Ben Parr is one of those marketing gurus who’s made a name for himself teaching business people how to better reach their customers or potential customers. His most recent book calls his approach Captivology: the SCIENCE of Capturing People’s Attention.
Well, he wrote something that captured my attention.
Here’s what he said: “Google has placed its faith in data, while Apple worships the power of design,” Parr wrote. “This dichotomy made the two companies complementary. Apple would ship the phones and computers, while Google would provide Maps, Search, YouTube, and other web tools that made the devices more useful.”
OK, I admit it. He captured my attention by using the word “ship.” I’m a sucker that way.
But really, Parr’s comment hit me because of its familiarity. I knew I’d heard something similar before, but it took me several days to remember where I’d heard it. Then it struck me. A few years back there were a series of television commercials for the plastic company BASF that came with the tagline, “At BASF…we don’t make a lot of the products you buy. We make a lot of the products you buy better.”
Genius, right?
Well guess what? At Forest Packaging, we don’t make many of the products people buy, either. But we do help creatively package them, present them and ship them to make a lot of those products better.
One example is our stay-flat envelope. It’s a large, flat, sturdy shipping envelope developed out of a particular customer’s need to help better protect their product. Along its developmental way, we showed how it also saves labor, time and space. See our video on the product here.
So thanks for the memory jog, Ben Parr. And for anyone reading who wants to discuss ways to make your products better, give us a call.
-John