Why are we swayed by pretty packaging?
Why are we swayed by pretty packaging?
How many times have you considered buying something for the packaging alone? The aesthetic factor has power in this era of overwhelming choice and packaging feeds into the whole vibe of the product and company in question. Pastel pretty boxes teamed with an Instagram feed showing dewy skin and flawless no-makeup makeup and suddenly you’ve bought into the idea all of this is attainable if you just have those boxes sat on your dressing table. In packaging, the beauty seems attainable, the minimalist speaks for itself, and the dark colours scream effortlessly-cool.
Packaging isn’t even the first interaction you have with a product. You pick up a lipstick for its colour and compare it with all the others on the shelf or in the shop; it lands in your shopping bag if its packaging outshines the rest. This can be purely down to looks—you shallow thing, you—or it could be the logo or the feel of the tube or how the lid has a satisfying snap when you close it. Maybe the packaging makes you feel youthful, or expensive, or special.
Take a Net-a-Porter delivery. Choose your item online or via the app and you’re choosing it purely for its own aesthetic. Then the slim black box arrives at your door; inside is crepe paper neatly folded around your new t-shirt, an envelope to house your receipt and a bow to hold it all together. You feel swish, you feel like you’re being treated—but it’s a box. A box and some paper. Compare this to an ASOS delivery; as exciting as it is to get new clothes from anywhere, does the practical but cheap bag make you feel the same way?
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Product packaging can evoke feelings of excitement and happiness from beautiful fonts and vibrant colours to stylish curves and funky shapes. EOS lip balm is the perfect example of the idiocy of choosing a product for its packaging: it comes as a sphere, doesn’t fit in pockets in clothes or handbags, and its shape means you can never use all of it before you’re slicing your face on the edges. Not to mention how ridiculous you look shoving your face into a ball of lip balm. And yet, it sits so neatly on a desk, and looks so darn cute. They’ve built their following on being impossible to resist, regardless of practicality. On that note, a showpiece on your dressing table is similar to a vase on your counter—it brings beauty and personality to your space. Birchboxes make adorable storage boxes, beautiful patterns stacked neatly; lipsticks all lined up exude glamour; and perfume bottles strike a pose against the mirror.
Maybe perfume is the culprit for our packaging obsession. The point of sale for most perfumes is TV or print advertising—these brands are selling a smell without letting you smell it. So you fall for the feeling the ad evokes, and the shape of the bottle has to be funky to stand out on the crowded shelves. We buy into the brand, not the product, and packaging is central to this.
Besides, slathering on the multitude of products women use daily every morning and every night is boring and time-consuming enough; how much worse would it be if the products weren’t pretty and making us feel good just by sitting there?
Not that beauty and clothing are the only things to come in pretty packages. Bottles of honey shaped like bears, stationery sets in ribbon-adorned boxes, and pool inflatables with cheeky slogans imprinted on their cardboard shells—it’s everywhere! Fruit teas in frankly gorgeous boxes appear as jewels among the crates of black tea bags, minimalist bars of chocolate stand out among the purples and browns we’re used to seeing, and wine bottles with thumb-divots scream their practicality and funkiness from among the rows upon rows of competitors.
It’s more than the eye-catching product sat on the shelf, it’s the allure of that special feeling, that excitement and whimsy. It all seems so bizarre but then, why not pick a product for its packaging? Lip balm is lip balm, whether spherical or cylindrical—if you want spherical, then you know what to do. Use what you gravitate towards.
EOS lip balm smells and feels amazing and the little spheres are great fun; Too Faced Chocolate Bar eyeshadows are pigmented and blend-easily and the chocolate-shaped palette entertains; Nuxe Huile Prodigeuse d’Or smells like summer and hydrates tired skin without leaving it greasy and the fact it’s full of glitter just adds to the experience. Typically, the ingredients in beauty products only make up about 15 percent of the final cost, which means you’re often mostly paying for the brand name… and the packaging. Brands and manufacturers know that when packaging speaks to you, it makes you feel good. And when we feel good, we like to buy things. It’s just business. But if that packaging makes you feel special, or looks nice at the bottom of your bag, or sits just right on your kitchen counter, why not shell out for that satisfaction?
Impostor syndrome is ‘the psychological pattern in which an individual doubts their accomplishments and has a persistent internalised fear that they are going to be exposed as a fraud.’