Glass Packaging that Emotionally Connects with Consumers
From Methodology To Mission
Brands have long understood that emotions drive choice. The harder question is how to turn something as intangible as emotion into strategy and positioning—and ultimately into something consumers can actually see, touch and experience.
The collaboration between BRAND AVIATORS® and O-I Glass began with this challenge and a fundamental strategic question: what does glass mean to people beyond its functional properties? Drawing on biology, the science of human motivation and THE WHEEL OF MOTIVES®, we decoded the deeper emotional territory of glass and explored the role it could play in creating meaning for brands.
From there, the work progressively expanded. Different human motives could first provide direction for brand strategy and positioning, defining the emotional territory a brand could authentically own. That same territory could then be translated into the physical language of glass—form, proportions, texture, weight, transparency, color and tactile experience—allowing the package to become an expression of the positioning itself.
This represented an important reversal of the conventional process. Rather than creating a bottle first and then researching or rationalizing the emotions it generated, the intended emotional meaning could become an input into what was designed from the beginning. Strategy and packaging were no longer separate worlds: one could systematically inform the other.
But perhaps the most significant evolution came when this thinking moved beyond individual projects and became part of O-I's own market-facing proposition.
In the article “Glass Packaging that Emotionally Connects with Consumers”, O-I introduces “Engineering Emotions”—the idea that glass packaging can be intentionally developed to help brands create meaningful emotional connections with consumers. Packaging is presented not simply as a container or aesthetic asset, but as a strategic medium capable of embodying positioning, shaping experience and differentiating brands at the critical moment of choice.
The significance went beyond better packaging. THE WHEEL OF MOTIVES® was providing a bridge from human emotion to strategic meaning, and from strategic meaning to something O-I could actually engineer and manufacture for its clients.
This also marked an important evolution in our journey together. Emotion was no longer simply something to understand, measure or communicate. It was becoming something that could inform strategy, be translated into design principles and ultimately be built into the physical product itself.
And for O-I, that capability was becoming part of its own value proposition.
What began by decoding the emotional meaning of glass had evolved into a new mission: Engineering Emotions.