New Headline, Same Great Column
By Paul Lukas

(FORTUNE Magazine) – If you happened to find yourself shopping in your supermarket's pet food aisle about four years ago, you might have noticed an unusual claim on boxes of Alpo dry cat food. Instead of the usual sales chatter like "Great New Taste!" or "More Nutritious Than Ever!" the boxes featured a burst calling attention to a completely different aspect of the product. It read, "New Package Design!"

Any first-year business student understands a package design's value as a sales and marketing tool, but that value has traditionally been kept on an implicit, seductive level--put your product in an attractive wrapper in keeping with your target market's aesthetic sensibilities, and you'll move more units. But as demonstrated by the Alpo example (the first of its type that I'm aware of), today's package designs are no longer content merely to shill for their respective products. On merchandise ranging from chocolate-covered raisins to toilet paper, more and more packages are now explicitly calling attention to themselves, as if to suggest that consumers are more interested in the packaging than in the product itself--probably a shrewd marketing assessment, given the extent to which brands and logos have become elements of contemporary pop culture.

More recently, this trend has been taken a step further, as food products like Lay's potato chips and Ovaltine have begun carrying bursts that read, "New Package, Same Great Taste!" This wording is particularly interesting because it runs counter to the longtime marketing strategy of implying that a product has been improved simply by revamping its container. By telling consumers that a product still has the "same great taste" it's always had, regardless of how drastic a design makeover it may have undergone, marketers are essentially saying, "Same old crap, different wrapper." How's that for a snappy sales pitch?

The latest development on this front came several months ago, when packs of Thomas' English Muffins began sporting the following announcement: "Coming Soon...New Package, Same Great Taste!" An illustration of the forthcoming design appeared along with the burst. Aside from scaling new heights in inanity (think about it: "Coming Soon...Same Great Taste," oh, boy!), this campaign clearly set a new standard in postmodern marketing: Instead of simply crowing about itself, this package was actually heralding its own replacement. The new design showed up in stores about six weeks later.

While it's amusing to imagine legions of brand-loyal Thomas' devotees losing sleep each night while anxiously awaiting the new design's arrival, Thomas' marketing spokesman Tony Lavin said the campaign was meant to be informative, not to generate consumer anticipation. "We wanted to make sure there wasn't any misunderstanding among consumers that the product was changing," he explained. "So we decided to make sure our loyal customers would know that while this may be a new package, it's still the same great taste." In other words, the burst was a warning shot, a polite way of saying, "Don't be alarmed--we're jazzing up the graphics to attract a larger market share, but you steady customers can go right on stuffing yourselves with English muffins."

Lavin was noncommittal when asked if the packaging tail is wagging the product dog these days, maintaining that the Thomas' pedigree makes the brand conveniently exempt from such concerns. "I think it depends on the product you're marketing," he said. "Thomas' has always stood for the gold standard in the baking segment, so I don't think we've reached the point where we're selling the package and not the product."

Maybe not, but then why did Thomas' decide to change its packaging in the first place? "We wanted to attract younger consumers by making the package more contemporary," said Lavin, essentially acknowledging that even gold standards occasionally need to polish their demographics. "And the new design creates a nice 'billboard' effect in the bread aisle."

He's right--the new cardboard tray is a tasteful, handsome updating of the previous version, which had logged more than a decade of service. And despite insisting that his product inherently transcends its packaging, Lavin gave a hint regarding where his real feelings on the matter may lie: "So many consumers do shop by package. They may not say so, but they actually do--they just don't realize it." Ah yes, the familiar strains of "Marketer Knows Best"--new package, same old refrain.

PAUL LUKAS, author of Inconspicuous Consumption, obsesses over the details of consumer culture so you don't have to.