eatbigfish has been banging on about ‘house media’ since method first put out a bowling pin and innocent wrote on its own bottoms, because it is astonishing just how few companies use the “media” they have at their disposal — everything from packaging to business cards to envelopes — to project their identity. Unless you have P&G type budgets odds are all that stuff you have to make is the best place to make an impression and when you line it all up and take a look at it, you quickly realize what a big impression you could be making.

Here’s a good example from Dorset Cereals. And here is a just beautiful example from Timbuk2, one of my local heroes.

I ordered a customized messenger bag a week or so ago and promptly forgot about it. Then this large plastic bag arrives with the message “This is not a bag” emblazoned top left corner. OK. On closer inspection it tells me it is in fact a waterproof map of San Francisco, just the kind of thing you’d actually need if you bought a messenger bag for your commute on your fixie (unless, of course, you live in Larkspur and drive a Civic . . . But I digress). Brilliant. They insist I don’t throw it away. As if I would.

Then there’s a list of fabulously cool and appropriately hip places that all us messenger bag carrying types need to know about. Clarion Alley, for example, Zeitgeist, Four Barrel Coffee. The company you keep is important, as Jude points out here. And because I’m not a card-carrying hipster anymore I quite like being informed by Timbuk2, who sure seem to know what they are talking about. The confidence on display here is really teeing me up to like my bag.

When I can finally bring myself to tear open the “map”, I see my bag and a hang tag telling me about its birth, with a unique number and a photo of he who “delivered” it complete with scrubs. Nice. It came out screaming I’m told.

And the bag is quite nice, don’t you think?

People like to rave about Zappos and Apple out-of-box experience, but I reckon this is the best I’ve seen so far. Let me know if you can trump it. (Oh, and the bag works great).

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One Response to “Bags of Personality”

1. Luxury through and through — eatbigfish says: June 7, 2012 at 5:34 pm

   [...] is another brilliant example of adding theatre to online delivery, as Mark explains here (giving the purchase experience a bigger thumbs up than the much wowed Zappos and Apple). It [...]