Package Design - September 2012 - 6

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A Winning Environment
Mutual respect helps build an Olympic-worthy design team.

he London 2012 Olympic Games have come to an end, but the Olympiad’s messages of diversity, teamwork and excellence remain. The London 2012 Olympic Games hosted some 204 nations, and the Paralympic Games, being held this month, will host 166 countries. The 10,490 athletes in the Olympic Games and the 4,200 competitors in the Paralympics carry their own stories of teamwork and excellence, but those stories often have a common beginning. Whether they competed as solo athletes or as part of a team, their success started with a training environment built with cooperation and collaboration.

These characteristics also play major supporting roles in the Head & Shoulders brand team’s participation in P&G’s Road to London campaign, which celebrates the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. The Head & Shoulders team, which is based in Geneva, Switzerland, has members who originally hailed from multiple continents—including North America, South America and Europe. “We represent the cultures that we’re doing the work for,” says P&G package designer Sherri Nielsen. “It’s a multi-cultural and multi-functional team with great balance. But what really makes the

team is everyone’s respect for each other in their areas of expertise. “At P&G, we will comment and critique—letting one another know what we like and don’t like about each other’s work,” Nielsen adds. “But it’s still about respecting one another’s talents and expertise in our fields. And that’s what enables us to do the projects like the limited-edition Olympic packaging.” Originally, P&G charged the Head & Shoulders team to create limited-edition packaging for one product SKU. This design would include the medaland-ribbon logo that P&G created with its design partner Landor Associates. “The Road to London medal and ribbons are both literal and abstract representations of the athletes’ journey to the games and the medals they receive,” says Tyson Betts, associate design director for P&G’s corporate brand franchise organization. “One of the things we love about the system is that it allows for unification across all of our brands and creates a unique voice and visual system for the company. The teams have taken different routes in bringing this to life on the packaging and in their own advertising. Some brands have simply applied the medallion to their packaging, which certainly helps with brand familiarity. And other brands—such as Head & Shoulders—have taken a much more spirited route.” “This wasn’t an easy thing to do,” Nielsen confides. “When I went through the first round of design reviews and presented this particular direction, I was told, ‘Absolutely not.’ You can’t move these elements on the pack. You shouldn’t be moving the brand block from the top position.” But she felt strongly about the design and that her company’s atmosphere of mutual professional respect would enable her to see her vision through. Nielsen’s design just had to knock it out of the park. Working with agency partner Turner Duckworth, Nielsen created a design that not only incorporated all the iconic Head & Shoulders graphics but also highlighted them in unprecedented ways. “Our jewel

september 2012

Package Design - September 2012

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