Pentawards Packaging Design Winner: Kleenex

Earlier this month, the Pentawards--an international packaging design awards competition that is juried by agency and design leaders from around the world--announced their 2009 winners.

The winner for the 2009 Diamond Pentaward for Best in Show was Kimberly-Clarke for their Kleenex "Perfect Slice of Summer" tissue box series.

I'd never heard of the Pentawards before, but it's great to know that great packaging design is being acknowledged. In advertising, the Clio Awards are held in high-esteem, and companies go out of their way to ensure submissions are made for that competition. Here's hoping that the Pentawards will elevate packaging design in a similar fashion.

Just the other week, Apple released information on the lifecycle greenhouse gas impacts of its entire business, including manufacturing, transportation, product use, and end-of-life. In doing so, Apple becomes the first company in the electronics industry to layout its entire carbon footprint, providing detail not only on their operations but also on individual products as well.

This is a bold move by a company that historically is better known for its innovation in other areas. For years, environmental groups have pushed for better reporting of these impacts. Manufacturers have been slow to respond, in part because modeling the lifecycle impacts of electronics is challenging, especially due to the complex supply chains associated with electronics manufacturing and assembly.

Interesting stat: 53% of Apple’s total greenhouse gas emissions are due to the use of their products. In other words, continuing to drive energy efficiency into products, the less sexy side of alternative energy, is still important work to do.

Because Apple gets a lot of press for their innovation efforts, their brand halo on the environment is a little more positive than it should be. Relative to Dell, IBM, Sony, and Hewlett-Packard, Apple was a latecomer in addressing the recycling and reuse of computers. And although Apple has been touting their green product design recently, there is a general shift toward greener products by all electronics firms, in large part due to European Union directives and US EPA-supported standards, like Energy Star and EPEAT.

At the same time, Apple has often received a disproportionate share of criticism from environmental groups about the company’s lack of aggressive goal setting and weak environmental reporting. Environmental policy has seen far too many ambitious goals without any deep strategic implementation, and far too many companies have made bold claims that amount to little more than greenwashing—misleading consumer information about a company’s true environmental impact.

From what I’ve seen in the past, Apple works on the environment in the same way it works on new products: get people excited (and concerned) about what they may be doing, work on interesting things behind closed doors with select partners, and then finally make a big announcement when they’ve actually done something great. The company’s efforts on greenhouse gas emissions reporting is just the latest example.

Starbucks…just as good (or bad) as instant coffee

Earlier this week, Starbucks officially launched VIA Ready-Brew, the company’s first-ever instant coffee product.

Like many people, I am concerned about the brand dilution impact of this move. When I see Howard Schultz saying that “the majority won’t be able to taste the difference”, I think that says more about the poor quality of Starbucks’ regular coffee, as opposed to the great quality of their new instant brew.

That said, I think this is a very smart adjacency move by Starbucks. After years of amazing top-line growth, Starbucks' strategy of building new storefronts has not been effective in recent years. Expanding into instant coffee gives Starbucks access to a $21 billion market, without cannibalizing in-store sales (although some cannibalization will occur to their packaged coffee products).

Also worth noting, the instant coffee market has been ripe for innovation. Although I have not followed instant coffee with any sort of consistency, the last major instant coffee innovation that comes to mind is the Folgers plastic canister. Starbucks, with its focus on customer experience and heavy investment in coffee R&D, is bringing a bold innovation in a category that has lacked big news for quite some time.

Although the current economic environment seems to be odd timing for launching a new, mass-premium product, Starbucks is doing a great job of leveraging its core capabilities and applying them in a relevant market. The innovation logic of Starbucks VIA makes sense; in the coming months, we'll see if instant coffee drinkers think it makes sense to pay a lot more for presumably better instant coffee.