NOTICE ME!
Don't snicker at eye catching labels...
If you've had a successful product for years and everyone knows its name you might need to plan for marketing before you start to blend in. Even after a successful campaign or shelf life, ads still need to catch your eye in the middle of a crowded street or store.
New and funny or moving messages need to be incorporated into every aspect of your business so they always stand out.
If you see a red cross stamped on a folder, a bald muscular guy cleaning tile, or a gecko dancing across a billboard, you immediately recognize the companies. If you see a Toucan lurking around in the cereal aisle you’ll remember Fruit Loops and if you see yellow arches down the street you know what’s there.
Snickers doesn’t have a mascot or ubiquitous storefront symbol and it always relied on its plain brown wrapper and large label name. It worked for years, decades, and it was always easy to spot a Snickers candy bar in the small displays. Years later the internet and mass advertising in stores and streets has shrouded the world in 24/7 moving color and image. Add a saturated candy market with a zillion options and longer aisles and Snickers had to rethink their labels.
It’s a rule of marketing to engage your audience and feed their needs. Whet the ego’s appetite and you can win an audience that wants to engage, feel part of the game, the joke, the experience. Snickers started a line of new labels that at first were different names so just like choosing yourself on a keychain you could choose yourself in a candy bar. Then they added to the fun and made choosing a cheap candy bar a sharing experience so you could buy your friend a bar that said either your state of mind or his.
The labels match their ad campaign that insists you will feel better after eating a Snickers bar. The before and after TV ads are funny and eye catching and the product labels, while simpler, are just as effective. Grumpy? Whiny? Confused? Eat this and you won’t be. Chew on that the next time you think about marketing messages…What does your message do?
Morty Silber, CEO
Mad Strategies Inc.
a Wizard of Ads Partner