Wind your memory back to Coca-Cola’s personalised Share A Coke With… bottle labels. They helped achieve genuinely astonishing sales figures. But personalised printing isn’t just for global brands with deep pockets. Any business can benefit – including yours.
Question: How do you boost your sales?
Answer: Make people feel a sense of ownership of your product, before they have even crossed the purchasing line.
It worked for Coca-Cola. In a big way. Their innovative personalised labels changed the way people think about FMCG packaging. In doing so their Share A Coke With… campaign generated the largest year-on-year sales growth in 20-ounce packaging in the brand’s history – more than 19%.
Hungry for similar sales success, Snickers are getting creative with their packaging too. The new campaign ties in to the You’re Not You When You’re Hungry positioning and will replace the Snickers logo with one of 21 symptoms of hunger – such as Sleepy, Feisty and Loopy.
But what does the new trend for variable packaging mean for you and your business?
Why brands should be looking to personalise
It’s important to delineate between personalisation and variable packaging. One is custom designed for a specific consumer, the other – as with Coca-Cola and Snickers – gives brands an opportunity to break new ground and get creative. But both, used smartly, have the potential to make a transformative impact on your bottom line.
Variable packaging helps to shift units and boost revenue because it’s unique. It’s a talking point. It gets the consumer engaged. Ultimately the key to succeeding with variable packaging is the marketing brainwave behind your idea – how it breaks down the barriers between your business and your customer. That’s the challenge. From bread packaging themed on a specific global sporting event to beer bottle labels that offer a series of tongue-in-cheek dating tips, the opportunities are limited only by your imagination.
As for personalisation? Well if the multi-million pound success of Funky Pigeon and Moonpig is evidence of anything, it’s that consumers like personalisation. Giving your customers the chance to personalise your product range has the potential to spur a whole new source of revenue as benevolent customers seek gifts for their nearest and dearest (and self-indulgent consumers treat themselves). The flexibility of today’s printing technology is such that if you can think it, it can probably be done.
It’s not just for global brands
Sounds good, doesn’t it? But what about the cost? Is variable printing and personalisation limited to megabrands like Coca-Cola, Snickers and Funky Pigeon? Absolutely not. You don’t need to have a high volume, high turnover product to make variable printing cost-effective.
As the video below shows, ASQ Labels are a Belgian printing company specialising in the food and drink sector. They incorporated variable printing technology to help local breweries offer personalised beer bottle labels to their consumers. Print runs were limited. Yet today – as personalisation grows in popularity – they have opened up an entirely new market that would have otherwise been off-limits.
Introducing the world’s most advanced digital label press
The technology ASQ Labels implemented was the Domino N610i. It makes it possible for small businesses to make like the big brands and get creative with variable printing and personalisation, without blowing the budget. It also happens to be a digital label press that delivers the highest digital productivity and the best digital UV inkjet quality on the market.
Remember what we said about the printing opportunities being limited only by your imagination? The N610i makes it possible to create exceptionally vivid, variable label packaging. No changing plates – everything is digital. You don’t need a big brand marketing team or achingly zeitgeist branding agency to have an idea that could boost your sales and build your relationship with your customers. And you certainly don’t need a huge budget to bring that idea to life.
How could variable printing help your business? If you have any questions please leave a comment or contact us.