Remember the 80′s? Back then, a teenager with no singing ability could put on the most horrendous clothing combination and, by moving on the stage to music, become a hit pop music star. Admittedly, that still happens on rare occasion, but it is now few and far between. The day of the anything goes approach is over and that means business is not as usual.
At one time, food came from the farm to the grocer. Local buyers then would buy the amounts they needed and go cook their food in their kitchens with ovens and everything. The problem with that was it wasn’t glamorous – it took hard work to grow food and a great deal of time every day to prepare it at home. Over time, the home cooked family meal has been phased out and replaced with convenience to rival any luxury experienced by kings for millennia past.
Most of our society today is drowning in such a flashy, everything you need and need now mentality. Cooking is not only inconvenient, it is undesirable. No one wants to spend time in the kitchen when there is perfectly good fast food down the street and since time is money anyway, doesn’t it all even out? Sadly, it doesn’t, but the fast food companies have sucked in a lot of business through that single idea alone (because let’s face it, fast food is not real food).
Today, for a product to stand out, it needs to be presented boldly and with class. The correct packaging of a product can lead to its success, while the incorrect packaging will assuredly lead to failure. For instance, car sales have always been shaky for many of the companies. Once the big Japanese companies started rolling out car after car that beat the domestic versions consistently, the image of domestic cars dropped drastically. One old slogan if people had driven a domestic brand recently in an attempt to fight back against the foreign cars. It has only been recently when the cars were offered at enticingly low deals and touted as equals in quality (with foreign makes) that the sales have changed. Truly, a bad image will sink a ship, but a good one is hard to stop.
A good package can make the difference between a sale for your brand versus another. Whoever has the prettier bow wins, so to speak. When comparing fruit at the store, the most beautiful ones get to leave in the cart while the others stay on the shelf to rot. Similarly, a pair of plainly packaged headphones will sell much less often than the bright, flashy ones that advertise nothing that the other one doesn’t do as well. Presentation is key. Sometimes this can be done by your own talented employees, but sometimes it is better to employ the resources of a professional interactive agency to create the perfect packaging for your products.
Sales and pricing do affect the decisions of many buyers, but more so the image. A popular drink once pitched that self same idea by saying the opposite while showing popular sports players and “cool” scenes. This grabs attention. People are attracted to shiny, new objects just like children – it is just that the objects get bigger and more expensive as the child grows up.
Choose the right packaging and the product will sell. Don’t give in and believe that your product will sell itself. It won’t. Nothing just sells itself. Everything requires a voice to sound its arrival. Let your packaging be a loud and enticing voice so it will be heard above the din of your competitors.