During my recent travel to Asia to teach communication, I obviously passed through a number of airports, most of them having the same tax-free business offering universal brands from Toblerone to Hermès, from Rolex to Johnnie Walker.
Between the two World Wars, the Swedish businessman Ivar Kreuger built an emporium with safety matches. They were no doubt of the highest quality, but so was the marketing of these matches, marketing built upon design! Fascinating designs by acknowledged artists, as the profession ‘package designer’ was not yet established. The very diverse designs were not built on today’s positioning, nor on target thinking, but according to the clients’ taste. Unfortunately, Mr Kreuger’s ‘empire’ broke down with his sudden death in 1932.
In my book, as well as on this site, I have written about those books that have had an impact on my way of working and inspired me to do things a little differently.
Brand identity is important. It is certainly not something you play around with. It is something that , if properly handled, increases the strength of a brand every time it is seen. This short article will try to show how it is seen.
Are they particular? Can we learn from them? Are they creative? Do they progress? Can a Westerner understand them? All these questions come to mind when visiting this booming market. After two days’ storechecking, here is my analysis for what it is worth:
When reading about the introduction of the iPad in the TIME magazine I fell upon a few words about Steve Jobs which gave me the answer to the above question. It read as follows: “Apple’s success is mainly due to Steve Jobs’ insistence upon design, detail, finish, quality, ease of use and reliability”.
I am often asked the question: “from where do you get your creativity?” The answer is: “mostly in keeping my eyes open, from storechecking, and being curious. That is what I would call the visual input to my brain. However, these images need stimuli to be of value and this stimulation comes from my verbal memory, from books I have read.
Packaging – Unravelling the Value of
the Silent Salesman
Simplify your message in order to amplify what you have to sell, advises Lars Wallentin, a Packaging Communication Specialist. Part of what the product does and stands for is getting lost through unclear and complicated communication, when in fact simplicity is the key. As a speaker at the [...]
I will try here to summarize what is important when it comes to food and drink communication in advertising, packaging and recipe brochures. It is all about maximizing appetite appeal and present the products in their best light.
Why are packages all over the world more often seen as waste than useful containers of products? Why do we have a guilt-feel if we do not recycle the smallest plastic bottle or Nespresso capsule? Why are there more negative articles written these days on packaging than positive ones?
My friend Bobby Monaghan in London said it so well: “if packaging were an olympic sport, it would be decathlon”. Yes, to master package design you need to know and understand a lot.
Can it be said better? I doubt. On a recent business trip to Austria I was once more reminded of the fact that in every single market in Europe we ‘overcommunicate’. Not only on packaging, but equally on POS, outdoor advertising, TVC or print.
What happened to print advertising, but also to packaging, TV, POS and other media?
Those of us who are over fifty or sixty, i.e. who have been around for some decades and can thus compare how it was “in the good old days”… will certainly question why so much communication has become so complicated and overloaded. This, in a world which today has more media, more products and brands than 20-30 years ago. Logically, we should communicate simpler and with more creativity and uniqueness/surprise in order to be noticed in such a crowded market place.
Package design is about selling. To sell you have to convince consumers that your product is different or better than the competition.
First of all improve your product, secondly improve your communication and that is what this article is about.
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Born in Sweden and educated at the Graphic Institute in Stockholm, Lars Wallentin moved 1964 to Switzerland to the Nestlé headquarters where he was responsible, during almost 40 years, for the development of creative design solutions for the strategic brands such as Nestlé, Nescafé, Maggi, Buitoni, Nesquik or KitKat. 
