Fiama Di Wills, a personal care brand from FMCG major ITC Limited, required packaging design for a range of shower gels for women. The objective was to delight and engage consumers with creative design solutions that would enable sensorial experiences and affordable luxury without compromising on the functional requirements of the container for the product.
This project was the submission by a group of three for the Fiama Shower Gel Packaging Design Competition by ITC, open to students of the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Gandhinagar, held in April 2017, and won 3rd place with a cash prize of Rs 25,000.
(With Akshay Khurana and Ruchita Rajan.)
Brief
Fiama Di Wills sought new packaging to improve its stagnating sales. The bottle’s design had to communicate that the liquid gel was being dispensed in ideally measured doses of 4 ml each.
The shower gel is unsure of its place in a bathroom unlike, say, the ‘automatic’ soap-dish for soap. The new bottle therefore had to ‘belong’ by finding itself clutter-free storage with ease.
Approach
Fiama Di Wills’ primary competitors are Palmolive and Nivea. Currently, among the three brands, Nivea shower gels look the most premium, and stand out on the shelf.
Fiama Di Wills’ secondary competitors are Neutrogena, Signature Collection, and Anatomicals, and in a grooming chain store like Health & Glow, their shower gels can be easily ignored.
In a worst-case scenario, Fiama Di Wills' products are placed in cramped, badly lit, local supermarkets, next to soaps. Here, the challenge is to make sure the packaging stands out in all possible circumstances.
We also looked to The Body Shop and Forest Essentials as aspirational brands against which Fiama Di Wills can compete in the future.
Inspiration
The Fiama Di Wills woman is a confident and independent person. She knows what she wants and she works hard for it. She likes to experiment and try out new things, to break from the mundane. The shower is a quiet space at the start and end of her daily routine. It rejuvenates and kickstarts her day, and it calms her and helps her unwind at the end of it. Showers are her me-time.
Keeping this in mind, our packaging form and graphics have water at the core of the brand. Water as the ‘refresher’: the source of life, the mighty river, the calm ocean.
Technical Specifications
The bottle’s PET (Polyethylene Terephthalate) body features a rigid, moisture and chemical-resistant PP (Polypropylene) ‘living hinge’. The flexible clamp can bend comfortably around towel rods. The thinner button section is easy to depress, and returns the disc to its original position after the measured gel has been dispensed. Injection moulding, which allows walls with differential thickness in the same container, has been suggested as the method of construction.
Packaging
We took inspiration for the shape of the bottle from the most basic visual form of water: a drop of it. The tall bottle is designed with fluid lines to reflect the personality of the woman who uses it.
The features of the bottle make it multi-purpose. It can be hung from a hook near the shower, which is a unique space for the product. Or it can be kept on a shelf nearby, where the shape of the bottle itself makes it memorable.
The button-like pushing mechanism shall dispense just the right amount of gel with each use, making quantity control effortless for the user.
Graphics
The names given to the variants in the range take from water-based words that reinforce the product’s image. The graphics have been kept clean and simple, imparting a premium quality to the brand. We kept the colours of the gel and its ingredients similar to the range already available in the market, so that brand recall among loyal customers remains unhampered.
The proposed packaging stands tall, has a unique shape, and has visual cues that indicate the unique features of the bottle. This will pique the buyer’s interest, who will then choose and discover it over the other conventional shower gel bottles on the same shelf. The flip-open cap at the bottom enables a dry sniff, convincing the consumer to buy the variant she finds most appealing.
Usage
The bottle’s multipurpose functionality allows the consumer to hang it from a shower rod or a towel rack, or simply place it on the bathroom shelf. This accounts for all possible uses.
The one-inch loop can accommodate variable bathroom fixtures, which are conventionally half-inch in diametre.
