Regardless of your industry, it’s essential that you not only invest in excellent branding but in ensuring your packaging aligns with it. It’s one thing to make sure each item within the packaging is on-brand, but overlooking your branding on the packaging is a missed opportunity to strengthen your brand’s image—and what your customers or clients can expect in your attention to detail.
Your packaging’s branding is a core feature of your customer’s visual experience and, no matter your product, they want and expect a memorable experience. If they don’t get one, don’t be surprised if they eventually look elsewhere.
Let’s get into how to ensure the packaging solutions you choose deliver on-brand items.
Align Your Packaging With Your Brand
You and your team have poured a lot into growing your company’s presence and creating an impressive brand. Don’t let the temptation to skimp on applying that dedication to your packaging just because it “only” houses your products or assets. While you might save a bit on bland, run-of-the-mill packaging, it won’t do you any favors in the long run with customers.
First of all, customers perceive your packaging as an extension of your brand: if the packaging for an expensive, high-quality, or essential product or asset is off-brand, how can you expect them to believe that you see it as such?
Tip: Opt for custom dimensions, designs, or other knockout additions where they make sense. Customers will get excited before they even lay eyes on your product.
Think Like Your Customers
Similar to the above, ask yourself, if I were expecting a unique product, what would I want to see first? Whatever that looks like in your mind’s eye, bring it to life. Get creative with your marketing or design team and other stakeholders. Figure out how to execute it in a way that makes both financial sense and stays on-brand, whether that’s packaging for a single product or a whole line of goods.
This is especially true if you offer high-end products, like perfume, fine foods, cosmetics, or electronics. In these cases, consider elevating your packaging with:
- Spot, Raised, or Textured UV coating
- Soft Touch Aqueous
- Embossed lettering and design
- Metallic foil
While your customers might not hang on to packaging once they’ve retrieved the contents inside, they’ll commit to memory the experience they had opening the package.
Think Outside the Box—And Your Company
Your marketing and design teams can only do so much. To ensure you can bring your packaging to life, it’s always wise to reach out to a packaging engineer before giving final approval. These professionals can tell you whether or not the packaging you’re looking for is possible in its current form, the tweaks it needs to reach production, or if it needs an overhaul. It’s always in your best interest to contact a packaging engineer before you commit to big plans with your custom packaging.
Value-Engineered Packaging
Reaching out to an engineer crosses into the realm of value-engineered packaging, which means utilizing technical design, materials technology, and environmental policy to help you and your team create and bring to life your ideal packaging. They go beyond just making your packaging; they source sustainable solutions and help you understand the materials’ origins and how they’re produced to help you make packaging decisions beyond just the final product. It’s an environmentally responsible approach—and one that your customers will appreciate, too.
Create Before You Create
Once you have your design, it’s often helpful or necessary to create a prototype. This step helps you to eliminate any unforeseen issues with your packaging. Additionally, many new products require a short run of the actual packaging to be used for presentations. Associates International can produce these short-run prototypes, offering the quality in production needed to wow your audience.
Bring Your Custom Packaging to Life With Associates International
In a time when digital marketing reigns supreme, it can be easy to forget that physical items beyond proprietary goods and products are just as much a part of a multi-channel marketing strategy as digital ads. Your packaging is part of your brand and your advertising. Shouldn’t you invest in it with the resources it deserves?
Associates International can help you bring your custom packaging ideas to life and help you tailor your packaging to your brand. We’ve helped countless clients reach new customers and impress and retain existing ones, and we can do the same for you. Let’s make it happen.
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