Inside the Suitcase

Dear HEB / January 13, 2010

Dear HEB,

I can’t express how much I love your food. Your Hill County Fare frozen chicken breasts are so tender I’ve stopped ordering chicken at restaurants. Your Peppercorn Ranch salad dressing wins hands down against the ever popular, way-too-fatty and bland Hidden Valley Ranch, and your in-store flour tortillas (yes Texans, I like flour not corn) are so fresh, so thin and oh so tasty. You’re the reason I can’t loose that extra 5 pounds. But can I ask? What is up with your packaging? To be specific, let’s concentrate on your herbal tea packaging.

I, like many health conscious consumers, enjoy a nice herbal tea to calm the nerves before bed or to aid in digestion after a spicy tex-mex meal. When I recently went to your store to buy my well trusted Sleepytime® tea, I thought to myself, “I’m sure HEB’s chamomile tea is just as good and definitely cheaper than Sleepytime. I should give it a try.” But when I saw your medicinal looking packaging, I made a subconscious decision to stick with the cuddly teddy bear sitting by the fireplace. Ah, so soft. Ah, so warm.

It was only after I put Sleepytime® in my basket that I realized, and said out loud in your store, “I just decided to purchase something that costs 20% more based purely on packaging.” Well HEB, that is the brilliance of marketing. And I hate to break it to you but your tea packaging needs some work.

Here’s some design suggestions:

• Don’t use primarily colors. The yellow and black used on the chamomile packaging gives off a sense of urgency. It’s almost frightening and screams “use in case of emergency!” A softer color palette would help consumers feel relaxed, telling them that the product itself will do the same.
• The HEB logo prominently displayed top center in a bright red circle alerts the consumer in a negative way. Yes, if I was looking for cough syrup, I would be sure to pick this up, but herbal tea and cough syrup should evoke very different feelings. Funny how both products can treat a cough though. (If that was part of your marketing plan, you might just be a genius, but not genius enough to place the tea on the shelf with the cough syrup.) I understand that the generic brand needs to say generic brand and grab the consumers attention among the rest of the hundreds of tea options, but let’s try something different. Please?
• The san serif type is harsh and cold. Try a beautiful script that mimics the steam coming up from a freshly steeped cup of tea to evoke a feeling of relaxation, not sterilization.
• What’s up with the pyramid graphic? Who cares? We are consumers here, not historians. Teddy sitting by the fire tells a much nicer story than how the Egyptians used Chamomile as a cure for “Acute Fever.”

These are merely suggestions, so take it or leave it. But for now, me and Teddy are going to go snuggle up in bed. Sweet dreams.

Posted by Mackenzie

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