McCormick's Packaging Innovation Philosophy: The Consumer Is King

By Sam Lewis

I recently spoke with Dr. Michael Okoroafor, VP of Global Packaging Innovation at McCormick, to discuss the packaging design and innovation process at the company. In his newly created role, Dr. Okoroafor is focused on optimizing the packaging design and development processes for food, herbs, and spices.

Food Online: Why do you consider packaging to be the most important vehicle for communication with consumers?

Okoroafor: The real boss, when it comes to marketing and selling things, is the consumer. That’s really the beginning of everything. At the end of the day, whether you’re talking about retailers, or institutional buyers, everything converges around the consumer.

The traditional way of thinking about packaging focused on protecting products, preserving them, and extending their shelf life. The new way involves much more than that. In addition to doing all those traditional things — protecting, preserving, and transportation — packaging has become the biggest media for product differentiation. When consumers go to the store, they can be confused about which product they want to buy. Further, they have between four to eight seconds to really see your package. Because of this, your package needs to be designed to stand out in such a way that it screams, “Buy me!” If you don’t do that, you get lost in the clutter.

The packaging is about communicating the product to the consumer, not just the product benefits. There are five senses — sight, touch, taste, hearing, and smell. The most important one, from a study done about 10 years ago, is sight. In fact, if the consumer doesn’t like what they see, they’re not going to touch it. If they don’t touch it, they’re not going to open it, and if they don’t open it, they won’t smell and taste it.

Food Online: What influence does the growing popularity of e-commerce have on the design of food packaging?

Okoroafor: Your company must be successful both online and in-store. The Zero Moment Of Truth decision making process is changing how consumers search for and buy products. Basically, before a consumer goes to buy a product in a store, they go on the web to learn about it. Most people go on the website, they search, they see, they like it. Then, they go into a store, evaluate what they’ve seen, and buy it. It’s critical that you have your packaging communicating to the consumer both in-store and on the web.

The real question is, “How do you go about designing for both?” That is the challenge we’re facing. And, again, it’s driven by the consumer. You must use technology to communicate what you’re doing, which means you have some display board that you work with the consumer to see what differentiates your company’s product from your competition on the web. And, you do the same thing in a physical store.

You should sit back and listen and hear what the consumer is telling you. This has become what I call, “a fusion of art and science.” You have to make sure you listen to the consumer; you have to make sure you get the cues that really excite them. But, more importantly, you will be looking for the online, articulated needs of the consumer. That’s where the breakthrough comes. That is the challenge we have today, and that is where McCormick is excelling.

Food Online: If listening to consumers to find out what excites them is essential, what’s McCormick’s process to receive consumer feedback?

Okoroafor: We have a very robust consumer insight group. In fact, we spend a disproportionate amount of our innovation dollars on consumer insights. We communicate with real consumers online and bring them into our offices where we run daily consumer sessions. We have them come here to look at what we’re doing — either testing the product or taking a look at the package — and telling us what they think about it.

Then, we run what I call “economic studies.” This essentially means, “How do consumers use the product?” For instance, most cooks have wet hands when cooking with herbs and spices. As a result, you must make sure when consumers are handling your package, it doesn’t slide, or you must ensure they’ll are able to open it with wet hands. They handle it, they try to dispense it, they give us feedback on what they like or don’t. Oftentimes, this is the case where the majority doesn’t rule. You may have 10 consumers in a test lab and 9 of them really love the packaging, but one of them doesn’t. Guess what? That one may be more revealing than any of them.

We do that regularly, and when we’re done, we go out and do what I call “focus groups.” We use all the tools of consumer insights, but on top of that, we make sure the digital world is engaged. So much so that it allows us to design for in-store and on the web.