The consumer connection

  The Consumer 
  Originally uploaded by Tub Gurnard

I spent 15 years having fun with packaging design and packaging design processes so when I read about B_E_E - a cool green household cleaning products company in New Zealand I was intrigued. The world is dominated by 3 or 4 global players- Unilever, Proctor and Gamble, Colgate Palmolive or Reckitt Benckiser who have exerted enormous influence on the consumer for generations delivering tried and tested brands to generations of families.
After having some interesting stints in various organisations, Brigid Hardy wanted to find some sort  

of union between her hard-earned business savvy and her idealism. “I knew that I wanted to work in an area that had a bit of purpose and soul,” she says. “Business has all this efficiency, all these systems. I thought if you brought that together with passion and beliefs and goodwill you’d really have something…”  Perhaps not surprisingly the eco-friendly cleaning products idea was not Hardy’s. It came from Stephen Tindall, who she’d met through her work at McKinsey. But once Hardy had given it some thought and managed to spark up her imagination, cleaning products had their most principled and passionate advocator in history. Brigid Hardy doesn’t puddle around. “It’s businesses that change the world and we really want to change the world with this,” she says.

Research confirmed that, despite their growing concerns for the environment, consumers would ultimately choose cleaning products from Unilever, Colgate Palmolive or Reckitt Benckiser – trusted household names with pocket-friendly prices. To succeed, B_E_E’s new products had to achieve real stand-out, with hardcore performance, eco-ethics and enormous shelf-appeal. The strategy was to sex-up the products, making them an irresistible purchase, despite their premium pricing. Design was crucial to the success of the strategy and Designworks Enterprise IG was appointed as partners right at the beginning of the process, involved in every stage. Design had to be at the very core of the range, which launched with three products: a washing-up liquid, a surface cleaner and a wash for delicate fabrics.

To cut a long story short....

You have to cut through the dull fog that descends on the soul of the average shopper as they wheel their trolley down the supermarket’s least inspiring isle. Not only do your labels have to be wittier and your bottles more easily recycled, but your products must be more bio-degradable, they must work better, smell nicer, leave your hands softer…

The product range is very different from the big players's offerings and in Design Space the B_E_E team resolved Design Space issues in a way that did not compromise their green credentials... but could not be solved in more conventional, industy standard ways.

We can see other initiatives in Europe (Ecover- launched 1980) and the USA (Method-launched 2001)which attempt the same to be more environmentally responsible in their own markets:

 

Looking at each company my feeling is that Ecover is a conventional cleaning products company but with strong environmental goals; Method is attempting to improve the American way and makes compromises (e.g. refill packs that are not necessarily as environmentally friendly as we imagine). Also the aesthetics of packaging are not necessarily what I believe are the right balance between aesthetics, geometry and structur . B_E_E (launched in 2005) is a without compromise company with strong ethics to drive its environmental point-of-view.. and is fun too! Not handled their packaging but looks acceptable....?
I connect emotionally with its story and products. Like I do with Innocent Smoothies...


Picture uploaded by Daniel Morris. Used with thanks under CC- link.

To be capable of moving into areas like this means taking a holistic, collaborative approach which I call Design@The_Edge.