Shine Advisor - Ideas on Packaging, Design and Possibility

I just watched The Grinch with my kiddos. We watch some version of it every year, Mr. Grinch and his considerable disdain for what he sees as the excessive consumptionism of Whoville’s Christmas.  But this year, it fueled a thought: I’m considering my blatant use of the word consumer .  As I dedicate more time to design theory it’s interesting how important language is to the process. Language, our lexicon, shapes our thinking. And our thinking shapes our actions, our processes. And that word, consumer, keeps sticking out like a small, stray cactus spine. What does this word mean?  “A person who purchases goods and services for personal use.”   Yeah, okay, but the root of it is a bit darker. To consume. To eat up, devour, deplete, destroy, waste. In this time of evolving awareness and sensitivity to waste and depletion, this word hits rather painfully on the nose. Consumerism feels like it’s due for a make-over, similar to the one I felt growing...

I’m intrigued by the trend of personal care bar products. A bar avoids excess packaging, but there’s also something organic and truthful about a bar. Consumers seeking authenticity are finding it in the humble elegance of a product that nestles comfortably in the palm of their hand. The trend follows a desire to find product solutions that reduce packaging waste. For a bar, maybe it needs to arrive in some sort of outer container, but once it starts to be used, the outer container can be recycled or simply join the compost bin. The bar trend goes far beyond simple soap, however. The big idea right now? Shampoo. Bars are making inroads into hair care in a very high-end way. Lush  and Love Beauty and Planet are established beauty brands with shampoo and conditioner bars. Sans the Suds What about lotion? Semi-solids in propel-repel sticks are common in lip balms and underarm products and enjoy a loyal user base in sunscreen, but face and body moisturizer in a...

Beauty is such a fun market to play in, and a smart one to play in too. Lipstick and nail polish, though not considered true economic indicators anymore, are still some of the most stable consumer items, seeing healthy sales even through financial recessions. Beauty is a small-ticket indulgence that can be scaled up or down as consumers flow through lifestyle transitions. Why is beauty so fun? Because it’s full of emotion. It’s vibrant. Moody. Dramatic. Playful. It has personality, because it exists to inspire . Celebrities are often called on to show off the products, serving as aspirational role models for glamour. But strangely, as much fun as this segment is in terms of brand imagery and inspiring, dramatic advertising, the cosmetics retail aisle for these products feels disjointed and definitively uninspiring.  Why is that? Part of the challenge is the nature of the packaging; beauty products come in small sizes that collectively form a busy mosaic in the ...

Industry is taking a closer look at refills in an effort to truly close the loop on material usage. Several large and influential companies are making an incredible investment in a cradle-to-cradle model, honoring the significance and urgency of the environmental waste issue. Putting aside the driving need for solutions to the unsustainable material usage and waste problem, I’d like to take a look at the renewed attention behind refills as a consumer product model. The Refill Dilemma I’ve developed refill concepts for healthcare and personal care a number of times in my industry career, and the projects always took the same detour back to custom, one-time-use packaging. Our team believed consumers wouldn’t go for the refill approach. The complexity of managing a durable container that had to be kept clean and somehow stand up to daily, on-going use was a step too far from the easier, and often less costly option of standard packaging. A refill model requ...

Blog Series — Find a Translator to Turn Technology into Strategic Gold In this four-part series I’m exploring the ways to bring powerful differentiation to market with more seamless processes: building a strong bridge of communication between R&D and Marketing, exploring and leveraging product claims, using both the left and right brain in development, and ensuring a continuous influx of fresh technology insights. Part 4: Keeping the Future Fresh The best way to continue reaping the benefits of fresh thinking is to continually immerse in it. When you commit to knowing the tide and trends of the marketplace, you soon become expert at scanning the landscape. When something truly novel enters the frame, you recognize it immediately and jump on it before your competition even realizes the ramifications. Keeping the future fresh is about creating intersections for ideas. Feed your innovation landscape a rich mix of inspiration to enjoy more “aha!” moments. As ...

Blog Series — Find a Translator to Turn Technology into Strategic Gold In this four-part series I’m exploring the ways to bring powerful differentiation to market with more seamless processes: building a strong bridge of communication between R&D and Marketing, exploring and leveraging product claims, using both the left and right brain in development, and ensuring a continuous influx of fresh technology insights. Part 3: Developing in Your Right Mind There’s an old joke that only left handers are in their right minds. As a left-handed person I appreciate the sentiment. While it isn’t accurate to say that we only use one side of our brain, there is a tendency to lean heavily on one side or the other. The “left side” being more logical and fact driven, and the “right side” being more abstract and creative. The corporate realm tends to push us into the left hemisphere, relying on data, formulas and standard practices, and the crafting and reporting of results tha...

Blog Series — Find a Translator to Turn Technology into Strategic Gold In this four-part series I’m exploring the ways to bring powerful differentiation to market with more seamless processes: building a strong bridge of communication between R&D and Marketing, exploring and leveraging product claims, using both the left and right brain in development, and ensuring a continuous influx of fresh technology insights. Part 2: Leveraging Claims Say more than you thought you could say, with more power and impact When you have a robust bridge of communication between R&D and Marketing, you have access to the full story, the technology and the market insights, to maximize the impact for customers. This story is everything, because it not only guides the internal direction for product development, it guides the message that you share with the market about your product. It isn’t just what you do. It’s all the things you can say about what you do. Th...