Have you ever walked into a store and found yourself unexpectedly drawn to something that wasn’t on your list?
You might not be consciously aware of it, but music, scent and other sensory features can draw your attention and entice you to engage with a product you would have otherwise overlooked.
That’s an important edge for retailers in an environment where consumers are bombarded with choices and messaging screaming for their attention.
Multisensory Special Effects Printing for Added Impact
Research has shown that the more senses that are engaged by your product packaging or promotions, the greater the impact of your messaging. Special effects printing that employs a hidden “reveal” has the extra advantage of creating a sense of mystery and anticipation.
Hydrochromic special effects are a great way to make your brand stand out from the competition with ink that reacts to water to reveal a hidden image or messaging.
Here’s how it works. Hydrochromic ink is screened over an image. When water is applied, the ink coating becomes transparent, revealing the message or image underneath. While this type of promotion is popular with swimming pool, vacation and other water-themed promotions, its use is limited only by your imagination. For a recent trade show promotion both Evian and Olay distributed hydrochromic promotional cards that when wet, revealed a prize to be awarded. For the bottled water company, the just-apply-water effect could not have been more apt. For the skin care company, the theme helped build anticipation around an upcoming product launch with promises that the company would soon be “revealing something big…”
Hydrochromic Inks and a Canvas of Imagination
We recently used hydrochromic printing to create a poster for a national daycare chain that doubled as an art project for their littlest clients, who swept wet paintbrushes across the surface to reveal the full color picture beneath.
A car company used hydrochromic printing for great success with a direct mail promotion in which prospects applied water to game cards reveal hidden prizes.
We’ve also used hydrochromic printing to create a particularly on-brand direct mail promotion for a pool company, who made a splash with a just-add-water discount code hidden beneath the cool blue image of a swimming pool.
Learn More about Special Effects Printing for Your Next Project
At H&H Graphics, multisensory special effects are our specialty and we have a dedicated R&D team who loves nothing more than coming up with a new way to surprise and delight your clients. From one-of-a-kind textures, scents and colors to a wide variety of ways to incorporate a surprise reveal, we can help you create a campaign that is anything but ordinary. In fact, ordinary is just about the only thing we can’t do.
Have an idea for your next project that might be even more interesting if you added water? Give us a call or click on the link below. We can help you explore the most effective options for reaching your target audience.
