2008 Editors’ Choice Award Winner: Personal Care

Prevage Anti-Aging Night Cream
by Elizabeth Arden

From formulation to packaging, everything about Prevage Anti-Aging Night Cream is advanced. The skin cream itself contains encapsulated, time-released ingredients, such as Idebenone and Mega Complex-A, that help to boost the skin’s anti-aging repair process. As for packaging, the product’s jar is truly innovative.

From the outside, the silver jar looks pretty traditional, complete with a lid that screws onto the base. When the lid is removed, however, customers can see that the jar’s mouth is covered with a rubbery orange membrane. (This membrane is biinjection-molded onto the jar.) When customers press on a raised area located in the center of the membrane, the skin cream is pushed out and dispensed through a small opening in the membrane. Customers can then swipe their fingers over the membrane to get the cream onto their fingers in order to apply it. By allowing customers to access product without having to stick their fingers in the jar, the rubbery membrane protects the cream from outside contaminants.

“Customers find the packaging unique and easy to use,” says Jessica Fish, vice president of global skin care marketing for Elizabeth Arden. “It allows them to avoid dipping their fingers into the product, keeping the formula uncontaminated and fresh. They also like that the rubber dispensing mechanism allows them to dispense the precise amount of product they prefer.” As customers exert more pressure on the membrane, more product is dispensed.

The entire package is provided by Qualipac (Wayne, NJ). It was initially a stock design before Qualipac customized it for Elizabeth Arden. “Since this is the third product in our Prevage anti-aging treatment line, the design challenge was to marry [the jar’s] aesthetic to [that of] the existing products,” says Laura Hawboldt, senior package design director for Elizabeth Arden. “We aimed for a sleek, high-tech look, appropriate for the kind of product Prevage is.”

Hawboldt adds, “It was fortunate that our supplier, Qualipac, provided us with this interesting idea of a rubber dispensing membrane. It was a perfect match for our Prevage Anti-Aging Night Cream product because [the system] protects the formula from air and light.”

Qualipac says that it designed the package with the growing anti-aging market in mind. Anti-aging products, especially luxury ones, often contain extremely active ingredients that are most efficacious when they are pure, says Eric Vanin, Qualipac’s vice president of sales.

Even though the packaging is complex, it’s still very easy to understand how to use it. The act of pushing down on the membrane’s raised center is intuitive. “We did not want to make something that was complicated to use,” says Vanin. “You don’t have to open a pamphlet to understand how the package works.”

Vanin adds that Qualipac did not want to create a package concept that was too far out from what customers were used to. “In our research, we found that women who use skin care products were used to using jars with screw-on caps. It’s something that’s been done for generations. We didn’t want there to be any kind of cultural shock, so we made sure that our design was something that customers would be comfortable with.”

By finding a way to combine sophisticated technology and an easy-to-use format, this Prevage jar is definitely a winner. “I love this package,” says awards panelist Alan Bodker, executive director of Origins package development.