Stimulate Craving

by Donna Sturgess

Do customers, or some subset of your customers, crave your product?  Craving is a response that stimulates an immediate impulse to buy.  If you want people to crave your product, you have to project a meaningful story that makes people want to connect and buy. The product sitting on a retail shelf, and eventually on the consumer’s home shelf, is the media space your brand owns.  If your package doesn’t tell a story that engages buyers, it won’t stimulate a craving and the desire to pick up a product and buy it in the moment.

Leaders so often leaders fuss about the size of the brand logo on the product when what they should be fussing about is the brand story and whether it is projecting through the product and package. “My management doesn’t understand that idea,” someone once said to me. “They understand it in advertising don’t they? ” I replied.  So why doesn’t that thinking extend to product and packaging?

A great example of a package story comes from the South African winery Klein Constantia that produces “The Bees Knees” limited edition honey. The elegant yet playful packaging tells a story from the single bee on its way into the box, inviting you to open it, to the world of bees and honey on the inside. There are even small die cut bees packaged inside each box.  A winery understands how to break out in a crowded category by creating differentiation through innovative packaging.  The Bees Knees tells its story to stand out from the commoditized plastic bears and squeeze bottles of honey that crowd the shelves.

Look at products and packages you are selling today and see if the gist of the story you want to communicate is coming through.  If it isn’t, then you are missing a big opportunity to stimulate craving for your brand.  Now look again at the above photo of The Bees Knees packaging and think about how your product can step away from its category conventions and excite people emotionally to the heights of craving.

imagecredit:polyvore & thedieline

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Donna Sturgess is the President and Co-founder of Buyology Inc and former Global Head of Innovation for GlaxoSmithKline. Her latest book is Eyeballs Out: How To Step Into Another World, Discover New Ideas, and Make Your Business Thrive.