Packaging is the ambassador of a product. Everything from the shape of the package to the colors, fonts and copy should convey the goals of the product and reflect the interests of the target demographic. In an industry as crowded as CBD, packaging could be the factor that propels one product to sell and another to gather dust.
“It’s one thing that we always push to all of our clients: If you’re coming out with the same products as everyone else, you’ve got to put your own spin on it somehow,” says Chris London, the owner of Pixel Productions Inc., a design firm in Medford, Oregon.
For ubiquitous products like tinctures, Mad Mind Studios CEO Omid Mousaei says the products that stand out are the ones that incorporate the functions of CBD — relaxing and reducing anxiety — into their designs. He says designs with watercolors like softer blues, greens and pinks and easy-to-read, informative copy on the front of the package reflect the goal of the consumer and therefore stand out on the shelves.
A few of the common mistakes Mousaei sees on CBD packages include making false promises about what the product can do, failing to identify the source of the product and leaving the results of lab tests off the packaging or providing them as a link or QR code.
“The packaging can only get someone interested enough to pick up the product, the next phase is making sure that the quality is there so people come back and grab your bottle over and over again,” Mousaei says.
London says a lot of companies make the mistake of designing a package that is appealing to the producer and not the consumer. On top of that he’s seen several companies design and order packaging for a product before researching what legal copy has to be on the package.
“They find out pretty quickly that they can’t get into the retail market and end up having to redo everything,” London says.
— Patrick Wagner