The Packaging Therapist

Balancing Brand and Sustainability in Packaging Design, with Aaron Keller

• Jessie Schwartz • Season 1 • Episode 13

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Are you overwhelmed by the complexities of brand design and sustainable packaging? 

In this episode, Aaron Keller from Capsule joins Jessie Schwartz to talk about innovative solutions to packaging design challenges and the broader landscape of responsible packaging. In this conversation, you’ll learn:

  • How Patagonia's Octagon box revolutionized sustainable packaging with enhanced recyclability and reduced material usage.
  • The significance of minimalistic packaging, like Patagonia’s "sushi roll" design, in both environmental and consumer appeal.
  • The role of design agencies in bridging brand storytelling and market opportunities, illustrated with examples like "Liquid Death" and "Smartwool."
  • The critical balance between distinctive design and cost-effectiveness for standout shelf presence.
  • Strategies for integrating eco-friendly practices in packaging while ensuring scalability for large brands.

Connect with Aaron on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaronjkeller/

Visit Capsule’s website: https://capsule.us/


If you love our content and want to learn more about the packaging industry, hit SUBSCRIBE!

Connect with us: www.StrategicPackagingPartners.com
Jessie Schwartz - jessie@stratpackpartners.com

Jessie Schwartz:

Welcome to the Packaging Therapist Podcast. I am your host, Jessie Schwartz. I've been a packaging engineer for 20 years and currently the founder of Strategic Packaging Partners, where we are obsessed with creating strategic approaches to packaging to enable growth and cost savings in the CPG industry. My goal in this podcast is to discuss hot topics in the packaging space to enable you to make strategic decisions for your business that impact the bottom line and take the chaos out of manufacturing. Join us for technical discussions about packaging and let's make the world of manufacturing better together. Hey everyone. Welcome to the show today. I am joined by Erin Keller of Capsule Design, and we are going to talk all about using a design agency to get work done for your organization. When should you use a design agency? Some of the things that you should consider. And so I'm super excited you're here, Erin. Um, go ahead, introduce yourself and we'll get right to it.

Aaron Keller:

Great. Yes. Excited to be here as well. Jessica, this is, uh, Jess. I am, uh, excited about being here for sure. The, uh, um, capsule firm. We are 25 years old as of August. And, uh, we wrote a book many years ago called Design Managed Packaging, which led to a tremendous amount of both here domestically and internationally. And we do a lot of work on the front end of strategy and the research and understanding what what's happening at the moment intersection and then designing to that when it comes to our package design process.

Jessie Schwartz:

Fantastic.

Aaron Keller:

bit.

Jessie Schwartz:

Yeah. So like, let's talk a little bit about telling a brand story. Um, there are so many different options out there when people think about getting, okay, I want a new branding, some, a new look, but then I don't know how to, to create something that, that will resonate with consumers and not confuse them. And I mean, it's just really, when you think about, you know, Your brand image and what your packaging will look like for consumers. There are just so many things to consider. And so in terms of, um, using a brand agency, um, in the role of storytelling and how packaging can convey a brand's, um, values and story, say a little bit about that.

Aaron Keller:

Yeah, the best thing, there's a lot of different ways to approach it, but I've found that finding the gaps in the category, unless you're inventing an entirely new category, finding the gaps and the gaps may form in the area of personality and may form in the area of visual language, um, and certainly hopefully they form and also like the base product that you're, you're putting in the package itself. Um, So as you're looking out in the world and looking to find a firm to partner with, the broadest view you can take as early in the process as possible is definitely helpful when considering, you know, where are you going to fit in? What are you going to design yourself into as far as a spot in a category? Um, and there's a lot of factors and that could be, you know, competitiveness of the category. How? How much innovation is going on in the category of some categories that just get very stagnant, right? People aren't even innovating at all in a certain category. And those can be right for for opportunity for them to come in and do something dramatic and change and create a new perception with a new product or package. Could be very cool.

