5 Trends of Creative Packaging in 2023

Creative packaging can enhance the brand image of a product and the user's desire to buy. This article describes 5 trends in creative packaging, I hope it will be helpful to you.

In an era where everything is a medium, packaging is the most effective advertisement for a product, because it is not only the first medium for brands to reach consumers, but also the first step in establishing brand awareness.

Good packaging speaks for itself, not only clearly conveying the differentiated features of the product, but also retaining consumers' attention in the shortest possible time.

On the supermarket shelves, whoever can make customers stay for a while will easily stand out from the crowd. Based on past product trend observations, we have sorted out 5 common packaging methods.

1. Selling point packaging

A report from the University of South Australia's Marketing Research Centre shows that the average time it takes for consumers to decide to buy a product offline is 13 seconds, while the average time for online shopping is 19 seconds.

Brands have gone to great lengths to refine numerous selling points, but the reality is that most consumers don’t care and won’t proactively interact with brands, leaving brands with only 20 seconds.

In the era of traffic, consumers' attention is scarce and precious. If a brand wants to attract consumers, it is best to extract only one unique value message and convey it to consumers in the most direct way.

The simplest way is to constantly emphasize the selling points. For example, the main visuals of the sparkling water and burning tea in the Yuanqi Forest family packaging are visually impactful calligraphy, which emphasizes product differentiation from a visual perspective.

For example, the packaging of Yuanqi Forest sparkling water uses a big "气" character, emphasizing its position as a pioneer in the sparkling water segment and its product feature of "lots of gas", which attracts users' attention at the first moment. The second visual effect is the "0 sugar, 0 fat, 0 calories" production process, which meets the needs of young people for healthy weight loss and naturally drives conversion.

Also targeting the weight loss needs of young people, Yuanqi Forest launched its first sugar-free tea drink "Ran Tea". The packaging also uses a big word "Ran", which makes users have a positive association that "Ran Tea" = "burn body fat", and the "sugar-free" selling point is emphasized on each product packaging.

The same approach is also used by Jane Eyre sugar-free yogurt, which directly puts the food ingredients on the product packaging: "raw milk, sugar, soft acid bacteria, nothing else." There is no need to go to great lengths to emphasize "healthy, no additives", and customers will understand at a glance.

Last year, pidan launched a new pet snack design that also adheres to this “simple and crude” visual design.

Stand out from the crowd of fancy pet snack packaging designs.

The entire packaging design only leaves the necessary logo, product name, and selling points, and is mainly made of aluminum, making it stand out among a bunch of fancy pet snack packaging designs. Before the brand is well-known, sincerity is always the ultimate skill to communicate with users.

2. Value Visualization Packaging

In addition to magnifying the selling points of the packaging and attracting users' attention, you can also use product visualization to allow consumers to directly experience the brand experience of "genuine goods, what you see is what you get."

For example, the "Whole Root Ginseng Water" that became popular in convenience stores last year uses a fully transparent bottle to present a whole root of ginseng as its original material. In addition, most people's perception of "ginseng" is "nutritious and health-promoting". This approach conveys the high value of the product in an intuitive and simple way.

Another example is PEAR whisky, which is also packaged in transparent glass. Only the brand name is left on the entire package, which locks consumers' vision firmly on the "pear" that is looming in the bottle. It also arouses users' curiosity: how does the brand put a whole pear into a narrow bottle? The answer is that "pears" are cultivated in glass bottles from an early age, making the brand selling point of "single malt pear" deeply rooted in people's hearts.

If the product cannot fully present the original ecological materials, you can try to make the packaging in an "original" form to make users associate it with it. The packaging of the local food brand "Nongfu Wangtian" chili sauce is made into a whole chili shape, and the curved bottle cap can be hung in the kitchen or on the stove.

Less is more. Good design is not just a formality, but a concise and clear expression of the brand value.

