Catching the eye catches a sale

By IRENE CHAPPLE

Packaging design is gaining credibility as a valuable - yet still underestimated - business tool.

For Burton Hollis coffee, slicker packaging and a new branding "personality" produced a dramatic rise in sales.

The company began as an Auckland coffee roaster in 1989, when just five or six competitors shared the market.

About 60 independent roasters now fight for the consumer's dollar.

The traditional Burton Hollis label suffered as more trendy roasters - Atomic, L'affare and Allpress, to name a few - gained favour with the inner-city cafe set.

"The brand needed to compete on street level," says Insight Communications' Mike Tisdall, in charge of rebranding Burton Hollis.

"It sells to little tearooms in Te Kuiti, but the cafe-owners in Ponsonby, Parnell and Remuera just weren't interested."

Burton Hollis general manager Murielle Calme agrees.

"The acknowledgment of the Burton Hollis brand had faded away," she says.

"We needed a new visual - the look of the packaging and logo was dated, and the perception of Burton Hollis was that it wasn't trendy enough for the same cafes that stocked locally roasted coffee."

A team of writers, designers and creatives redesigned the image over four months.

In 1999, Burton Hollis introduced Gravity coffee. In 2000, it relaunched the Burton Hollis brand.

Paper-bag packaging, seen as the correct way to store coffee when the business began, was dropped in favour of aluminium, to preserve freshness after roasting.

Gravity used a silver, red and purple colour scheme. The design was clean and the name catchy.

"The decision was very left-field," says Calme. "We had to go to the extreme."

The Gravity brand now sells 31,000kg of coffee a year, 20 per cent of Burton Hollis' total volume.

Custom for the Burton Hollis brand has increased 25 per cent and Calme says company turnover is up 35 per cent since 1999.

She estimates the company's national market share has risen from 15 to 22 per cent.

Tisdall says he was "blown away" when he saw the sales figures.

"Until now, I have felt the power of creative branding has simply not been recognised.

"[Marketers] have overlooked a hugely dynamic tool that can make the difference to innovative products New Zealanders come up with.

"The fairydust of creativity, when built on a very wise, experienced base of research and fact, can make the difference between walking and flying."

Calme says that although Gravity aimed for a young demographic, it now caters for "aficionados from 16-year-old university students up to the 50-plus."

Tisdall believes the Burton Hollis result, supported by a similar experience with de Redcliffe wines a year later, means "we can now say to business, 'Ignore this at your peril'."

The president of the Designers' Institute of New Zealand, Dave Clark, agrees. He says fees collected for packaging design have increased about 10 per cent a year as marketers recognise its importance.

The industry is now worth $50 million a year in chargeable time.

Supermarket shoppers spend less than a second judging a product, says Clark, and with more than 35,000 lines now crowding the shelves, according to ACNielsen figures, good packaging can make a sale.

"It's absolutely crucial. It's quite obvious there's been an extraordinary increase in the range of products on supermarket shelves, and individuals have to rely on product branding.

"This issue is increasingly important."

Clark says visual signals and clues help the consumer in a cluttered environment.

"Consumers are becoming more visually educated, more discerning."

Packaging needs to be clean and obvious, he says.

Marketers need strong brands and icons that people can identify with.

Greater emphasis is also being placed on product innovations such as single-use packs, microwave packs and zip-up products.

"Increasing sophistication of the New Zealand marketplace, which is incredibly outward and world-orientated, means that in particular categories innovation will be the key to survival because consumers will be exposed to constant new products that will be introduced from overseas."

Clark believes the importance of design is still frequently overlooked, despite the minimal $10,000 to $12,000 cost of a base design.

Tisdall wants businesses to take note.

"People think design is only pretty pictures, but the fact is it goes straight to the bottom line."