Beauty categories have always been a great opportunity for packaging branding. The ability of brands to create product experiences is what matters. But how can we connect to nowadays customers? What has changed?

Brands are craving for stories and the designers’ job it to sublinate the brands world and address the customers’ expectations. 

1. Analysing the customers’ evolution of mindset

We cannot think of design without talking about the evolution of the customers’ behavior. 

In beauty, the customer has shifted from conceiving beauty as an idealistic concept to diversity and consciousness that beauty is not only one dogma. We can see that all leading brands are conquering the digital native space promoting transparency with messages that talk about “taking care of oneself while making the world better” and avoiding animal testing or unsustainable practices. 

Therefore, as designers, the goal is to catch the new consumers mindsets within holistic brand messages making sure they are taken in consideration in the packaging design. From a communication perspective, you can do short term and promise that you have nothing to hide or that you will change the world with your product… But you still need to stand out from the crowds onshelf. So in that sense, packaging is the best medium to connect brand and customer. 

The role of packaging

Packaging is the core instrument to transmit a brand’s identity: its present at the store, at social media and street campaigns, at customers homes… so it’s very important to guarantee that packaging delivers the story that the brand wants to tell. We have to think of design as what enables us to create a mental imprint to generate sales. 

Moreover, design has the power to concentrate full messages into one device. It’s not only a matter of style, but you need to get further in the story you want to tell so the consumer can get a universal understanding of the brand. 

Best stories around packaging

Nature as a storyteller

Using nature resources like water, flowers… helps the customer to asociate a product with nature and transform it into a ritual. For example, water is energising, a flower is blooming, the bee is harvesting. And then you can translate it into a skin benefit: moisturize thanks to the water or have a resplendent skin thanks to the blooming properties of flowers. The last step, will be to translate this into a design language like using blue colors, splashes in the design…

A good example of a brand that uses nature to position its brand is Abeille Royale, they have built a story of a bee that extracts from the honey properties to create a super protective anti-aging cream through the alveolar system that explains the ritual. 

As we can see, its all about the universal language and creating a communication that can connect with everyones rivers’ of thought. 

Going back to the origin

How do we create a traditional story?

An example of brand that uses origin as its story is a fragrance that was created based on the scent of the first parisian shop. In this case, the product ideation was a perfect fit with the traditional storytelling value. From the packaging perspective, the designers expressed the traditionality through a perfume cap with a printed number on top. All of these stories were represented in an aesthetic way to attract the customer. 

Key tips for your stories

Integrate sustainability at a core brand message

How can we integrate sustainability?

Before it was trendy to put sustainability in briefs 

Create an emotional connection with consumers

We are living in a very competitive market and we need to find new entries to the categories. Through packaging we can connect in a strong and an emotional way. For example if you put packaging as a star medium and use transmedia campaigns to create interactive stories with your customer, it is more likely that you gain engagement with your customer and build a better relation with them. 

Reusability of the packaging

Unfortunately, sustainability cannot always be achieved that is why sometimes we have to be creative and think about how we could give a second life to our package and inspire the consumer.  For example, there is a champagne company that transformed its packaging into an ice-bucket. This way it is not only a value for sustainability but also for usability. The packaging can have second lives and be part of the product ritual. 

It can also create a product experience, the spirit company Hennessy, created a shaker that was included with the bottle and Veuve Cjicquot had a special packaging that reflected the storytelling of the brand: the use of a mailbox to pay tribute to the origin of the brand (how the brand wrote letters to clients). 

All in all, we cannot talk about packaging without mentioning sustainability. We want to sustain the world we live in by making things smarter, safer and better but for this to be possible we need to question our ability to invest in innovation, time and money. So, in the end we need to work a lot and work together (marketing, production and creation) to build strong brands and make sure we make things the right way. 

If designing an original idea has the power to federate across a shared mental imprint, then design is the best currency to set a dialogue between the brand world and cultural anchorages. The aim of design is to make sure that stories tease curiosity and complicity.