Unbeatable Packaging Ideas for 2021

Want to sharpen your appearance in 2021?

Great packaging gets buyers pumped about your product before they even open it. It’s one of the first touchpoints of a prospect and helps you stand out from the competition.

Ready to go? Here are just a few creative (yet functional!) designs to consider this year.

Packaging with a Story

Consumers want more than a product.

They want to be part of a story. Studies have revealed that people are impacted by emotions rather than information when making brand decisions, so sharpen your narrative and weave compelling stories into your designs.

Consider the example of Paper Boat, a brand of traditional Indian beverages headquartered in Bengaluru. This brand seeks to evoke tradition and memory with a product that’s more than a beverage – but something with “nostalgia in every sip.”

In a sea of similar tetra pack cartons, Paper Boat packaging leaps off the shelf with its pear-shaped flexible pouch. The design evokes a bright, unconventional theme with bold, playful fonts. This heart-warming vibe is paired with a creative one-liner on the bottom of the pack, bringing a quirky personalization builds a strong connection with customers and keeps them coming back.

Name-Centric Labels

When you want your brand to stick, why not put the name front and center?

Instead of making an illustration or logo the packaging’s focal point, many designers choose to make a product’s name the star of their designs. These concepts have lots of fun with lettering, allowing the featured name to leave a confident, edgy impression.

Each name feels like an artwork, bringing a stand-alone sophistication that speaks for itself.

Beautiful Boxes

Today’s customers are starved for new experiences, and a clever unboxing experience can provide the fun factor people want.

‘Unboxing’ is just what it sounds like: the action of taking something out of a box. But it’s also much more than that. If it wasn’t, there wouldn’t be 1.6 million videos on YouTube devoted to it, with popular channels drawing in as many as 2.4 billion views. It might be odd-sounding, but it’s a fantastic niche that’s growing by 57% per year!

A stellar unboxing experience will boost your content marketing efforts, drive engagement, increase sales, and enhance customers’ opinions of your product. Need ideas? Check out companies like Birchbox or Thrive Market to inspire your next masterpiece.

Limited Edition or Collectible Series

If you want products to fly off the shelves, try packaging them as a gorgeous collection.

Good Flower Farm, which specializes in organic, plant-based skincare products, does this masterfully. Richly-colored earthy labels adorn each item, and combinations (in a design series) make a beautiful decoration for the bathroom, yoga studio, or vanity of your favorite tree-hugger. The deodorant set features jewel-toned packaging for lavender tea tree, pine cedarwood, or charcoal citrus. Why choose just one when you could have all three?

To stimulate impulse buying, change up your labels series each year. These quirky and attractive limited editions trigger spontaneous collectors and an urgency to buy.

They WILL Judge a Book by its Cover

As tempting as it is to think ourselves rational, logical individuals, the truth is that human beings make snap judgments when it comes to packaging.

If you want to increase the emotional attachments customers have with your business, start with pristine packaging. From a dash of color on your envelope to a gorgeous label on your containers, exterior branding can be part of any business budget.

Need some fresh ideas? Contact us today to get started!

Grow Your Influence with the 10 Most “Likeable” Personality Traits (Part 2)

 

Certain horrible habits drive others away.

If you want to win friends and influence people, it’s important to spend time evaluating your personality from time to time. Do others gravitate toward you or subtly slink away when you leave the room?

Influential leaders know how to gain respect and bring out the best in others.

Move in the Opposite Spirit: Traits 6-10

In last week’s blog, we shared five traits to avoid and how to replace them with better habits.

Here are several more from the “notorious” top ten, with five essential qualities to emulate instead:

6. Pessimistic

If people are always telling you to look on the bright side, it’s likely that you are the “Debbie Downer” in the room.

While it’s ok to be a realist, melancholy people are perceived as whiny, impossible to please, and a drain on everyone around them.

How can you fix this? Do your best to avoid talking about things that bum you out. When you’re tempted to complain, choose something upbeat or beautiful to focus on instead. If you have a headache or a car problem, consider asking someone else about their day instead of talking about yours.

Change the atmosphere, and you’ll change EVERYONE’S mood – and your reputation.

7. Arrogant

Arrogant people come across as prideful, rude, or long-winded in conversation.

If you find that you regularly turn conversations back to you – or you make yourself the hero of every story – you might be repelling those you’d like to attract.

