LMAI panel discussion on Labels: What the Print buyers want

India’s trusted healthcare brand Dettol introduced a nationwide campaign, #DettolSalutes, after the peak of the second Coronavirus wave in June 2021 as a tribute to Covid-19 warriors. In the one-of-its-kind campaign, Dettol replaced its logo with the image of a Covid warrior, along with his or her inspiring story of battling the pandemic, on its liquid handwash packs.

Dettol’s parent company Reckitt launched a website www.DettolSalutes.com for people to share stories related to Covid protectors among them and create virtual Dettol liquid handwash packs, which could then be shared on their social media channels. The campaign’s aim was to strike an emotional chord with the customers and convey the message of human solidarity in the wake of the global crisis.

Reckitt sacrificed its brand logo space on 4 million packs to deliver the message through digital labels printed on HP Indigo presses. This premium example of brand packaging illustrates how consumer engagement, hyper-localization, and personalization can be amalgamated into a brand story to provide a unique offering to end users.

The #DettolSalutes campaign was one of the several initiatives studied as a part of Label Association of India’s (LMAI) panel discussion on ‘Labels: What the Print Buyers Want’, at Hotel Pride Plaza in New Delhi Aerocity on 5 August 2022. Sanjay Ghoshal, senior GM and head of packaging at Diageo India, said that the perfect label solution needs to be a combination of aesthetics and sustainability features.

Sanjeev Sharma, director of project management at Avery Dennison, said embellishment on labels is the key to creating value in the whole print process. Introduced in February 2019, the Falsified Medicines Directive (FMD) is Europe-wide legislation to prevent counterfeit prescription medicines from entering the pharma supply chain. Avery Dennison has become the first label stock supplier in India to manufacture FMD special labels to enable Indian pharma manufacturers to export their medicines.

Ghoshal further said that with globalization, expectations for quality increased among consumers and brand owners. The socio-economic changes in the last 5-10 years have triggered a need for higher aesthetics, high finish and quality standards, and higher functionality. Naveen Stuart, cluster packaging manager at Reckitt, told the audience that the cooperation between the designer and label manufacturer is of prime importance in the age of social media.

Avery’s Sharma said that technologies that were imagined a decade ago have come to life today. These include RFID and NFS label solutions manufactured at the company’s plants in India. Ghoshal said that the alcobev category, traditionally considered as a media dark segment, can benefit tremendously by incorporating the latest technologies such as AR, RFID, NFS, and active and intelligent labels to increase engagement and connection with customers through sharing of movies, recipes, and beverage tracking.

Anil Namugade, founder and director at Trigon Digipack, said that events such as the Covid-19 pandemic, the Russsia-Ukraine war, and natural disasters have resulted in a massive increase in startups in the last few years. Ghoshal predicted that in view of the short runs on labels going up in the past few years with the explosion in the number of brands available to customers, the short runs will produce long runs in the days to come.