Following on our post last week in Part 1, we delve further into how to improve your marketing budget’s performance.

2.  Creative Use of Technology. RockTenn talks about their specific experience using QR codes with high volume retailers and digital content producers. Displays are being outfitted with digital displays, motion sensors, and high speed internet access. For smaller manufacturers, this is probably not very cost effective.

Figure 2 Innovative POP Displays

Using QR codes on packaging and displays is an innovative way to enhance the shopping experience and get sales propositions across. It’s cost effective and you won’t need a multi-million dollar price tag. However, the tie-in to shopper’s smartphones can’t be an afterthought. The display needs to make the shopper want to scan and learn more. What else is there about your product and brand they need to know about and experience?

3. Collaborating for Compliance. Collaborating with retailers and keeping up to date with a chain’s style guides, visual merchandising standards, rules for type usage, changing store formats, and display authorization procedures is important. Those who don’t comply are apparently suffering big losses when retailers don’t display their products as intended. Your packaging and display designers need to know retailers guidelines.

The second matter they highlight is to be well acquainted with the traffic patterns in the particular retailer’s store layout. RockTenn says “one of the most effective ways to contain costs is to make sure the right display gets to the right place at the right time – and gets seen.” Fighting for good visibility is very important to ensuring your product achieves its exposure and sales expectations. If it’s stuck out of the way and is kept in dissheveled condition, shoppers will not be taking your product with them.

4. Short-Run Manufacturing Power. The combination of digital printing and integrated fulfillment give manufacturers shorter lead times, increased customization, and more effective POP collateral. Adjusting packaging and displays for each retailer and doing it quickly are key to keeping things fresh.

The digital printing element is the key to cost-savings. And working with a packaging company that offers complete fulfillment makes your job easier and more successful. And you can sleep at night.

5. Magic of Modularity. RockTenn believes company modularity is key to higher, more cost-effective performance. When design, short-run digital printing, copacking, and distribution work together seamlessly, changes and adjustments can be made easily, and clients save money. Sounds a lot like much-a-do about nothing since most packaging companies are adjusting to just-in-time systems. RockTenn may be just responding the problems of being a giant company and trying to integrate their endless departments and geography which brings rise to complexity.

6. Streamlining the Supply Chain. RockTenn points to the carbon footprint reductions and just-in-time efficiencies when display

Copacking and Fulfillment Operations at Ravenshoe Packaging

RockTenn says it can have its packaging is done relatively local. In addition, the company touts its Meta System, which creates cases and trays at ultra-high production runs. For very large manufacturers, their system may indeed bring packaging costs down and improve packing in some cases, but not where custom packing by people must be done. And whether a giant corporation such as RockTenn can serve small to medium sized customers in distant cities is a big question mark.  It might be best to have a local packaging company handle everything. Some like Ravenshoe have design and digital marketing services too.

7. Sustainable Savings. We’ve talked previously about sustainable packaging because it is a major concern among consumers. In our case, we use recycled materials, LED lighting, and vegetable based printing on our digital machines.

RockTenn plays the old tape about the importance of reducing waste and focusing on ways to use and reuse packaging. Yet, unfortunately, they talk more about promotion of sustainability than about processes or the materials that can actually be recycled or reused. There are still pitfalls in using recycled products or demands for design improvements when using lighter gauge paperboard, so some discretion is necessary if you really do want to cut down expenses on materials and operations.

Take our survey and see what others in the packaging industry believe are the most critical features of excellent display packaging.

See these creative POP displays and get some ideas for your next sales building POP displays.

Are stockouts impacting your company’s bottom line. I’ll bet they are because reports are that it is costing business 8% of profits. The long term brand damage might be much more extensive.