The Key to a Successful Personalized Packaging Campaign

The Personalization Movement

Personalization has always been a popular marketing trend, but with recent widely successful campaigns such as Coca Cola’s #ShareACoke campaign, it has seen a major boost as companies rush to make use of its popularity before it goes stale.

As a result, thousands of companies are reimagining their packaging with better personalization and spending large sums in the process. The statistics say it better: the personalized packaging market had a valuation of over $980 billion in 2017 alone. Even better, that figure is expected to rise by almost by 3% every year, according to Smithers Pira Research.

Keys to Success

Targeting

Do this by interests, demographics and geographic area.

Identifying a niche market may not be so easy, but people’s interests, demographics and geographical location aren’t always hard to get. That’s why targeting these three attributes is a good start for any personalized packaging campaign.

Personal interests such as sports or films create a quick familiarity with the consumer, which is a direct catalyst for purchase. Targeting demographics, such as using popular young adult slang on your product’s package when targeting the 20 to 29 age group, can be a real winner. The personalization speaks to them and invites them to make a purchase.

The same applies to geographic locations. Many major firms have created highly successful marketing campaigns personalizing their packaging based on a certain residential area, such as say, New York, such that it speaks to only New Yorkers and not anyone living anywhere else.

Clear Goal

The best key to success for any personalized packaging campaign is to have a clear goal for what you want to achieve. A personalized packaging campaign can be quite expensive, so you need to have a clear goal in mind to justify the spending.

What kind of goals can I work towards?

Business always has a number of goals, ranging from increased sales to more engagement on social media to more foot/visitor traffic in physical and online shops. With personalized packaging, most companies aim for all three goals, with special emphasis on the first two. And with proper attention, personalized packaging can help you achieve both goals.

For context, Coca Cola’s #ShareACoke campaign is said to have generated over 250,000 tweets in the first few days as consumers posted their photos of name-sake Coke bottles on Twitter. Additionally, the company saw a 30% boost in sales during the first attempt at the campaign.

Set Schedule

The next key to success for your personalization campaign is a schedule for how it will run. The schedule should feature guidelines of how long the campaign will run, where it will run, and why. A schedule keeps you in the loop as the product hits the market and helps you know when to expand the market reach or pull out of the market.

Memorable Message

You need to send a memorable message with your personalized packaging campaign for it to be successful, according to leading industry experts. The message has to immediately speak to your targeted audience and inspire a reaction of sorts, such that their attention is cornered and their interest in the product piques to the point of purchase.

The perfect example of a message that translated to sales is Snickers’ 2010 ad campaign that featured a series of emotions in the place of the Snickers logo on its chocolate bars. The emotions were chosen according to what people are known to feel when they’re hungry, and they included tired, anxious, angry, impatient, befuddled and more.

The campaign was a major success and has since won countless awards for its creators. It has also been the subject of countless online reviews as people recount how the emotions made them purchase the chocolate bar without hesitation. The common conclusion by most of them is that it spoke to their emotion at the time, or the emotion of someone they knew, so they had to buy it for said person.

So what’s in a memorable message?

For a personalized packaging campaign to be successful, it needs a memorable message. One such message must feature;

Positive emotions and humor, such that buyers feel happy when they see it on a shelf, and that it makes them feel good about themselves or something else. Plus, humorous things and positive emotions linger long in the memory.

A personal connection, such it stays with consumers even when they’re no longer in a supermarket aisle, and such that it inspires consumers to purchase the product on their own because it speaks to their inner persons.

Targeted Products

One other key driver for a successful personalization packaging campaign is using a targeted product. A targeted product is the one that a company chooses to carry their personalized branding, based on its traction in the market, the company’s needs and budget and more. You need to choose the right product to use right from the very beginning, or all will be lost.

Follow Up

Following up has always been a major aspect of sales campaigns, but it is also quite helpful in personalized packaging campaigns. Once you’ve sent out a series of personalized items, make sure to follow up with their buyers to gauge their feedback soon after they receive them. You can use standout hashtags to follow up on social media or call them personally.

Examples of Successful Campaigns

Some of the world’s most successful personalized marketing campaigns include;

Coca Cola’s #ShareACoke campaign

The #ShareACoke campaign featured some of the most popular names in the world on Coca Cola bottles instead of the Coca Cola logo and has since been hailed as the most successful personalized packaging campaign yet.

Snickers’ Emotion campaign

As mentioned above, Snickers’ ‘What Are You When You’re Hungry’ campaign used emotions expressed by hungry people, such as Anxious and Befuddled instead of the Snickers logo, to resounding success.

Oreo’s

The snacks maker allowed its customers to design their own Oreo packaging in 2015 by choosing from two designs and modifying them online. The final design would then feature on a special Oreo pack and delivered to the buyer’s specific address, all for $15.

Conclusion

Personalized packaging can work wonders for your company, even if it’s just a small business. But to make it work, you have to pay attention to the market and to detail.