If you don’t surprise in one way or another… you do nothing! Quite a radical statement, isn’t it? Well, it is slightly exaggerated, but there is truth in it. If we are in the business of marketing, selling and reaching out towards consumers, we need to be seen, listened to and be convincing!

Mr Musheg Mkhitaryan, native from the Ararat region in Armenia, is a very special man. He not only built a water factory in the Ararat Valley, but after three unsuccessful design studies, he saw me on Russian television and decided on the spot that I was his man to help out with his project.

… how to create something so unique that word-of-mouth becomes an efficient marketing tool.

… thanks to creative package design.

When teaching design and communication I often ask the question: Why is Coke so big and why will KitKat most likely become the second biggest FMCG product?

No doubt my main hobby became my profession when I selected packaging way back in the 1950ies! My other hobbies are: table tennis, jazz, calligraphy, stamps and photography.

When designing for print, POP, packaging, outdoor, vehicles, etc.:

Guinness just redesigned their 50cl draught can. Did you notice it? Maybe, maybe not. Doesn’t matter. What matters is that they did it right. This is unusual as today we mostly see up-datings or modernisations without real logic or common sense thinking – just playing around with different elements. Here are seven learnings:

Creative packaging is one of the most efficient way to promote a product. Very often the creativity comes from “thinking outside the box”. Here is an example of such a creative thinking, making a corrugated box more unique.

They are S. Pellegrino, Tabasco and Maggi Aroma (1920 edition) as we have a lot to learn from them. Unfortunately the Maggi bottle has today lost its uniqueness, while the other two bottles are still going strong.