News

Milk chocolate could be the national sweetshop’s equivalent of the grey squirrel. First introduced at the start of the 20th century as a populist extension of what had hitherto been an expensive luxury – the masses previously having made do with toffee to satisfy their sweet tooth – it took less than 30 years to displace its dark predecessor as the British confection of choice, and has remained so ever since.

But tastes might be changing. Although it still represents a fraction of the estimated 9.94 kilos per capita of chocolate that we gorge every year (source: Biscuit, Chocolate, Cake & Confectionery Association), dark chocolate is making a spirited comeback. It’s being driven by healthier-eating advice, in tandem with the climate of concern fostered by the likes of the Fairtrade Foundation and the Soil Association, and increasingly comes in formulations of the real deal with 70%-plus cocoa content. And it’s not just the nation’s palate that is melting before the seductive charm of the dark forces: a distinctively elegant design signature is sending a compelling message to the volume packaging market as well.

“It’s like the Jackson Pollock of the packaging world when you look at the confectionery counter; there are bright colours splattered everywhere,” says Pearlfisher creative director Jonathan Ford. “It’s all very samey. We don’t need to see the old formula of a big logo on a diagonal across a flow-wrap pack any more.”

Pearlfisher was the agency largely credited with propelling arguably the best known of the ethical brands, Green & Black’s, into mainstream contention five years ago, by what in hindsight seems to be the simple expedient of repositioning organic as premium at an affordable price. As one of the original  Fairtrade-accredited products on the market, Green & Black’s had struggled to achieve a 1% share, due to limited retail listings. The marketing trick was to lead with taste and intensity as a redefinition of “luxury everyday”, says Ford, which the classically under-stated design combination of dark brown colouring and gold typography reflected to a T.

And it’s a trick that has paid off. Sales of Green & Black’s products have increased by a whopping 700% over the past four years; little wonder that Cadbury Schweppes bought the firm.

The rest of the ethical sector has benefited too. “The chocolate market is shifting towards more premium choice and also towards dark, and the category is definitely heading towards more elegance in terms of packaging design,” says Charlotte Borger, communications manager at Divine Chocolate. The company is owned by a West African cocoa farmers co-operative and its countline-listed bars feature on shelves alongside the likes of Mars and Snickers. “There’s a sudden proliferation of new Fairtrade names offering dark products via supermarkets, as well as clear evidence of the major brands trying to do something a lot more classy, including appropriate packaging, although not to the point of scaring off established customers.”

Unlike the Soil Association – which specifies that anything certified as organic must demonstrate it has considered the environmental impact of its packaging, by reducing the amount of material used or using non-toxic inks – the Fairtrade Foundation lays down no hard-and-fast rules on packaging. Even so, an implied ‘less is more’ philosophy is clearly demonstrated by most accredited producers. “With chocolate, there’s always a part of buying it that is about reward or treat,” says Borger. ‘“The whole experience from the packaging inward is part of that, so it’s unlikely it will ever be presented in a very utilitarian way.

“Ultimately, we could look at not having gold foil on the packaging, for example, which probably makes our paper slightly less recyclable; but at the moment, that’s what’s getting us noticed. Certainly with Divine, there’s nothing there that doesn’t have to be there because it’s protecting the product, and we don’t use any plastic. Our mission is to improve the lives of the smallholder cocoa farmers in West Africa. Ensuring that we meet the best environmental standards is secondary to that, even though we see it as being terribly important.

“Cadbury, which is making noises about cutting down its packaging, is in a great position to go extremely environmental, because it won’t make such a big company suddenly invisible.”

Of course, you need to apply as much design and marketing nous to an ethical product as to any other. Packaging design should convey the spirit of the brand, but Fairtrade chocolates need to be careful not to ram the ‘worthy’ message down people’s throats. When Comic Relief teamed up with Divine, they wanted to create a Fairtrade chocolate that was squarely aimed at young people. Comic Relief launched a competition on Children’s BBC for young people to design the wrapper for the new chocolate bar. Entries were used to create the name and design, and in 2000, Dubble was launched in a silver-and-purple flow-wrapper with red bubbly letters and an image of a ‘comedy banana skin’, proving that chocolate can be fun and Fairtrade.