Jessie Schwartz:

I think of liquid death when you say that, where it's like stagnant category of water. Do you guys have any, do you have any other examples?

Aaron Keller:

Liquid Death, and the other comparable I would give is Smartwall, which has been a client of ours over the years, where they came into a category that was, you know, socks. It's boring to a certain degree, but they came in with a softer wool sock made from merino wool. Um, and once you put it on your feet, it feels like a luxury for your feet. Um, and so the design of their package was done in such a way that you can get the sock out of the package and put it back in the package after trying it on. If you were to, now that sounds gross right out of the gate. You're like, what other people could have had their feet in my socks? Well, probably not because they're so comfortable. You put them on, you do not. Take them off again. Um, and it was, I think, a pretty impressive innovation for them. Plus, they have a little smart little guy and, uh, and designed a beautiful package that's connected with people and they grew dramatically

Jessie Schwartz:

Yeah. And you say something interesting though, like even if someone were to take it out of the package just to see the color, cause smart wool socks in particular have a different design often throughout the whole sock. So let's just say you wanted to take a look at the whole design. Um, what you're saying is you could get the socks back together without it looking, um, besheveled or, um, disorderly. And I think that's an important. aspect of design that you might want to consider. Like what are the traditional problems of current design or a problem that you anticipate? And then how can you, um, leverage agencies and different schools of thought to come up with a solution that solves that problem?

Aaron Keller:

Yeah, definitely seen the bigger experience that someone's having. It also fit really nicely. If you think about where they went to market, they went in ski shops. So you would, if you ended up at a ski shop and you hadn't skied a lot, you end up there, you're big, you know, white, you know, sports socks and, and then they said, well, you should really try out a pair of like knee high socks because you're in ski boots. It'll be more comfortable and your feet won't be destroyed or your shins won't be destroyed by the time you're done. Um, you try them on. Yeah. Ski shop gets you to buy one. And of course, they're so comfortable you buy 10. Um, and it's great for the ski shop and great for smart wall. And, uh, and it really fits in those that don't sell. They just put back in the package, um, which is I think pretty rare and, and sell them again. So it's a, it was a really, really impressive little innovation and really not as understood in its full form because you think about all other socks were swift tack. So you could not try those socks on, right? You could not see what they feel like on your feet. A lot of the things we, especially clothing, we get to try it on, but socks have not been that, or weren't that until this smart home innovation. So,

Jessie Schwartz:

Right. Pull it off the shelf and then it was yours and buy it. And it was yours like sort of thing.

Aaron Keller:

right, right.

Jessie Schwartz:

Okay, cool. So then, um, you know, you, you have these ideas of what, uh, Type of product you want to offer to the market. And there's just so much that goes into coming up, even with the idea for the product in so many facets and everything is constantly changing. And so when, when do people, when do you usually engage with people in terms of how far down the product development cycle are they, um, because you need to have kind of something that you can design. But then where, you know, it's hard, there's no like mile marker for like, now you engage with a brand agency. So tell, tell us a little bit about how to identify the right time to consider an agency getting involved in helping out.

Aaron Keller:

Yeah, it definitely, you know, it depends on the agency you're engaging with and what their full scope of capabilities are. That's for sure. Um, I also, there's definitely a correlation between the complexity of the challenge and how soon the more complex, the sooner you would want other partners involved. Um, almost like any other product development process, the same principles and the same, uh, many ways stage gates apply in the, in the area of packaging, so, um, Yeah, I'm reminded of like a couple of different examples of clients. One was a chocolate. All they had was a concept of what they might design as a chocolate. And they brought us in very early to help them actually design the chocolate form factor as well as the package and all the surrounding things in the brand and everything. Um, and so that's a, that's a very early stage in that. But, um, and I think they would, they can attest to this. It was an incredibly successful launch of a, of a chocolate that could have ended up in just a bar form, which yeah. There's just plenty of bar forms of chocolate, right? Kind of boring. You're going to do something different than, um, that we did together. So it is, it is definitely dependent upon the complexity, which can come from the category itself, what you're looking to accomplish, right? Um, what the innovation is. But generally skewing the earlier the better. Um, that's my view because some people look at it. Well, I engage them early. It's going to cost me more money. But if you're engaging a good partner, you're reducing the risk of bringing that product to market. Hopefully you're increasing your odds of success. Hopefully there's a lot of other good that goes with engaging that partner. Um, You know that that makes it a good reason to bring them in earlier versus later

