Effective packaging is memorable to the consumer and sticks out amongst competitors. While bold colors and structures can help set your brand apart, creating a multi-sensory experience with your packaging can entice consumers and create brand loyalty even more effectively. Multi-sensory packaging consists of integrating the five senses into your packaging in order to create a more memorable and striking design.
JohnsByrne breaks down the various ways your brand can create multi-sensory packaging below.
Visual Features
Adding striking visual components to your packaging is what will first attract the attention of your target consumers. Using unique shapes and bold colors are effective at grabbing consumer interest and making a good impression. Press effects are also a great way to create a unique design and nudge the customer in the direction of making a purchase.
Other visual elements that help elevate your brand include:
- Hot and cold foils
- Holographic foils
- UV coatings
- Glitter coatings
- Pearlescent coatings
Tactile Features
Once a customer sees a product that attracts their eye, they are likely to pick it up and interact with it. This is where tactile features come in. A soft touch coating can be a great way to convey a soft texture emulating luxury for a high-end product, while grit effects can be great for elevating vivid images, such as sand on a beach, or plastered walls.
Other tactile features that will leave a lasting impression on customers include:
- Reticulation effects
- Glossy coating
- Multi-level embossing/debossing
- Raised UV coatings
- Soft touch coatings
Olfactory Features
Using scent in your packaging can be extremely beneficial to your brand, as it is proven that scent is the sense that is most strongly related to memory. For example, a particular scent, such as one that resembles freshly baked chocolate cookies, can work to create a nostalgic feeling for consumers. This can compel them to try your product and increase the odds for customer loyalty. Using a tropical scent, on the other hand, can remind customers of summertime – a time that is commonly missed during the long, dreary winter months – and can be other powerful scent that drives consumers to purchase your product.
To add an olfactory element into your packaging, you can include scratch and sniff stickers or scented inks and ribbons in your design.
Auditory Features
Sound is another interesting sense that is not often included in traditional paperboard packaging. However, incorporating music or sound effects that play when the package is opened is an effective way to get the customer to actively engage with your packaging. These traditional auditory features make excellent add-ons to specialty packaging products such as Launch Kits, and Sales & Marketing Kits.
Another auditory feature that enhances the element of luxury is the satisfying sound of closures. This can include magnetic closures, custom tabs, and locking flip-tops that subtlety “snap” into place. A perfect example is the Sappi Gift Wrap Carton, pictured below. When a consumer opens the package, the snapping sound is both an interactive and satisfying sound that creates a memorable unboxing experience, encouraging the user to repeatedly interact with the package. A bonus element: the closure is entirely sustainable.
Taste Features
Taste is a difficult sense to include in a packaging design, however, it can be very effective. You don’t need to think literally when incorporating taste into your packaging. Instead, you can include imagery, colors or shapes into your packaging that remind consumers of a taste that triggers nostalgic ideas.
For example, images of ingredients such as lemons and honey in a specialty cocktail recipe, can excite customers to purchase your brand’s Wine & Spirits gift set. This element of visual taste can help the consumer feel an immediate connection to the packaging, making it more likely they will purchase your product.
Get Started on Your Next Project with JohnsByrne
Work with us at JohnsByrne to get started on your next design project – one that incorporates all of the five senses. We’ll work with you to create a innovative packaging design that will stand out and engage consumers.
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