but you can still do something odd with it. I was amazed when i walked through a supermarket and found this. First thought that popped up in my mind: wtf?
Seriously - i have seen many many things, but i did not expect to be tongue-tied just because of a box of tissues.
What is it telling us anyway? I would be glad if you share your opinions with me.
Market research shows that Men Do Not Buy Tissues. This frankly ugly design appears to be a thin and scatterbrained attempt to address the issue.
ReplyDeleteMarketing obviously unisex things as 'for men' is the safe move in the media. Women who do men's things are 'aspiring', but men who do women's things are 'emasculated'. Both are controversial, but by modern standards one much more so than the other.
I don't know what creeps me out more, that marketing agents really do think like that, or that it appears to work. Probably not in this case though, that thing's horrible.
Kleenex also does 'Mens Tissues' but I think they're maybe called 'man sized' and are considerably bigger than your average tissue. I do actually buy the Tepo mens tissues because they're super soft and strong. Men have to have strong tissues because like, they're strong and so their snot is strong and only a MANLY tissue can handle that kinda abuse. Gettit? Me neither, lets boycott them after I've had a chance to get down to Lidl and stock up.
ReplyDeleteI agree, Daniel - the person responsible for the design of that box needs to be fired ASAP. It's ugly as hell.
ReplyDeleteTo be honest, the issue of marketing tissues is beyond me. The same is true for toilet paper. Naive as I am, I like to think people will use a certain amount of tissues and toilet paper because they need to, and that's it. Of course, advertising makes sense for high-quality luxury products... but this box of tissues is less than glamourous. Does a design targeting men actually lead to more tissues being sold altogether? Will men suddenly buy tissues whereas they previously blew their noses on... newspapers? Their bare hands? Do these tissues make them feel more virile? I don't get it. This is probably why I am not marketing exec of a huge tissue-making company.
I would be happy so see a plain, unicoloured box that just informed me about the content. I get impatient when things are marketed with a gendered label when this is clearly bullshit. Personally, I could do without ANY gendered labelling on products. But I am pretty sure nobody needs gendered tissues.
Thank you a lot for your contributions.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with all of you.
I think there are still lots of creepy ideas in the heads of marketing agents.
In terms of creepy i just remembered that:
http://www.geekologie.com/2010/02/cutting_down_treeszombies_with.php
The Hello Kitty chainsaw.