Good things come in smart
packages
by Nancy Lees
Despite the old adage
about not judging a book by its cover, the simple fact is that most
consumers do it everyday. And kids retail shelf space, in particular,
has become so crowded over the last few years that a product's outer
trappings often make or break it in stores. So licensors and
manufacturers alike have been forced to think a lot harder about the
box, investing in product packaging with a little something extra to
make kid browsers zero in on their SKUs.
According to Kevin
Curran, senior VP and GM of Fisher-Price Friends (the division that
handles all of FP's licensed toys), the effort is crucial. The company
has found through recent research that more than half of all toy
purchase decisions are made while the consumer is in the store, meaning
that packaging plays a role in closing sales. And Matt Nuccio, creative director of Merrick, New York-based
packaging studio Design
Edge, says many of
his clients (which include Mattel, Hasbro and Fisher-Price) are putting
a lot more money and time into package design than they used to - and
that's no mean feat in such a rapidly moving, trend-driven business.
Michael Bernstein,
senior VP of marketing for boys toys at Malibu, California's Jakks
Pacific, says several companies seem to have stepped up their packaging
game this year, at times investing as heavily in the trappings as in
the product. "It used to be just the majors that were able to do
creative packaging, because it does come at an expense. But I was
amazed to see how many small companies have really pushed the envelope
this year in terms of structure, quality and graphics."
In fact, depending
on the product and the sophistication of the design, packaging today
can represent anywhere from 15% to 50% of the overall product cost. Toy
package designs tend to be more expensive and complicated than
categories like room décor or apparel, and a typical outsourced
package design program can run anywhere from US$15,000 to US$25,000.
It's also worth noting that companies launching major new brands
sometimes spend in the hundreds of thousands.
Package before product?
Assessing the style guide
But manufacturers aren't
the only ones intensifying their packaging strategy. Toy Quest product
manager Tara Cortner says over the last five years, the licensors her
company deals with have become much more focused on branding and
presenting a consistent look across all categories at retail. She adds
that more licensors are looking to get in on the ground floor when it
comes to package design decisions - which was relatively rare five
years ago.
Debra Joester,
president of New York licensing agency The Joester Loria Group, agrees
that in such a competitive environment, it's more important than ever
for licensors to be involved in all aspects of packaging decisions.
This means going beyond just the size and placement of logos, to
participating in choices regarding color, shape, graphics and much
more. But in order to do this successfully, licensors need to be
constantly monitoring the market and their competition to see what
works and what doesn't.
After that, it's
about getting input, being flexible and, most importantly, listening to
your licensee. "[Each licensee] has unique needs in terms of their
consumer and how the box needs to be displayed, and you can't just
shove them into a one-size-fits-all strategy," she says. American
Greetings, which owns the Care Bears IP, has a huge art department and
its own packaging arm, giving the company an advantage when it comes to
finessing a package. But Joester says licensees are always at the table
when the style guide is created to make sure there's nothing unique to
their sectors that's being missed.
This includes
looking at whether the text and graphics are designed to appeal to the
main buyer. Since parents or grandparents are most likely to purchase
preschool products, for example, packaging should have clear
information about what the toy does. Packaging geared at an
eight-year-old boy, on the other hand, should have lots going on,
without coming off as too text-heavy.
Eric Stein, VP of
licensing for Taffy Entertainment, the merch arm of L.A. prodco Mike
Young Productions, likes to come in early with a style guide on
packaging designs, but he prefers to give his licensees full rein and
then cut back if necessary. In some cases, Stein believes style guides
can become too restrictive. "If you just trust your artists, they
might end up bringing a lot more to the concept than you even
dreamed," he says. For example, when licensee Fast Forward created
a backpack for the Pet Alien line, it added actual working lights to
tech up a fairly basic lighthouse design.
Taffy is working
closely with licensees such as JEM Sportswear, Jay Franco & Sons
and Fisher-Price to build play apps based on elements of its TV shows
into product packaging without hiking up costs. Ideas that are
currently on the table include a clothing hangtag that's also a trading
card, and a shoebox that's graphically sophisticated enough for kids to
want to use it for storage. For Pet Alien (a 26 x 22-minute toon that
premiered in January on Cartoon Network), the company plans to play up
one of the key settings in the series, the lighthouse, as a graphic
element to tie the entire merch line together. And so items like
playsets from the company's yet-to-be-announced master toy licensee
might come in a lighthouse-shaped box that could also be used as a play
backdrop.
There are no
hard-and-fast rules as to what can be done in packaging, but Nuccio
stresses that the package has to actually make sense for and serve the
product. It sounds like a no-brainer, but he says you'd be surprised
how many companies miss the mark. Many manufacturers will attempt to
create a try-me package even when it's not a good fit or doesn't
reflect what the product actually does. For example, lots of try-mes
are not prominently advertised on the box, or the packaging doesn't
have enough range of motion to allow the product to show to its fullest
potential.
Fisher-Price
grappled with that very issue when it was designing a box for Tumble
Time Tigger, a cartwheeling electronic plush that's due out this fall.
The company invented a plastic armature that's stable enough for the
toy to spin on when it's in the package, but snaps off easily when it's
taken out. While it represented a hefty investment for a package,
Curran says it's all about effectively communicating what the toy does.
"There's a balance between ads and packaging in terms of where we
make our investment, and in this case, we chose to invest a bit more in
the packaging side."
Retail recon
The first step in
designing effective packaging is heading to the toy aisle to find out
what sort of space is available, and what everyone else is doing in
that space. Standing out from the crowd is usually a good thing, but
Nuccio warns that being too different can be a double-edged sword of
sorts. "If everybody's boxed and you decide to do a blister card
for the sake of looking unique, that might be a terrible idea if
there's no place to hang the item. Or it might be a great idea if it
can be hung as an endcap item."
