Why Your Product's Labelling Matters More Than You Think

Driven by impulse, consumers often make purchasing decisions based on a product’s aesthetic appearance — the colour and shape of the packaging — making label design a key competitive advantage in food manufacturing.

The way people shop has changed over the years. Today’s shopper is less patient and increasingly time-poor, so you generally have one opportunity to capture their attention and influence their buying decisions. Brand identity and the need to engage the consumer, build an emotional connection, and develop brand loyalty have therefore never been more important.

But brand dominance outside the store no longer guarantees that you’ll get sales in-store. When it comes to making purchases, research shows that more than 60 percent of brand decisions are made after the shopper has entered the store. What’s more, it then only takes two and a half seconds to make a purchasing decision, with the consumer only reading an average of seven words from the product packaging in an entire shopping trip.

Brand package design matters

These instinctive product purchases, driven by impulse, show that people are not only buying products based on mere brand recognition, but also on the colour and shape of the product’s packaging. In a 2014 ‘Packaging Matters’ study, more than 65 percent of new customers purchased a product for the first time because of a product’s packaging, while 55 percent of repeat customers bought a product again because of the favourable interactions they had with the packaging.

A product’s label is therefore a key driver and influencer of a consumer’s purchase decision. As an important brand investment, effective product labels should emphasise your brand’s DNA while evoking a memorable, emotional response — and all within 2.5 seconds! Product labels that encapsulate these key design characteristics tend to have the most successful shelf impact.

Consider Tropicana, which invested over $35M into a fateful advertising campaign to promote their new packaging but found increasing dissatisfaction from consumers with the new design not long after its release. Within two months, sales had dropped by more than 20 percent, ensuring a $30M loss for the company and demonstrating the importance of package design as the primary purchasing influencer with significant impact on an organisation’s success and failure.

So, when your average Australian supermarket carries more than 40,000 different products, each one vying for the customer’s attention, how do you ensure that yours cuts through the noise and stands out from the rest?

As providers of tried and true complete labelling solutions for 50 years, we reveal three ways that high quality labelling can engage your target customer and build greater loyalty.

1. Bring your brand’s DNA to life

A brand’s DNA is made up of the core values and beliefs that capture who you are as a brand, what your product is and what your brand stands for — in other words, your identity. The product label should be a cohesive part of this identity and accurately represent your brand’s story. It can bring your brand’s DNA to life through colour, label face stock (the top layer of the label) and embellishments.

When selecting your label face stock and embellishments, reflect on your brand’s primary characteristics and personality. Does the product offer environmental awareness, which can be represented through a biodegradable face stock? If luxury is a key brand characteristic, then this can be expressed through foiling embellishment. Or if simplicity is the goal, achieve this by using a clear face stock.

Whether you opt for premium-labelling face stocks or embellishments from cold foiling (designed to deliver high quality and cost-effective metallic printing effects), two-side printing to UV Flexo and UV lamination, the labels that stand out on a crowded shelf and get your brand noticed will be those that instantly communicate your brand’s DNA to the consumer.

2. Use colours to evoke an emotion

Colour can be a crucially important aspect to your product and brand, creating a consumer connection and helping your product stand out in the marketplace. With consumers taking an average of 90 seconds to make a subconscious purchasing judgement and 85 percent attributing colour as the determining factor when purchasing a product, the colours used on your product label play a key role in affecting consumer emotions.

Consumers act when a brand makes them feel something so the colours you choose for your label should project a deliberate subconscious message to attract your target audience and prompt them to choose your product.

When 60 percent of the product’s first impressions are based on label colour, can you afford to package your product without placing enough focus on the label’s colour palette, which may be saying more than you first thought?

3. Maintain consistency to differentiate your brand

Ensuring a consistency of tone, colours and graphics on your labels and across your product branding is critical in terms of building brand credibility and loyalty among consumers. Consistently maintaining these elements of your brand’s identity can eventually be the iconic differentiation that sets your brand apart from the rest.

When you see a red and white swirl, you instantly think of Coca-Cola. When you see the colour purple, you automatically associate it with Cadbury. And this is the power of branding consistency, particularly when applied to your product packaging.

When you engage an experienced team of graphic designers to work directly with you on label colour and die recommendations, as well as label design and layout, then certified printers throughout the label-making process, you’ll produce a label that creates a lasting impression on the shelf and in the hearts and minds of your customer.

Label design as an industry influencer

Knowing that it takes only seven seconds on average to make a great first impression, packaging design and, in particular, product labelling provides a last chance to influence the consumer’s purchasing decision when in-store.

Labels are key because they help drive the impulse purchase when good label design meets brand differentiation, when effective colour choice is used to create emotional connections, and by ensuring your product label is a cohesive part of your brand identity and DNA. Because when it comes to consumer tastes, looks really do matter.

Discover how insignia’s unique labelling solutions can bring your brand to life and help your products stand out by visiting our website at www.insignia.com.au/labelling.