Everything Has Changed, Yet Nothing Has Changed: Power of Packaging Third Edition

At the end of March, we’re thrilled to be launching the Third Edition of Behaviorally’s “Power of Packaging” book. As I reflected on a preview of the updated text earlier this week, a realization struck: EVERYTHING has changed, and yet NOTHING has changed, at least since the launch of the Power of Packaging First Edition, published at the end of 2021, our first year as Behaviorally (formerly we were known as PRS).

In the NOTHING has changed column are the basic principles of great packaging design. The key to success remains rooted in Behaviorally’s long-standing 4S model: Be Seen, Shoppable, Seductive, and most of all, Selected. If a pack delivers against all 4 pillars, communicating well product benefits and minimizing barriers to being chosen, then it will win at shelf. We’ve seen this showcased time and again, including by our most recent 2023 PackPower Award winners. It took 5 decades of learning and then analysis of the largest database of behavioral pack design metrics in the world to develop the shopper behavior principles outlined in the Power of Packaging First Edition. It’s of little surprise that these foundational drivers of behavior at the point of purchase have not changed, at least not over the past 3 short years.

Yet, at the same time, EVERYTHING has changed since the First Edition of the Power of Packaging launched alongside Behaviorally in 2021. The precision, speed, and scale with which we can predict packaging effectiveness – specific emphasis now on effective versus generically great – has been transformed:

Precision in Prediction

The introduction of the PackPower Score™ in 2022 marked a seismic shift in the value offered by Behaviorally’s product stack. This easy-to-understand one number score serves as a predictor of a pack design’s sales impact. By leveraging AI to integrate 50 years of insights from over 60 million behavioral metrics with sales data, we can pinpoint the effectiveness of new pack designs. Our research has shown that the best packaging in isolation can yield a 5% sales lift, while the most ineffective packaging risks a decline of a similar magnitude. This prediction of packaging effectiveness can be provided independent of, or more often to complement, both quantitative survey and/or qualitative behavioral diagnostics, providing a new standard and anchor for packaging assessment at any stage in the design and development process. More importantly, it better aligns the data intelligence Behaviorally provides with the end-objective for nearly any brand: sales growth.

Speed of Data Intelligence

Our journey as Behaviorally began with a digital-first mindset, which first reduced the exercise of obtaining final validation of new packaging designs from several weeks to a few days. Behaviorally’s proprietary digital tools for best-in-class shelf creation, essential for an accurate prediction of packaging effectiveness, have grown to be leveraged by 95%+ of our clients, with this context now built in minutes and the painstaking hours dedicated to replicating a perfect planogram (which is anyway imperfect in the market!) circumvented. Tech-enabled qualitative work – which often remained in-person if structural or sensory changes to packaging were proposed – has been supplemented with quantification by more robust and representative digital consumer feedback.

But the weeks down to days saving offered by repositioning as a digital-first provider was never imagined as our end point. Instead, between the launch of Power of Packaging First Edition and this latest Third Edition, Behaviorally has increasingly leveraged AI not only to validate pack effectiveness more accurately, but through our image recognition based Pack.AI™ product, also provide those effectiveness predictions in close to an instant. This month we’ll surpass our 7,000^th design test using Pack.AI, if we’re to conservatively assume 5 minutes to execute such a test, this means on 7,000 occasions we will have provided a better prediction of pack effectiveness 30,000X more quickly than the 16-week in-person package test run too often run in a by-gone age (few brands still execute these today!).

Scale of Digital Commerce

Over the last three years, and while growth rates slowed from a pandemic induced spurt, the importance of the digital shelf has grown across all categories. When we re-branded as Behaviorally in 2021, we set a goal of 20% of our business coming from answering digital shelf objectives, and we have approximately reached that goal through a combination of TransactionPath™ and eCom.AI™. TransactionPath maps and influences the multi-channel shopper journey while eCom.AI utilizes AI to optimize eCommerce images. AI is again important, as it scales-up assessment of product description page (PDP) images up a speed traditional insights methods could not. When answering client objectives at the digital shelf, we’re not only providing a more accurate prediction of visual asset effectiveness, more quickly, but also at the scale required for insights to be relevant in the era of digital commerce.

We can’t wait to share with you the Third Edition of our “Power of Packaging” book later this month, so watch this space for the launch. As you can see, NOTHING about the principles of great packaging design have changed since we published the First Edition, but EVERYTHING is different about the precision, speed, and scale with which we are able to provide data intelligence to brand owners upon which they can confidently make packaging decisions. We sincerely appreciate those clients who have joined us on our transformation journey from analogue, to digital-first, and now AI-enablement, and can’t wait to see you at the series of Book Launch dinners we’ll be hosting throughout April.

My mind wonders now to how Behaviorally will revolutionize again ahead of publication of the Fourth Edition of “Power of Packaging”, whenever that may be. The best clue is above, as we are only just beginning to harness the transformative impact AI will have on anyone in the prediction business: data and insight providers are no exception. If you want to learn more, check out the interview I recently conducted on this topic with ESOMAR Research World.

THE AUTHOR

Based in New York, Alex Hunt is the CEO of Behaviorally. He is a recognized pioneer in the practical application of behavioral science to shopper marketing to help clients realize the most valuable moment in marketing: when a sales transaction occurs. Alex is acknowledged as an industry thought leader and a regular contributor to industry events as an advocate for the power of consumer insights to fuel commercial growth.

Follow Alex on Twitter @AlexHunt84 or connect with him on LinkedIn.