Context

Every brand’s motto is to connect with its customers emotionally, for if they don’t, their chance of retaining the same customer drops periodically.

This year, Entropik Tech studied some of the best Easter-themed chocolate packs to determine the top 5 packs which connected with the audience the most. The pack that resonates with its customer the most will have the highest shelf pick-up rates.

From Cadbury to M&S, all brands came with exciting packages and themes around Easter to woo their customers and grab their attention. Entropik Tech surveyed 120 people in the United States, distributed among generations and gender on its self-serve DIY Emotion AI platform – Affect Lab.

The respondents were asked to look at each pack, during which their eye movement, eye gaze, and facial expressions were captured through their webcam or their laptop cameras. This test was the basis for ranking the best packaging design. The same packs were then placed on a virtual shelf to see which pack won the most attention. This test helped analyze the shelf clutter breakthrough. The emotional/subconscious responses captured were then cross-checked with their post-survey response to validate their answers.

Here are the top 5 Easter-themed chocolate packs in order of first to last, which made our list this year. But first, let’s discuss some of the terms we will use in this article. 

Let’s get started with the list.

M&S Speckled Eggs

M&S Speckled Eggs pack topped our chart with the best closing score of 21.96 and an overall Affect Lab score of 36.38. The winning element for the pack was its text elements, especially the product description. The product name came out very clean due to the background color and font size contrast. Of all the people surveyed, 88% said that the M&S Speckled Eggs pack was relevant to the Easter theme. Words such as ‘cute’ and ‘unique’ came out loud when asked what they liked most about the pack. 

Even though M&S Speckled Eggs topped our chart in pack design, it came second in grabbing people’s attention when placed on the virtual shelf with other competing packs. Keep reading to find out the best pack in the virtual shelf. Back to M&S Speckled Eggs, people felt highlighting the product image would have made it better. The open egg image was noticed the least in the pack.

Cadbury Mini Eggs 

For the Cadbury Mini Eggs pack, the product name – ‘Mini Eggs‘ achieved higher stopping power as it was discovered the quickest and earned high attention as the text was bigger, readable, placed at the eye level, and occupied most of the pack. The brand name and product shot followed the word ‘Mini Eggs‘ in grabbing the respondents’ attention. The vibrant yellow and violet colors placed Cadbury Mini Eggs on the second spot in pack design. 

Cadbury Mini Eggs packs were placed in the top right corner of the shelf, making it hard for respondents to find it. This is considered one of the reasons the Cadbury Mini Eggs came last in the shelf clutter breakthrough test. 

M&S Extremely Chocolatey

M&S Extremely Chocolatey had the image of a vibrant golden orange egg inside a golden box. On the virtual shelf, the pack was placed at the eye level of the respondents, making it easy to be noticed quickly and drawing greater attention with a holding power of 0.96. The image of the egg exploding grabbed most of the respondent’s attention, making it the most loved pack on the virtual shelf. And with that, M&S Extremely Chocolatey won the shelf clutter breakthrough test. 

Let’s dive into how it did in pack designing. Affect Lab insights showed that respondents’ eye gazes moved from bigger elements like the product image to more minor elements like product name and description. The brand name ‘M&S’ was the least noticed element due to its smaller size and style of the font. Making the brand name bold on the pack would surely help earn more attention as people like to read which brand they are buying from. Overall, M&S Extremely Chocolatey came third in pack design.

Kinder Surprise

Kinder Surprise recently came under heat when 70 kids in the UK got sick consuming it. But we are not here to criticize the content of the chocolate; instead, we are only here to analyze the pack design and the shelf clutter breakthrough.  

You can somewhat blame the pack design that kids were irresistible to buy. So how did it do on the virtual shelf? It came third on the shelf clutter breakthrough test. With an Affect Lab score of 30.97, it was able to grab the respondent’s attention but couldn’t hold it for long as the holding power was only 0.61. It could be because the pack was placed on the bottom shelf, giving less time to respondents to find it and engage with it. Another reason Kinder Surprise garnered low holding power compared to the other packs might be its minimal elements. 

On pack designing, the name ‘Kinder Surprise’ was noticed first because that was the only element present and was placed in the middle of the pack. The white background upon which the text was placed played a crucial role, as the name came out very loud and clear. The duck face and the easter egg on the pack were noticed second and third in the order. 

Cadbury Dairy Milk Daim

‘Daim’ was the quickest element on the Cadbury Dairy Milk Daim pack to be noticed as the color used was unique with a red and yellow vibrant background with Bold Royal blue font. Respondent’s eye gaze starts from the middle and then moves to brand name, product name, and product image. Some respondents didn’t even understand that the text ‘Diam‘ was placed on an open egg because the egg color and the background color were both violets. The egg color should have been something different than the brand color. Most respondents felt that the pack didn’t have much Easter theme linked to it. 

However, on the virtual shelf, Cadbury Dairy Milk Daim came on the fourth spot because of its unique color compared to other competitors.

Emotion AI metrics for all packs with hits and misses.

Conclusion:  

To wrap it up, the best packaging design is not just about selling the most number of units but also creating a connection with your consumers. A bond so emotional that consumers will come back to you when it’s Easter the following year.

Affect Lab’s virtual shelf where the packs were placed with all other competing packs.

All metrics used in the study might sound very technical, but everything combined gives the emotional perspective of a consumer. M&S understood the assignment; they connected with their consumers with their soft colors and clear images. But this is just Easter, and there is a reason to celebrate every day. Brands should start investing in Emotion AI technologies, which helps understand human behavior in a speedy and scalable way. With the help of AI and Machine Learning Technologies like Facial Coding, Eye Tracking, Sentiment Analysis, and Voice AI.

This report is internal research by the Consumer Insights Team of Entropik Tech. Our team performs these studies on our Affect Lab platform which is cloud based, easy-to-use and delivers deep behavioural insights along with survey results, 4X faster than traditional research.  

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