Jessie Schwartz:

Can you give us an idea of the range of services? So I think, you know, if you're going out to look for an agency, there's really, what, what, what questions do you even ask in terms of services and some offer some, but not the other and explain a little bit more about specific services that agencies, um, often offer. And then maybe some more of the strategic, uh, Well, I'm just wondering, like, you know, I've seen you offer a lot of services that you've seen that not everybody offers, but you know, you should ask up front, like, do you have capabilities in these spaces? So you don't get too far down the line. Right. And realize, oh my gosh, now I've got to hire somebody else cause these guys can't do, you know, whatever it is.

Aaron Keller:

Yeah, yeah, and we look at it as we get the basically three rings We got the core and what capsule can do inside a capsule and then that next ring which is our set of partners like you and uh in which we Turn to them for those other things that we don't do we find it's much better to be just Totally transparent, almost radically transparent about what we can do and what our partners can do. Um, we, of course, take responsibility for our partners. So if our partners mess up on us and on our clients, we take that and we make the correction and we, um, We like to say we're the throat to choke, essentially, if something goes wrong, um, but that, um, and I hope that other agencies out there do that kind of thing where they're just as honest as possible because it's more painful later if you have to explain, oh, no, now you need blah, um, then, you know, experienced clients who've done this before, no, all. The pieces are just generally the pieces that are involved structure can be that gray area and testing of structure, right? Can be like, who does it? Where do we get materials? And some of those things you just you can't possibly know if you've never done this before. And so part of our role, I think, collectively is educating as we go. So they get the best they can get because you want, we all want. They want a successful story. They want something that sells. We want not only the pain, but also the case study, right? The story of having done this great thing together. Um, so our, it can be very much aligned. If you think about it that way and bringing the best partners to the table for that second ring is a critical thing for us because there's no. We can't possibly do everything. There's no way it isn't. Um, and I don't know that there's any firm that can. You're always relying on your firm. We just had a partner ask us for, for consultants for EPA and FDA consultants. And we're like, we've never. Ask, then ask that. Okay. We went and found our network. We had two really good partners who do that all the time. And we've been talking to, we just didn't realize that they would be great partners and sent them off and they loved it. And so just a matter of making sure you've got a good partnership network,

Jessie Schwartz:

Yeah.

Aaron Keller:

is a healthy thing. So.

Jessie Schwartz:

I think that's a great point. So what type of network does the agency have in terms of ancillary services that are adjacent services that you might need and what. What does their landscape look like? Because I think in the design agency in. world in particular, you guys are networked with so many different people because you're. You're handling, um, the way the product will show up on the shelf, but then you're connected to all the other aspects of the graphics, right? The packaging, the regulation, um, just everything. And even, even how it sits on a shelf and you know, what does the retail landscape look like? I mean, is it going to be in fluorescent lights all the time? You know, have you tested your product against that? Can you even have a window and all these like really thoughtful technical questions that, that you ask? And it's just. You can't think of everything, right? Even the brand owner can't think of everything. And so that's why it's important to have an agency that can help you ask the questions that will prevent huge disastrous mistakes. And I remember a story that you told me about, um, a vodka that you guys worked on once.