Toy Quest's Cortner
agrees that keeping an eye on your aisle is critical, especially in
crowded categories like dolls and action figures - even a simple
change, such as having a blue package in a sea of girl-targeted pink,
can make a world of difference. The doll sector, in particular, has
undergone a major packaging evolution over the last five years, as
manufacturers have moved far away from the plain pink cardboard window
boxes of yore. These days, unique box construction with details like
injection-molded pieces and plastic handles is common, as are floating
pieces of cardboard with callouts on them and cardboard cutouts of the
dolls interacting with playsets. Expensive printing processes like foil
stamping and window printing are also much more prevalent now.
Design decisions
Most toycos rely primarily
on quantitative research and focus groups when designing their
packaging, but the ultimate test always takes place on-shelf. Canuck
construction toy manufacturer Mega Bloks learned that lesson when it
made the simple decision to release two different packages - one
featuring a girl more prominently on the front, and the other a boy -
for its preschool-targeted Maxi Bloks bags. The resulting 20% sales
increase came as a bit of a surprise. "We tried to highlight
builds that would interest girls in order to position our bags as
appealing to both demos," says marketing director Andrew Witkin.
"It led to huge growth in a category that was flat overall."
That boost was all the impetus the company needed to launch several new
girl-targeted SKUs in 2004, starting with a line of Disney Princesses
licensed buckets.
Toy Quest has also found
that a small tweak can make a huge difference. When it released its
Spider-Man 2 N-Vision TV game last year, the box had a fifth panel flap
that flipped up to reveal a window box. While the product moved
relatively well this way, Cortner says one retailer asked for a box
without the extra flap, and it quickly sold out. The competing systems
in the aisle were in regular window boxes, and when presented with the
option, customers simply didn't want to take the time to open an extra
flap. Toy Quest has chosen to stick with window boxes for all TV games
that have rolled out since then, but the company has added diorama-like
cardboard cutouts in molded plastic blisters in order to stand out from
the competition.
Opening up a package - so
the actual product is visible in the box - can also make a huge
difference. Three years ago, Fisher-Price changed the packaging for its
37-year-old Little People line, moving from a closed square box to an
open package. Since then, the line has experienced a percentage sales
increase in the high teens.
Joester says having
an open package can also highlight a toy's added value. The packaging
for the Care Bears Smart Check-Up Bear by Play Along, which is hitting
shelves in the fall, allows people to see exactly how many extras and
accessories come with the bear, including a stethoscope, syringe and
bandages.
Jakks has been
working to push the envelope in packaging, spending as much as 10% more
on average and focusing on its boy-targeted ranges. One good example is
an August-launching Fly Wheels line featuring licensed wheels that are
revved up with a ripcord and can perform stunts at speeds of up to 30
MPH. Bernstein spent three months in China trying to design a try-me
package design that could accurately demonstrate the speed and power of
the product without falling apart under the stress. "The packaging
was almost as difficult to figure out as the product itself," he
says, adding that the biggest roadblock was finding the balance between
performance and cost. The winning design was a pegged blister pack that
allows the wheel to spin freely inside when the ripcord is pulled.
Cost efficiency is a
much bigger challenge now that rising oil prices have sparked a
significant increase in the price of packages that rely heavily on
plastic, such as clamshell and blister packs. In response, leading
toycos are having to weigh price increases over cutting corners in
production. "We're trying to think creatively about what we can do
to offset this problem," says Bernstein, "asking, for
example, if we really need that star on an action figure's sleeve
called out. There are lots of things you can do to the product that 98%
of consumers won't even notice." But while the increased cost is
influencing decisions, Bernstein maintains that the drive to showcase
product in unique packaging is paramount.
Toy Quest's Cortner
says the manufacturer will always absorb a packaging cost increase, but
that there are ways to get around it. In many cases, particularly if
the package can be used as storage (a popular strategy in the craft
aisle), customers are willing to pay a bit more.
Try-me packaging V2.0
Probably the biggest
on-shelf innovation the industry has embraced in the last decade is the
try-me package. Cheaper technology and computer chips have bred more
and more toys with complex electronic components. But as products
become more abstract and multi-purposed, it gets harder to communicate
their functionality in print, making a hands-on demonstration
absolutely essential.
Fisher-Price Friends
only had a handful of try-me packages in its line five years ago, but
now Curran says virtually all the company's packaging has some kind of
try-me element to it. Try-me is particularly important when you're
dealing with character licenses, he adds, because hearing a character's
voice can be an overwhelming selling point. "For the price of a
couple of AA batteries, the character can actually speak on the store
shelf. That's a very cost-efficient way to bring them alive."
But there are
pitfalls to the try-me approach, the biggest of which is battery life -
there has to be enough juice to keep the character talking and moving
properly in-store.
Toronto,
Canada-based Thinkway Toys is powering up its packaging this fall with
a line of Batman, Spider-Man, Teen Titans and Toy Story M.A.G. (motion
activated gear) TV games featuring a new hook called video-in-a-box.
When the try-me button is pushed, a narrator's voice explains how the
game works in tandem with three or four panels that light up in
sequence. The box even vibrates to simulate a hit. The technology is
housed in the toy itself, which is hooked up to the box by a wire.
"It's a true interactive experience for the customer," says
John Barton, senior VP of sales and marketing. "This is like
putting a commercial right inside the box."
Though the
video-in-a-box technology was developed years ago, it was initially too
expensive for the mass market. A drop in tech costs of about 75% over
the last three years has finally allowed Thinkway to gear it up this
year, and the company plans to launch a separate division to sell the
patent to third parties for use in a broad range of packaging and
promotional initiatives.
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