It's a wrap for Anacin

When a national retailer requested that Insight Pharmaceuticals remove the carton for its new Anacin Advanced Headache Formula, the drug company was understandably nervous about the change. Langhorne, PA-based Insight Pharmaceuticals had traditionally presented its Anacin line horizontally in a carton, with the bottle lying on its side.

To comply with the retailer's needs, the product would not only lose valuable billboard space, but it would have to be presented vertically to meet new shelf space reductions. Furthermore, Insight was losing the space used to present drug facts information, which is extensive for analgesics.

To meet the retailer's requirements, Insight decided to use an extended-text label. "We were fortunate at the time to have a packaging engineer on staff," says Larry Freedman, Insight's director of business innovation. "He knew that applying a wrapped label to a round bottle could be complicated, so we needed a good quality product."

The silver lining

Insight turned to WS Packaging Group (www.wspackaging.com) to design an extended-text label for the one-size Anacin bottle. The company chose WS Packaging's EasyTab extended-text label from its MultiVision label line. The label features a precurve top panel that makes it possible to wrap around tight-diameter surfaces. The top panel wraps completely around the bottle. The base of the label is made with a die cut in a portion of the label. When machine-applied, that gap closes to accommodate the wrapping of the label structure around the surface without tearing, splitting, bunching, or wrinkling.

According to Paulette Carnes, MultiVision product development manager, one of the biggest challenges was designing a label that included all of the regulatory information but at the same time maintained brand identity. "The customer wanted the outside of the label to be all about the brand," she explains. "We designed single sheets that opened and reclosed so if someone didn't want to buy the product, they could reseal it and put it back on the shelf." The label has a pressure-sensitive "lift here" tab made with coated-two-side paper that allows consumers to easily lift, read, and reseal the label.

Another significant challenge was achieving the silver metallic look that Insight wanted. WS Packaging recommended a 60-lb coated-one-side, bright silver foil label stock for the primary display panel. The company ran two line trials with various coatings, over-laminates, and different screens. Insight Pharmaceuticals eventually selected a 1.4-mil matte polypropylene over-laminate for the silver metallized primary display panel to create a tactile feel and matte image. The final base label was a 60-lb white semi-gloss finish. The finished split-base, pressure-sensitive labels measured 2x6 in., and were printed with a combination of UV and water-based flexographic inks in 11 colors.

WS Packaging worked closely with Insight's co-packer, Quality Packaging Specialists (www.qpsiusa.com), to ensure that the labels were applied efficiently. Jeff Wozniak, executive vice president for the co-packer's Steritek pharmaceutical packaging division, says that minor adjustments were made to their Q10 Quadrel Labeling Systems (www.quadrel.com) labeler to accommodate the new labels. "In the beginning, we were getting some skewing from the surface layer that adheres to the bottle, and the second layer wasn't aligning properly," he says. "We made some adjustments to the setup and tension of the machinery, and that fixed it."

WS Packaging added a six-foot leader tape to each roll of labels so that QPSI could thread the labeling equipment without wasting labels. "WS Packaging recognized how expensive these labels were," says Freedman. "They wanted to make sure loss was minimal."

The labels are engineered to open and close under normal conditions for the shelf life of the product. According to Carnes, the ability to open and reseal over and over again is based on a proprietary coating used on the label's base ply.

Insight is pleased with the project's success and so is the retailer, says Freedman. The bright silver label maintains the product's shelf appeal while meeting regulatory requirements-and the elimination of the carton has resulted in cost savings per package. Freedman did not comment on cost savings, or whether the carton elimination changed the product's retail price. The carton reduction has also had a significant environmental impact: Removing the chipboard box for 60,000 Anacin bottles sold to the retailer result in saving 3,480,000 sq-in. of paperboard disposed in landfills.

-Kassandra Kania, Contributing Editor