Every day, thousands of packaged goods vie for buyers’ attention on store shelves. An average supermarket shopper, for example, will pass 300 products per minute. It isn’t easy for an item to break through the clutter, especially when new products are launched and packaging is redesigned continually. Therefore, manufacturers devote countless hours and resources trying to distinguish their brand and encourage consumers to put their product in the shopping cart.

“The overall goal in the design of consumer packaging is to create a more compelling experience for the consumer at point of sale,” says Tom Newmaster, a partner with William Fox Monroe, an agency that develops and consults on packaging design. Packaged-goods companies need to consider all the elements of their packaging. “That includes shape, material, how the material feels, size and graphics.”

And, of course, color. “Color plays a vital role in package design and is influential both consciously and subconsciously,” Newmaster says. “That said, certain colors have different meanings in different categories.” Some categories are consistent — brown for regular chocolate, white for white chocolate, red to hint at a flavor like cherry or berry. Reese’s^® peanut butter candy products, for instance, have deemed orange their signature color, and other candy has followed suit: “If it has peanut butter in it, it probably has orange on the package somewhere.” Even non-candy-bar products featuring peanut butter have gotten in on the act: Skippy^® Roasted Honey Nut Creamy, Cap’n Crunch^® Peanut Butter Crunch and Nutter Butter^® cookies all sport orange on their packaging.

Whatever the color scheme, companies have their motives when using specific hues. “If a package is green, that color is there for a reason,” Newmaster says. “It’s not just because it looks pretty.” For example, OKI Printing Solutions surveyed 100 members of a weight-loss club to determine whether health-conscious consumers are more likely to be drawn to foods in blue packaging. Results indicated that 76 percent of participants shown two brands of cereal, orange juice and a yogurt drink felt that products wrapped in blue were the healthier choice. In response to the survey, color psychologist Angela Wright theorized that blue may encourage people to eat less.

What’s more, how people interpret colors can change over time. “You always have to be watching color trends and color shifts and what the meanings are in that category,” says Newmaster, citing the use of green on food packaging as an example. “There was a point when if you put something green on the package it meant it was fat-free. That trend has gone away. Now green means it’s probably more of an organic or natural product.”

In addition to the package’s color scheme and graphic design, Newmaster says it’s important for manufacturers to pay attention to the target consumer’s lifestyle. Some points to consider:

• What are their likes and dislikes?
• What are their needs and expectations?
• What influences them outside of the retail environment?

William Fox Monroe took this approach when the Hershey Company hired the firm to examine the packaging of its Valentine’s Day candy — in particular, Hershey^®’s Friendship Exchange line, which targets parents and kids who are buying treats for classroom exchanges. On store shelves, the holiday represents a sea of red, pink and white. Newmaster and his team worked with Hershey to break free from the holiday’s typical palette by looking at color trends in other categories, such as children’s apparel, books, cartoons, movies and home fashion. William Fox Monroe modified the graphics and incorporated yellow, blue and green without completely abandoning the traditional Valentine’s color scheme. The result: Hershey’s Friendship Exchange category grew 14.1 percent in 2006 following the package redesign.

Interior designers can glean lessons from consumer packaging. “No matter what industry you’re in, you need to know who your consumer or target market is and understand what influences them and why,” Newmaster says. “I think the same type of background research and trend analysis applies to interior design.” That is, getting to know your clients’ lifestyle a little better — the books and magazines they read, the TV shows they watch, the clothes they buy, the household items they surround themselves with — may offer very useful insight when it comes to developing a design scheme that’s unique to them.

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