Smarties interactive packaging : the new packaging of the music creator associated with downloadable resources for an interactive brand experience.
Smarties interactive packaging. Echo creative agency recently developed and released the new packaging for the Smarties Music Creator.
It is basically a reusable flute capable of creating real music, branded by the well-known children’s confectionery company from the Nestlè group. Smarties are part of the Travel Retail segment and have recently been involved in a redefinition of 100% sustainable packaging. Nestlé aims to have fully recyclable, plastic-free packaging by 2025.
Obviously, the global pandemic from Covid-19 has significantly delayed launch schedules, but this has given Echo agency and its team of experts in child development more time to draft an effective launch plan and a highly structured product offering.
We were talking aboutfull sustainability, but also packaging interactivity. The experts have divided the product’s reference target into three types: the dreamer, the thinker and the creator child, with different didactic-playful tools and methodologies.
Peter Cowie, Account Director at Echo, commented: “Today children are independent and intelligent, they respond quickly to stimula and just as easily they get bored”. But there is a great opportunity for the brand to capture their imagination by creating experiences, especially tactile and related to digital play, satisfying their curiosity and their innate expressive need. Smarties aimed to carry out its mission of facilitating children’s learning through play and interactive design.
“We were originally asked to design the physical packaging for the toy, but we also explored the possibility of using the Smarties website to increase the educational value of the teaching experience, creating a deeper engagement with the brand and packaging and bringing traffic to the company’s online properties”.
The new echologic Smarties flute wrapping includes a QR code that once scanned redirects consumers to an online portal. The latter hosts many resources children and parents can skim through to learn how to play the musical instrument enclosed with the delicious chocolate pralines.
Inspired by the stylistic code of Smarties, that is a fun and playful brand identity and in line with the target audience (children aged between three and 10), Echo has set up a portal rich in contents that include:
• A page on the history of the brand.
• A system of evaluation for the learning types to help parents understand the best approach to propose the game.
• Downloadable and printable music sheets.
• Interactive pages where children can click on the notes to play the corresponding sound.
• Video tutorials on how to play.
So what can we learn from this interesting case? To begin with, in order to be truly innovative packaging materials must be recyclable and reduce the environmental impact. Secondly, packaging can serve as a hub to engage the consumer by fostering interaction with the company and inspire loyalty. Thirdly, packaging tailored to the target audience and drafted consistently with the distinctive values of the brand is a very powerful marketing tool.
Conclusions
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