Brown paper packages tied up with strings…

Seth Godin’s latest blog entry made a lot of sense- in fact, I thought he packaged it rather well.

These days, I find tea packaged rather well, in India. You find the oddest of flavors- like the one i had yesterday, green tea with chamomile. in a glossy package. The team of sprightly tea bags had a few wooden sticks for company- they served as stirrers. But God forbid if you drop the box- you will find yourself bending double in retrieving them! Some tea packets have these tiny read-me text artistically packaged a booklet with a few glossy pages. It’ll probably give you info which you know already like the benefits of tea drinking and how to drink tea in the first place. But it’s all the more fun to buy a tea box with a kit of such odd souvenirs. Who knows, they might even add a tea cup or two, in the box soon!

How do you pick a pot of peppery pickle off a plane?

And manage to keep your fingers free of the hot red lava that emerges from within? In Andhra Pradesh, packaging pickles for wannabe NRIs is being an industry in itself. Years ago, I hauled a pot o’ pickle for mom and dad who live in the US. I was utterly dismayed when I opened the suitcase with the bottle and found it had leaked onto my clothes! Now all you need to do before hopping onto the plane, is to take your pickle to the nearest packaging joint in town. They shrink, wrap, polish the package like its fate is literally sealed within the wraps. Comes out like the Gucci brand of mango pickle.

Innovation is the in thing in packaging. Companies often call it ‘brandizing’. Marketing gurus sometimes say ‘USP’ (not to be mistaken for ESP which is also being packaged these days). Moms are packaged into ‘Mother’s Day ‘. Yep, packaging is in, packing is out.

Sometimes sadly enough, the earth’s package comes undone to give rise to earthquakes. Easy does it with natural wrappers. Don’t forget what dad taught you about global warming.

Ah, but some packages are by far the cutest and need no further innovation…

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