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As someone who grew up eating Calbee snacks, I think they’ll be fine. People from my generation aren’t buying Calbee because the bag is colorful. They’re buyin
by guessmyname 5mo ago
As someone who grew up eating Calbee snacks, I think they’ll be fine.
People from my generation aren’t buying Calbee because the bag is colorful. They’re buying it because it’s Calbee and they already know what they’re getting. The packaging could be black and white and I’d still recognize it instantly.
The only people I could see being briefly confused are younger consumers. Japanese packaging tends to be very colorful, so we’re all conditioned to identify products partly by color. But people adapt quickly. In fact, a black-and-white Calbee bag might end up standing out more on a crowded supermarket shelf than yet another brightly colored package.
There’s also a chance this ends up being a net positive. If simpler packaging lowers costs and sales stay the same, why go back? Japanese consumers are feeling inflation more than they have in decades, and companies are under pressure too. Cutting costs in a place customers barely notice seems a lot smarter than shrinking the product or raising prices again.
- BoorishBears 5mo ago[flagged]
- no-name-here 5mo agoFrom the official guidelines https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that". May be good to edit your comment to remove the first sentence.
- BoorishBears 5mo agoI won't.
- thrownthatway 5mo ago[flagged]
- ThePowerOfFuet 5mo agoAppropriate username is appropriate.
- aaron695 5mo ago[dead]
- emodendroket 5mo agoI think the dialysis supply shortage may be less of a charming quirk than the potato chip bags.
- thrownthatway 5mo ago[flagged]
- emodendroket 5mo agoI wouldn't say the present strategy worked a lot better so maybe the whole world had a point.
- thrownthatway 5mo agoI never made that argument. I just tend to thing bullies should be crushed rather than appeased.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- vkou 5mo agoSo, how are you planning on dealing with Trump and friends? Appeasement clearly isn't working.
- defrost 5mo agoSo, dialysis patients had their supplies on a regular basis, and then the Ayatollah Khamenei was assassinated (hard to get more crushed) during peace negotiations, and now dialysis patients are at risk. Seems like being a bully achieved very little .. why tear up the original hard won agreement that allowed inspection and kept the uranium enrichment in check in the first place?
- subscribed 5mo agoWhat do you mean why? His White House posted Obamas as monkeys, he hates everything Barrack achieved as a president and who he is. Trump is a scam artist as all his prior achievements show, so of course he will damage anything he can't turn into his personal profit. I bet his "negotiations" involve kickbacks for his family personally, in a similar way he "appropriated" profit from the seized Venezuelan tankers. Don't treat the guy like he was a philosopher. He's a felon, prominently mentioned in the infamous Trump-Epstein files.
- wartywhoa23 5mo agoOf course there is always an advocate for every little incremental step of the deliberate chaos that the world's helmsmen have been steering into. OBEY.
- rpozarickij 5mo ago> If simpler packaging lowers costs and sales stay the same In reality packaging is a very big part of marketing. People are drawn by vivid and bright colors, which is especially relevant in the modern world where unfortunately so many of us are living in a permanent hyper-stimulated state. It's hard to ignore well-designed packaging with tastefully chosen colors even if you're someone who is mindful about their eating/consumption choices and you know that what's inside that packaging is totally different from what you see from the outside.
- cainxinth 5mo agoAbsolutely. If packaging and marketing stopped mattering so much once the public already knows a product well, Coca-cola could have stopped spending so much on their brand a long time ago.
- tormeh 5mo agoIf packaging and marketing stopped mattering so much Coca-cola would go out of business immediately. Sugar water is cheap and simple to make. The off-brands taste just as good if not better in blind testing. The only defense they have is their brand and the amount of money they spend on marketing. Same with Red Bull.
- toast0 5mo agoPepsi tried redirecting their advertising money to community projects, but sales fell, so they went back to advertising.
- phantomathkg 5mo agoI think you are overly optimistic and forget a few key facts here. According to wiki, 8% of males and 0.5% of female suffer from colorblindness. That means for the rest of the people, the color is part of the information that our brain use subconsciously when we go and grab a bag of Calbee. Will it affect the Japanese general public? Minor inconvenience for sure. Will it affect sales? Probably for area popular by tourist? Maybe it move the needle by 1%? But what's important that's below the fold is there could be other knock on effect as naphtha is used to make other product.
- jezzamon 5mo agoFYI, those 8% of males / 0.5% females stats are not about complete colorblindness, so almost all of those people use color in their life
- throwaway173738 5mo agoYes for men mostly it’s red/green colorblindness. It’s one reason traffic lights have a uniform order and why you might get tested on which light means stop and not what color on a written test in the US.
- fieldcny 5mo agoYour response shows how much trouble the west is in, you are completely missing the fact that this is the leading edge of a petroleum supply shortage that is going to have significant and painful effects on all those who are not prepared. At this point the United States is the least prepared country in the world and Americans are going to be the hardest hit, simply because we have the most to lose. Papering over the canary in the coal mine never saved the coal miners. (Edit spelling)