Aaron Keller:

Yes, they had originally come to us and they said, and this sometimes happens, we're going to do a design contest. We're going to have, you're going to design some concepts. We're going to have 2 other firms design some concepts. And we said, no, we don't do that. We ended up working on a relationship. Um, but at the time they had done some concepts with the manufacturer and it was a crystal manufacturer says premium vodka should be in a crystal container of some sort of like, Oh, that totally makes sense, right? As a piece of the conversation, right? You go to the crystal manufacturer as a, as a designer on staff, you know, works in crystal and it creates this incredible bottle. That's like two feet tall. Um, and then of course we'll never fit on a shelf ever. There's no shelf that will fit on, not even in a bar that won't fit on a shelf, but I'm like, okay, okay. Uh, and then it's made out of lead crystal the lead of course Leads from the crystal into the vodka, of course killing your customers sooner than you'd like Which is rather unpleasant. Um, and they said well, we're probably not going to go that route And so we ended up, you know working with them and actually designing a beautiful Bottle that worked out really well for them. Um, but it is, it is, it's a challenging area to consider. And, and, and I, I empathize with clients because the landscape is cluttered. There's a clutter with a lot of challenging, you know, paths. You could go down and you have to find people you can trust, right. That are going to go on this journey with you. So,

Jessie Schwartz:

Right. Well, and to your point, the time and the effort and the money spent on designing a lead containing bottle could have been spent other places too. So, um, it sounds like just having conversations anyway, earlier on to understand, okay, here's where we're at and maybe there's no engagement at the moment, but at least, you know, capabilities and, and when to engage so that. Mistakes can be prevented and you can design into something that resonates with your, with your clients. Um, and do you guys do any studies around different designs and how they are perceived by, by consumers? Cause there's just so many different looks and feels that you can have in a brand image. Um, whether it's just the artwork itself or it's the artwork plus, plus the packaging. Is that something that you, that you do or the, you know, the, I guess the landscape of design offers design agencies offer?

Aaron Keller:

Yeah, I don't know entirely how many firms do the full blend, but we definitely do that research piece. I have a research background, so I'm always fascinated by anything where we can do the testing after we've done the concepting with all kinds of different ways to test. Of course, the. The moment of truth that intersection between the human and the package at the shelf or at the moment of decision is the purest form of test and the purest form of research is observation. So observing that interaction happening and seeing what people see and more appropriately, sometimes what people don't see. Um, we did this years ago with a Brand is now owned by Cody at lacrosse and selling answer to the consumer brands. And we observed, um, it was probably 60 or 70 different shoppers shopping the aisle, figuring out how they behave to figure out which things they picked up, which things they noticed, things they didn't notice. And these little things you can find all kinds of nuances of behavior that can be really valuable to you as a, as a, as a brand owner. Um, and then of course, yes, the mixture of structure and graphics and how are you being as distinctive as possible on the shelf, um, without. You know, breaking the bank, um, and going off the charts from a custom structure design, um, trying to find that happy balance is a critical thing, but the testing is a more and more people get the importance of that and see that and do that. There's all kinds of different creative ways to approach it too. So,

Jessie Schwartz:

Yeah, absolutely.

Aaron Keller:

and it's that last step in, you know, reducing the last step of risk of bringing something to market. Right. And if people don't know that there isn't, just look up the Tropicana story and that'll tell you how much risk is involved.

Jessie Schwartz:

Yeah.

Aaron Keller:

know that

Jessie Schwartz:

Yes. Yes, absolutely. And I think, you know, now e commerce is such a huge market. And it's only growing. And so you really have two spaces that your product needs to show up. One is potentially a store shelf, but then the other is in e commerce. And so talk a little bit about the considerations for both. Environments for the product. And sometimes they're in this, they go in both spaces. Right. But like some customers or some companies decide to start with e commerce and going D to C, and then they might get into brick and mortar later. Some go straight to brick and mortar. So there's just different considerations potentially for where your product will be. Um, can you, can you help us understand that?

