Fact files: Folding cartons, branding and marketing
On this page:
- How do cartons assist branding and marketing?
- How do folding cartons protect brands?
- How do folding cartons help brands to communicate with customers?
- How do folding cartons help brands to promote themselves?
- How does brand advertising on packaging compare with other media?
- How are developments in carton packaging helping brands?
- How do cartons help brands in the supply chain?
- How do folding cartons add value to brands and help to build them?
In this fact file
How folding cartons assist branding and marketing of products, add value and brand security. Developments in folding carton packaging applications.
Key facts
- Cartons deliver the brand to the consumer. They are an integral part of an overall brand strategy
- Packaging, including folding cartons, is almost as popular as television asa means of promoting a brand and is best for stimulating repeat purchases
- Cartons protect brands by incorporating the latest intelligent features, such as RFID, anti-counterfeit features, temperature colour response
How do cartons assist branding and marketing?
Folding cartons deliver the brand to the consumer – in so doing they reflect the marketing strategy and the brand attributes.
Cartons facilitate the marketing of the product at every stage of the packaging chain. They communicate brand values, they promote and advertise. A graphical image can create an expectation about the product in the mind of the consumer.
An important aspect of branding and marketing is product positioning. What sort of product is it and where does it stand in the market alongside competing products?
The carton can reflect the answers to these questions in its graphical and structural design, choice of cartonboard and surface finish for example “hygiene” can be suggested by having a white reverse side for pharmaceutical, toiletry and healthcare products. Marketing seeks product differentiation and this can be provided by imaginative design.
Product positioning within a product type is also important. Three broad choices for the product are typical:
- top of the range or luxury
- middle of the range – good quality, good value
- “budget” or “value for money”
The carton through its graphics, structure and material can reflect these subjective values and thereby play an important role in the brand and marketing strategy. There are examples of cartons where their shape is associated with one particular brand, providing an exclusive, instantly recognised, package with an iconic status.
Cartons are also ideally suited to reflect socio-cultural and demographic trends, as, for example, in delivering portion control to reflect either “family size” or single servings for one person households. Consumer lifestyle changes can stimulate both product and associated carton development, for example the TV dinner, school lunch box or sandwich carton.
How do folding cartons protect brands?
Folding cartons protect brands by ensuring that the product reaches the consumer in good condition. They assist the consumer and hence the brand by appropriate convenience features relating to opening and reclosing and, most importantly, provide the main means by which the consumer is provided with information about the safe use of the product.
They provide security, confidence in the brand and ensure the integrity of the product with tamper evident features. Failure of any aspect of packaging militates against the good name of the brand.
How do folding cartons help brands to communicate with customers?
Carton packaging helps brands to get “top of mind” positioning with consumers when they are ready to buy at the point of sale. Cartons attract customers’ attention due to their high quality graphics, variety of printed finishes and other effects, premium appearance, and smooth, clean shelf presence and shape, which helps the brand to stand out in a “noisy” supermarket environment.
Cartons can provide intelligent packaging solutions for brands to help consumers use their products. For example, in the pharmaceutical industry, cartons with integral electronics can make the carton “talk” to, and interact with, the consumer.
The graphics of a folding carton can provide a co-ordinated link reinforcing other media promotion of the brand by the brand owner through newspapers, magazines and television.
How do folding cartons help brands to promote themselves?
Consumers expect change and cartons can respond quickly to brands’ changing requirements. Cartons can offer flexibility and speed in getting new designs to market. They offer good value, compared for example to the cost and time required to retool plastic containers, to enable brands to seize promotional opportunities. Developments in printing technology such as digital imaging, computer-to-plate processing and pre-press proofing bring significant advantages in cost and time.
How does brand advertising on packaging compare with other media?
Packaging is almost as popular as television as a means to promote the brand and packaging is best for stimulating repeat purchases. Carton packaging’s advantages are used increasingly to capitalise on this.
How are developments in carton packaging helping brands?
New technology is opening up more possibilities for innovative applications for cartons, which gives brands more choice in both the graphical and functional design of the carton.
Examples showing carton design innovation providing consumer convenience include:
- beer can be stored in a refrigerator in a carton multipack, which can then be used as an ice bucket as the beer is consumed
- ready meals in cartons can be taken from the fridge and heated in either a microwaveable or radiant heat oven. This type of carton is referred to as being “dual ovenable”
- use of susceptors, one type of which comprises aluminium metallised polyester film, in microwaveable ready meal packs.
- the susceptor absorbs microwave energy and makes it available to the food in its vicinity, causing a desirable localised browning and crispness
- pharmaceutical blister pack containing an embedded microchip, antenna, electronic circuitry and printed with a conductive ink will record the time and date when a pill is removed and “bleep” when the next pill should be consumed.
- patient feedback on side effects can be entered and stored using buttons built into the pack. When the course of treatment has been completed, the information can be downloaded to a PC for observation and onward transmission to the medical advisor and the product manufacturer.
- cartons are at the forefront of providing intelligent packaging solutions, for example by including time/temperature devices to indicate the freshness of a product
- cartons incorporating dispensing devices.
How do cartons help brands in the supply chain?
Printed cartons are easy to transport as they are mainly flat packed and easy to erect, fill and close at the brand owner’s factory. They are easy to pack in bulk and distribute. At the retail store, cartons are easily merchandised. Folding cartons as secondary packaging can provide retail ready packaging.
How do folding cartons add value to brands and help to build them?
The importance of brands has grown as the complexity of peoples’ lives has grown. Therefore we rely on the shorthand of brands that we trust. Cartons can help reflect a brand’s values through their own attributes.
Cartons can add value which we perceive through our senses by touch, smell, sight and sound. The taste of foods such as tea and coffee with delicate flavours, and products such as chocolate confectionery, can safely be packed in direct contact with or in close proximity to cartonboard. Non-food products such as tobacco with delicate aromas, can also be packed in this way. Scratch and smell features with attractive flavours can be produced by the use of flavoured capsules in ink and hence in printed designs. Tactile effects can be provided in the surface design as, for example, warnings about harzardous contents, and usage instructions printed in Braille characters.
Cartons are-well known and liked by consumers and elicit a warm emotional response. Studies have shown that consumers like the feel of cartons and value their environmental credentials.
Cartons are made from a renewable resource and are recyclable, and these environmental credentials reflect the naturalness of the brand and product, for example, the freshness of sandwiches and the natural aspects of health and beauty products. How do folding cartons help brands to protect themselves?
Cartons can offer overt/(visible), covert (non-visible) and track-and-trace technology to help brands protect themselves.
Counterfeiting harms both a brand’s reputation and the consumer of counterfeited products. An example of visible protection is an embossed hologram on a varnish layer which can show overt security features alongside the decoration. Using a substrate with integral coloured identification can provide covert protection.
The security features can be embedded in the cartonboard and thus be very difficult to imitate by printing. Cartons can offer printed RFID systems for authentication and track- and-trace of product. The electronic element is produced with conductive inks and can be integrated with the carton structure so that it is highly secure and tamper evident.