I believe that packaging is a key medium for customer relationship management (CRM). In a slower economy, when marketing departments owns little money to spend on advertising, you need to be creative, and take every chance you can get to communicate, and create brand equity. As packaging is the first tangible brand asset a customer will touch, it is obviously very important to optomize it and turn it into a branding vehicle.
Packaging could be used in very different ways for branding purpose, but in this particular example, packages are used to bond with customers, and support good causes. Here is a short highlight of the article:
Cause marketing programs are taking on new significance in this economy, as brand owners strive to broadcast their corporate principles, create closer relationships with consumers and offer the idea of greater brand value.
In the current economy, people definitely “vote with their dollars,” says Sean Greenwood, Ben & Jerry’s grand poobah of PR (his actual title). Consumers may not be able to make financial donations to charities and other nonprofits as they have in the past, but they will make a conscious purchase, Greenwood says. “I don’t think that’s uncommon for people today.”
Whether you make it fancy or classy, make sure your packaging will provide to customers the right image of what your company is about.
