Power of Packaging

You don't have to read Chinese to know exactly what this is.

At home I do my best to eat whole foods: fruits, vegetables, eggs, meat, things that don’t come in a package with food labels.  I’m not perfect, but I try.  However, since I’ve been in China my diet has been very laden with packaged food.  It’s not that I can’t get regular food here, I can, and do.  It’s that when I go to the market to pick up groceries for my room I can’t seem to help myself and the incredible feeling of “home” that overcomes me when I recognize something.

If I wasn’t so lazy, I would go look some information up on the psychological aspects of packaging design.  But let’s face it, my internet connection is very reminiscent of dial up circa 1995, and I’m just not that motivated.  Instead let me tell you what the outcome is:  I’m wandering through the stores here, and I’m overwhelmed with stiumuli.  Not only are there packages of familiar things that I don’t recognize, but there are unfamiliar products as well:

File Spicy Duck Tongue under "Things I won't find in the Tempe WalMart"

I can’t read any of the writing on the packaging, and I can’t understand the words to the songs playing in the store.  On top of that, clerks will approach me asking to help me but I can’t understand a word they are saying.  If I’m truly motivated to find something (like when I wanted to buy a spoon) I will whip out my iphone and consult the Chinese/English dictionary app.  But most often I just smile and walk on. 

So my head is spinning, and I start to feel stressed.  I just want to pick up whatever the minimum items I need (sometimes just water for drinking and teeth brushing) and get out as soon as possible.  But I turn down an aisle and all of a sudden my eyes fall upon something that I recognize.  It doesn’t even have to have visible English on it – colors, packaging shapes, cartoon characters, etc all make up packaging elements that bring about a sense of recognition that happens before I know it.  The first product that did that for me here was coke and coke zero, but soon thereafter I found this section

Oreos!  I see the package, I recognize it as something I know , and I feel happy.  It’s like my brain can take a breather and say, finally, something that makes sense, even if it is cookies.   I can’t tell you the last time I bought Oreos at home, but I’ve eaten them here.  I’ve also gotten my fill of these

Now I’ve also seen and recognized these:

But just as at home I think that Pringles are just a little overpriced here.  You pay a premium for the non-broken chip can design.  Also, who wants to eat seaweed chips? 

Cheese isn’t a big favorite here, so it took some scouring the dairy aisles, but I finally found this somewhat familiar gem:

I’ve eaten several wheels of this stuff.  I’m not sure it’s real cheese, but I’ve seen it in the refrigerator cases at my local Safeway at home, and it’s all I can get here, so I bought it.

I have the same response to fast food brands.  I recognized the Pizza Hut “Hut” logo before I ever saw the English words.  Interestingly enough, Pizza Hut is very upscale here with fancy dining rooms and everything (I’m supposed to eat there Sunday and I hope to report on that experience). 

My heart leapt when I saw the Subway branding on the side of the mall.  The experience of ordering was slightly different (the line moved from left to right instead of right to left and the workers didn’t understand English.  There were lots of pointing), but I was so happy just looking down at the “Subway “ logo on my sandwich bag I didn’t care that the concoction wasn’t quite delicious when I ate it.  I accompanied it with that mini Snickers bar. from the local market.

The professional lesson that I’m taking away from these observations is that the branding elements the university provides really can evoke strong powerful emotions in our audience, even unintended ones and hopefully they are all positive.  But we have to continue to use them consistently so that they are recognizable and representative of “home” even if found in another country, in another language.