Aaron Keller:

Yeah. There's sometimes I think it's definitely a misconception of like, let's go. Ecom. We don't have as much expense on packaging. We can do a one color package or best of two color package, right? And we can make it cheaper. Because it doesn't matter as much. Um, but you can make an argument that then the only thing you've got is when the package arrives in front of someone and in their formative relationship with your product. So the structure becomes more important. That experience of what people call unboxing experience becomes much more important. And so it plays a different role, but I don't know that it plays a lesser role when it comes to e commerce versus, versus at the shelf. It's just a different context. You know, there's, there's all kinds of different contexts to design something too, right? You can say, we're going to design this for this context of, of e comm. You can design it so it, it wins at the shelf. You can design it so it wins at home, right? We talked about method and the method, original bottles and, and their beautiful shape and form. You know, that was designed to sit in the home and be noticed and talked about at parties. Guests over and everything else, um, as a great way to be introduced to this new brand, this new beautiful form factor. Um, and versus being designed to sell hard at the shop, which is where their competitors were and their competitors were more than likely, you know, as dish soap under the sink, right? Not visible to anyone. People don't want branded items, you know, screaming at you and not their kitchen shelf. So,

Jessie Schwartz:

Yeah. And especially in that commodity space, it seems like dish soap, for example, it's just a race to the bottom, right? And how do you come up with something that's not part of that story where method did just that, right? Where the form of the bottle, the look of the bottle was unique and it was like you picked it up because you're like, wow, what is this? You know, it's right here with the dish soap, but it doesn't look ugly. Um, and it's just. It's a neat way to leverage, um, yeah, both the product and the packaging and where it's really working the hardest for your brand. Right.

Aaron Keller:

Yeah, and you can, and Eric Ryan and that team were very good at finding, you know, categories that were old and, and, you know, stagnant and that just hadn't had a lot of packaging innovation. Good people, good team members, good people at those organizations doing great work, but, you know, after a while, you just kind of get into a pattern and then someone looks at that and says, I see a different thing here. I see there's a possibility of breaking into this and, and having something that crosses a bunch of some categories within clean. And, and launch something called method, which has had a lot of, I mean, I'm obviously broken and did great things and, um, caused a lot of pain and suffering to American brand managers at big corporations. They went, Oh, they did that.

Jessie Schwartz:

Wait a minute.

Aaron Keller:

Yeah, yeah, it is. It's a I have an old fascinating story that is a friend of mine went to school with was at Target, and he was the first one to bring in the laundry detergent by method that it was a three in one concentrate, which was the first time a concentrate came into Target, and he gave him the opening to the aisle. For their method. Concentrate. And he, it launched. He didn't realize the timing, but it launched the week before he was supposed to be visiting P& G. And so he said, I got pulled into so many offices about how I was going to destroy the category and, uh, and how painful that was and how many conversations are around what he's going to, but what it did is it pushed. The others in the categories to, to meet that and to innovate the category, right? Um, which is commendable for method and they got their proper share for that, um, and then continue to innovate, right? Um, they it's it's Somebody has to do that. Otherwise we get stuck in a rut as a just as a society as a whole that do and give them the credit for doing it Nothing wrong with You know, PNG and all that they've accomplished as an innovator, you know, they are phenomenal in so many ways. And, um, but everybody can be disrupted if they, they get a little bit stagnant.

Jessie Schwartz:

Yeah, absolutely. And so we talked a little bit about, okay, how do we show up in a unique way on shelf, get attention and, um, actually be picked up. Right. How does that change when you think of, um, e commerce where you're shopping on the web and you can't pick anything up. And honestly, I think a lot of people, a lot of companies don't do a great job of selling their product online if it's new or different, or it has like a function, um, because you get some flat images, for example, but. You still can't fully understand what the product is intended to be used for. So say a little more about e commerce and how people can help their customers. Understand their product better.

