Major changes to Pepsi-Cola’s packaging had been few and far between for the majority of its 110 year history. And then came 2007 when the company did an about-face, rolling out more than 30 new graphic art designs for its cans.

“Whimsical and contemporary,” is how Ted Mininni, president of the packaging design firm Design Force, Inc. describes the result. “This packaging speaks to the new Pepsi Generation.”

Pepsi quickly followed the move with the Green Label Art series for Mountain Dew. The series included 12 different aluminum bottle designs for Mountain Dew in 2007, with another 12 to be rolled out through 2008.

One reason for the frequent changes is they grab  attention on a store shelf increasingly crowded with new products. The tactic especially works with the core target audience: teens. “Younger consumers have more limited attention spans and a higher demand for a constant flow of new, fresh products and product packaging,” says Mininni.

David Ceradini, president/executive creative director of Ceradini Design sums it up this way: “We have come a long way from the Coke or Pepsi battles. Beverages now compete in a crowded ‘evolve or die’ retail environment, where you need to innovate quickly or get left behind. It’s no longer enough to rely on a great marketing campaign to ‘push’ consumers towards a brand that speaks the language of their lifestyle. Consumers now won’t just take the hard brand push, and in fact, they just might push back and then blog about it.”

But there’s also another reason for the frequent change-ups. Technology has streamlined packaging design processes that used to be labor-intensive, time-consuming and costly. John Cato, a partner with the design firm Object 9, says this is so even before the actual design begins. “We just finished a whole round of focus groups held all over the country and the client’s management team and my designers were able to watch what was going on via a webcast,” he says.

And when it comes to the actual design, Cato says the process now moves more quickly than ever before. “I’ve been doing this for 15 years and I can tell you the rate at which we turn work now is 500 percent faster than what it was,” he says. He credits collaboration via the internet, along with the ability to produce 3-D comps digitally. “It’s been a huge time-savings in terms of what you can do now digitally from a production point of view,” Cato says.

Echoes Ceradini, “New efficiencies in pre-press, proofing and printing technologies and a trend towards early collaboration are allowing for better lead times and faster speed to market.”

The availability of new packaging substrates also has fueled the imagination of beverage marketers, as in the case of Pepsi’s use of aluminum bottles supplied by CCL Container for its Green Label Art series. “It’s a very exciting time for beverage marketers,” remarks Eric Umsted, CCL’s national accounts manager rigid packaging, about the newfound use of the aluminum bottle for drinks like soda and beer. Part of the reason, he says, is the ability to use eye-catching, full-body artwork on the bottles, as in the case of Mountain Dew. “The graphics are very bright and detailed, something you typically do not get on other packaging,” he says.

From Beverage World July 15, 2008