Giving me a warm feeling.

I sometimes wonder if designing packaging in the old days was easier than it is today. No long complex legal declarations, simple layouts, less competition.

I recently came across an old product from an even older German company in the “health and well-being” market, Beuerer. When I was lent this old electric blanket by an elderly neighbour, it was still going strong and working very effectively after what could be 40 years, or more.

But once my stiff neck was cured, I was interested more in the packaging design. How does it compare to the sort of mental checklist I used to use in product marketing. Let’s go through a typical list:

1) Company logo (ie, who’s this from): check. With a nice touch “Original Beurer”
2) Unique design mnemonic: check.
3) Clear product identifier (heating blanket): check.
4) Memorable tagline/usp: check (sort of: with the cat’s head)
5) Endorsement: check (“X-ray certified by the DVE”).
6) Unique identifiable brand/company colours: maybe. Can’t judge this one, though I can see the company logo is well matched to the round frame around the cat’s head, so the green and yellow were obviously important at the time.

For me, however, the prize goes to the analogy with the cat. A cat sits on beds, keeping it warm. What better, albeit subliminal, way to signal the product benefit. Lovely.

We may laugh at the simplicity of this packaging, the monotonous use of colour (no gradients, two colours plus black and white), but it obviously worked. And Beurer is still going strong, so they’re obviously doing something right.

Returning to my original thought, I found no details on the pack of who Beurer is, where they’re from, product specs (eg, voltage, safety instructions). There was not even a bar code. Apart from the design you see here on the lid, it seems product management had little else to worry about.