Product Packaging Takes Center Stage in Marketing-Effectiveness Debate
Product innovation over the past several decades has been dominated by a reinforcing cycle, as consumer attention becomes increasingly divided by more stimuli from advertising, social media or entertainment. Marketers have responded by developing new and streamlined ways to generate product awareness, with these streamlined approaches resulting in more noise competing for consumer attention.
All this noise means significant challenges for marketers to generate awareness of the “next great thing.” In the world of product packaging, that means you must catch attention quickly—often with what can be seen on the package itself, either on the shelf or in a brief ad. This has forced marketers to blur the lines between traditional pack testing and concept testing. These are no longer distinct, self-contained approaches.
New Ipsos research hones in on the blurring of these approaches: What can marketers do to replicate reality? How should they be thinking about testing for new innovations? And how do they decide the right approach?
A packcept can help. While usage of the term has become more common, there still isn’t necessarily full agreement on what it means. The general idea is that a packcept is an image of product packaging. That image can be used to assess the viability of a new product or a new packaging design for an existing product. However, there’s plenty of variation in how those stimuli can be used within research.
In our latest paper we outline the three ways of using packcepts to successfully assess the potential of new product or packaging initiatives.
KEY FINDINGS
- As brands compete for distracted consumers, they should consider “packcepts” if they don’t intend much advertising—this is a way to introduce consumers to an innovation that will not have marketing support.
- Marketing communication has become much more fragmented.
- To gain a clear assessment of consumer interest in a product, companies’ concepts should reflect how consumers will become aware.
- Ipsos research can help brands successfully use packcepts to assess the potential of a new product or package design.
Product innovation over the past several decades has been dominated by a reinforcing cycle, as consumer attention becomes increasingly divided by more stimuli from advertising, social media or entertainment. Marketers have responded by developing new and streamlined ways to generate product awareness, with these streamlined approaches resulting in more noise competing for consumer attention. And the cycle continues. Consumers see thousands of ads a day, with recent Ipsos research showing that about 78% of Facebook video ads are watched for three seconds or less. This trend only accelerated during the pandemic, as consumers devoted less mental energy to new products and spent less time at-shelf. At the same time, we see increasing consumer demand for sustainable choices when shopping. A majority of people consider themselves to be sustainable/ethical shoppers (64%) when it comes to food and grocery, though in reality they believe the responsibility falls on the brand: 66% of consumers believe companies have a moral obligation to use sustainable packaging. As a result, companies are expected to do good, but it can be difficult to get credit for the work that’s getting done. All this noise means significant challenges for marketers to generate awareness of the “next great thing.” In the world of product packaging, that means you must catch attention quickly—often with what can be seen on the package itself, either on the shelf or in a brief ad. This has forced marketers to blur the lines between traditional pack testing and concept testing. These are no longer distinct, self-contained approaches. New Ipsos research hones in on the blurring of these approaches: What can marketers do to replicate reality? How should they be thinking about testing for new innovations? And how do they decide the right approach?
Packcepts and Your Research Strategy
With consumer attention increasingly divided, how can brands capture consumer interest? Companies often take two approaches to this reality: They focus on increasing the quality and impact of traditional advertising, or they reduce/eliminate in-market support to focus on areas with better ROI. This change has resulted in two key considerations.
• Packaging is often doing significant work in generating consumer interest, especially as attitudes are shifting towards more sustainable products.
• “Traditional” concepts aren’t always the right approach for testing innovation performance.
With these realizations, the use of “packcepts” has increased significantly. What is a packcept? While usage of the term has become more common, there still isn’t necessarily full agreement on what it means. The general idea is that a packcept is an image of product packaging. That image can be used to assess the viability of a new product or a new packaging design for an existing product. However, there’s plenty of variation in how those stimuli can be used within research. And as always, it all goes back to one key question —what is the objective of the research for product packaging? Just because we have one type of stimulus doesn’t mean there’s only one way to conduct research. There are three key perspectives on how to use packcepts in assessing the potential of new product or packaging initiatives.
‘Packcept’ Objectives
Since the “packcept” term can be used several different ways, the key is to focus on the business objective of the research. Ultimately, we can look at three goals:
- Determining the trial potential of an innovation—the “Pack as hero” approach.
- Determining the optimization needs/best version of a pack—the “Traditional pack test” approach.
