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Packaged LivesWe’re surrounded, literally. Packaging is so pervasive it seems like it’s taken over our lives. While useful for storing and transporting all types of products, it also makes up half the world’s garbage. Thank heavens (and science) that a new generation of “smart” packaging, which uses fewer contaminants, is on the way. Practically everything comes in a package. Even our food, from sodas in unbreakable bottles to eggs nestled in cardboard or foam cartons and cookies in bright foil wrappers. How many of our purchasing decisions are dictated by the shape, color and feel of those packages? San Francisco-based market expert Louis Cheskin and his team have performed a range of studies on consumer perception and how sensations are transmitted via product packaging. In one experiment, they replaced 15 percent of the color green with the color yellow on 7Up bottles. The result? In a taste test, consumers found the unaltered beverage to have a stronger lemon flavor. “Don’t change my 7Up, please!” was the gist of their reaction. There are hundreds of similar examples, with millions of dollars invested by companies to snag consumers via product packaging. Think about it: Are canned peaches more alluring in a tin can or a glass jar? The American Heritage Dictionary describes a package as “a container in which something is packed for storage or transportation.” So, even our cars could be seen as packages in which we are the objects being transported. Let’s take it one step further and consider that the ultimate package may in fact be our skin. Skin is a living wrapper, a binding that keeps us together and separates the inside of our bodies from the outside world. Our packaging not only defines us by giving us a unique appearance that lets our friends and loved ones distinguish us from the other packaged multitudes, it also is the boundary that lets us separate self from everything else. Our skin is not the only form of packaging supplied by nature. Eggs are the packages in which new chickens grow, cocoons are the packages that caterpillars spin for themselves as shelters in which they can turn into butterflies, and shells are the packages that turtles and snails carry on their backs. They all serve almost the same functions as industrially produced packaging: protection, storage and/or transportation (but not marketing). Although a peacock’s plumage during mating could enter into the category of advertising, couldn’t it? |
