Doesn’t it drive you mad when you can’t easily open a pack of food or drink? Why don’t manufacturers of anything – especially food and drink – realise that getting at the contents before consuming is part of the customer experience, part of the product itself? They have to work harder at getting the balance right between securing the contents and providing access to them.

The packaging, as far as I’m concerned, is part of what Geoffrey Moore in Crossing the Chasm called the ‘whole product solution’. Admittedly, that book is about so-called ‘disruptive’ products, but you still have to get everything to do with your product or service right. This is something I’ve talked about before here.

If you don’t get it right, you run the risk of someone substituting your product for someone else’s. Someone else who has thought harder, and worked harder, about exactly how you are going to consume what they sell, from the moment you see it. For an old but hilarious packaging fail, have a look at this beauty and imagine yourself being the owner or captain of this business, demonstrating how easy it is to consume the product – not.