Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Packaging As A CRM Tool: Camembert's Case Study

You don’t think your packaging could serve your customer relationship management effort? In my opinion, the use of packaging for CRM purpose is underrated. Indeed, packaging is one of the main feature your customer will have a tangible contact with, and will have to see when he bought the product.

Some companies like Apple pay a lot of attention to make its packaging unique, as the unpacking process is among the strongest consumer experience momentum. Don’t you have in your mind a specific product you unpacked and that you felt special about it? The first time I bought an Ipod, I remember unpacking it, and feeling how special was the device, only buy the way it was packed.

Now the unpacking momentum is not the only reason why I believe that packaging is a CRM tool. Your packaging, is a part of advertising, as it is displayed to customer while shopping. You could use your packaging to:

  • Invite your customer to get into your customer relationship program system, by proposing him to subscribe to a newsletter, or to order its loyalty reward card.
  • Now, thanks to augmented reality, and codebar scanning, you may propose to your customer to access to information and content online thanks to a mobile Internet device.
  • By proposing a coupon for next purchase
  • Counting him the story of your products, and what make them special.
It doesn't really matter what kind of industry you are working with. Packaging matters. You can see above an example of a French camembert that proposes special coupons for those who would log on their website.

The Social Camembert, Beyond CRM
Now there are also extended possibilities, in order to turn your customers into advocates, and to create a strong relationship. Thanks to the stickybits system, anyone can stick a video linked to any barcode. For example, you take a picture of a barcode of any product, and you load a video attached to it, which will be seen by other shoppers/customers.




Do you have great examples of packaging that has been used for customer relationship management?