A global benchmark for packaging

Blackmores is one of Australia's most established vitamins and minerals businesses, with a significant presence across Asia. They wanted to update their packaging to address well-known usability pain points and modernise the materials, but needed a rigorous, evidence-based view of what best-in-class looked like globally before beginning any design work.

I planned and managed a global packaging research programme across Australia, China, South Korea, the USA and Europe, combining three streams: a market-by-market desk review of packaging innovation, interviews with 20 Blackmores stakeholders, and expert interviews with global packaging specialists. Insights from all three fed a co-creation session with the client team, where we refined the scoring dimensions for fieldwork: convenience and usability alongside sustainability and brand storytelling.

Local teams built a long list of over 200 brands, refined to roughly 30 per territory. All products were purchased and assessed against the scoring framework on the ground, then scores were aggregated and normalised across markets to identify the strongest performers. Each case study in the final report broke out the scoring, highlighted what made the product interesting, and used candid unboxing imagery to show the first-use experience.

The report was presented to senior stakeholders and became the reference point for subsequent packaging innovation. It contributed to an increase in recyclable materials across the Blackmores range to 98% of total packaging.