Innovation You Just Can’t Keep a Lid On

Situation

Long known for its quality and packaging efficiency, Silgan Containers thought it was high time everyone heard about all the great ideas it had cooking. After all, Silgan Containers had innovated its way into being the largest food container manufacturer from its roots in hand-canning condensed milk way back in 1899. Ready to stake out this market position and about to introduce an exciting new technology to the U.S. market, Silgan called Slack Barshinger in as its marketing partner.

Marketing Challenge

Often the process of creating a new market position takes a lot of internal dialogue. The people in HQ say this, the folks in the Midwest say that. At Silgan, it didn’t take long for total agreement around its statement. Innovation. A strong customer focus. Vast capability to do what needs to be done. The position statement being agreed on, the tagline was a cinch: Finding Solutions. Creating Value.

Solution

In the midst of its positioning work, Silgan won the rights to exciting container technology that already was a proven success in Brazil. All it needed was a name and a rollout to U.S. food processors. Thus was born Dot•Top™, a recloseable, lift-off lid that tops both glass and metal and can be used with all kinds of foods and processes. The tagline? “Tops Everything™.”

We had a name. We had a tagline. Next we created a logo.
Dot•Top soon had everyone seeing spots—lots of bright ones—at Pack Expo and the National Food Processors Association meetings in Chicago where the product was unveiled. Unusual, eye-catching Dot•Top brochures told the Dot•Top story backwards and forwards. People were sent to the Dot•Top Spot, a hospitality suite where they could learn how Dot•Top was proven to be incredibly strong, safe for kids and the elderly—and a product differentiator that could make foods practically leap off the shelves.

But dots not all. Silgan pulled out all the stops at a soiree featuring an exclusive showing of the glittering Kremlin Gold exhibit at the Field Museum of Natural History. Silgan presented guests with gifts of a midnight-blue velvet bag filled with a specially designed Dot•Top can. Inside the can was a museum-quality reproduction Faberge egg. The can’s label drew the connection between Faberge’s jewel-encrusted adornment of the egg, nature’s most perfect container, and Dot•Top. Both are perfect containers made more so.

Outcome

Silgan introduced its Web site at www.silgancontainers.com, including an informative splash page. Every element of the colorful site adds up to its market position. “Your success is our success” speaks to Silgan’s working hand in hand with customers. “100-plus years of innovation” shows the Silgan story for what it is: the work of people who kept building a better mousetrap, or in this case, a better food container. And the visitor has no doubt of the magnitude of this company’s reach when, as you sign off, a daughter window shows calculations of hundreds of thousands of cans and ends that Silgan made while you were visiting the Web site.

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