By Ian Beresford, head of marketing and development at Essentra Tapes
What was once a nice-to-have is fast becoming standard in a heavily saturated FMCG market. Today, a good ‘opening experience’ is a minimum expectation demanded by those considering parting with their hard-earned cash in exchange for products of all shapes and sizes.
So, to say consumer goods businesses must evolve their propositions to build deeper, more relevant, and inclusive consumer relationships would be an understatement. Their future success depends upon it.
Successful businesses take time to understand who is going to be interacting with their products. They search for barriers and points of exclusion in their customer journey and address them in order to reduce complexity in the consumer’s purchasing journey.
And it is organisations that set a high ambition level for human experience while attempting to understand the often complex and intersecting motivations of people, that will grow and sustain.
This meaningful industry change is where Essentra Tapes can, and does, add value.
Beyond one size fits all
The pressure is on to provide experiences and propositions inclusive to all. Consumers are far more likely to consider and purchase from companies they consider inclusive.
With businesses increasingly investing in areas such as self-care, wellbeing, and positive thinking, now is the time to eradicate exclusion in consumer-packaged goods for good.
To make inclusive packaging that truly works for everyone, the packaging cannot simply be functional – it must be desirable, too. That means no compromising on the integrity or quality of the packaging. Achieving this across any material or substrate while maintaining consistently excellent results is challenging for manufacturers and converters seeking to meet the demands of their clients.
A universal solution that provides quick, clean tears across paper, board, flexible packaging, and film seals is the easy-open tape. Tape provides a cleaner tear than traditional perforation and does not compromise the integrity of the packaging when applied, making it the premier easy-open solution.
This innovation is what Essentra Tapes is all about. Using narrow strips of polymer, our flagship RippaTape (for paper and board cartons) and SupaStrip (for plastic and film applications) products can be printed in a variety of colours – including authentication inks – and can be used to carry messages. This allows you to make your easy-open strips a distinctive, vivid colour to aid those with visual impairments. It can also carry opening instructions, diagrams, safety messages, or any other useful information to make your packaging more accessible for everyone.
And our capabilities don’t stop there. Vaktape enables the easy opening of heat-sealed, airtight packaging, RE:CLOSE provides a resealable closure function for flexible packaging, but perhaps most crucially for FMCG executives, our portfolio of applicators can be added to both new and existing packaging production lines allowing for easy integration of tape into your packaging, while best-in-class technical support ensures a seamless process.
Protect your packaging
Consumers continue to report high concern over the safety of the packaging products they use.
Weaving solutions that prove authenticity, such as a hologram, into an easy-open width around a medicine bottle cap or a carton of strip-packaged tablets serves multiple purposes. It acts as a preventative measure to deter counterfeiters from even attempting to imitate your packaging, and if they do, it makes the fake easy to spot.
It also shows the consumer their medication is sealed and has not been tampered with. Perhaps most importantly, though, it provides a positive opening experience for consumers who may struggle to open standard packaging films
Deterring potentially negative experiences with counterfeits while creating an initial positive opening experience with the real thing is key to protecting and enhancing your brand image.
Building lasting connections
A faster shop coupled with a move online means packaging will have to work harder to capture attention and communicate to time-pressed shoppers.
Consider how customers perceive their interactions with your company. Perceived value can be influenced by the functionality and overall appeal of product packaging design. Beautifully, well-conceived packaging can increase sales, and promote positive word-of-mouth advertising.
With more and more demands being placed on packaging, it must be stronger, and more compelling in the moment when the product is opened.
For brands, finding the right packaging and ways to use less material without compromising on quality or aesthetics is an ongoing challenge. Yet this also creates opportunities to discover even better solutions. For consumers, it’s becoming more and more about accessibility.
And our narrow, long-length, self-wound, adhesive tapes can be attached to add functionality to the finished packaging solution. They can be enhanced by high-accuracy print and authentication features.
So, in a devastatingly competitive space, it is more important than ever that companies meet customers anytime, anywhere, when, and how they want.
