At Label Apeel we do great labels, even if we do say so ourselves. But we get board if the labels we’re printing are ordinary. So, we’re championing the need to do something more exciting, different, even maybe a little bit dangerous.

Recently we’ve found that while we get to work with some amazing designers who are keen to push the boundaries of what can be done with our sticky friends. Many customers are either not aware of what could be achieved or lack the confidence to talk to really good packaging designers. So they end up with boring labels that do nothing for their brand.

We want to put an end to dullsville labels!

As a business we exist to help create branding and labelling that makes you stand out, that drives sales and reflects the qualities of your product. What we have recognised is that as a label printer not only can we influence how the product is viewed, but we should, and are eager to play an active part in the process of achieving how it is viewed.

Our job is to get your product into the consumers’ ownership. We can do this by producing a label that will help you sell more product than your competitor or than you did with your previous label.

Here are three things to consider when looking at changing your labels that we’d love to help you implement:

Change the shape

The world is full of square or rectangular labels, we have a cutter library of over 4500 different cutters and 98% of them are rectangular or square. There are good reasons why this might be the case, square labels allow us to get best use of material meaning they are the cheapest option, they are uniform so apply better and sometimes you know what they even look better than anything else.

We’re not being squarest but the problem with squares is, lots of labels are square. Square is the go to shape, so why not be different? Why not get the shape of your label to stop people and get them to ask a question.

One method of making excellent labels is to make them incongruous. If you have an aisle full of square labels use a triangle, or a circle or be completely whacky and have your own shape?

Let’s confuse everyone

The same rules apply to imagery and text as they do to shape, the whole point of the imagery is to draw the consumer to our product on the shelf, it is no good using imagery that meets all our preconceptions. The brain sees the imagery pulls up the previous upteen times it has seen the same or similar and that allows it to file it as recognised quickly and without fuss. We don’t want that, we want the brain confused we want the consumer doing a double take and to reach out and pick up the product for a closer look.

Try a different material:

Labels are a visual medium right? Nope they are not. By its nature a label is going to be handled. It’s a functional item it is going to be picked up, it is going to gripped and felt. This is a fantastic opportunity to interact with the emotions of the consumer. A fantastic opportunity that is being missed by a large number of brands. If you are a bit sad like me then you watch how people pick items in shops. Let’s take wine as an example, in a supermarket people first go to the price range they are happy with, then they look for the label that looks the best then they pick the bottle up, read the back and then put the bottle back down again. What do they do next? You know because you all do it, you go and have a look at the price bracket above, and then you go through the whole process again. Why, because you want to be sold a better quality wine, you want your guests to know you are a person of distinction, someone who knows about wine, not quite a connoisseur but comfortable in your knowledge of grapes and regions, and vintage. But if you are like me you are not even that. You look for the prettiest label stroke the label and if it feels like quality you will then turn the bottle around and try to read the blurb on the back. Except there is none because there is now so much legislation to be printed there is no room for the nice piece about where it has come from and how it is hand trodden by moonlight, so you turn it back round tell yourself it feels like a quality wine.

The upsell is achieved in the feel. Once they have put the cheaper bottle down they are duty bound to pick an expensive bottle up. It is while it is in the hand that the decision is made to either buy expensive or go cheaper.

Go on admit it, that’s exactly what you do.