The Economist recently had a story about a successfully secret strategy to market to Japanese old people: you make things easier for them — bigger print, old-fashioned vocabulary, lower shelves — without ever indicating that age is a factor. It's called "stealth marketing."
I have an idea for America. It's called "stealth manufacturing." You make the plastic enclosing your product weak enough for old people to be able to get to it. All you say about it is "easy to open." Watch your competitors stand in amazement while half the world flocks to your brand.
AnneinParis, were it not for technical difficulties, would have said, "My dream journalists' interview would be to go see the CEO of, say, General Mills, hand him or her a box of Cheerios and then say, `Please open this without ripping the cardboard or shredding the plastic bag inside, in such a way that it can be easily reclosed.'
ReplyDeleteYears ago in Sweden, we were neighbors to a family where the breadwinner worked for Tetrapack. At the time it was just about impossible to open one of the brick-shaped containers of long-life milk without spilling some. The wife complained to her husband that Tetrapack's motto should be "we put milk on the tables of the world."
ReplyDelete