It is difficult for
your product labels to stand out on the retail shelf these days.
There is so much competition in every product category, how can you
create a label that will be noticed? You need high quality design as
well as excellent print quality, that much is a given. But if you
really want to create some buzz around your product, you should try
and do something unique. This article provides several breakthrough
product label ideas that will really help you stand out from the
crowd.
1. Tell a Story
If you buy a bottle
of vitaminwater® you will notice that featured on their labels is a
fun little story related to their product. They are in the
ultra-competitive beverage industry and even though the name
suggests a health drink they have decided to create a fun image for
themselves with these clever stories on their label.
Here is an example
of what they do. This is from their multi-v lemonade label:
remember "the
jetsons"? all they had to do was push a button to get dressed,
microwave a pill to eat a three course meal and throw astro out on
that treadmill thingy to walk him. talk about the good life.
well, we created
this all-in-one product, containing more of the nutrients you need,
from vitamin a to zinc. think of it as a drinkable swiss army knife.
ok, so we didn’t invent the flying car or legless robot maids, but
come on… like that’s even gonna happen.
Notice the liberal
use of slang, the all lowercase text and the conversational tone.
People actually enjoy reading these labels. While vitaminwater® is a
great example of using a fun story to develop a brand, they have
missed an opportunity to really build on this. The problem is that
when you have read the story once you would probably never glance at
it again. It does give the brand a fun feel but it could be much
more. Why not have several different stories for each flavor, so
that each time someone purchased a bottle they could read something
new. People might be motivated to buy more than one bottle at a
time, to collect the different stories.
There are so many
freelance writers out there that would jump at the chance to work on
a project like this. You don’t have to spend thousands of dollars –
you could even hire a student. Have dozens of these short stories or
anecdotes and you will be creating something that is truly
different. You just need to allocate a small space on your label and
then when we print your labels we would print a different story on
each label.
2. Adapt the
Fortune Cookie Idea
If creating these
short stories seems like too much then you can still create an
impact with short sayings. When we go out for Chinese food, at the
end of the meal we get the bill and some fortune cookies. We all
love to crack open the cookie and read the little saying inside.
Most often the sayings are all different and we can get a good laugh
out of them. This idea can be adapted on your product label.
You could have a
different saying on every one of your products on the shelf. You
could spend an afternoon brainstorming with a couple of people and
come up with dozens of these sayings. Alternatively, you could use
quotable quotes from famous people. There are plenty of places
online that list these and you could incorporate them into your
product label. To be most effective you should have at least 100 –
this way you would be unlikely to get two products with the same
quote on the shelf together.
People will look
forward to buying your product to see what pearls of wisdom will be
on the label today. Whether you decide to go with the fortune cookie
idea or the famous quotes this is an easy way to be different
without impacting your current label design. You only need a small
amount of room on your label, and you can create some real curiosity
for your products.
3. A Product
Label "Photo Album"
Many product labels
feature some kind of photo. But why have the same photo on every one
of your labels? You could take advantage of the wealth of online
stock photo libraries and have a different photo on each label.
Say you make
sunscreen and you have a photo of a sunny beach on your label. This
is what you can do. Go to an online stock photography site like
iStockPhoto.com and search for the kind of photo you want. In
January, 2008 a search for "sunny beach" returned over 14,000
photos. You could download several hi-res photos for just a few
dollars each, and your product labels could feature several
attractive photos rather than the same one. The fact that no one
else is doing this will add to the impact of the different photos on
your labels.
You don’t need to
buy photos – you could make your product label more personal by
featuring photos of your business. For the sunscreen company you
could show pictures of employees frolicking on the beach, different
beaches in your area, or famous beaches of the world. Give each
photo a caption and you have a new product label concept that will
be uniquely yours.
There is one
company that is using different photos successfully on their product
- Jones Soda. Every bottle of Jones Soda has a different photo on
it. They have their customers send in photos, a great way to cut
down expense and get your customers more involved in your product.
4. Run a
Competition
You could use a
part of your label to run a competition with your customers. Here is
an example of what you could do. Provide simple instructions and
print a random 10 digit code on every label. Instruct your customer
go to your web site to enter in this code to see if they win. There
would be a different 10 digit code on every label. On the home page
of your site you could have an area where your customer can enter
this 10 digit code.
The best part about
doing something like this is that you can start to gather some
marketing information. You could try and capture an email address
and other personal information once they have entered the code.
There is a double benefit here. First, you have a committed customer
exploring your web site and second you can have this customer enter
information that will allow you to market to them in the future. You
will have easily created a marketing database.
5. Numbered
Labels
Polin & Polin is a
small winery in the Hunter Valley wine growing region in Australia.
Every bottle of wine sold by Polin & Polin has a unique number on
it. They like to emphasize that they are a small, family owned
winery and this helps them achieve that goal.
Now, this would
work for many products other than wine. If you want to emphasize the
fact that your product is handcrafted, not mass produced, you could
do the same thing. Just add a little note: "Bottle X of 1500" (we
can do the consecutive numbering here) to your product label.
Promote Your New
Product Labels
If you go to the
trouble of creating a breakthrough product label you need to tell
the world what you are doing. So few companies are creating
individualized labels, you may well be the first company in your
industry to take this approach with your labeling. So this is a
great opportunity to try and get some publicity for your products.
In ten years time
there could be many products on the shelf leveraging the power of
digital label printing by making every product label different. This
new trend has not even begun yet, so if you start now you will
probably be breaking new ground in your industry. You can make
individualized labels a key part of your brand. In today’s
competitive marketplace it is so difficult to be different – with
digital label printing you can create a product label that is truly
unique.
We Want to Help
If you decide that
you want to undertake one of these new ideas then we want to help.
We will not only help you with the implementation and printing of
your product labels, we will help you promote your product. We will
work with you to create a promotional program to announce to the
world that your product labels are truly unique. Just contact
Lightning Labels and ask for Peter or send an email to peter@lightninglabels.com.
Who was it that decided that every
label for a particular product should be exactly the same? With the
power of digital label printing we no longer have to live by that
rule. There is a huge opportunity here for enterprising companies to
create something completely new in the world of product labels.