- Determining the trial potential of an innovation while also getting a general understanding of the optimization needs/best version of a pack—the blended approach.
Pack As Hero: Testing Innovations That Won’t Have Marketing Support
The Ipsos stance on the term packcept is that it describes a concept that is based primarily on the pack shot. In other words—it is a means for introducing consumers to an innovation that will not have marketing support. Ipsos has been addressing this common occurrence regularly. Our central focus is on testing stimuli that reflect the planned in-market communication—however robust or limited it may be. We recognize that marketing communication has become much more fragmented—new product awareness is now frequently driven by short marketing elements, or simple shelf presence (see the Ipsos Views paper “Speed Dating with Innovations: What’s your innovation’s pick-up line?” for more on fragmented marking communication). The goal is always for test conditions to mirror reality. In order to gain a clear assessment of consumer interest of a product, your concept should reflect how consumers will become aware. Put most simply, this view of “packcept” is used when a client is interested in testing the trial potential of a new innovation that will not have marketing support. There may or may not be multiple versions of the concept, but the goal is not pack refinement —rather, assessing the potential of the innovation itself and how it is “communicated.” Our most common approach for assessing trial potential of an innovation, pits innovations directly against consumer-defined competition via a choice- task. This approach better reflects the actual behavior of adopting an innovation in-market. It is also stimulus agnostic, meaning it’s appropriate for testing innovations regardless of the amount of marketing support planned. That means a robust read on innovation potential, whether awareness will be generated solely by shelf presence or by an extensive marketing campaign. This means a consistent approach— and consistent success measures—whether your innovation is final or early-stage, well-supported or focused on distribution-based awareness.
Traditional ‘Pack Test’: Screening, Optimizing Packaging Designs
When a more holistic view of the product proposition is not required, we might take a different approach. A package must do two fundamental things at the point of purchase:
- Capture the shopper’s attention.
- Persuade the shopper to choose that product (at all, and instead of the other options available).
Great packaging design does plenty more—it’s easily recognizable, cues positive brand associations and gives information. But at its core, a pack should be seen and then sold. A fundamental consideration in assessing a pack’s stopping power is utilizing an appropriate competitive context. Depending on the stage of development, the associated risk and the plan for launch (i.e., e-commerce vs. brick & mortar), Ipsos will work with you to design a fit-for-purpose competitive exposure, ranging from a simple “clutter reel” all the way to immersive shopping environments. This empowers us to be agile and efficient when needed, yet also offers the power of forecastable results and behaviorally based approaches (which have been validated against real in-store sales data). We often hear the question, “which design is liked best?” This should be only part of the question we ask of consumers. While appeal is important, we believe people buy products rather than packs, and as a result employ the same measures we know to drive potential of a product proposition in determining potential for success of a pack. We think about the pack as an extension of the product (rather than just a participant within an on-shelf beauty pageant), which enables us to leverage our vast experience in predicting the success of innovations—both new launches and relaunches. And we don’t often find that a go/no-go answer is adequate—we want to know why a pack design performed as it did. Regardless of method, Ipsos bakes in both System 1 and System 2 measures to ensure we’re going beyond the “which one” and get to “why” or “what’s next” each time.
The Blended Approach
Most innovation tests aren’t templated; each new launch has nuances in terms of the role it will play in your portfolio and the people you hope to persuade. However, we believe in a few foundational principles as related to innovation testing, such as including competitive context (as consumers don’t make choices in a vacuum) and using consistent key measures across the development process. In addition, we understand the importance of messaging—regardless of where that communication is happening. A pack can be viewed as just another form of product messaging, separately from (but ultimately working to inform) product advertising. In this context, the pack itself is a natural extension of the overall innovation proposition. To get the clearest answer, you need to incorporate both a method of assessing in-market potential and detailed understanding of how to improve your pack’s appeal. This is what will put you on the path of in-market success. Moving Forward We should no longer put our initiatives into neat little boxes— a concept test here, a pack test there. The best research addresses the entire innovation, and measures more than solely whether an idea is solid or a design is appealing. As a result, we’re committed to working with you first to define your questions and then build the best possible research to address it. The best research begins from clearly defined business objectives rather than letting the stimuli lead the methodology, so be sure to choose a partner that helps you see and improve your potential, no matter where you sit in the development process.