Top-end luxury
Luxury, rather than environmentalism, is the defining feature of top-of-the-range Sir Hans Sloane handmade dark chocolates. A box of its Artist Range pralines – only available online or at Selfridges and General Trading – can cost up to £30. The company was the first in the UK to ‘conch’ its own chocolate: a 72-hour bean-grinding process to optimise flavour, unlike volume-produced brands that rely on sugar to mask an otherwise burnt taste, says business development manager Bridget Goodwin.

“There’s high growth potential at the top end because of the health benefits of chocolate with a large percentage of cocoa and no vegetable oils or additives. Packaging is a huge factor; people make their purchasing decision on the basis of seeing our website and packaging before they’ve had the chance to taste. With so much business going via mail order, it also has to be robust; our cartons are made in 115gsm gloss laminated board.”

Maintaining margins through subtle tweaks to structure and materials use, rather than image transformation, is the preoccupying issue for most established volume brands. This is not surprising, says Museum of Brands, Packaging and Advertising archivist Robert Opie, given the mind’s association between look and taste. “Packaging is so much part of the pleasure that you need to keep that consistency; it’s part of the whole ritual, and indeed it performs part of that taste value. Sure, technology can change it because it’s easier, cheaper and more convenient, but it can mean riding roughshod over your brand heritage – and you do that at your peril.”

Nestlé famously attracted the ire of loyal consumers when it moved to flow-wrap packaging for KitKat in 2001, on the basis of extending content freshness by more than three times that of the traditional foil and paper-strapped product.

Change and change again
Subsequently, it changed again last year, this time adopting a new metallised wrapper to further extend freshness by a factor of five. Climbdown or otherwise, the result has been impressive. “Our new Foil Fresh packaging, alongside the launch of KitKat four-finger Dark and KitKat Peanut Butter Chunky, supported by a £14m media spend, has helped the KitKat portfolio sell 25 million more packs over the past year,” says UK trade communications manager Graham Walker. “Sales of KitKat four-finger and Chunky have grown in value by 15.2% in the same period.”

There appears to have been less resistance to the repackaging of Nestlé’s Smarties, which switched to the six-sided ‘Hexatube’ in 2005. According to Nestlé, the aim was to refresh an iconic format that had been on the shelves for almost 70 years – and the switch was not made for cost-saving purposes.

Meanwhile, the brand owner’s Rolo packaging has remained the same since the 1930s. “Rolo has many loyal consumers who love the nostalgia associated with it, from the classic advertising to the foil and paper packaging,” says communications manager Helen Reah. “Also, as Rolo comes in bite-size portions, they like the fact they can have a couple of sweets and then use the foil to reseal the pack.”

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SIGPACK'S 'PULL PACK'

Voted innovation of the year in Packaging News’s 2007 UK Packaging Awards, Sigpack’s modified flow-wrap concept is yet to find an adopter, despite attracting the interest of a number of undisclosed international brands. Pull Pack was specifically designed for confectionery applications and was launched at the Total show last May, following an 18-month development period.

The product is held in one hand and a simple tug on the seal fin of the other, shorter end opens the pack. For consumers on the go, the top of the pack can even be safely bitten off. Hygiene issues are eliminated as the product does not have to be touched and remains covered within the remaining half of the pack.

The tubular film is perforated at the right point in the Pull Pack module and the perforation is sealed and secured by a V-shaped fold (through a rotating cross-sealing on a horizontal pillow pack machine).

The controlled opening of the pack, and the clearly defined pull-off section, opens up a raft of possibilities for marketing, claims Sigpack. Although it represents innovative development of an existing, widely-used and well-established packaging method, it requires no new process and limited new machinery – for example, the addition of one extra module for existing Sigpack flow-wrapping machines. Production speeds are claimed with cold sealing film of up to 80m per minute or 800 packages per minute.