Home Care

In home care, communication often faces the challenge of true differentiation within a highly competitive sector, where on the one hand the risk of commoditisation can lead to pure price competition, while on the other brand loyalty passed down from one generation to the next can be difficult to disrupt. This means that at shelf a product needs to convince consumers within just a few seconds while communicating value, and at the same time complying with all regulatory requirements: warnings, pictograms and mandatory wording that all require their own space. As an agency specialising in home care branding, ATC – All Things Communicate works towards these objectives for brands ranging from multinational companies to family-run businesses, across laundry, dishwashing, surfaces and bathroom care.

Formats reflect a changing category. Concentrates and refills have rewritten the hierarchies of bottle packaging, because they need to communicate both effectiveness and reduced bulk, asking the pack to explain a different dosage from the one consumers are used to. In refill packaging and concentrates, sustainability and performance promises need to be understood at the same glance, an area where we also work with recycled-plastic solutions.

Detergent packaging also has to accommodate requirements that do not originate in marketing. Hazard pictograms, risk statements and mandatory legal wording occupy space and often conflict with the visual hierarchy the product would otherwise require, while environmental claims are increasingly subject to regulatory scrutiny. We work closely with clients’ teams so that these constraints are built into the project from the outset, rather than treated as corrections during the final approval stage.