Packaging

Just how far will creative packaging take a product?  Can it create a new market out of thin air?  Or is it simply just another arrow in the marketer’s quiver?  In our humble (or rather, biased) opinion, product packaging is somewhere in between.  A recent article by the Australian design agency Truly Deeply got us thinking about this issue (its well worth the read).

When it comes to gender roles and gender cues, packaging is very effective at targeting in not so subtle ways.  The Truly Deeply article noted above features a student project by Dutch design student Annemiek van der Beek.  The project is a package design concept for a male-oriented cosmetics line, as seen below.

 Clearly this creative packaging crosses boundaries from a gender perspective and introduces masculine visual cues into a very feminine product category.  Would something like this work?  Depends on the category and the consumer profile.  Its not entirely clear that there is a market for very masculine cosmetics.  That said, this concept–while somewhat extreme–demonstrates how innovative and creative packaging can be effective at repositioning a product for an entirely new (perhaps shockingly so) consumer segment.

This masculine design makes us think of a couple of other creative packaging examples that we were recently struck by, per below.  Any interest in yogurt, gentlemen?