april 2011
	top ten packaging trends you can't afford to ignore Each year consumer packaged goods face more and more competition at shelf to gain attention. Established companies cannot rest on their past successes in this rapidly changing marketplace. Companies who are quick to embrace new technologies and keep on top of emerging trends will create opportunities to grow and prosper. Packaging will be more important than ever and must work harder than it traditionally has. In addition to the basic purpose to protect the product inside and provide information, packaging also communicates your brand, the values of your corporate culture and serves as the final decision tipping point. With so much resting on your package, it's important to have the right strategy in place. So what will be among the most important packaging trends in 2011 and beyond? Let's take a look:
			1. Deliver Value: Recognize that the package isn't an afterthought. Anything that does not serve the consumer or retailer should be left out. This includes hard to open seals and difficult to remove product which create “wrap rage,” and packaging which is difficult to dispose of or recycle. All package innovation should put the consumer first, not just be optimized for retail and distribution networks. 2. The Incredible Shrinking Package: Packaging per unit will continue to shrink driven by the desire to decrease manufacturing costs through less waste and less energy consumption. Even modest reductions of scrap material left on the factory floor can add up to big savings when multiplied by thousands or millions. Internal practices that can reduce energy costs by as little as 1 or 2 percent can make a big difference to profitability. This trend has the added benefit of appealing to a growing segment of the population who are becoming more concerned about the environment and are looking for everyday ways to contribute to a solution. click here to read the rest of the list
			google slaps crappy sites For as long as Google has been around, it has used PageRank as a means to score the value of web pages, and the order they’re displayed in Google search queries. In simple terms, PageRank is a mathematical way to ascribe importance to a web page based on the links that point to it from other web pages. Google has refined and modified the algorithm over the years, but it is still relevant. (The algorithm itself is described in Brin and Page’s original paper, Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Search Engine.) Since PageRank is public knowledge, people have been using it to improve their website rankings using search engine optimization (SEO). Some of these attempts have been legitimate and some have simply been scams. One of the common unethical means used to increase PageRank is to acquire links to a website from low quality sites or “link farms.” These are sites that are designed simply to create links and generally have no valuable content. Google recently released an algorithmic update called Panda, that evaluates the quality of inbound links and penalizes web pages using links from junk sites. What this means for website builders and owners is what they should have known all along. Building relevant links on quality sites to meaningful content from within your site is the best way to improve your search visibility in Google.
			leibold wins at the addys! We are proud to announce that we received seven Addy awards at the Northeastern Wisconsin Addy Award presentation on March 17th in Oshkosh. We were awarded a Gold Addy for a Kleenex® Sales Kit, a Pull-Ups® Toy Story 3 Big Kid Box, a Little Swimmers® Pool Bin Display and a Kleenex® Video. We were also awarded Silver Addy's for a Huggies® Newborn Gift Set, a Cottonelle® Sales Kit and our Leibold Earth Day Promotion. click here to see the winners
			a toast to tax day! Many thanks to those who joined us for our Tax Relief Happy Hour two weeks ago. We wouldn’t be here without the support of our terrific clients and vendors. So, to you all, we drink a toast! Look for details on our next Happy Hour in upcoming newsletters.