When Toni & Guy approached us with a view to updating their packaging, it quickly became clear it was a tricky project.

Firstly, there's the multifarious range, which has a number of different sub-ranges for different hair types and styles, each with their variants. Despite its complexity, consumers need to navigate the range to find the right product quickly and easily. Then there's the brand, which exists in two quite different places in the two markets we tested. In the US, it's an exciting new brand from fashionable London; while in the UK, it's more mainstream on account of its greater exposure. To further complicate matters, there's the design challenge in successfully positioning an offering at the 'salon' end of the this category: packs need to achieve impact to compete in this competitive environment, but the most direct means of doing this - bold, vibrant colours - can undermine the brand's premiumness.

We helped the brand team and design agency over two stages of research, in which we identified the design territories with the greatest potential before homing in on more executional pack details. This process helped highlight the challenges, and yielded the strategic insights that helped to 'untangle' them.

When Unilever decided to redesign the packaging for Bertolli olive oil, the potential number of designs presented us with a major challenge: 5 different structures + 5 graphic routes = 25 possible combinations!

Through collaboration with FutureBrand we adopted a combined, iterative approach in which the first country is used as a pilot for the designs, and the stimulus adapted for the remaining territories based on the initial findings. As the research progressed, we were able to focus our efforts on fewer and fewer routes until we had a complete understanding of the successful designs.

"Fantastic analysis of both structure and graphics… even when the stimulus mixed them. To be honest in my 10yrs of marketing, [The Big Picture] are the best research agency on packaging that I’ve worked with. And last but not least, the pleasure of working with you…"

Patrizia De-Haag - Unilever Italy

The breakfast cereal category is a tricky beast, with packs needing to strike a careful balance between on the one hand, taste and on the other, health. Nestlé Cereal Partners approached us to research their Cheerios brand, concerned that the pack wasn’t getting this balance quite right.

Our pre-design research not only confirmed this hypothesis, but also revealed the emergent gap between consumers’ positive emotional engagement with the brand and their detachment from the overly functional and adult pack. A further exploration of taste and health provided the design team with the insights they needed to progress with confidence.

Consumer feedback on the next stage of design work was so positive that the selected route needed barely any executional tweaks prior to launch – quite a feat, and quite a verification of the value of good pre-design research.

In packaging design, often the brand team needs to drive forward even when consumers are hesitant about change. But sometimes, it works the other way around - consumers are unattached to the current pack, while it's the brand team that's more conservative.

This is especially the case for family brands, like Luxardo. Here, the stakeholders have their name on the bottle - so for them, it's more than just business; it's the family's name and heritage at stake. Thus it took bravery from the current Luxardo generation to break from tradition to modernise the pack.

The pack had changed very little since it was launched way back in 1821, resulting in a bottle which felt left behind by the new high energy occasion the spirit is now associated with. The Luxardo family placed their trust in us and, over three research stages, we guided the design agency to create a pack which held onto the rich heritage of the brand whilst injecting a sense of elegance and contemporary relevance. The design approach was applied across the whole range, and even saw the new logo adopted across the company as a whole.

Creating a single mark that captures a brand's values, resonates with consumers and works across brand touchpoints is no mean feat. And when you're dealing with a brand that has 14 existing brand names in over 50 local markets, that task doesn't get any easier!

That was the challenge facing AkzoNobel and designers Design Bridge when they began the process of unifying the Dulux brand with a new global identity. It also represents a substantial research challenge to collate and strategically interpret responses to the identity in its different touchpoints across global markets.

After research that spanned three stages and twelve markets, the result is an identity that transcends cultural differences between regions by introducing an iconic, uplifting and truly universal ‘flourish’ to the brand.

When Kenco launched their instant coffee in a pouch format – a first for the category, they got much less of a response than they hoped, so drafted us in to help them understand and tackle the problems.

We started by investigating what the pouch format itself meant to consumers to see if there was some fundamental incongruity, but this uncovered nothing but positivity. So we then looked at how the pouch format fitted into the instant coffee category and struck insight gold. Within a habitual purchase category, the pouch, combined with a premium foil substrate and unclear graphics, was signalling ground rather than instant coffee, hence it being bypassed by the masses. This miscommunication was compounded by merchandising issues, with the pouches often positioned away from jars, thereby hindering any beneficial cognitive links between the two formats.

