Packaging: September 07, 1998 issue of New Thinking

September 07, 1998 New Thinking:
Packaging

Website content management

Home I About I Services I Clients I Contact

New Thinking Home

Subject Classification
Reader Feedback
Subscribing
Unsubscribing
2006
2005
2004
2003
2002
2001
2000
1999
1998
1997
1996

Books by
Gerry McGovern

Content Critical

Gaining competitive advantage through high-quality web content

The Web Content
Style Guide

The essential guide
for online writers, editors and managers

September 07, 1998

Packaging

By Gerry McGovern

Have you ever actually seen Absolut ‘vodka’ being advertised? Think for a moment. Certainly, a lot of us would be familiar with advertisements for the Absolut vodka brand and bottle. Rarely, however, do we see the vodka itself being advertised. In fact, the whole stress in the advertising for Absolut is to do with the shape of the bottle and images based on that shape, rather than the vodka liquid the bottle houses.

How much of a car is packaging? The primary objective of a car is transportation - moving things, whether they be people or goods, from A to B. Whereas, for example, a motorcycle hasn’t much packaging, a car has a lot of it in order to protect its contents, either from the weather or from crashes.

In some ways you could say that a brand is a type of packaging, wrapping itself around the product, guaranteeing a certain quality and consistency. It is often said that Guinness is a drink as much drunk with the eyes as with the mouth. Guinness drinkers like to see a nice solid, creamy white head. Some Guinness drinkers judge the quality of a particular pint by the way the head leaves rings on the inside of the glass as it is drunk. This seems to indicate the solidity and body of the head and pint (and also informs you of how many gulps you needed to finish the pint).

Over the years I have heard numerous stories of people enjoying and praising their pint of Guinness when in fact they had been given, either deliberately or accidentally, a different brand of stout. I have read about blind tests for lager where very few were able to guess what brand they were drinking.

We don’t drink to drink anymore, do we? We don’t eat to eat. We don’t drive to drive. We don’t wear clothes to wear clothes. Most everything we do today – those of us in the wealthy world anyway – contains a statement. We buy things not just because of the product itself but also because of the package and brand.

As we begin to spend more time in cyberspace, how do we keep making statements about ourselves that our brands and packages make today? While there is an obvious place for brands in cyberspace, the role of packaging is less obvious. Digital things don’t need so much packaging. They are delivered in bits and bytes. And because of bandwidth constraints, the less packaging there is the better.

A lot of the time companies have hidden similar products behind different packaging. In these increasingly standardized and commoditized days, one beer tastes much the same as another, one car drives much the same as another, one vodka … So, when you take away the packaging, you take away much of the style, you take away the statement.

It’s a bare, no frills place, this Internet of today. You have to cut the packaging and get to the product. What is the product? What makes us different while we wait for bandwidth to flow and all those colorful images to make us different?

I’ve thought about this question for a long time. The only answer I can come up with is a simple one. What makes us different is ourselves. What makes an organization different is its people. People – our ability to communicate with and build relationships with other people.

Gerry McGovern

Next issue: Landing in the gutter
Previous issue: Two sides of communities
New Thinking homepage

New Thinking Newsletter
Subscribe to this free weekly newsletter covering the role and function of content on the Web.
More info | Privacy policy
Read the current issue

Content management seminar feedback
"Gerry's presentation was very well received by the more than 400 higher education delegates. I've chaired this meeting since 1994 and very few speakers have generated the same level of enthusiasm. Wit and wisdom is always an unbeatable combination."
Bob Johnson, American Marketing Association

“Excellent presenter ... thought-provoking and relevant. I hope we can persuade him to visit us again one day.”
Malcolm Davison
The British Association of Communicators in Business

"Hearing Gerry McGovern speaking, one can feel that he truly masters the subject of content management. He was voted ‘best speaker of the conference’ by delegates."
Toon Lowette
European Association of Directory Publishers

Find out more about Gerry McGovern's seminars

Digital things don’t need so much packaging. They are delivered in bits and bytes.