Challenge
A pack should help ensure that the brand and product are the obvious choice. Shoppers don’t think consciously about what a pack is trying to tell them; they just want to make the right choice as quickly and easily as possible from the least amount of information.
Craft beer brewers BrewDog turned to Kantar when needing to explore the best way to convey sustainability for their Lost Lager brand.
Importantly, they wanted to understand whether the pack designs and messaging would resonate beyond the minority of active sustainability seekers to those less engaged in sustainability, the believers and considers.
Approach
We used Kantar Marketplace behavioral science inspired agile pack screening tool to screen different design where they manipulated the messaging, the impact of design and the impact of short-cut logos that convey its sustainability credentials.
This solution uses swipe technology, combining Type 1 and Type 2 approaches, providing a shortlist of preferred packs from a large number of options, and clear diagnostic insights to help improve them.
We recruited the different audiences who are distinguished by their level of engagement in sustainability (actives, believers, considers and dismissers).
Insight
1. Less is more: messaging needs to divulge as much sustainable information in as few words as possible.
2. Pack aesthetics (use of the green color) are prominent drivers of appeal amongst those actively engaged in sustainability and those who are less so.
3. Actions that are led by the single consumer appealed more to actives, with collective messaging (e.g “Let’s plant together”) creating a broader appeal for those less engaged.
4. With the actives, we need to be more careful with the pack designs and the messages we use; as they are so closely engaged with sustainability, they scrutinize everything a brand does.
Impact
Our findings have been fed into the Brewdog’s long term packaging strategy. These findings reinforce how important it is to test pack designs, as small changes to color, design and messaging can have a strong impact on intuitive appeal and more deliberative assessment of the pack by different audiences.