Our insights and recommendations enabled Kenco to remedy its pack communications, thereby disrupting the habitual purchasing in the category and winning the attention that its innovation deserved.

Think Robinsons and the words ‘British’, ‘Wimbledon’, ‘trusted’ and ‘iconic’ are probably not far behind (not to mention the clenched fist of Tiger Tim). Britvic, however, identified that this emotional connection was not supported by the brand’s packaging. Our research helped the brand realise that conveying premium quality in this category requires more than just conveying good product quality – rather, by dialling up its latent emotional connection with consumers on pack, the brand could ensure quality perceptions would improve in a differentiating, ownable manner.

Of course you don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater when it comes to iconic brands, but our research enabled the team to know which visual equities were important, and therefore which areas of the pack could be freed up to concentrate on building an emotional connection. The iconic green arches provide a perfect holding device for the family ‘fruit picker’ tableau to build the emotional resonance required. The result is an underpinning of the brand’s premium credentials with a strong visual reminder of the emotional connection already associated with the brand – and still the leading deuce, sorry juice, in the category.

It’s often said that products are the physical embodiment of a brand; nowhere is this adage more true than when it comes to the humble soap bar. The direct, personal engagement consumers have with soap bars means that a well considered bar design can result in a strong bond between consumer and brand.

It was with this in mind that Unilever asked us to help them with the slippery task of balancing the Lux brand values of ‘feminine beauty’ with improved ergonomics in their new bar range.

Our research helped Unilever and the design team at Seymour Powell to understand how consumers relate to different bar forms on both emotional and ergonomic levels. The result? A bar that’s as close to consumers’ hearts emotionally as it is physically.

With Own Label gaining ground on more expensive branded products, GSK were keen to explore ways to add value to the Panadol brand through its packaging.

Our research found that traditional painkiller packaging was seen as impractical and lacking in portability: simply put, if you put a normal paracetamol pack in your bag, there’s a good chance it won’t be in one piece when you come to get it out!

This insight inspired designers FutureBrand to create the practical, strong and convenient Panadol pouch – one of those simple yet ingenious designs that makes perfect sense. And with research conducted amongst GSK’s workforce rather than ‘regular’ consumers, there was little chance this new concept would be hijacked by rival companies prior to launch.

There’s a fine line between ‘with heritage’ and ‘dated’, and Chivas Regal's 12 year whisky had slipped into the latter category. So new designs were developed seeking to create a subtle evolutionary change to improve contemporary relevance, for testing in five very different markets.

The difficulty with researching evolutionary changes is that the designs are often very similar to one another, so the rotation effect takes sets in - this was certainly the case here. Our focus on monadic appraisal comes into play here: the first impression is the pure one, and from that point on a finely attuned research ear is required to sensitively separate the genuine insights from post-rationalised responses.

Our careful analysis helped ensure that the new pack successfully dials up contemporary relevance without losing any of the brand's 200-year heritage.

Cow & Gate’s powdered baby milk offering was just one of many in the market, following the same tired foil & cardboard format as its competitors. In addition to appearing pretty generic, numerous practical flaws meant the pack was contributing to the complexity, mess and general chaos of babies’ feeding time.

Cue a complete graphic and structural overhaul by designers Blue Marlin which sought to address these myriad challenges. Our research enabled them to develop the optimal route – a watertight, resealable tub with an integrated spoon holder – which not only raised the bar for the category but also set the brand apart from its competitors on shelf.

The result? A sizeable 6% jump in market share for Cow & Gate, a rare ‘Supreme Gold’ at the Starpack Awards, and a lot of happy mums.

We’ve been a creative partner with Axe for many years, helping it keep ahead of the pack in the male personal care sector. But when that means structural innovation on a global brand, an interesting challenge is raised: how do you research designs that won't launch for three years?

We've developed a methodology that allows consumers to guide design development focussed on emergent (future) trends - so designs don't get shot down just because they're ahead of the curve.

What that means for Axe is a shower gel pack that conveys the kind of gravitas, masculinity and dormant power that's expected of the brand, coupled with a sophistication and neatly interwoven form & function that's expected of cutting-edge products of today. Not bad for three-year-old research. Read more here.