Branding is something of a novelty as a concept. Some 19th-century entrepreneurs practised it without knowing it. When Charles Lewis Tiffany decided in 1837 that all the packaging of his Manhattan store had to be in the same shade of robin-egg blue, he never realised he was creating something that would be seen as a branding turn in our time. Today, Tiffany Blue is a registered trademark, and the robin-egg blue boxes with their distinctive white satin ribbons are an example of packaging that adds value to what they contain. Like the Tiffany blue box or the coke bottle, packaging nowadays is solid and recognised as a constituent part of the brand identity.

“Packaging should refl ect brand values, communicate the brand or product proposition, and, of course, attract shoppers’ attention,” says Salil Sadanandan, president, Timex and Fashion Brands, Timex Group. “This is becoming increasingly important today, when consumers are pressed for time and try to make sense out of an overload of information that they are expected to process instantly.” He then goes on to drive home his point: “You don’t need to know Malcolm Gladwell’s theoretical work on the subject to sense that the split-second decisions that people make when shopping in the overcrowded supermarket are more likely to be infl uenced by packaging, than by whole campaigns of advertising or promotion.”

In fact, a good package is not just a container that holds and protects the goods inside it; a well-thought-out packaging design can refl ect a product’s core values. For instance, premium watch brands often have elaborate packaging using valuable materials like leather and mahogany wood. The packages are usually larger than practically required and even come with detailed literature on the manufacturer’s heritage.