Aaron Keller:

Yeah, this is definitely where the place where and that's where great packaging, um, blurs the line between product and package. Right? You can't really it's hard to distinguish the 2 and the 2 become very much married and important that they work together because you've got product imagery and package imagery. Uh, and and. And some, you know, some have gone like minimal, like hardly anything there, which seems fraudulent in many ways, because you're like, I can't find anything about this. All I got is one package to look at or one product. And then some have gone exhaustively over the top and just have so much to look at. Um, and there's a lot of room to grow in the being just deliberate about, you know, What is someone looking for when they come to this particular product? So you give them enough so they can go deep enough and make the purchase, but not too much that they get overwhelmed. Um, I think we're, we're in an interesting stage when it comes to income that there are plenty of opportunities. But the space is basically free, right? The digital space to upload things is basically because you can upload anything, as many things you want, and you're gonna videos, you're rotating stuff, which are all good in different forms and different settings. Um, but all of a sudden it becomes too much for the consumer, right? Um, so there's a happy medium there to get someone to. The things they need to make a decision and part of that's the package in many cases, and part of that's the product or a blend of those two things. Um, but being thoughtful about it, not only for the sake of the sale, but also what it conveys about your brand. That someone thoughtfully considered all the things to get me to the right thing and hopefully also reducing returns. Cause I mean, it's a, it's a, Returns are an environmental disaster when it comes to e com, right? You not only have one, you know, shipping one box to one household, but then you're doubling that on the way back versus, you know, the number of products you buy at a grocery store and bring home. You know, you are the last mile of that transportation, perhaps. Um, these, you know, just, it just, it's not good, right? It's,

Jessie Schwartz:

No, absolutely not. Yeah. Um, especially like in apparel, I think about it's just, it's wild. Um,

Aaron Keller:

yeah, yeah, yeah. That's, that's scary.

Jessie Schwartz:

of the, um, one of the things that I like, um, I like the, on running shoes and they do a lot, they do a good job of, um, displaying their shoes online in a way that I can look at it and rotate the shoe to see the subtle style differences between two different models. For example, I know we had a conversation about shoes. Um, but I like a certain fit and I can tell by looking at the shoe, if it's the right fit or not, like the toe space, for example, um, but then I wouldn't want the same functionality and imagery showing up for a toothbrush. Right. That just would be overkill and unnecessary. So having that guide, that guidance through the process of how do we show up? What, what do we present and how do we present it is really important. Bummer. Yeah.

Aaron Keller:

you remind me of the, the, when it comes to shoes and all the details you can have in that or not and and purchasing the wrong pair of shoes because I've recently done that and I'm proud of brand that I love and so I'm in this place where I don't want to return them because they still kind of like them, but they're not the shoes I wanted, but they don't want to purchase another pair. Got this conflict going on that I haven't resolved yet. There's also an interesting packaging story in Allbirds. When Allbirds came out and they have their kind of origami package because they were DTC or all online originally, which I thought was, I keep looking for people to solve the shoebox problem, right? There's like the cereal box problem, the shoebox problem, there's all these boxes that are Too much space for the product inside, they're shipping a lot of air and other things and, and I thought they had an interesting solution to that, this origami effect. And then once they went To retail, they got rid of the origami. So I'm like, Oh, I suppose, bummer. And you know, it is, it's one of those that I don't know that it'll ever be solved. I keep trying, I keep looking for the right opportunity to solve that. Cause

Jessie Schwartz:

It's a tough one.

Aaron Keller:

it is a tough one when you get a certain, and they like, it's the entire system. So you'd have to change the system in order to change the box, which is, which is probably not going to happen. Right. Which is also part of your packaging effort. Right. Yeah. Not yet. Somebody might, you know, who knows, but yeah.

Jessie Schwartz:

Yeah. So kind of on the heels of that, then we think about sustainability, um, shed some light on how the approach to design can incorporate sustainability. Um, as you're sorting through a lot of noise in the industry and what sustainability really means, um, I think it gets, it gets confusing and, um, you really need experts. To guide the conversation, whether it be your designer or a packaging engineer. Um, but just how do you Sherpa people along the sustainability path?

