I recently wrote about Draegers and Costco, and how sometimes, packaging is the product being sold.

Amusingly, thanks largely to my trusted field researcher, she who turns heads wherever she goes, the blonde bombshell, who needs no artifice, we have two new examples of packaging, staging and “personal staging”…

The first situation, staging, should be familiar to anyone who’s ever bought or sold real estate. 

“Staging” is derived from the term in theater “setting the stage” – in real estate, taking a property that’s for sale and painting it, cleaning up the lawn, cleaning it, emptying out all the crappy possessions that you, the owner, had accumulated and replacing them with beautiful art and furniture.

Some stagers even go as far as to have cookies baking (or even just a pot of water, cinnamon, and vanilla boiling on the stove or in the microwave) when prospective purchasers visit – to create the appropriate olefactory as well as visual experience.

The goal: make your property more attractive to prospective purchasers.

Staging is marketing: it’s packaging, the art and science of taking a concrete item (often concrete – paths, house, apartment) and changing people’s perception of its inherent value purely by changing the packaging surrounding it – the context in which the item is presented to the purchaser.  Arguably, this is why the same food seems worth more to purchasers in different contexts – and, as a recent study proved, even tastes better. (The same chicken nuggets were rated as tasting better when tasters were told the nuggets were from McDonald’s).

But I was flummoxed when the Bombshell told me about the latest trend in personal staging.

No, we’re not talking about clothing, makeup, or hairstyles (all elements of “personal staging”).

We’re talking about the practice of hiring “personal paparazzi”.

Really.

Now you too, in many cities in the US and UK, can –pay- to have a pack of photographers follow you around as though you’re famous.

Heck, it’s more than mainstream – you know it’s a positively passé trend when it’s featured in Time magazine… www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1704698,00.html

But before you dismiss this trend as foolish, consider – what a great example of “personal” staging.  How better to persuade club bouncers of your fame, moving you to the front of the line?

And yes, I know it’s silly, but is it really that different than real estate staging, or the look & feel of your website, or store, or flyers, or physical product packaging?

So the moral of today is that Packaging is marketing. And it’s everywhere – anything has packaging. And it works.

So ask yourself, how are your offerings packaged?

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