Industrial Design • Innovation • Product Development
Industrial Design • Innovation • Product Development
The ‘MegaPack’ gum package is a completely new innovation in the category and proved early to be a success for customers and consumers. Our design was driven by unfulfilled consumer needs, consumer user behavior, quality and durability requirements, manufacturing capabilities, and environmental considerations. Our resulting Mega Pack, which holds 35 pieces of stick gum, increased our front-end sales 50% incrementally in the first year and became the #1 selling SKU in its set.
Athenaeum Good Design Award Winner
One of the largest barriers to gum chewing is users running out of gum. For those that prefer stick gum, there was no bulk package allowing them to keep more gum on hand in a single pack. Durability and maintaining freshness were mandatory design criteria, which had to be considered with front end shelving constraints and a variety of user needs. Most important for initial success was ensuring that consumers understood the proposition immediately since a bulk stick pack had never been offered before.
Size and shape was carefully considered to juggle various customers and consumer needs. The pack’s footprint had to meet front-end sales requirements to sell-in to customers. For consumers, the pack needs to be stash-able, storable and portable. Interestingly, we identified a need to be unique in shape in reference to other personal belongings to support blind search-ability in bags, purses and car consoles. Our final size also provides a strong billboard space for brand graphics and language to explain the proposition.
Our polypropylene material was chosen for a variety of reasons. The transparent window at the top allows consumers to see at-a-glance how many sticks of gum they are buying. The case is durable and watertight, which keeps the gum safe and fresh, which was a major consumer concern. Finally, the one-piece polypropylene design is reusable and supports easy, single-stream recycling The one-piece design is unpigmented and undecorated, with no labels to remove or colorant. Pre-purchase labeling and branding is accomplished through the removable printed outer sleeve, and consumer use branding and decoration is done via a printed inner sleeve, necessary for filling.
Since launch, the Mega Pack has quickly proven its strength in the marketplace. Launched under the Extra® brand, and expanded to 5 Gum and Doublemint, the Mega Pack format has become the top SKU in its set and has increased Wrigley’s front end gum sales 50% incrementally.