Seeking a dollop of distinction to debut products, including a reshaping treatment and a renewal night crème in its NIVEA Body® collection, Beiersdorf AG, based in Hamburg, Germany, looks to its secondary packaging.

Specifically, it selects a premium coated-one-side (C1S) paperboard, Crescendo®, as the substrate for cartons from MeadWestvaco (www.meadwestvaco.com/prg) that will impart a look and feel of luxury. Chief among these features are said to be a blue and white pearlescent coating suggesting the soft, luxurious skin the product promises and the addition of silver hot stamping that yields a twinkling suggestion of the starlit night sky.

The paperboard undergoes processing to achieve these effects while perfectly reproducing the NIVEA midnight-blue brand imagery while retaining the extremely bright white, with the lettering knocking out the characters from the dark-blue printing to let the carton board shine through. All of this is converted by Curtis Packaging (www.curtispackaging.com).

Comments Beiersdorf secondary packaging buyer Kristin Schlegel-Moore, “Our products are sold in high-end drug chains as well as Target, Wal-Mart, Walgreen's, CVS and mass merchandisers. It was essential that the exterior packaging for each product capture the consumer's eye amid a sea of competitors and drive purchase intent at the point of sale. The board is very bright, and it shows off our 'NIVEA Blue' very well. We also achieved much better pearl coating results than we had with previous suppliers.”

MeadWestvaco, 800/728-5015. www.meadwestvaco.com/prg.

Curtis Packaging Corp., 203/426-5861. www.curtispackaging.com.