We've Got Opinions

And we're not at all shy about sharing them. Within the past year or so, Amy and Jim have penned opinion pieces or contributed quotes for articles on a range of topics in a variety of publications including: Packaging Design Magazine, GD Magazine, Hartford Business Journal and Business New Haven.

Most recently, Amy weighed in on the advisability of consumer product companies implementing nostalgic packaging programs for Package Design Magazine's eNewsletter. And while we think our response was pretty darn smart, the editor (Ron Romanik, a truly swell guy) was forced to remove a couple paragraphs to make it fit. For those of you interested in this sort of thing (we probably lost those who aren't a couple sentences ago), here's the complete text:

In the late Nineties and into the first few years of the new millennium, several well-known corporations spent a lot of time and money publicizing milestone anniversaries. Some of these programs were successful and others spectacular failures.

The reasons some of these anniversary programs worked and others didn’t are instructive for any company considering implementing a nostalgic packaging program.

Because there are too many variables (target audience, price points, market share, etc.) to address in this forum we’ll stick to the basics. The losers of the big corporate birthday rush simply reminded anyone paying attention that they were old, without any meaningful explanation of how that advanced age was any kind of benefit to consumers (ex: a large manufacturer of blue jeans, rhymes with “knee-highs”).

The winners made a good case that over the years they had been innovators, continuously raising the bar in their particular category. That point made, they demonstrated how their unbending desire to improve the breed translates into a demonstrably better product today (ex: a manufacturer of very expensive cars, rhymes with ‘her lady friends”).

In short, a respectful nod to the past is fine, so long as it’s done against the backdrop of relevancy in today’s marketplace. So, to any company considering a nostalgic packaging program, I’d recommend taking a very realistic at consumer perception of the brand/product and then proceeding very carefully.