[00:00:00] Welcome to Unpacking the Digital Shelf, where we explore brand manufacturing in the digital age. Hey everyone, Peter Crosby here from the Digital Shelf Institute. On today's episode, we return to the place where commerce started. A consumer walking through a store, scanning the
[00:00:26] packaging, looking for what they need or didn't know they needed. In the digital world, there is more space to tell your story, but in-store you've got three seconds. Michael Kaplinger, a founding partner at Smashbrand, joined Lauren Levak Gilbert and me to articulate the modern
[00:00:41] testing strategy to ensure that the packaging creative you craft is truly what will make the sale. And how those lessons can be applied across all your channels. Michael, welcome to the podcast. We are so excited to have you on. Thank you so much for agreeing to come on.
[00:00:59] Yes, we're talking about packaging and that is true and dear to my heart. So thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here. I know we're throwing out the old school, we're going new school with packaging, which I'm so excited about. I mean,
[00:01:10] so much of having the physical and the digital shelf kind of merge together. There's so much more to think through, so many opportunities for storytelling and for impact. And so I'm really delighted to have you here to talk about that. So you've done packaging with
[00:01:27] both sides of that equation in mind with a wealth of experience. So tell us, just walk us through what in your mind these days are some of the critical elements of packaging for brands to consider and their process for sort of thinking through all that effectively.
[00:01:42] Yeah, you know, that question can be construed as very tactical and there's some really actually good pointers that I can focus on. But I feel like it's beneficial to maybe just throw out a couple point of point of views. And, and I think first of all is,
[00:01:58] first of all, like shopping in general doesn't matter where you do it. It's very contextualized. So for example, I'm in a retail shelf, I'm in a hurry, I got to get out the door,
[00:02:11] like my context, my mind state is different. I'm in a rush versus say online, I'm in the comfort of my home, maybe I have a bit more time. And then the category two so like,
[00:02:21] am I very familiar with this category? Or do I need to learn about it? Or am I so familiar that actually, I a new groundbreaking product has something to tell me and I'm not as open to it.
[00:02:32] And even within the stores where there's e commerce or retail, like I know for fact that Costco is very much a discovery store. You kind of we all weave through those aisles, right? And there's even though there's so much shelf space, there's actually not that many
[00:02:46] products on the shelf. So people discover products and their mind state the way they think about them are different than in a grocery store, I'm inundated with so many things. And so I think that that's a really important thing to think about,
[00:03:01] no matter how you're selling. And at the end of the day, most products are most products have multi channel right? So they're in store, if you're sold in e commerce, you probably have a goal of being indoors at some point. And so like, that's definitely something that we
[00:03:17] we think about. And, and then also, I think a really critical piece is the role of packaging in sale. So in a retail store, where we actually do focus most of our attention on and it's
[00:03:32] everything right? If you got me in the grocery store, we all go to the grocery store. And for the most part, consumers these days, they're so inundated with ads, they shut them out, they're not listening. And so the job of the packaging and that particular shopping experience
[00:03:47] has to do everything. And for those for consumers, really, the the prop the package and the product are almost one of the same. It's kind of like the product, the brand is the package and it's your only medium of communication. So when you think about shop,
[00:04:03] like packaging, and what it roll it what its role is, I think it's, it's, it doesn't matter how it's sold. And if you really come down to it's the piece that is the lead that you
[00:04:16] can't change, like in e commerce and things, you can change your marketing, change your tactics, you can target to specific audiences. But at the end of the day, that package is the product. And so if you start there, and you actually really spend a lot of time,
[00:04:30] then I think you can go a long way of really getting things right. So you asked me like, what really matters there? Of course, in that role of packaging, or in that shopping experience, you've got to grab attention, you've got to have a compelling offer,
[00:04:42] have to understand what that offer is. And again, thinking about like, am I super busy? Or my have do I have more time? All these things really drive down to the role of the packaging in making that decision ultimately, and getting trial. And how would you suggest
[00:04:58] brands approach creating packaging for in store versus online because it's a very different audience, right? To your point, you're in the comfort of your home, maybe you're scrolling through a lot of products on your phone, but in store, you just want to
[00:05:09] grab a cereal or deodorant or whatever it is, how would you suggest they go about that? Yeah, this I really glad you asked this question. So we actually in all kind of going back to
[00:05:22] how I started like the context of shopping, right? And so we are able to as e commerce marketers actually bring a lot of context, we get to introduce we get to build a story,
[00:05:36] right? We get to have more images, we have bullet points, we have all kinds of information. And in a retail shelf, you get the context is different. But a lot of it is your show
[00:05:46] whatever the consumer shows up within their head, like how they're going to judge you. And so the way that I think about this is, it's kind of like first principle. So if the one thing that if that packaging, it let's just say you're your multi channel,
[00:06:02] and if you're not today, aspire to be and when you're in that retail shelf, and you have nothing but that packaging to communicate to your consumers, your only marketing medium, that is it is the most important thing. So you get that right.
