December 5, 2018
We marketers spend a lot of time wondering how to change ideas into action—how to trigger consumer behavior change. Put simply, how do we get people to buy more of our products? The Paper & Packaging – How Life Unfolds® campaign surveys consumers after we run our advertising on TV to see whether people recognize our paper-centric message. We ask them how they feel about our industry’s products after they’ve seen the ads and compare those responses to the answers from our previous waves of research. This way, we can measure how the messaging is affecting potential behavior. If we change an attitude, we are on the way to a change in consumer behavior.
For example, we ask people whether they agree or disagree with the following statement: “Paper-based product packaging provides important cues about what I’m buying better than other types of packaging.” Baked into this assertion are two ideas: that paper is useful graphically for brands and, as a consumer, that it does this job better than packaging made from other materials. We have seen improvement in this response over six waves of research since the start of the campaign (2015), with now 61 percent in agreement with this statement. We’ve also seen statistically significant improvement on the statement “Paper-based product packaging is an essential part of everyday life,” with movement from 59 percent to 66 percent.
What might this mean? As people see and appreciate paper-based products and packaging’s role in their lives, they also value what it does for them. Combine that with the strong attitudes and understanding that paper-based packaging is recyclable—in the survey, we’ve seen statistically significant improvement here, with 84 percent agreeing paper-based packaging is recyclable, up from 76 percent—and you can logically anticipate that people will choose, use and reuse, or recycle paper if given the choice.
Our industry can use this to talk to customers, reassure consumers, and be reassured ourselves that people value our products. Our defensive posture on complicated industry can, perhaps, melt away in a more optimistic marketing environment in which consumers are responding more positively than ever to our products.
Joan Sahlgren is senior director of public relations at the Paper and Packaging Board. She can be reached at jsahlgren@paperandpackaging.org.
