Packaging Best Practices and Trends: More Than Just What's Inside the Box

* Packaging design via social media. Brands are increasingly turning to their social media platforms to find out what consumers do and don't want from their product packaging. Vitaminwater, for example, used its Facebook page to poll fans on what packaging it liked best.

* Customer loyalty through engagement with packaging. Brands have the ability to create engagement through their packaging, Hines said. She pointed to Amazon.com as an example. The online retailer was being criticized for its wasteful packaging. It used a great big box with a tiny product inside, Hines said. So it created a packaging feedback program to improve the consumer experience with its packaging. The program has resulted in the online retail giant offering “frustration-free packaging,” aimed at reducing jagged tears and lacerations that can occur as a result of wrestling with clamshell and other hard-to-open packaging.