How To Build Empathy with Packaging

The Relationship Between Empathy and Packaging

The power of your brand’s Empathy indicates how well people feel your brand understands their needs. You can increase your Empathy through Packaging. The way you present your product is an instant demonstration of how nuanced you are at understanding your customers, and the slightest thing can frustrate, or delight, them.  

To increase your brand’s Empathy through Packaging, there are many tweaks you can make to ensure your brand outwardly presents itself as one that understands its consumers, their needs and desires.   

When using Packaging to increase your brand’s Empathy, consider these things: 

1. Is your Packaging the right size?  Perhaps people need to carry your product around, or they want something larger so they don’t have to purchase it as often. Consider the size of your packaging and whether that is optimized across the different needs of your audience.

2. Is your packaging the right format? Putting your products into a shape or format which best serves the needs of your consumers is key. Do they want it to be easier to freeze, to pour, unwrap or uncap? Understand the occasion they are using it in, and explore whether there’s anything more you can do to help. 

3. How can your product’s core benefit best be presented on pack?  Successful products, at the core, are built off a consumer need. Making sure an articulation of that need is face-forward on your packaging is a simple way for people to feel that a brand ‘gets them’. Consider using solution-based claims language on pack which showcases your product as the answer to a common consumer problem.

4. How can you use emotional benefits?  A common group of on-pack claims focus on ‘emotional benefits’ – essentially, claims which pull on the intangible benefits a consumer gets when using the product rather than the functional benefit of the product itself.  When rooted in a real tension, showcasing your brand’s emotional benefits on pack is a great way for people to understand you really get them at a deeper level.

5. How can you use functional benefits?  Another common group of on-pack claims emphasize a brand’s ‘functional benefits’ – essentially claims which pull on the tangible benefits a consumer gets when using the product. When rooted in a real consumer need, showcasing your brand’s functional benefits on pack is a shortcut to people seeing that you ‘get them’.

What should you do next?

• Review the product packaging sizes and formats your brand has made available to shoppers and consider if there are needs unmet for products delivered in a different way.

• Have a look at the claims language across your current products to determine if they are clearly articulating how your product solves consumer’s needs.

• Do you need a massive overhaul or can you make minor cosmetic adjustments that will make a big difference?   

• Develop a claims roadmap stretching across emotionally led and functionally led claim language.  Your emotionally led claims should highlight your product’s intangible benefits whereas your functionally led claims should focus on your product’s tangible benefits.  In either case, both should solve a real consumer need, and be displayed on pack.

How do I know if it’s working?

• Determining whether your Empathy is improving as a result of your packaging change can be done by observing how your Empathy score changes over time – before, during, and after your packaging changes have been made.

• In the Conversations area, people’s ‘delights’ should gain traction, and their niggles should recede, as you show you understand what they want.

• Keep an eye on customer complaints, as you should observe a decline – whether that’s through online comments or customer service logs.  

  
  
  Guidance from:
  Michael Coden | Head of Marketing, ProQuo AI
  
  Michael has spent 10 years developing and building brands across the US, Europe and Australasia for global companies.