Noticia

We all know the Nivea BLUE and the Coca-Cola RED. Color quality and consistency was and remains a very strategic and sensitive topic for both Brand Owners, printers and converters. As technology evolves, it is important to understand the perspective of brand owners and their view on the latest developments in color management.

We spoke to Brand Owners at six leading global companies, encompassing food, beverages, tobacco and pharmaceuticals, about the challenges they face around the colors on their brand packaging, and how they consider more digitalized color solutions in their packaging production workflows. The responses we heard reflect the high pace of change in this area, as Brand Owners grapple with a fast-moving environment and equally rapidly-evolving technology.

The changes driven by the Extended Color Gamut (ECG) are significant. It is the biggest driver to simultaneously improve color consistency and production efficiency while reducing cost and environmental impacts.

The observations and recommendations you will find below are very important in a world where the digitalization and the automation of processes are driving forces.

• Consistency remains the key color challenge
“Color fidelity is now table stakes. Without demonstrable accuracy and precision, you are not a player.”

Marc Hufschmied, Senior Manager R&D Packaging Innovation at PepsiCo, lays the situation out in plain terms. Color consistency is a must-win battle for Brand Owners.

“Consumers are very color sensitive, and have expectations around brand colors that need to be met consistently in a global marketplace,” he continues. “Their trust in the product encompasses packaging graphics. Packaging is the ‘last sales force’. It is vital that we adhere strictly to consistency standards and quantifiable verification systems.”

Mr Hufschmied says that consistency is the “number one challenge for Brand Owners around color”. Achieving consistency has traditionally been challenging due to the sheer variety of printing processes, inks, and substrates involved.

Michele Amigoni, Group RDQ – Vice President, Global Packaging at the Barilla Group, agrees. “Like all global companies, we have had color consistency issues,” he says. “Take a Barilla pasta box in the US and compare it to one in Italy, and it might happen that you will not get exactly the same color consistency. We have standardized everything to have the same look, but still does not always happen consistently across converters, printing technologies and runs, and countries.”

• But what are the consequences of inconsistency?
“The issue is brand perception,” says Amigoni. “In extreme situations it can also lead to readability issues, although that is rare.”

As well as diluting brand perception, issues with colors on packaging dilute brand differentiation from competitors, and for certain brands could make life easier for counterfeiters (if consumers are used to seeing color inconsistency, a counterfeit package would appear less suspicious).

There is also the matter of consistency between online imagery and real-life packaging. A recent report asked shoppers about their expectations around packaging. Forty-seven percent said they expect that the item they ordered online will look exactly the same when they see it in person. And although 37% say that it’s OK to have “minor variations” between the online image and the package they receive in the mail, only 9% are fine with a package that arrives with different colors or imagery.3

As one Brand Owner from a major global food company said, “Inconsistency puts doubts in the consumer’s mind.” If there is an issue with the packaging, he argues, then there are immediately concerns about the product inside. Also, there is the matter of trust and brand recognition. People see a certain color and they are acquainted with it.