PaperSpecsGallery.com Presents: La Mer Matte Maze Box (Video)

This packaging for La Mer lotion is definitely a contagious design. If you have read Jonah Berger’s bestselling book Contagious, you know what I’m talking about. (If you haven’t, Jonah is a professor of marketing at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and an expert on word-of-mouth - aka viral - marketing.)

We begin with an arresting blue slip case, its front a finger-pleasing delight thanks to blind embossing that mimics the “micro capsules” at the heart of this serum. But never having been one for delaying gratification, I quickly slide the main package from the case and voila– I’m back in the arcades of my childhood once more.

Click here or below to watch the video:

That’s because the in-house design team at La Mer, working together with MW Luxury Packaging, used the letters that make up the acronym MATTE (Micro-capsule Auto-matte Traceless Transformation Everyone) as the basis for a fun - and this is the crucial part - functional pinball game! OK, there’s no spring-loaded plunger to set a ball in motion, but there is a ball bearing in a pocket at the bottom of the box held in place by a concealed magnet. Simply move it to the “Start Here” mark on the right, then move the package around to guide it through the maze until it ends up in the pocket on the far left with a pleasing kerplunk.

The letters making up the labyrinth were intricately die cut from ethylene-vinyl acetate (EVA) foam and covered with printed card stock, while the rest of the box was offset printed on white 85 gsm art paper. And naturally at the center of the package rests the lotion bottle itself, easily removed with a tug of the color-matched ribbon beneath.

This the second time that La Mer’s design team and MW Luxury Packaging have wowed us with their packaging for La Mer, which pretty much makes their collaborations our current favorite “seaside” activity.