Package redesign gives Centrum vitamins a whale of a sales lift

Food & Drug Packaging, Nov, 1998

New packaging for its children's vitamins has helped American Home Products increase sales 20% with virtually no other marketing support or expenditures.

The company's Centrum Junior children's vitamins were losing the battle for market share in their category. The Centrum name carried brand weight with parents (the buyers), and a license agreement that put Shamu the killer whale on the package worked to attract children.

Attracting and keeping audience are two entirely different tasks, though, Taste plays a big part in winning children's loyalty, and the vitamin maker, realizing that the taste of its vitamins needed a lift, reformulated two of its three stock keeping units (SKUs) and improved the taste.

But any change means little until projected to the marketplace. American Home Products hired CAG Design to help present its children's vitamins to consumers. Virtually alone, that packaging redesign has brought the vitamins (according to the latest Nielsen report) a 20% increase in sales volume over a year previous.

CAG Design has worked with the company for about five years, designing packaging for a variety of adult and children's products. In this case, American Home Products asked the designer to perform a specific task: given a limited budget, without changing the physical bottle, closure or carton, and still including Shamu in the design, help the reformulated vitamins project their new and improved taste and attract a new audience.

Together, the two companies recognized that the product needed a new name, first of all. Centrum Junior wasn't `kid-oriented' enough. Following name searches, brainstorming and low level consumer tests, they finally Chose Centrum Kids.

They also experimented with brighter colors in the design, to project the new taste. The earlier package had used bright, almost fluorescent colors with a grafitti-looking type that drew attention with its brightness--but was difficult to read. For the new project, they involved a well-known packaging illustrator, Bill Devlin, and consulted with Anheuser Busch on available Shamu images that were being used on the children's television show featuring Shamu and his crew.

In the new design, CAG included more of the crew on the carton, expanding the draw of the characters. Colors were kept closer to the tastes they were to project; fruits were worked into the design, as well as the rainbow that marks other Centrum vitamins but had been omitted from the earlier children's package.

A wave pattern was added to the package to put Shamu in an environment, and the varying repeat waves in the background change in color across the three SKUs, tying the packages together but distinguishing them at the same time.

Sales Spurt

American Home Products did no media or point-of-purchase advertising of the new vitamins in the early stages of reintroduction, and sales promotions did not begin until July 1. The bottle, closure and carton retained exactly the same dimensions as before. Store position and space allocations remained as before. Early sales growth can be attributed almost entirely to the impact of the new package design. Results showed a sales spurt of about 15% over previous sales in the first few months after Centrum Kids was introduced on May 1. By September, Nielsen reports were showing a steady incremental sales increase over the same period in 1997 that had reached 20% by September,

"We attribute that early growth to the packaging and the message on the package," says Jennifer Klaxton of American Home Products' marketing department.

For more information from CAG Design, call (908) 813-0855 or Circle 590.

In a nutshell

Goal: Make Centrum children's vitamins more competitive

How: Redesign packaging to project the new taste of Centrum Kids

Result: Incremental sales increases of up to 20% over 1997