[00:06:19] And, and so I think that my my recommendation advice to even brands that are more e commerce centric is to really go back to that first principles and get that right. Because I really
[00:06:30] do believe that whether it's used to the same degree in an e commerce purchase, it still affects the consumers experience when they receive the product. And also it makes all of these other elements so much more like to call it force multiplier, all your other efforts,
[00:06:46] those activation things, a small little tick in in conversion rate can really have those multiplying effects downstream. So I think and I'll say also too is if you're really if you really go through this process, and you try to honestly get it right to get it really, really
[00:07:04] right, that you'll learn a lot of things about where consumers might still have some questions, where they need to build more information. And I think that's where e commerce has an advantage to kind of further strengthen some of these things that maybe are slightly disadvantaged
[00:07:19] in a retail in such a small, like front of pack medium. So Michael, I'd love to dig into a little bit to sort of you were talking earlier about testing and using data sort of guide your decisions rather than what I imagine might be
[00:07:34] some objective teams feeling differently about something you know, you want to get sort of rid of that and really get some data to help guide what you're doing. And I know you guys
[00:07:46] focus a lot on how to deliver that data. So I'd love you to dig in maybe maybe with an example of how you use your processes to get that, you know, that sort of objective data for
[00:07:57] folks. Sure. So the way that we think about it is, because this is such a kind of it all comes together at the end to just like, boom, in three to 10 seconds, I've got a gut reaction to a yes,
[00:08:10] no decision by consumer. So to really break that apart, we our approach, the way we think about it is to really do just that to break it apart. And so we'll have a number of tests
[00:08:24] we'll do. And so we're going to focus on creative and I'll give you an example first on the creative side of things. So we're going to actually strip away some of like a lot of
[00:08:31] that nuance language you might see on front of pack, there has to be enough there to create that context. I'm a consumer understand. And so I'm going to talk about a new this is
[00:08:42] laundry detergent. And so this brand they're in market now, I can talk about this Earth Breeze our client. And they did really, really well in e commerce, good store in this and
[00:08:53] then targets like we want you but your packages not ready for the store, the retail shop. So we approach this and so first of all, just so everyone understands, this is a new form factor.
[00:09:05] So Earth Breeze has a laundry sheet. So think like a dryer sheet, but instead of it, it goes in the washing machine, it completely dissolves. So there's no plastic, there's no waste. So they have a pretty good position, they call them eco sheets, they're positioned
[00:09:20] for like eco conscious consumers. Because, you know, we all have that vision of a pile of laundry plastic bottles in right so. So we do some creative and like, okay, we understand and we put this into creative and what we learned. And through this process,
[00:09:37] so you have a strategy like, hey, this is what we stand for. They create on it, we think we execute it, we've got a lot of creative that's got plant based stuff on there.
[00:09:45] That's what they had in the market today. And what we learned from this testing was that comparing to broad mainstream things, you have consumers that say I care about the planet, I care about eco, but they don't want the product because they believe that it's not going
[00:10:01] to be as effective as say tide or these mainstream things. The funny thing is that actually came because it was plant based references in the creative, visually speaking, the actual formulation for the product has chemicals, it has strong detergents,
[00:10:16] it actually works as well. But the consumer just and there were no words that said to the contrary, but the consumer presumed because of all these green colors and plant based references, that it was plant powered, and it didn't work. That product if it would have
[00:10:32] went to market with that creative would have failed miserably. So the unlock was oh my gosh, we got to move away. We need to find a way to say, save the planet without it being plants.
