In October 2001 an exciting new product was launched.
It weighed 6.5 ounces. It was just 2.4 inches wide and 4 inches tall. It was made from stainless steel.
It had a mechanical scroll wheel on a monochrome LCD display. Users used the scroll wheel to navigate songs. The device held “1,000 songs in your pocket.”
It was white. You listened to the songs with white earphones. They acted as a walking advert for the product.
Of course, the company was Apple. The product was the iPod.
When Steve Jobs launched the iPod he said, “with iPod, listening to music will never be the same again.”
He was right. It wasn’t.
But something else was never the same again – design.
The iPod prioritised simplicity, clarity and ease of use. Where the iPod led, the iPhone followed. It’s why your iPhone no longer has a home button.
With the iPod, Apple broke the design rules. They are still breaking them.
Why are we talking about this? A grocery store is one of the most visually complex environments you can put anyone in. Thousands of products. Price labels. Promotions. Point of sale communication.
The task of filtering, finding and selecting is hard for shoppers. But we often make it harder.
To shoppers (not people who work in the industry who can see everything there is to see about their category and brand)… aisles (or pages) often look the same. Products often look the same. Display units often look the same. POS communication often looks the same.
This is because most categories and brands follow the same (explicit and implicit) design rules. But when you follow the same rules, you end up doing the same (or similar) things.
To stand out, you need to be different. To be different, you need to do different things. To do different things, you need to break the design rules.
So, how can you do this?
Think Packaging. Take a look at your category. What are the standard packaging rules that most products are following? It could be shape. It could be colour. It could be format. It could be material. Then break (at least one of…) them.
Most crisps are in a bag. Pringles aren’t. They are in a tube. Most fruit is in transparent packaging. Driscoll’s Berries aren’t. They are in branded cardboard trays. Most tea is sold in rectangular boxes where the product is invisible. Tea Pigs aren’t. They are sold in slim boxes with a window that makes the product visible. Most chilli sauces look the same. Sold in interchangeable bottles. Esplosivo Chilli sauce isn’t. It’s designed to look like a stick of dynamite.
Don’t look like everything else around you when you could look different.
Think Display Units. Look at the standard rules that most display units follow. They are often a standard size. A standard shape. A standard material. Why not break these rules?
A display doesn’t have to be box-like. Blue Dragon use their dragon to disrupt the standard rectangular display unit. Quaker have used a 3D porridge bowl to do the same. Pipers Crisps use wooden display units. In Duty Free, tic tac have taken things onto a whole new level. A display unit in the shape of a tic tac box with tic tacs poking their heads out of the top.
Don’t look like everything else around you when you could look different.
Think Shelf Layout & Merchandising. When it comes to layouts and merchandising, categories often follow a standard set of rules. They are input driven. Do the purchase decision hierarchy study. Get a 100+ slide deck full of data and decision-tree style content. Desperately try to translate that into something that can work in store. Which it usually doesn’t.
What if you broke the rules and changed this approach?
Be more output driven. Put the 100+ slide deck to one side. Think about what the simplest and most intuitive way of merchandising the category is. Then make it really clear to shoppers. Then implement it. This is how you get to A-Z led merchandising approach in Herbs & Spices. How you get to a prescription (+1.5, +2.0, +2.5) led approach in glasses.
Don’t look like everything else around you when you could look different.
A lot of the time the “rules” that we follow are self-imposed. We’ve always done it like that. Well, try something new. “Retailers wouldn’t let us do that,” you may think. Well, try asking them. “We need to follow brand guidelines,” you may think. Well, try changing them.
So, take a step back. Understand the rules. Then break them.
Don’t play the game, change the game.
Feel free to forward. Have a great weekend. Speak to you in a fortnight.