Standing Out
Live up to your potential!
Posted Jul 12, 02:28 pm in business, business models, improvements, marketing
It always perplexes me as to why many manufacturers in saturated industries don’t take more efforts to differentiate themselves from their competitors. Take beer for example. Budweiser, Miller, and Coors have been fighting in the domestic beer market for ages, and despite the aggressive, multimedia advertising campaigns, the multi-million dollar Superbowl ads, and the painstaking and often pathetic efforts in making ‘sticky’ slogans, you’ve got products that many consumers still think are pretty much interchangeable (even if they have a brand preference). There are other beer brands too, like Sam Adams, Dogfish Head, Sierra Nevada, Heineken, etc. But oddly— except for Red Stripe— they all come in bottles that look exactly the same. Sure, some are green and some are brown, and some are clear, but in terms of the bottle packaging, they’re pretty much the same.
If I were the maker of a brand that needed to build some equity, I would forgo the usual bottle and go with something that would generate interest in people who normally wouldn’t notice my beer. And I’d give them something that might make them buy my beer for a reason other than the beer itself!
I’d make my bottles blockish (perhaps the Jagermeister bottle might be a good model to imagine), and make them so they could interlock. That way people would feel inclined to keep them around the house and find uses for them, like propping things up, building shelves, making huge towers, using them as bookends, etc. The sort of things that college students might want to do. (SEE UPDATE AT BOTTOM)
This is only one example of what you could do. There are many cool things you could have instead of useless round beer bottles. How about a beer bottle in which glass can be easily punched out and be converted into a tobacco waterpipe? College students would love that. Maybe it could be something you could keep your change or pencils in. I haven’t invested a lot of time thinking about other potential ways to change package design because it’s not my job. But just think about how things might change if people wanted your product for more reasons than just the obvious one.
I think the people behind M&M Minis realized this when they started packaging their product in little plastic containers that would perfectly hold a roll of quarters (which many people, particularly young people, could use to hold their laundry money). I think the people in charge of Icebreakers, Altoids, Eclipse Mints, and Mentos Minis also realized this when they started producing useful, well-designed, and reusable containers for their candies. Sure, they are more expensive— a pack of Icebreaker Sours costs some $2.30, which is a lot for candy— but people want those containers.
Perhaps many companies out there might have products that might be able to take a lesson from these guys. Of course, there are logistical hurdles, but there are always logistical hurdles. Wouldn’t it be better to make your product different, to have people want it for many reasons, and have them looking at your products all day instead of just when they’re using it for its primary purpose?
UPDATE:
Apparently Heineken has now developed a brick-like bottle, just like the one I described.