In the current issue of Admap, Katie Ewer, strategy director in the Singapore office of design agency jones knowles ritchie (jkr), makes the case for packaging's role in brand-building.
In a fragmented media environment where people's attention spans are shorter than ever, design offers the possibility of being both the medium and the message, she suggests – "the visual glue that promises to hold a brand together".
Already, she notes, "savvy brands [are] investing more heavily in design in order to get noticed in a world with story fatigue".
Heineken, for example, innovates constantly in its packaging and builds brand iconography through design.
And when Coca-Cola launched its Share a Coke campaign, "for the first time in a brand of scale, we had packaging performing the role conventionally reserved for advertising", Ewer says.
While other brands have subsequently copied Coca-Cola's personalisation approach, none have had the same success. That, Ewer argues, is because, unlike Coke, they have failed to marry new technology to a brand idea.
She cites examples of a couple of brands that have done this – Heinz's 'Get Well Soup' campaign, where people were able to gift a can of soup to someone not feeling well, so reinforcing the brand's nurturing position.
And soft drink Irn Bru's 'Bru's Your Clan?' campaign – created by jkr – cemented the brand's role as an emblem of Scottish nationalism when it featured 52 different clan tartans on its packs.
"The sign of a great 'design campaign' is that it delivers something new, fresh and relevant to the consumer, while speaking to a more timeless brand truth at the same time," Ewer concludes.
"Campaigns that do one without the other simply do not work."
Data sourced from Admap