Not all consumers who wander are lost

In a consuming world of instant gratification, it’s not easy for brands to keep the wandering eye of their target audience on their products.

In 2012, packaging was rediscovered as a growth market by marketeers as a means of pulling the customer back in. Obviously, we couldn’t agree more.

Big brands like Coca-Cola, Twix, Heinz paved the way and launched some nifty bold campaigns, seemingly appealing to the individual self. And it worked – Coca-Cola had to thrown in extra production cycles to keep up with demand, jars of Nutella are saved for posterity with the offspring’s name label.

I call it the market(ing)-ization of things. Believe it or not, there’s plenty of –ization potential for everyone to go around. And it involves more than just personalization. And it’s most certainly not a big brand exclusive.

You just have to find the differentiator that works for either you as a printer or marketeer. Talk to people, find out what they want, what might attract their customers and then decide which –ization differentiator you should look into. I see 3 main options:

1. Regionalization – think Ola
2. Customization – think Coca-Cola
3. Individualization – think Nutella

What will be your reward? Centralization of data and optimization of the creative process. Brand and printer alike will fare well with both.

What will it cost you? Investments should not be steep. Implementing a good online editing system (hint hint) and workflow on your exisiting label printing might already do the trick.

I tell all (well, most) in a white paper I recently wrote on the topic. Find your –ization customer trigger, the technology is readily available. Time to adopt the customer-centric mindset.

Until then, pray tell me: what’s your favourite –ization customer trigger and why? How do you make your customer swipe to the right when he checks your profile?