A Package Deal unPACKING Why Design is Mission Critical for Brand Success

In today’s increasingly complex retail landscape, brands face growing pressure to drive sales, build loyalty, and resonate across multiple channels. Amid all the noise, one of the most powerful tools marketers has been sitting right on the shelf: packaging. 

We wrote and dedicated our latest book, unPACKED. Predict Packaging That Sells, to “anyone who has ever reimagined the predictive power of consumer insights, trading gut feel for evidence and precision.”

While unPACKED calls for a new era of packaging design, driven by ever more predictive and accurate consumer insights capabilities, the first chapter focuses on one key critical question: Why is packaging mission critical? Too often, packaging is seen as just a design exercise when in fact, it is a strategic, testable, and predictable business lever that helps brands own that most valuable moment in marketing: the purchase transaction. 

This article explores how packaging design is one of the most important marketing assets a brand has, starting with the shelf, where visibility, attention, and conversion happen in seconds.

The Shelf: Where Brands Win or Lose

Whether consumers are browsing the shelves in-store or scrolling online, this is where buying decisions are made – and they happen fast. In fact, in many categories, brands that are seen the most at shelf are purchased at 2.5x or more than those seen least. To be seen at shelf, these are the brands that use packaging to cut through clutter, capture consumer’s attention, and convert quickly. Packaging must do more than house the product. It must perform. 

When brands overlook the functional and emotional roles packaging play at shelf, they miss the opportunity to reinforce brand identity, drive trial, and build loyalty. Packaging that fails doesn’t just miss out on sales – it can confuse shoppers, erode brand equity, and be delisted. But it is not only on-shelf where packaging matters. It is constantly playing an ongoing role. 

Packaging: Your Best Salesperson  

Packaging is a brand’s most visible and consistent touchpoint. It lives in pantries, on counters, in homes, on people’s social feeds, and in the hands of consumers. It is constantly reinforcing brand identity and is a piece of what drives repeat purchase.  

There are 5 key benefits of effective packaging design and why brands can’t afford to overlook them. Packaging:

• Shapes behavior, perception and emotional response before trial

• Reinforces brand identity and loyalty

• Serves as a competitive differentiator at shelf

• Connects advertising to the moment of purchase

• Creates opportunities to capitalize on existing assets, expand and innovate  

When approached strategically, packaging becomes more than a container—it becomes a commercial engine.  It drives experience perceptions, generates trial and contributes to repeat purchases.  Packaging is at the meeting point of shopper motivation and shopper action – and can facilitate linkage of these dynamics (or fail to), depending on its overarching execution.  In unPACKED, we highlight real-world examples and cases where key design principles were leveraged to deliver packaging that is a true driver of measurable success.  

Real-World Examples. Real Results. 

Tony’s Chocolonely became one of the fastest-growing chocolate brands in the U.S. and UK by turning packaging into a statement. Bold colors, clashing hues, and unconventional layouts made it stand out at-shelf and told a story of bold values. The result? Over $200 million in sales across 2023–2024, powered in large part by its packaging.

RXBAR took the opposite route with radical simplicity. By making ingredients the hero, the packaging cut through the noise in the crowded health bar space. The distinctiveness of its design was a key factor in its $600 million acquisition by Kellogg’s.

Packaging also offers legacy brands a powerful opportunity to reinvent themselves. Jack Daniel’s Gentleman Jack redesigned its packaging with a taller silhouette, premium materials, and a modern label. Without touching the product inside, the brand shifted perceptions and boosted sales by 40%. 

In a category increasingly under competitive pressure, Chobani set out to attract shoppers in the yogurt aisle by communicating why Chobani Fit is superior.  By leveraging consumer insight, a new design was created and launched, which led to 72% value growth for the brand year-over-year.   

And then there’s Fiji Water, a prime example of expectation setting. Despite having underperformed in blind taste tests, its crystal-clear square bottle and minimalist design signal luxury. Consumers weren’t just buying the water; they were buying the premium brand image that the packaging projected.  

These examples underscore how great packaging drives consumer choice and can deliver measurable commercial outcomes. By ensuring brands leverage shopper-based insights to understand permitted amount of change – i.e., drive evolutionary vs. revolutionary design modifications – brands can seize the shelf to win, creating greater opportunity with existing and new shopper audiences alike.

Your Brand is Only as Strong as its Pack

Ultimately, packaging shapes perception, influences behavior, and drives real business outcomes. As outlined in unPACKED and through our research, packaging has the potential to boost sales by as much as 5% when executed effectively. But unlocking its power requires rigor. Packaging must be treated as a testable, predictable business lever—one that warrants the same investment, strategic planning, and performance measurement as any other part of the marketing mix.

unPACKED is a manifesto. A strategic wake-up call. A playbook for brands ready to take packaging seriously. Because the shelf isn’t just where your product sits—it’s where your brand wins or loses. Packaging plays a pivotal, mission-critical role in the most important moment in marketing: the purchase transaction.

Discover how to ensure your packaging design delivers results by picking up a copy of unPACKED. Predict Packaging That Sells, available July 29th in hard cover, paperback, and digital formats via Amazon and other book retailers. For more information, visit www.behaviorally.com.