Marketers of ice cream, beer, soup and even shampoo are discovering what stylish women everywhere know: It's totally awkward when two guests show up at the party wearing the same little black dress.</br>Anheuser-Busch InBev recently introduced its first black beer bottle, complete with a black label, for Beck's Sapphire. Häagen-Dazs, owned by General Mills Inc., has just brought out a gelato line in black containers.</br>
Even the once-cheery laundry detergent aisle, a veritable '60s kaleidoscope of blues, greens and oranges, is going darker. So is soup.</br>
"The use of black has really exploded," says Mike Cecil, senior brand manager of Renuzit air freshener from Henkel AG's Dial Corp., which in August introduced a new line of cone fresheners packaged in black.</br>
But a Renuzit rival, Air Wick from Reckitt Benckiser, launched its own black packaging for a line of air fresheners named for the national parks last month. Black helps companies "break through the clutter," says Domenick Tiziano, senior brand manager for Air Wick.</br>
Big supermarket brands invest countless hours and dollars studying which colors and graphics will grab the eye of hurried shoppers maneuvering through crowded store aisles. So the more-or-less simultaneous adoption of black by a brand and its rival would seem like an unfortunate coincidence.</br>
Not at all, Renuzit's Mr. Cecil says. His competitor Air Wick is using black for candles, scented oils and automatic sprayers—but not cones.</br>
Because most stores stock air fresheners according to form, not brand, the two brands say their black packages are unlikely to sit next to each other on shelves.</br>
Some marketers say black's popularity is a reaction to the continued lackluster economy, which has consumers gravitating to lower-priced items. Black subtly conveys "premium," they say.</br>
People want premium products so long as they don't cost too much, says Pat McGauley, vice president of innovation at Anheuser-Busch. Consumers are saying, "I can't drive a high-end car but I can drink a slightly more premium beer without breaking the bank."</br>
Beck's Sapphire, which Anheuser-Busch says is brewed with "German sapphire aroma hops," costs 20% to 25% more than regular beer.</br>
Shampoo rivals are also dressing alike for the packaging prom. In January, L'Oréal SA launched Advanced Haircare shampoos and conditioners, a new line in sleek black bottles—the same month when Procter &amp; Gamble Co. brought Pantene's black-clad Expert Collection to stores.</br>
The use of black is especially striking for Pantene, which has relied on white for its packages for so long. People inside P&amp;G even sometimes use the phrase "wall of white" to refer to Pantene's territory in the shampoo section.</br>
Kevin Crociata, marketing director of P&amp;G's North American Hair Care business, wouldn't comment as to whether he is worried about Pantene's and L'Oréal's dueling black packages. A spokeswoman for L'Oréal declined to comment.</br>
With so many brands in black, there is always a danger consumers will be turned off, or worse, simply won't notice.
Renuzit is already updating its black air-freshener packages, which hit store shelves in summer, adding brightness to the images and text to help them pop even more on store shelves.</br>
"Our launch packaging ended up a bit darker than we set out," says Dial's Mr. Cecil. "Being lead to market with black in a category brings with it some learning curves."</br>
Black has been a packaging standard in consumer electronics for years but once was considered taboo for other products, including food, packaging experts say.</br>
"You wouldn't even have the conversation about the color because it had too much negative baggage," says Rick Barrack, chief creative officer at CBX, a packaging design firm in New York.</br>
That changed in the economic boom of the 1980s, when more companies adopted black packages to signal luxury, says David Turner, partner at the package-design firm Turner Duckworth.</br>
Breyers ice cream from Uniliver was among the products in that wave, he said. The trend eventually lost steam.</br>
An early sign of black's comeback came in 2010, when Kimberly Clark Corp., working with CBX, introduced a black package for U by Kotex. In the feminine-protection aisle, the product was a contrast to the pastel hues typically used on products there.</br>
U by Kotex has built up a 7% market share in the $2.6 billion U.S. business.</br>
For Beck's Sapphire, Anheuser-Busch did extensive testing, showing consumers computer simulation of store shelves and using eye-tracking technology to observe how well they saw the product compared with others.</br>
Anheuser's Mr. McGauley says his company had "some reservations" when it was contemplating using a black bottle and black label because, he says, "black can look heavy."</br>
It added an image of a glass of golden beer to the six-pack holder, reassuring consumers that the beer itself wasn't black.</br>
Pantene's Expert Collection products sell for about $8.99, compared with a base price of about $3.99 for regular Pantene. "The technology inside is really breakthrough," says Mr. Crociata at P&amp;G. One of the formulas has a thickening agent that "gives you the feeling of 6,500 more hair strands in your ponytail."</br>
Dial says the new Renuzit air fresheners have roughly 25% more premium fragrance oils and cost about 25 cents more than the company's existing cone fresheners.</br>
"It's about finding new ways to signal affordable luxury," says Mr. Cecil at Dial.</br>
In summer 2011, P&amp;G brought out Downy Unstopables, a line of black-packaged scent boosters that claims to give laundry "up to 12 weeks of freshness."</br>
The product has exceeded expectations, generating $50 million in sales in the first year, a Downy brand spokeswoman said, and it's on track to double sales this year. It sells for about 32 cents an ounce, compared with 9 cents an ounce for regular Downy.</br>
Product makers are under unrelenting pressure to differentiate their products in the sea of cardboard and plastic in supermarkets.</br>
The number of new product introductions has exploded over the past decade. In 2012, 40,194 new products hit the market, up 52% from 2002, when 26,412 products were introduced, according to market research firm Mintel.</br>
"Packaging needs to work harder now," says Benjamin Punchard, Mintel's senior global packaging analyst.</br>
For Häagen-Dazs, it's critical to catch shoppers' attention fast. "A lot of people don't enjoy walking down the frozen-food aisle. It's cold and you are slightly uncomfortable," says Cady Behles, brand manager for Häagen-Dazs, which just launched a gelato line in black containers.</br>
Häagen-Dazs conducted focus groups with 150 consumers last June, months ahead of the gelato launch.</br>
Participants in one group saw the new black packages nestled amid other ice creams in mock store shelves. A second group saw a gold-and-white container.</br>
Overwhelmingly, Ms. Behles says, consumers found the black packages were more eye-catching and appealing.</br>

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