The clothes presented in Milan catwalks during the fashion week are always a powerhouse of creativity. They are, at the same time, the product, but also a tool to capture the attention of the media, constantly in search of the most eccentric news.
Creativity, in that case, is also a strategic need to get the so expected media coverage.
That is why some dresses you see parading on the catwalk are not sold afterwards. The ones you get at the fancy stores do have a creative component, but, unlike in the parade, they find themselves in a different reality: market and sales.
Having said this, I have to confirm that the fashion business constitutes a constant source of Italian creative solutions and this also relates also to the packaging.
The packaging does not get the chance to parade, but I have in my mind the revolutionary package choices proposed by Uniqlo for its t-shirts and shirts in recent years, or the radical change adopted by Puma for its shoe boxes.
I do not have the sales spreadsheet to tell whether these options paid back, but it is clear that the fashion industry is much more open to new solutions, even when it comes to packaging. To bet, to dare and to go beyond it is in its DNA.
Do not take make of these few lines the truth of creative packaging. It is not like this. When I reason on a product and think of a solution that will make it sell, I analyze deeply every single creative choice; you can imagine what I do with an excess of creativity.
Talking about packaging, I believe that, today, most businesses are stood still, without knowing how to move.
This stood still position – or dead point – is that in which products are not able to sell any longer and the packaging has stopped being of help, not fulfilling its main function: to increase sales.
This situation is mainly caused by three reasons:
- Fossilized agencies, working on old concepts and that have been assigned the same job for years.
- Fear to choose any alternative that deviates from the paths walked to date.
- Employees that are awarded with the Oscar for Creativity and not for the increase in sales of products they are in charge of
Yes. I am saying that there are companies that entrust, for years, the packaging of their products to agencies that sleep while the market changes and requests close attention.
Other companies ask for better results without being willing to consider a change – even when motivated.
In worst cases, both described problems coexist!
Of course, many people work well and they understood perfectly all these passages.
What do I think the fashion industry can teach those who sell breakfast cereals?
Limits are not taken into consideration by fashion makers. Actually, pushing limits seems to be the favorite challenge of fashion designers. Without having it as a main objective, thinking of a solution free of constraints is a valuable approach to be adopted in all industries.
I am saying this as myself being the first one not looking for a creative solution.
My staff at Packaging in Italy and I do not go for a creative challenge, but, at the same time, we don’t let creativity to be a limit.
Technically, we define our approach to creativity as “Scientific Creativity” and this is not a contradiction. Creativity is there, but it is neither the origin of our work process nor the cause of our success, but in the end, it is the product.
Only with a scientific approach – research and analysis of product, market and consumer – we can get a final result that, even through creative tools, is able to achieve concrete results.
We search for solutions that will help products to sell.
Our success is about increasing sales of our clients’ products. If the road to get there includes using alternatives that, at first sight, seem to be unconventional and counterintuitive with respect to what you have always done, so be it!
That is why we do not consider ourselves as creative, but we operate also through a creative expression of communication when you need to reach the ultimate goal: sales.
This is the way you should think of your products and their packaging, because there are not standards or conventions that you CANNOT change, with the exception of the material “convention” that your product might have success only thanks to the purchase the end consumer will make.
This is what we can do for you, helping to increase your product sales with targeted packaging solutions.
In 1996 enters in the world of marketing, in 1999 founded Ardigia Marketing Funzionale (Ardigia Functional Marketing), in 2013 founded Packaging in Italy, Design Agency for Packaging Positioning™
