Food and beverage products have a wonderful chance to deliver a little surprise. When I recently opened up a dozen eggs from Whole Foods, the organic, Vital Farms free-range eggs came with a tiny, little newsletter. It was from the chickens who laid the eggs and told me how two of the chickens, Bella and Stella were BHF (best hens forever). I’m a sucker for a pun, but I’m also on hyper alert for clever marketing tactics. I typically hate newsletters. This was charming and caught me off-guard. I learned something about what made these eggs different.
A Pure Moment
That same day, I opened up a container of Daisy sour cream. The inside protective cover came with a selfie of a Carmen W, a mom, and daughter. They were sharing their PURE MOMENT that the Daisy brand was celebrating. Seeing this photograph caught me by surprise as I am not used to seeing photographs of people on the lid of my sour cream.
Later that evening, I opened a pinot noir wine recommended by a friend, and the cork had imprinted on it a message that was like something you would get in a fortune cookie at a Chinese restaurant. The quote caused me to pause and notice and pay attention.
All three of these companies made me stop and pay attention to them because they interrupted my regular pattern.
The Little Surprise Inside
Attention is fast becoming more and more valuable to marketers. We need ways to break through the expected, with something from left field. In our daily lives, we just don’t notice things that fit into the expectation we have for behavior or messages. Suddenly, when there is an interruption of pattern, we try and make sense of it. There is a wonderful book on this topic by Douglas Van Praet called Unconscious Branding.
What happens when instead of printing your product brochure on paper like everyone else, you put it somewhere no one would expect to find it? For example, if you were sending a press release about your new all natural vitamin infused soft drink, why not wrap the press release onto your bottle and send that to the media?
What happens when instead of selling your product like everyone else, you do something crazy. Like Little Mismatch, a sock company that sells three socks to the pair. Talk about breaking a pattern.
What happens when you write about creative thinking and instead of opening in a conventional manner, the book is upside down from its cover. Check out Business Model Generation.
What happens when instead of publishing yet another book on a topic, a Duke University professor creates a board game instead that teaches the same lessons, but does it in an unexpected platform using playing cards? That’s what Dan Ariely is doing with his new card game Irrational Game sold through Kickstarter.
What little surprise are you preparing for your customers to delight them and grab some attention?
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