A mother walks in the room to find that her toddler is hugging a package of diapers to his chest and happily babbling away.  She doesn’t think much about it.  Little kids do some strange things from time to time, after all.   However, when she notices that this behavior continues to occur, and that the diapers are being carted about the house by the little boy, she begins to wonder at the attachment.

What could make a little boy love his unopened package of diapers?  It wasn’t a favorite cartoon character or fancy design that won the little man over.  It was the relatable picture on the front of the package.

Soon the mom was taking to Twitter to announce the reason for her son’s new obsession.  The picture on the front of the package was a child, and her son thought that it was a picture of him that had been printed there.

The love of having something individualized does not diminish with age.  Consumers appreciate the effort when a company creates something that speaks directly to them.  Of course, it’s not possible to put a picture of every customer on the packaging, but as this diaper manufacturer learned from the Huffington Post article, any effort to personalize packaging can be well worth the effort (even if you didn’t intend for it to be quite so individualized).

You can use this information when designing your own food pouches.  Think carefully about who you are marketing to.  How can you work with the packaging designers to create stand up pouches that are both user friendly and personalized to some degree.  Maybe you need to consider multiple designs, allowing consumers to choose the food pouches that speak most clearly to them.  Maybe there is a trending topic that can be incorporated, which would speak very directly to your intended audience.

Just a peek at the numbers of people liking and sharing this Twitter post should be enough to convince you to personalize your food product packaging – more than twelve thousand retweets, and nearly 24,000 likes.  That’s some powerful, organic marketing!