Aaron Keller:

Yeah, it is a structure plays like your team. You play the really big role in that, obviously, and that the most balancing that most efficient structure versus, you know, efficient from a environmental point of view versus functioning and performing what it needs to perform. Right? Where you're getting into, you know, The intensity of the materials, the thickness of the materials, how things come apart or don't come apart can be rather critical. Materials is the other big 1 that we talk a lot about. There's, there's more and more really interesting opportunities and materials, especially on the. On the bigger brands and having them look at the material and scaling that material, kind of like RFID with Walmart, where they made RFID a thing, these big brands, they have scale and they can, they can make a movement happen in a certain category. They can make something real. And I think that's, honestly, I think it's an obligation of the bigger brands to explore those things and try to make them real. Um, and then on our part, just to advocate for that, right. Advocate for what can we do to be more responsible? Um, looking at the broader system of like, uh, origin of life, of where did the materials come from to produce the package all the way through, where do they end up, right, do they get back into the system, recycled, or do they go into the planet in some way? All those things that, um, Cradle to Cradle, Will McDonough's book, a huge influence on my life as far as thinking about that and understanding the broader system of things. Very, very critical thing. We wrote about them in our book, the Design Matters Packaging book. I tried to actually, this is funny, because with the publisher I tried to put, because we didn't get a lot of good responsible packages from our, You know, uh, exploration of samples that were put in the book as case studies, and I tried to say we, we should just put a blank page and I just say, when you find one, please paste it in this book. And the publisher is like, we don't do brown pages in the middle of books. We just don't do that.

Jessie Schwartz:

I'll pay for it.

Aaron Keller:

No, it doesn't. And I'm like, okay, I get it. Um, so yeah, it was, uh, but it's a critical, absolutely critical part of it. And, um, Um, not just for the for the perception of it or the messaging part of it, but for just the general responsibility of thinking about, um, landfills and waste of resources and all kinds of other things. Um, so because you're every brand is moving along a spectrum. Um, you may start like at the worst form of plastic you could possibly imagine. Um, but. Make progress. Put that also on your innovation cycle. Um, when it comes to your package and your, um, materials and your structure. And if it stays on the same cycle, you can innovate that along with the product,

Jessie Schwartz:

Right. Yeah. Can you give any examples of when maybe you started with a less sustainable approach, whether it was the material selection, maybe even the amount of material that was used and a way that, you know, you guys have changed

Aaron Keller:

Yeah, yeah, the probably the best one that we have, which is the most iconic examples are Patagonia stuff that we did, which they had. So they had base layer. And if you if you knew the base layer package, it was basically that's long underwear to the rest of us. It was it was the hang tag. And basically what was a sushi roll of the product with two rubber bands and held the hang tag connected to the product. Um, and so it came out as looking like a sushi roll. Um, and it would display in that way. So it wasn't, it was kind of cluttered and was on the shelf. You could, it really wasn't shoppable in the traditional sense. It wasn't easy to navigate. Um, and then, and then commending to, or, or, you know, kudos to Patagonia. They also, they knew that they had packaging in Europe and Japan. It was in boxes, that same product was in box and boxes of the windows, you know, so there's plastic and paperboard, um, and not very responsible, but. The Europeans and the Japanese didn't want people touching their underwear. Um, and so it had to be in some kind of kind of container. Um, and so that's what they would. So that was going on over there. But, you know, here we wouldn't see that. Um, and also pretty much every garment, every piece of clothing comes in a poly bag. It's shipped from somewhere, which is a rather horrific part of the fashion industry as a whole. Now, many have gone after it and tried to solve it. I think a couple are getting pretty close to it, or at least have maybe even broke through, um, to do this. Um, but this, the solution that we came up with was, it looked like more packaging because if you didn't know, They went from the, if you'd only thought they went from the sushi roll to this octagon box, which you can find on our website. Um, you know, well, they have more packaging. In fact, they removed a whole bunch of packaging from the system. And some of the bad packaging that's behind the scenes, you don't even see, because most people don't see the poly, unless of course you work in a fashion or in a retail store, then you see all the products coming into those. Um, and that is definitely the worst part of it. So moving from that to a paperboard, it's very much recyclable. Um, very much. An elegant design solution and increase sales. That's, um, that's the trifecta. If you can reduce material usage and improve the package, make it more shoppable. That's a great one for sure.