To grow in humility, remember this phrase: “collectively, we are genius.” Don’t try to be the expert at all times. Encourage the value in people through active listening, empathy, and a friendly spirit. Admit your own mistakes and apologize. Affirm others when you’re tempted to make much of yourself.

8. Focused on External Factors

Many years ago, Dale Miller conducted a study that compared two groups of executives.

One group was identified as highly effective and ready for a promotion, while the second group was eventually deemed unready or unsuited for the role.

The difference? A willingness to accept responsibility for the results of a task or team.

Unaccountable people are seen as unreliable, quick to blame others, or as embodying a victim-based mentality. In contrast, leaders are seen as “get it done” people – those who are willing to reject passivity and accept responsibility.

To grow in personal responsibility, embrace the mindset that says, “I am the person who must make this happen.” Take ownership for a task, accept criticism for mistakes, and apologize for outcomes that fall short of the goal.

9. Impulsive

In the movies, it’s cool to be spontaneous.

In real life, it’s often a disaster. Impulsive team members can be reckless, imprudent, arrogant, and oblivious to the feelings of others. They are often wrong – but never in doubt!

The annoyance factor here comes after the fact – when your decisions have hurt the people you care about. To avoid this tendency, delay big decisions at least 24 hours. Ask wise colleagues to give input or play the devil’s advocate to help you see all sides of a situation. And brainstorm other possibilities without assuming your instincts are correct.

10. Unbearably Sensitive

Overly sensitive people seem to have low self-esteem; they come across as weak, emotionally needy, passive-aggressive, selfish, or fearful of confrontation.

Have you ever been with someone who sucked the air out of the room or made every situation about THEM? If you have, you know why people will run away screaming if you do this.

To avoid this pitfall, let things go, strive to believe the best about others, and smile when you’d rather cry. And express your true feelings only after considering the best place and method to do so.

Change Your Words, Change Your Outlook

Do you see yourself in any of the traits from this list?

The first step is recognizing it. From here, you can pay attention to bad habits and make productive changes for the future.

Disable Defenses by Creating Curiosity with Your Marketing

 

You want your prospects to understand how your products can solve their problems, so they’ll be moved to make a purchase.

But people don’t go from uninterested observers to committed buyers overnight. Asking for a sale is a relational proposition. And relationships have rules. Understanding the stages of a marketing relationship is important because it helps you understand what your sales funnel needs to accomplish.

Just as you wouldn’t propose marriage before a first date, you can’t rush a customer into a purchase.

What do romantic relationships, friendships, and committed customers have in common? They all move through three stages:

1. Curiosity

2. Enlightenment

3. Commitment

People will not want to know more about you (enlightenment) unless they are curious about you. And until they know how you can help them, they will never commit.

Curiosity is a Snap Judgment

The curiosity stage of a relationship is about instant impressions.

Whether you are scanning a print ad or sorting piles of mail, your mind is always evaluating information. Anything not relevant to your survival is perceived as “junk.” You’ll toss it aside completely, or you’ll procrastinate and plan to give it attention later.

At the curiosity stage, prospects decide whether to keep or discard the information you’re offering. At this stage, if you don’t tell somebody how you can make their life better, they will set you aside.

When it comes to marketing – whether it’s the tagline on your direct mail envelope or your entire elevator pitch – you will never succeed if you can’t succinctly express how you will help people survive.

Want to build engagement by provoking curiosity? Get them wondering about something or look for ways to turn information into a quest. A few ideas:

--  Strive to make the information personally relevant

--  Avoid using material that is given away freely elsewhere

--  Use a compelling “missing information” teaser

--  Offer the promise of something worthwhile

--  Combine a curiosity headline with a self-interest subheading

--  Use visuals to suggest or create the perception of mystery

Samples of Curiosity Teasers

• Learn why you never want to eat this before flying!
• Is the Honeymoon Over?
• If You Live in Siberia, This Trick Could Save You Thousands!
• The Secret of a Clutter-Free Office
• Why You Don’t Want to Drink the Pool Water
• Are You Maintaining Your Life or Actually Enjoying It?

Finally, remember to provoke customers with a vision of the “ideal version” of themselves.

Very little of what makes people curious is rational. People don’t buy products or join a movement because they are thinking rationally. They commit based on emotion, status, or dreams of their aspirational identity. If you can stoke curiosity by tugging these heartstrings, you’re already halfway to a sale!