[00:10:43] So we did a whole other round of creative another testing and we moved to like blue oceans and I put a turtle in there with all these bubbles and effervescence on there. And so what that
[00:10:55] creative communicated was this is effective. And then the words reinforced it and the turtle said save the planet and their brain never went to plants and plant powered. So that is something that you can't really understand or learn until you put that creative in front
[00:11:12] of consumer and you learn how they react to it and then you navigate around that. And so that actually is a huge unlock that only became for in the creative process that we're able to actually shift and modify and move to a more effective visual creative.
[00:11:29] And that really does speak to the difference between online. They didn't need to be that economic, economical about how they describe their product because they had relatively lots of space to have a bunch of different approaches of describing their product and
[00:11:47] the consumer was sort of drawn to the one. But when you just have that and we use dryer laundry sheets like that and there's just very little room on the box. So you have
[00:11:58] one chance to sort of convince people not only pick your product but almost to pick your category of products because it's so new. So that's really cool to think of in a few seconds a consumer is able to kind of give you that feedback.
[00:12:13] Yeah and I'll give you one more and it's on the other side because I was talking about deconstructing them if we have time for this I'll actually focus on the words itself because we have another testing methodology where we do the opposite. We actually strip
[00:12:24] away all creative and we're focused only on the words. And so again we have to they have to understand what the product is and in this case it was kind of a better for you snack.
[00:12:33] And so the product and the function of it and the strategy and the positioning was this product had only 70 calories and so you eat it and it fills you up like you feel satiated for a longer amount of time so you're not back to snacking right away.
[00:12:52] And the mechanism to do that was high in fiber. Fiber makes you feel good. So in this case the creative team and they're putting the words out there like high in fiber was kind of a big
[00:13:04] claim right. So we put this in front of consumers and the way we do is we kind of break down the different like the key areas of the packaging that we want to test
[00:13:12] and we have variations about how it resonates and consumers are kind of giving us insight on that. But then what we also do and how we put it together is actually what are the drivers of
[00:13:22] purchase like that define the category claims or the product differentiator and what is the relative importance of those and in that list was high in fiber dead last. It doesn't sound very delicious does it? No but here's the thing so
[00:13:41] high in fiber means more than one thing. It means for some people it's like gastrointestinal like kind of feeling regular right and then let which is actually has more like history for that meaning and a more modern meaning which actually is coming but maybe not to the same
[00:13:59] degree is about that kind of satiation how they wanted to use it. And so what we learned in that process so if we lead with that now imagine this is on the creative and you've
[00:14:08] all these things here and that's on the shelf the consumer sees that and again our consumers are fickle they give you three seconds you're hoping for four and they're basically like a go no-go and they give it a no-go because that's not what they're interested in.
