It's All About The Way It Looks

I'll never forget the first time I walked through Target and laid my eyes on Method Hand Soap. This many sound lame, but yes, the hand soap caught my eye from a distance. It was the sleek, pear shaped clear bottle, with all lower-case letters written in a modern font, that also gives the appearance of a glass bottle that appealed to my inner hand soap core…to a certain extent, it screamed “chic” to me. Automatically, my brain communicated to my hands, and my wallet, with the command, “BUY IT!” and so I did. Method has the right idea, they take a completely basic product, considering that their hand soap is absolutely no different than your average bottle of Dial or Softsoap, and they convert it into a symbol of beauty, something you may want to showcase in your very own guest bathroom! It wasn’t long after my incident with the hand soap that I discovered that my mother fell into the same trap, and not only did she buy the hand soap, but she made it a point to share with me that she bought a nice looking new bottle of hand soap. She was actually excited about this new product!
This may all seem very mundane, not exactly the most riveting experience one could have, but it certainly displays how the appeal to our aesthetic nature. It relates back to the concept discussed in class and in the text, how people enjoy window shopping because of the aspect of “visual pleasure” that is involved in doing so. It also gives the buyer a heightened feeling (maybe only on a small level) of status in that they now own and showcase a stylized and chic looking bottle of hand soap, for all their guests to see! It’s cooler than your generic hand soap and it also makes you feel better about yourself, considering that the company claims their snazzy bottles are 100% recycled and their ingredients are 100% natural; they too have jumped on the “Green Wagon.” All these strategic marketing tactics combined have clearly proven themselves successful to Method and also sets them apart, a job well done!