Package Design: What You See is What You Buy

It is amazing to me how some very average products do so well. How do they do it? Packaging! In my career, I have seen this, and been part of it, up close and personal. I was involved in the inception of L’eggs Pantyhose. Even wrote the tag line “Nothing Beats a Great Pair of L’eggs.” The success of L’eggs became a Harvard textbook study. It wasn’t the ad campaign. It wasn’t the pantyhose. It was the package design. The brilliant Herb Lubalin decided that since they were going to be sold in supermarkets, let’s put them in an egg. He did. And the rest is history.

Here’s a great (and fun) exercise to go through. Buy any three products in a category. Take them out of the package and put them on the table. Now mix them up…and taste them. Does the word commodity come to mind? The only thing that really separates them is the size of their marketing budget and package design. The cereal aisle is another great example of eye-catching science. The first three cereals you will notice, as if they are jumping off the shelf at you will be Cheerios (bright yellow box), Wheaties (bright orange box with an athlete on it) and (the big scoop of raisins) on the Post Raisin Brand box. The rest is a blur.

And did you ever notice, (of course you have) that when you open a bag of chips it appears to be half-full? It’s all by design my friends….package design.

-Richie