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Mead West Vaco has been a pioneer in the packaging industry for more than 150 years. The company has seen a number of changes throughout that time, but has managed to stay on top thanks to market insight, innovative solutions, and packaging expertise. According to Sandy Gregory, the Global Marketing Manager for MWV, these aren't just buzzwords or ephemeral concepts that sound good on marketing materials, they're the basis of the company's success and an integral part of her team's way of working. MWV operates in a number of sectors, but the first on the list is beauty.
With 80% of the company's revenue generated by packaging, its no wonder that so much effort goes in to creating innovative dispensing systems (including pumps, sprays, and others). Further, MWV's reach is clearly global. About half of the company's projects occur in North America while the rest are set up, managed, and developed abroad. A large percentage of the projects outside the USA actually take place in developing nations, as MWV strives to support world economic development as well as garner a foundational presence wherever possible.
While global presence is important, it's only one part of the plan:
We think it's very important to know what consumers need and want in a specific area. We work with expert firms do do focus testing and generate internal reports to guide us. Our goal is to maintain a 5% growth rate, and to do that we combine several efforts. Organic growth is certainly part of it, but we also make sure to develop innovative products, maintain a strict policy of commercial excellence, participate and maintain a presence in emerging markets, and work on expanding participation and cooperation with our clients.
To MWV, "Commercial Excellence" is a credo, defined internally as the identification of top strategic customers based on profit potential, and then building or enhancing partnerships with those customers to create innovative solutions. Understanding customers’ business needs and strategies, along with MWV's unique market insights, result in the company actively striving to achieve a larger share of customers' packaging spend.
Hence MWV maintains, as Sandy stated, "A research machine that works with large information gathering firms to obtain data and figure out what the consumer actually prefers. We ran a study, for example, where we followed our items completely. We did a check on the whole consumer life cycle - how it got home, how consumers carried it, how they opened it, how they used it - and all these data points led to a steadily declining satisfaction curve, and we found a lot of opportunities for improvement."
A great way to work
This is what the firm can offer companies, and one of the biggest reasons they're a trusted name. All of that information "is taken to companies rather than to consumers, telling them that if they improve the intuitiveness of the packaging and its ease of use, if they eliminate obstacles and keep consumers happy, they'll have more repeat business, resulting in more sales." The MWV team, however, has to bear in mind the actual viability of a project at all times. Engineers and designers must take into account physical manufacturing to avoid situations where innovative products turn out to be impossible to integrate into a real world project, due to cost, production parameters, etc. Making sure the project is viable from the design phase accelerates the time to market, as no backtracking occurs.
Sandy's take on the importance of packaging as a tool for communicating with the consumer is that its importance cannot be understated:
Packaging doesn't just hold a product, it creates a connection with the consumer. Packaging has to look good and work well.
A perfect example of this is the company's new Emotions of Spray Collection, an expanded line of six fragrance pumps, each with unique spray characteristics.
The collection offers brand owners the opportunity to create a perfect match between the fragrance and the sprayer, heightening the consumer experience, increasing brand loyalty and driving repeat purchase intent, all of which are clearly in line with the company's business strategy.
We view luxury fragrance much like fashion and beauty: each is intended to make the consumer feel more confident. It’s about more than just feeling good, though, it’s really about facilitating a transformative state of mind, moving to the sublime through an emotional connection. MWV’s consumer insights revealed an opportunity to enhance that connection through the spray.
About Emotions of Spray
The collection includes the original Melodie pump, Melodie Agile, and Melodie Forever, plus three new sprayers that have distinctive characteristics to give brand owners even more options to tailor the spray to the positioning and personality of the fragrance:
Melodie Pure provides a perfect and fine atomization, even for water-based formulas, avoiding a wet feeling on the skin and enriching the luxury experience.
Melodie Delicate is an infinitely discreet and elegant spray, producing an ultra-feminine experience with its small, focused spray that is both soft and quiet.
Maestro Extravagant offers an exceptionally voluminous spray mist that is refreshing and airy, with a long and sustained spray pattern, providing an exuberant and indulging experience.
Our goal with Emotions of Spray, was to develop brand equity. The whole project was based on consumer feedback, on their comments even before trying out the sprayers. Some said 'I don't like it when the spray drops are too big', while others said 'I don't like it when the spray wets my skin too much', and still others said 'I don't like sprays to be too noisy'. It was amazing to us that these people were pulling up impressions of past experiences, nearly from their subconscious minds, to give us a lot of information. There were SO many different opinions! As an example, we learned that in general, women find the process of applying a fragrance to be a sensual experience, an abstract moment to pamper themselves. Men, on the other hand, are uninterested in ceremony, the go for functionality, speed, and efficiency.
The bottom line
The Emotions of Spray Collection, then, is a brilliant gambit to offer companies more than just a choice of sprayers, each one is backed by solid demographic research and by a nearly airtight guarantee to appeal to a specific consumer model. Thus far, the concept has been received very well by fragrance firms (such as MWV client Channel).
MWV, then, is doing exactly what common sense dictates a company should: The team obtains information about consumers, crafts products to provide those consumers with what they prefer, and offer both knowledge and superior products to companies to give them a competitive advantage. It's no surprise that MWV has been in business for as long as they have been!
