Awkward title for a thread, I know.
When a supermarket chain here went out of business, they has a closeout sale with some items priced at up to 90% off. I picked up a bottle of Live O’Wood polish for 30 cents. I couldn’t help but notice the label - straight out of the 1950s, right down to the lack of metric units. Still, it wasn’t something that was sitting on the shelf for fifty years; the label had a UPC code and wasn’t yellowed, and the bottle wasn’t dusty.
Occasionally I’ll come across other products in the supermarket that still have labels which seem unchanged from the 1940s and 1950s, like Hollywood Sani-White Shoe Polish. Are there any other products like this out there, whose branding and labeling is unchanged from 50 years ago? Why didn’t they update their packaging?
Low volume, low profile, and low status. These are brands whose advertising budget is close to zero, usually because they’re in extremely unsexy categories or have so little name recognition left that they’re relagated to cheap goods.
It’s not always just low-status/off-brand items, though. My previous job had me working with the brand identities, particularly graphics, for two biggest consumer packaged goods companies in the US. While lots of their products go through nearly constant packaging and branding churn (cross-promotions with movies, TV shows, etc.) and regular logo/package redesigns, each of them also had several product lines for which the very little on the packaging ever changes – new UPC code here or there, changes to required nutritional information, etc., but little else. The one-pound and five-pound bags for a very well known, nationally recognized flour brand get the occasional tweak, but the bulk pack stuff almost never does. There are posters and display cases throughout the headquarters buildings with historical product packages and advertising, and it’s surprising how little some have changed.