Packaging Design in the Philippines

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Important elements in label design in the Philippines

Packaging design in the Philippines is fast becoming competitive because of the ever-increasing presence of multinational brands. However, Filipinos in general remains loyal to local brands they have grown up with and an attractive label don’t necessarily spell out increased sale.

Filipinos still value “values”. They remain emotional when choosing a brand. In fact, multinational companies can learn a lot from locally owned products like Zonrox Bleach, Jollibee or Champion Detergent. The tenacity of these products to stay No. 1 has met little challenge despite millions spent by imported brands for product design.

While TVC remains the No. 1 push when it comes to decision making, a carefully studied packaging design is still crucial in making a product popular, local or imported. Most companies in the Philippines remain clueless as to where and how to come up with a good packaging design. Designing a label or packaging is indeed a unique talent and the success has a lot to do with both creativity and experience.

Whether or not you’re hiring a professional to do your packaging design, there are basic precepts in a packaging design process that are applicable to all types of designing. I use this same method in creating a design whether it be for a packaging design, logo or print ad.

Pinoy Demographics

Who wants to buy my brand?

According to Index Mundi, there are approximately 104M Filipinos reported earlier in 2013. Taking on the buying market which represents the 25-54 age bracket, male leads at 19,065,843 over 18,941,091 females with an age median of 23 from the general population. It is also safe to say that the female lead of 124,752 is insignificant.

If we pin our target on the median – this means that the packaging design must appeal to both males and females who are nearly equal in population. We also learn from the demographic that urban male Filipinos, in general, are beginning to embrace metro-sexuality which means that both sexes would have an overlapping preference for colors, scent, fashion sense and taste which are basic predictors of their buying signals.

This means that our packaging design may play on neutral colors where blue, gray or pink becomes non-exclusive. In Japan, colors and elements in a design is not polarizing do not polarize sexes.

Focal Group Discussion

Just like any brand campaigns, the first step is to identify who your market is. Their age group, preference, habits even ethnicity which is covered in demographics. After the summation, we invite random participants from our base (target) market and conduct a simple focal group discussion (FGD).

I am often amazed by how group discussions point out likings which cannot be predicted in theoretical assumptions.

Sample process for a snack product:
Part 1 (Warm up): Introduce warm-up discussions on snack habits and introduce blind tasting as a form of teaser and immersion.
Part 2 (Brand Equity): Introduce brand as a third person. Discuss its values and expectations, likes, and dislikes using mock-ups, planogram method, and tactile impression.
Part 3 (Expectation): Discuss taste, packaging, ingredients, and pricing
Part 4 (Tabulation): Answers the question: What works, what does not?

Keywords

Both the client and designer should constantly be reminded of what the product intentions are. The easiest way to do this is to build your keywords. Keywords are a set of words that describe your intention or ideal target response. It can be used in both the design and website application. These words should be established at the onset. The keywords become your thesaurus aiding you in the design.

Most clients end up approving what they like, not what should be. Validating the packaging design based on the keywords helps a lot in sticking to the intention. An example of keywords with personification and ideal target response:

Product example:
Orange Juice with L-Carnitine
Personification – Mrs. Orange Juice, 25 years old and a fit mother
Ideal response – “My day becomes complete after drinking this juice”
Keywords – Natural, healthy, fun, relaxing, fit, happy

The keywords used seem devoid of the “slimming factor” of L-Carnitine. Instead, branding takes hold of the product’s end result which is actually making Mrs. Orange Juice feel happy & healthy. While some may argue that slimming communicates better as the product merit, truth is, most brands should focus on emotional benefits more than formulation.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css_animation=”” row_type=”row” use_row_as_full_screen_section=”no” type=”full_width” angled_section=”no” text_align=”left” background_image_as_pattern=”without_pattern”][vc_column][vc_zigzag][vc_empty_space][/vc_column][/vc_row]