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.