3. Atmosphere Packaging

In the world of young people, appearance is justice. Young consumers no longer buy because they need, but because they like. Atmospheric packaging unlocks new consumption scenarios for young people.

Most of these "atmospheric" packaging, which are popular among young people, use a lot of blank space to create a sense of mystery and story.

The original oriental botanical fragrance brand "Guan Xia" returns to oriental tradition. Except for its own logo and product name, the rest of the packaging design is minimalist and left blank, creating an atmosphere of mountains, rivers, fields, and plants in memory, making people feel as if they are in an oriental poetic scene, triggering endless reverie.

This literary and cool atmosphere is extended to brand posters, content output, offline stores, etc., creating an energy field unique to oriental fragrance.

Zhong Xue Gao, which was previously teased by netizens as the "ice cream assassin", also follows this idea. The product design of Zhong Xue Gao ice cream introduces the "new Chinese" cultural concept, adopts a unique Chinese tile design, supplemented by the "Hui" pattern on the top, which means "returning" to the original taste.

The packaging is also simplified, highlighting the necessary brand name and product name. A large amount of white space is used as the whole design, with only a small amount of bright colors used to embellish it, adding a sense of appetite while maintaining a high-end feel.

4. Emotional Packaging

In addition to satisfying the functional needs of users, consumer products also have emotional needs. Unlike atmosphere packaging, this type of packaging is more intuitive and uses text to mobilize user emotions. The most classic packaging case is "Jiang Xiaobai", a liquor brand that has been criticized for being "unpalatable" for many years but is still extremely popular.

It adopts small-bottle packaging that is more suitable for drinking alone or with others, and the packaging is filled with youthful and thoughtful copywriting. In the consumption scenario where "truth is easily spoken after drinking", it is easier to trigger emotional resonance among young consumers.

Consumers are not drinking wine, but a current emotion. In a different way of thinking, Jiang Xiaobai not only provides wine, but also provides users with a channel for self-expression. There are also scent libraries like this, which tap into the emotional connection between users and brands and awaken users' deep-seated emotional memories with the smell of perfume. They are not named after raw materials, but inspired by local stories in the memory of Chinese people, such as "boiled water" that reflects Beijing Hutong culture, "cold boiled water" that carries the Shanghai autumn limited edition, White Rabbit that carries childhood memories, freshly squeezed watermelon juice, 2B pencils...

For consumers, this is no longer just a bottle of perfume, but a universal key to unlock memories. To make products an outlet for consumers’ emotions, Super Plant Company uses copywriting with great design aesthetics and personality characteristics to make plants a super spiritual antidote for urban workers.

5. Practical packaging

In addition to starting from functional and emotional needs, you can also find a breakthrough in brand differentiation from user living habits. Let’s first talk about the case of the tea industry. China is the kingdom of tea, but the world’s largest tea brand comes from the UK.

Due to the great regional cultural differences in Chinese tea, it is impossible to standardize it like the Lipton brand. The new tea brewing concept of "one can, one brew" of Xiaoguan Tea just solves this pain point and ensures that every cup of tea tastes just right.

The packaging form is used to differentiate the product and cleverly escape from the fierce regional competition in China's tea industry. Santonban Coffee also quickly became popular in the social circle with its "small can" packaging form.

The numbers on each can represent different degrees of roasting, so anyone can make a cup of specialty coffee anytime, anywhere, which is more in line with the fast-paced and high-consumption lifestyle of modern young people. Dongpeng Special Drink is also like this, designing a practical bottle cap.

It can be used as a dust cover and an ashtray, giving consumers a better purchasing and using experience. — There may be many criteria for judging a good packaging design.

It can meet the user's aesthetic taste, highlight the industry attributes, reflect the product function, visual hammer symbol, and provide emotional value... But no matter from which angle, a good packaging idea is ultimately to solve consumer needs. Therefore, when we design packaging, we don't worry about the material and style, but look at people and explain the relationship between products and people.

Author: Black Little Finger, Source: WeChat public account "Shock Copywriting"