Chaos Packaging
The consumer package goods industry is constantly pushing the boundaries in an effort to stand out on the shelves. The latest trend is being dubbed "chaos packaging" but what does it have to do with B2B? Mike and Anthony lay it out in this episode of Backchannel.
A.K. What's up?
What's up, man?
How are you?
I am doing great.
Excited for another jam-packed episode.
Yes.
How have things been?
Things been pretty good.
We're in New York.
I have a different little set up down here.
So after our conference about three weeks ago,
we just stuck around here in New York.
So excited to be a niece coaster for a little bit.
I like the New York or nowhere pullover.
That's New York drip right there.
They give you one of those, like when you when you go to New York for the
summer,
yeah, they give you a swaggy pullover when you enter the state.
Right. A JFK at the gate, actually, they just start handing these out.
But the propaganda begins.
All right.
Well, we got a bunch to get to.
So let's jump right in.
Here's my first question.
Have you ever heard of chaos packaging?
Chaos packaging.
No, no, no.
I haven't heard many people talk about this.
I think this term was coined by a guy, Michael Mirafloor.
I don't know if you know who that is.
He's works at a venture firm that specializes in the CPG ecom direct to
consumer space.
They do other types of investing as well.
But I heard him talk about chaos packaging first, which is basically
packaging that is usually associated with something else entirely.
So like as an example,
there's a brand called Ocean that is like electrolytes.
And normally when you get like electrolytes, it's like a tear open pouch of
powder
and you dump it into your drink or, you know, it'll be like a liquid,
like the squirt into your drink.
There's is it looks like it's in like a lotion bottle.
And you just squirt the electrolytes right into your drink.
And it's like a completely unexpected type of experience.
They're basically taking the packaging from some other type of product
completely
and then bringing it to whatever new product that they're doing.
Another example of that, have you seen Happy?
It's a celebrity backed coffee company.
They sell it like sprouts and things like that.
You ever seen that before?
No, I haven't.
It's apparently.
Yeah.
The happy coffee, I think Robert Downey, Jr.
is the celebrity who launched it.
But it looks like it's like in a it belongs in like the the
medicine section rather than in the coffee section.
It's in like a white container and it kind of has this sort of like
pharmaceutical
feel.
I don't know if it's on purpose or not, but they're definitely like pushing the
envelope
as it relates to packaging.
It seems to be kind of like a new trend that's happening in consumer goods.
Is this a is there an underlying strategy that this enables?
Like the the the name being referenced by that investor is this like,
hey, this is a way to stand out on the shelf where consumers are making buying
decisions or where's that coming from?
Yeah.
I think ultimately it is all has to do with like cutting through the noise.
If you can tie that into some sort of mission oriented thing,
then I think that that helps it make more sense.
But ultimately you're trying to like stand out on the shelf and like that's
like
always a moving target, right?
You know, like even when you think about, you know, brands like Ollie
Pop or Poppy, they used to like stand out totally on the shelf of other cans.
But now that they're kind of the dominant players, now everyone's trying to
kind
of copy their aesthetics.
Now you look at the right the drink case and you're like, this all looks the
same now.
And so, you know, the pendulum swings both ways.
But I think people are always trying to compete with attention,
yeah, compete for attention on on really crowded shelves and especially in
retail.
Yeah, I'm trying to draw analogy to to the B2B software world.
I remember back in the day, we used to have an idea to do like a magazine
when everyone was going digital.
It's like, you know, this goes back to like the zig when everyone else is
zagging or of way of thinking.
I think that's where it comes from.
The reason this was top of mind for me, though, is at PostScript,
we have a customer.
They're called Graza.
They're olive oil.
You've probably seen Graza in the store.
They come in those green squeeze bottles and they have like a cool.
Yeah.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
They're been a big disruptive force in the in the olive oil world.
And they just did a big launch, which is on this chaos packaging trend,
which is they found a way to nitrogen seal their olive oil in beer cans
that are refills for the squeeze bottles.
And so not only does that like look crazy on the shelf?
Because there's like this tall boy of olive oil, but it also fits into their
mission, right?
It's more sustainable that way.
You can refill the existing plastic bottle.
And so you feel like you're doing something good for the environment.
I think for them, it's a really smart business move because people can like
subscribe to the refills as opposed to a new bottle every single time.
And then the bottle ends up becoming like a its own statement thing, you know,
like.
And so, you know, it's sitting out on the counter.
People know it's a garage that you got your refills in the pantry.
Um, I think it was a brilliant move.
I think in a very crowded olive oil category, they already proved that like
having something that looks different on the shelf is good.
And now they're just leaning into that even more with the beer can model.
And so I'm just interested to see like, where else is this chaos packaging
stuff?
Going to show it feels like, um, it feels like people are like expanding their,
their options there.
And I'm excited to see what more happens on the brand innovation side relating
to packaging.
Should be interesting.
Yeah.
I like, I, I don't know enough about it.
My mind's going to link the liquid death who their whole, their whole product
is
chaos packaged in a way.
Yeah.
And not.
And yet also also refined also has a recyclable kind of mission orientation
around it.
But they don't really talk about that.
They talk, you know, they just present more as this like edgier tall boy brand.
Um, but gosh, it's so cheesy to even reference them as an example of these days
But, um, I think they, they're the first I can think of, of a product that, um,
is delivered in a package that one would not expect.
Yeah.
I thought about like, like at first, when I first heard about the chaos
packaging stuff,
I was like, Oh, is this new?
Is this like a new trend?
What's going on?
But then I thought about like, remember back in the day when like boxed water
first came out?
Fair.
Yes.
Yeah.
Mine in the box, mine bag.
You know, so there's, there's definitely some, some patterns that, uh, from the
past to recognize from, uh, from, uh, that sort of thing.
But, um, yeah, it's interesting.
I think, you know, everyone, every marketer everywhere, regardless of what
industry you're in, whether you're selling software, you're selling olive oil.
It's tougher to stand out every single day.
And you have to use creativity and how does creativity match your brand story
and do something that's innovative for the consumer that they want to be a part
of.
Um, maybe this chaos packaging is just a, another, uh, you know, version of
that.
Yeah.
Like how do you stand out in a crowded feed?
Like what are the different things you can do to, to kind of, you know, compete
for attention on, on whatever the battlefield is, whether it's digital, whether
it's a shopping aisle, whether it's, uh,
e-commerce kind of store or online floor, online show floor.
Yeah, we're always touching like pattern interruption and like thumb stopping
rate on the digital side.
Like, to me, like this on the shelf is like the in person version of a thumb
stop.
You know, do you get, do you interrupt the scroll?
It's like, this is like the same version.
You're walking through the, the aisles and you're just kind of scanning
everything.
And, you know, you see a giant beer can filled with olive oil, you might stop
looking at it.
Oh, um, very, very interesting seeing, you know, some of those, those
principles that we think about on, on breaking the, the doom scrolling cycle of
our digital consumers is ending up in the real world and vice versa.
So something to pay attention to.