#wackaging

WHAT? 

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2014/mar/25/wackaging-trend-food-packaging-innocent-language

Keep me in the fridge" is now the standard instruction on bagged salads and juice bottles. You barely register it; who doesn't keep salad in the crisper? Bananas are labelled "Eat me" or "Keep me", salad packs invite the buyer to "wash me thoroughly", and a Terry's Chocolate Orange says that "My delicious chocolate segments are made with real orange oil!"

British food packaging now has a matey, at worst babyish, tone that simply didn't used to be there – commonly, food is describing itself in the first person. My basket of groceries now addresses me as though we are killing time on Facebook. I began to wonder when we arrived at this cringey consensus, and why.

Some know the phenomenon as "wackaging", the Guardian's own Rebecca Nicholson launched a Tumblr dedicated to it a few years back, with a slogan proclaiming "I blame Innocent smoothies". And the company, born from a start-up by a group of Cambridge students in 1999, surely marked a watershed in groceries that give good chat.

"To be honest, we were mucking about when we started. None of us were copywriters back then, we didn't have an agency to write stuff for us, and we had this space on our labels that we had to fill with something," Lucie Bright, Innocent's copywriter, tells me. "It wasn't a conscious decision designed to differentiate us from anyone else. We've always talked to everyone in the same way we talk to our friends, but with fewer swear words. It's how we started off, and we saw no reason to change as we got bigger."

Today an article caught our eye in the Guardian (I know) about the growing phenomenon of wackaging. Basically, a lot of people are getting pissed off with the attempts of brands to sound friendly, casual or ‘engaging’. Why? Because in general, this can read as babyish, patronising or irritating.

We get it. We were initially reluctant to create a ‘memorable’ tone of voice for our own brand. So many other creative teams come up with a wacky tone of voice to show how out-there and quirky they are. But in reality, it comes across as sickly or desperate. And definitely not original – there are thousands of teams who do this.

But then what’s the alternative? To sound dull or copy-and-pasted? I have to wonder if the fact that this language has lodged so well under some people’s skin, is a sign. A sign that the language is memorable. It’s made an impact. For some, it’s touched a nerve, but for others it must have left a positive mark. It’s a little different, an added extra of the product to experience.

‘I love it in the fridge’ might grate some, but at least it's different. It says something about who the brand is, what they stand for and how they want you to feel using it. ‘Keep refrigerated’ may be a missed opportunity.

Honestly, I don’t think it’s the messaging that’s the problem. It’s the jumping on the bandwagon. We feel like we’ve seen it all before and brands are just copycatting (namely from Innocent). Of course monotony does get tiring. But there should be an easy way to navigate this. Come up with something new. A medium between functional and characterful.  

This at least is what we’ve tried to put into practice. We didn’t want to go all out and copy the tactics of other creative teams. Often those extensive personas can detract from the overall purpose and message. So instead, we’ve focused on the points we want to convey and added the isms of our speech patterns and humour.

The result? Something that’s fresh and memorable. A halfway point between clinical and eccentric. Maybe the world of packaging could do with a pinch of the same.

Weigh it up for yourself: