People know Sesame Street from watching the lovable Muppets on TV, but it’s the licensed product business that supplies the majority of the iconic brand’s revenue. These products encompass thousands of SKUs and hundreds of partners in nearly every category imaginable—from soft and hard goods to food. So when we partnered with Sesame Workshop on a global packaging refresh, we knew we needed to develop a solution that was clear, simple, repeatable and flexible.

To accomplish this, we turned to the essence of the Sesame Street brand to help us connect with today’s moms. We focused on creating five simple rules based on retail truths and the brand’s essence to guide the entire global packaging system. Here’s what the Muppets taught us about making real connections with consumers:

Lesson 1: Think Outside the Can

We began this assignment with a deep dive with key Sesame Street divisions to understand their world. But when you work with a client, there is a tendency to think exclusively about the brand and potentially neglect other perspectives. Sesame Street’s perspective is important, but it’s not the only one.

A different perspective changes things. And getting other perspectives, especially those of important retail partners like Walmart counts. “Think outside the can” in this context doesn’t mean “come up with the most creative idea possible.” Instead, it’s about using a holistic approach that encompassed Sesame Street, the retail market and the consumer or human perspective to inform the best solution.

Lesson 2: Make It Heartfelt

Sesame Street is a welcoming and engaging community where there is genuine warmth and caring. As humans, we’re wired—it’s literally in our DNA—to connect with the faces of the Muppets because of their human-like characteristics. And this emotional connection, especially with another human or human-like character, is a good thing to know about as marketers. Because we know that people shop emotionally.

For Sesame Street, we had to ask ourselves: Are we using the Muppets strategically at retail? Can you spot their furry faces in two seconds? That’s the tiny amount of time a shopper will spend looking for a package. We discovered that Sesame Street’s most valuable assets—its characters—were being under utilized on the packaging. We enlarged the Muppets dramatically to make instant connections.

Lesson 3: Keep It Simple

Sesame Street pioneered children’s television with a bold, simple idea: educate kids in an entertaining way. But it’s a busy, crowded, rough-and-tumble world at retail, especially at the mass-market retailers where Sesame does most of its business. To help shoppers find Sesame Street products, we simplified the packages and put the focus back on the Muppets. There are diminishing returns for the information you pack on a package.

Rule 4: Be Different

The heart of Sesame Street comes from its outrageously lovable, huggable characters. With their yellow feathers and neon fur, they creatively capture our imagination and invite us to play. But how could we best use them to stand out in the colorful sea on retail shelves? We suggested the color white to cut through the sameness, but there were concerns. It’s expensive. It gets dirty. Hasbro, a key licensing partner, had found white problematic in the past.

We got on the phone with the director of sustainability for Walmart and brought back evidence that white was working in the roughest retail environment in the world. It’s a great color for strategic reasons (it stands out) and for the message it delivered (it’s good for you). To manage the concerns, we called our color strategy “white done right.” Not too much. Not too little. A balance. The final white packages set the perfect stage for both the colorful Muppets and the iconic Sesame Street sign logo.

Lesson 5: Lead With Fun

Sesame Street knows that the universal language of giggles is understood around the world, and the brand revolutionized the idea of making learning fun. On retail shelves, the packaging needed to encapsulate this same sense of fun. Moms know that Sesame Street is intrinsically educational, but they’re also looking for toys and other merchandise their children will enjoy. We placed the Muppets front and center to lead with the fun, but we still tell Moms the educational story on the back of the package. We designed a “Let’s Grow” panel that highlights a product’s enrichment benefits at a glance.

In the end, we knew we had the packaging right when a group of moms we showed them to started singing “sunny day” from the Sesame Street theme song. They’d instantly made a connection with those lovable furry Muppets.

Sesame Street® and associated characters, trademarks and design elements are owned and licensed by Sesame Workshop. © 2014 Sesame Workshop. All rights Reserved.