By Sarah Rutland, market development manager at Filtrona Tapes
Are you finding yourself exasperated with battling packaging that you just cannot open?
Well, you are not alone! It’s called Wrap Rage, and you know it’s real because it has its own Wikipedia page.
There are few more frustrating household tasks than struggling to open a jar that won’t budge. Except, perhaps, trying to prise open the impenetrable, finger-slicing plastic that wraps everything from toothbrushes to ink cartridges.
It’s not only annoying, wrap rage can be dangerous too. Stories abound of homeowners resorting to scissors, pliers, nutcrackers and even hammers to tackle stubborn packaging — often with painful consequences.
And the evidence of this frustrating phenomenon isn’t purely anecdotal. In a recent consumer survey, 57% of consumers reported openability as a key issue with packaging. Furthermore, cartons with no opening device ranked number two in the most frustrating pack types.
Success is often buried on the other side of frustration. The marker of a successful business is one that takes time to understand who will be interacting with their products. They search for barriers and points of exclusion in their customer journey and address them to reduce complexity in the consumer’s purchasing journey.
With such a strong feeling toward openability voiced by consumers, and in the age where unboxing videos get serious YouTube coverage, facilitating frustration-free opening is where Filtrona Tapes can and does add value to the packaging experience.
Overcoming frustration
Packaging design is easy to take for granted; until it goes wrong. Any design group truly worth its salt should consider usability a key issue. But the reality is that it probably isn’t a priority.
Packaging is often thought about at the end of the product development journey but should be considered initially. As part of the customer experience, the eCommerce package for example is subject to the same rigorous consumer demands they carry in a brick-and-mortar store.
With this in mind, e-commerce businesses should see packaging as a way to replace the shop floor experience with the unboxing experience and extend brand messaging into the home. It is both a marketing opportunity and a consumer engagement tool. The problem of wrap rage and the solution of frustration-free packaging have become more popular with the rise of e-commerce because people are tired of struggling with packaging.
But when it comes to innovation, packaging is an area where the pace of change rarely lets up. But with ‘wrap rage’ coined in 2003, to sum up the anger many of us feel when the product we paid for is being held hostage as we cannot open a packet, jar or box, that pace could and should have been much quicker.
The call for change in the packaging industry is being sounded on another front as well with the need for environmental responsibility taking centre stage. 43% of consumers responded to our packaging survey complaining that their packaging was difficult to recycle.
This compounds a problem for the e-commerce sector as not only are today’s time-poor consumers frustrated that they can’t get to their product easily, but they also then have to spend time figuring out how or if they can recycle the remaining materials.
What if a solution could tackle both issues?
Our breakthrough tear tape solution endeavours to help brands and converters worldwide meet their environmental goals by providing customers with more circular curbside recyclable packaging options that offer easy blade-free access to paper and board-based packaging.
Rippatape Halo is the first paper-based tape in the Filtrona Tapes ECO Range. It is focused on delivering fibre recovery and is externally certified as recyclable with paper achieving an A+ level via the Italian National Recyclability Standard: UNI 11743 and MC 501: 2017 criteria.
With a tearing performance comparable to our market-leading Rippatape 60, Rippatape Halo does not compromise on the easy opening credentials of its plastic alternative. This is truly impressive from a product based on a single-ply, specialised coated paper with no plastic films or laminates.
Our renewed investment in modern, intuitive applicator technology and field engineers make deploying tapes, including the innovative Rippatape Halo, even more accessible for brands and converters than ever.
 Innovation starts when we begin to listen
 Poor packaging leads to worse things than a bruised ego – it leads to lost sales and revenue. And it’s no mystery why.
If you’ve taken the time and effort to tailor your product and packaging, your customers will see and value this, creating loyal customers who shout about what you’ve sent. And it doesn’t need to cost the earth to create your unboxing experience. A selection as simple as choosing a tape can enhance brand communication and protection, bolster consumer convenience, and contribute to an unforgettable opening experience.
Another factor that militates against change is the battle between marketing and production people, each with their vested interests. And then there is the perception that packaging innovation comes at a price. The costs involved in rebuilding production lines may be prohibitive, and the production department will almost immediately project the complicated upheaval and expensive downtime for the production lines.
However, our renewed investment in modern, intuitive applicator technology and field engineers combined with the introduction of Rippatape Halo – our patent pending repulpable paper-based tear tape, and the EASILINER range of paper-based release liners, make innovative total tape packaging solutions more accessible for brands and converters than they ever have been.
Packaging means something different for every business. Understanding its role in your end consumer’s experience, among departments in your organisation or your entire value chain, is critical to driving impact. And through activating our total tape solutions, you can do so firmly in the knowledge that reinforced creative and frustration-free packaging will give you a competitive advantage.
After all, it will be the 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.
