I’m Back! With holiday vacation coming soon, expect more posts in the next few weeks. Here’s a story about a fellow AIGA member, from BusinessWeek Online.
Justin Gignac pulled off what might be the ultimate marketing coup: repackaging NYC’s garbage for $100 a cube. by Liz Danzico
Justin Gignac goes out of his way to find garbage. Right off the street—from back alleys, from uptown, from downtown—he collects it late at night after his day job at an advertising firm. He boxes it up, labels it, then sells it for up to $100 via his company, NYC Garbage. Gignac has made trash trendy through a package design and marketing plan developed while he was a still a student at the School of Visual Arts.
Liz Danzico: Garbage isn’t the first thing people think of when brainstorming new product ideas. How did this all start?
Justin Gignac: I started selling New York City garbage when I was in college at the School of Visual Arts—I came up with the idea one day during my summer internship. A group of us were having a discussion about the importance of packaging, and someone claimed that package design wasn’t important. I disagreed. I figured the only way to really know if your package design is successful is to try to package something nobody would ever want. Garbage made perfect sense.
Nice post Packagin’ Diva! Thanks for contributing. I was with you all the way down to the bottom, where you said:
The best of all brands cross gender, ethnicity and age demographics. That is to say that everyone will recognize and identify with the brand.
It’s true, brands like Coca-Cola and GAP are timeless and universal, but what’s more typical are niche brands that appeal to a particular market segment. Brands like Apple or Nike work to develop strong brand loyalty amongst it’s core audience, rather than dillute itself to appeal to the masses, i.e. Wal-Mart or McDonalds.
They do so by creating a lifestyle that is unique and allows an audience to set ones self apart. Who wants to be ubiquitous?