Jessie Schwartz:

Yeah. And it's a unique design too. Um, it's not just your standard box. And like you said, it increased people interacting with the product and even buying the product. So that's, that's great. That's the ideal.

Aaron Keller:

yeah, yeah. We even had someone copy it. I won't name the brand, but because I don't want to, you know, disparage them in any way. But, um, we went to a presentation of another, um, prospect and we sat down and started showing that case study and the guy looked at us and he said, I'll be right back. He left the room, came back in and they had copied exactly the Patagonia Octagonba. And he said, I don't know how you did it without glue. Cause glue, not even glue was part of the responsible thing to do. And he said, we couldn't figure that out. So we just use glue. Like, well, you

Jessie Schwartz:

Okay.

Aaron Keller:

You did miss the point a little bit, but yeah, it was very funny anyway. Yeah.

Jessie Schwartz:

It isn't like, uh, imitation, the highest form of flattery or

Aaron Keller:

it is it is. That's what we

Jessie Schwartz:

also just doesn't feel right.

Aaron Keller:

No, I know. Yeah. Yeah. No, it definitely doesn't feel right. But also, Patty, though, he's not very litigious. So I think they commend people that at least are moving in the direction,

Jessie Schwartz:

Yeah,

Aaron Keller:

if they're as, as activists, they want people to at least make progress. I if everybody can, everything will be improved for sure.

Jessie Schwartz:

Yeah, absolutely. I agree with that wholeheartedly. All right. Well, we've talked about a lot of content here. Um, Good stuff around brand agencies and their role they play in brand development. Um, some of the watchouts and some of the questions to make sure that, that you ask in terms of what types of services or what type of a network does the agency have to kind of fill in the blanks where you don't have, um, someone in that seat. Um, we talked about a lot of examples about how packaging impacts the brand and really brings it to life. But then there's also some watchouts. You have, um, You have to make considerations for such as you can't poison your consumers. Um, and so really I think the, the main point of all of this is just as you're going through a brand development or even just a skew development cycle that you bring in the right partners that are going to kind of open your horizons up to start thinking about things differently. And then also have some unique. and maybe even challenging ideas and designs for you to contemplate, right? Because a lot of times our brain is kind of singular focused going after a goal, but then there's so much going on in the world around us that we just, we miss it. Even if we try to see it just because of everything else that we're, all the balls that we're keeping in the air and that we're juggling. Um, and so I think it's, it's imperative to make considerations for how do you include people who are going to help you think in new and different ways as you're going on this journey. So you end up with that final product that you're proud of and that it was thoughtfully designed. So I thank you, Erin, for joining us on the show today.

Aaron Keller:

Thank you, Jesse. This is great. Very fun. As our conversations always are really, really fun. Yeah. Thank you for inviting me on and great conversation. And I look forward to the next project we work on together.

Jessie Schwartz:

Fantastic. Yeah. And then I'll put, um, Erin's contact information and capsule, capsule information in the show notes. So if anyone wants to learn more, they can do that. Thanks everybody. Thank you so much for tuning into today's episode. If you found the content helpful, please be sure to share your comments with me by leaving a review so that I can keep the topics coming your way. If you haven't already followed me, click subscribe on your podcast app. So you get notified the next time we release a show. If you have packaging issues, you want to talk about contact us via our website at www.strategicpackagingpartners.com and click on the contact us page. Thanks everyone.