Comment by guessmyname
15 hours 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.
> 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.
Absolutely. 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.
If 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.
I think the dialysis supply shortage may be less of a charming quirk than the potato chip bags.
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I wouldn't say the present strategy worked a lot better so maybe the whole world had a point.
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And the genius move was to upset him without an exit strategy?
If your mom's life was in the hands of some thug, going in trying to beat him up, and then failing to win, pissing him off, is not a clever move...
"If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle." - Sun Tzu, Art of War
Maybe Trump's follow-up to the Art of the Deal should be "The New Art of War". (Although I just realize now that the title of that book most likely because "Art of War" was a very popular book for business strategy in the 80's.
Trump and Bibi did this, Iran's response is perfectly legitimate and proportionate.
You realize the Strait of Hormuz is shared territorial waters between Oman and Iran right? It’s not an international waterway like the orange shit stain likes to say.
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Of 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.
I 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.
FYI, those 8% of males / 0.5% females stats are not about complete colorblindness, so almost all of those people use color in their life
Yes 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.
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Did you actually read the article past the hero image?
> Teikoku Databank has identified 52 Japanese companies using naphtha to make basic chemical products like ethylene, synthetic rubber, and PVC resin.
> The chemicals, petroleum, and coal products manufacturing sector is most vulnerable to naphtha price rises and shortages; of the 4,700 companies in this sector, 67.2% are integrated into the naphtha supply chain.
From the official guidelines 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.
I won't.
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