Put your personal touch on products
In a world already overwhelmed by constant advertising, some companies now offer you a turn in the driver’s seat. You can put your face on a cereal box or write a customized message on a ketchup bottle.
On the surface, such DIY advertising can deliver a playful recycling of old themes, a fun application for your digital photos or a quick and easy way to personalize a gift. But it’s also a clever technique companies use to rope you into feeling a sense of ownership in a brand — to not only pay for a product, but to then pay for customizing it.
Good advertising has always sought to establish a personal connection, persuading you that a pair of jeans was tailored to fit your body, a car was built with your particular set of needs in mind or a burger was concocted for the sole purpose of satisfying your unique cravings.
But now marketers may have gone further , luring you into advertising to yourself. And you’re all the more apt to believe it when the customized label on a product incorporates a recent digital photo of your adorable new corgi.
“The reality is, when you get a product with your photo on it, your daughter’s photo on it, your son’s photo, or your cat, your dog or your chicken, it’s cool,” said Peter van Stolk, the CEO of Jones Soda Co.
Jones Soda, which for 10 years has been building a brand around consumer-submitted photos, considers itself on the frontier of the trend Heinz Ketchup is currently riding with its new myheinz.com campaign, where people can put their own messages on a ketchup or mustard bottle.
Van Stolk said a Jones team was meeting to discuss whether to consider legal action against Heinz for infringing on a patent owned by Jones for customizing brand and merchandize over the computer.
Heinz said its campaign is just the natural evolution of an earlier initiative called Talking Labels, where bottles had sayings from celebrities or other clever phrases printed on them. Customers wanted to print their own messages, and now Heinz has answered their request.