[00:14:22] They don't want fiber that's not what they're looking for in a snack but the but so the unlock was that the value the benefit really was was satiation with low calories so fill
[00:14:33] you up without and so the fiber was not a purchase driver but what it was was a reason to believe and so we needed messaging that said fills you up and then they then the consumer sees
[00:14:45] that and they're like interesting I'm intrigued and then they later see because it's in lower font in a lower position in the messaging hierarchy where their eyes are going to track to by the time they see fiber they actually can already associate it with its benefit
[00:14:59] and again their brain never goes to the other thing. And so this is this is the this is what we it's almost like engineering perceptions and to under to do it right you have to actually
[00:15:09] understand like the little mental locks that fall in order both on creative and both on words to get the consumer where you where you want them to be. Yeah I always think of it as Hansel and
[00:15:19] Gretel without the death like you're just doing one little one little crumb at a time and you just need to get them to the next crumb. Hansel and Gretel without the death I like it I like it. You know that ironic thing is it's like I'm explaining these
[00:15:36] guys are these are really easy for you to understand they almost seem obvious after I explain them but for some reason they're not obvious in the process because there's so many pieces all that
[00:15:46] come together all at once and it's really hard again like objectivity it's hard to get it on the pieces that are actually doing the work so to speak. I was just going to say Michael would you say that there's like specific categories to think about from a packaging
[00:16:02] perspective like I heard design so I think color font imagery right and then words right so typography the text the claims and then I'm assuming there's also an element of ingredients right like are there specific buckets that you can say broadly like as a brand think about
[00:16:20] these things in the context of how the the consumer is reacting to them. Yeah so at the end of the day again is like consumers they want the easy road so if you can make their job and
[00:16:34] so if you're going to interrupt their behavior their normal shopping behavior and this applies more so it's a there's a there's a degree of how much I'm engaged in the comp in the decision making process you know a car very high applesauce very low right so you got
[00:16:52] degrees across there in between so understand understand your consumer like how engaged are they in the process you have some advantages it's expensive but e-commerce you've driven them into a funnel you've got a little bit more captive audience so think about that. The next thing is
[00:17:07] again contextualize everything like going back to where I started like okay do I have a lot of consumers do up in the grocery store do I have a few or an e-commerce I've actually put
[00:17:17] them in there and they're on my they're on my landing page and there's no other consumers right so those are important things because what you're asking them to do is like if I have a go-to
[00:17:28] product and I have a yogurt I always buy the same yogurt and you got this new fancy yogurt I need to actually grab their attention right so that's where we start thinking about distinctive assets standing out on shelf they're not exactly the same but they should be related
[00:17:44] and so color is a really hard thing to own like brands change it but you can use color and blocking so what we're looking for I think brands should really think about
[00:17:56] like a design system so creatively if I'm in one part of a store I'm on e-commerce and then I later go into Target and the same brand is there that there's a mental connection consumers so
[00:18:08] we think about these things that are very ownable like Frosted Flakes the Tigers like pretty ownable not everybody can have a character on their thing or should they but there's a lot of distinctive things and so you want to grab that attention on shelf you
[00:18:22] want to stand out and then you want to you need to communicate your value very very quickly like for example I think it's perfect kind of teeing up as I was just talking about the
[00:18:33] healthy snack so the category is healthy snack but then the diff when we got to the next step of differentiation sorry they actually had the wrong message on there it didn't it didn't
[00:18:42] hit it so you've got to be very deliberate about communicating quickly and then and so you messaging hierarchy we think about that I think there's a lot of analogies to even selling online e-commerce like getting those kind of steps right and so I think like messaging is
[00:19:05] less is more and I think Thomas Jefferson famous for saying I would have written you a shorter letter if I had more time it's worthwhile exercise to try to distill less less is more because it forces you to be very very articulate about what really matters and
[00:19:23] what's working and and it also kind of declutters the pack and things things resonate more and it kind of adds a lot of these kind of second order effects like oh it just feels like
[00:19:35] a more premium product because they're able to get it done without screaming at me I'm kind of over exaggerating but I think these are some of the areas that and I think e-commerce in general is at more risk for this because
[00:19:48] because they have those other drivers to pull it's kind of like they can be a little lazy with their packaging and and it usually will be quite beneficial even if they don't change channels to go revisit it and tighten these things up and get that value proposition and
[00:20:03] presentation of the product really really good e-commerce they're a voice but they shouldn't have the sale because they're so focused on like targeting right and your packaging is the one piece that has to speak to all audiences and you're always going to have
[00:20:20] your core audience but you have a lot of audiences and and so you have to have it's a very strategic function it's actually closer in my opinion to product development than it is
