It’s not enough for beauty brands to deliver a great product. Today’s consumers want more. They want an experience. They want to have fun. Dopamine beauty is pushing the envelope with eye-popping colours, smells, textures and even sounds. The beautytainment trend looks for engaging gestures that turn makeup application into an exciting ritual. On the other hand, consumers want to feel. They are looking for a sense of wellbeing and focusing on mindfulness and peace of mind.

It's an exciting evolution and a far cry from the days when a cream just had to perform very well. The desirability of timeless claims is being reevaluated, with changing views on what beauty really means. It makes it more challenging for brands to deliver what consumers need or want. We are entering the age of ultra personalisation, where products need to demonstrate what a brand stands for and offer more to the consumer. Brands with a clear message and world view – and a deep understanding of their target – must now communicate this, not only via social media, but also in the products themselves.

Packaging is key to delivering their messages. Package design is also evolving, becoming more than a container with added value to contain, protect and apply the formula. Now, it is an essential tool to tell the story and deliver the desired experience. It needs to be personalised, not just to consumers, but to the brands themselves. Bespoke is clearly the most flexible route, but for masstige brands there are myriad options.

The time-honoured techniques to achieve this revolve around decoration and methods are being refined to achieve new levels of customisation – from high-gloss full-cover hotfoil stamping to new colour-shifting metallic finishes on wood. Materials also offer a tactile dimension. Soft-touch finishes make products comfortable in the hand. Certified wood can offer a unique texture and gifts the consumer a piece of nature in a way that’s responsible.

Dispensing systems can add a mesmerising sense of satisfaction by transforming formulas from liquids to foams or gentle mists, or by crushing microbeads as they come out of the pump. Special applicators can turn beauty routines into calming rituals, while new gestures add a sensory touch with a twist, click, swipe or stamp. With solutions like ShapeUp, dispensing the formula in a bespoke shape delivers a quick, surprising dose of joy. Using the pack becomes an experience all by itself.

There are many ways to achieve ultra personalisation that don’t require bespoke design, by customising small parts, mixing and matching components and striking decoration. With the right knowledge and the right combination of design elements, packaging can become a powerful tool to deliver that all-important feel-good factor.