[00:20:30] to marketing because it's it is the representation of your product and you get it right and you kind of can't change it very often so that is if you have brand managers they are the key
[00:20:42] stakeholders for sure they're the ones that whose job it is and that function is to bring the pieces together and understand and manage that brand they're usually a bit more insight driven and so that lends itself to getting it right instead of like trying to have special interests
[00:21:00] like what's gonna what's gonna sell my product better in this particular campaign I'm focused on so Michael how do you measure the value of different types of packaging versus another when you're launching sure so I know I've been talking a lot about some of the other
[00:21:16] testing methodology we use those are very much geared towards learning and then actually taking those learnings and applying them to new creative but the process at the end is really demonstrating and showing that it's actually going to work on the retail shelf and so the way
[00:21:31] that we do it is we have we kind of culminate this process with the purchase intent test and we try to bring the experience as close as possible to kind of simulating how a consumer
[00:21:44] is going to shop at the shop so we walk in we kind of contextualize it with some imagery maybe it's a grocery store or something and you have the shelf and we're going to take
[00:21:52] we're going to take you got your any brand manager and any any process of a repackage should never go to market if it's actually not going to improve what it's supposed to do which
[00:22:03] increase lift and so we're going to bring the existing packaging into the testing and we're using that and building essentially building our baseline in the test and then we have usually in our case maybe three optimized packages that are anyone would be happy bringing those
[00:22:16] to market and we bring them this test so we rotate the shelf and and like drop it what's grabbing attention best and then we have uh we're kind of narrow our choices down this is how we
[00:22:26] shop and you've got three products their price size just like we shop as consumers and you've got two target consumed target compete competing products and say four concepts your existing and these three new things and we're measuring the
[00:22:42] selection the percent selection in that set against um so that pi the purchase intent the selection of that thing and looking at where we started that's the baseline of our uh what what's in market today and looking for lift across these concepts and that final thing is
[00:22:58] really usually and there's actually if you go on the smash run website in our work page we have actually have a chart of this of several uh several different product categories and they move around and we're usually going through this process but there is something that is
[00:23:12] doing really really well and that almost almost always becomes our recommendation to go to market. When when you're getting those like have you formed a um and I suppose it's it differs from you know from case to case but I'm just wondering if coming out of what
[00:23:28] you've learned from doing all these measurements for all these clients are there sort of a few kind of takeaways that you've learned that uh sort of the the new packaging uh look out for or best practices that have come out of sort of the multiple
[00:23:46] measurements that you've done over the the past several years? There are um there's there's there's there's a lot of there's a lot of little nuances I tell you and sometimes uh a lot of times actually something that's not working and it could be failing miserably
[00:24:02] it can actually be a little thing and as I was talking about the gut and the health that could be or even the the the laundry detergent it's like conceptually not getting it.
[00:24:12] Another thing that we actually test for and look for you can have all your messaging right it actually can resonate really well and it's just you're trying to do too much and it's busy and there's actually like a it's a detraction it's like pulling away from
[00:24:25] the performance of the packaging because it's too it's too cluttered it's too busy and it's doing too much I think that actually is probably one of the maybe the least thought about
[00:24:36] but maybe one of the most impactful things to kind of keep an eye on of trying to do too much on your packaging so back what I was saying is like less is more. Yeah it is the hardest thing
[00:24:46] and I go back to you talking about the three seconds you have if there's too much on there your three seconds are actually wasted because they're it's just uh I can't I'm not I can't
[00:24:57] again I can't figure out where to look I can't figure out what's important and that hierarchy you spoke of sounds super important. Yeah and I think maybe one other thing too is um
[00:25:08] usually again kind of the context of it people show up they got an idea of what these things mean and so they're looking for a quick little like oh this is better and it I think
[00:25:20] sometimes it surprises us that it's actually so simple uh it's such a simple thing and so the magic is finding it and then when you find it it's super effective it's hard to find sometimes
[00:25:31] but at the end of the day it's not like I did 20 things and now look at this you're like oh my god I just changed this one thing it was a huge unlock and you can have a significant increase
[00:25:40] in performance by just trying to figure that out. Well Michael thank you so much for for coming on the podcast and help us revisit kind of a really what is a a core generator
[00:25:52] of success for products both online and in store and and hearing about the process in detail and how you you guys go through it has really been helpful we we appreciate it. Thanks Peter, thanks Lauren. Thanks again to Michael for packaging up the new approaches
[00:26:08] for upping your packaging game. Swing on over to digitalshelfinstitute.org to become a member and keep up on all the latest. Thanks for being part of our community.