All great products begin with the first customer connection – the packaging. There’s nothing worse than being let down by a product packaged in a cheap, cardboard box. Physical product experiences often begin at the shrinkwrap level.
Unboxing is the popular pseudo-porn-like ritual for documenting (via
video or photography) the consumer experience of opening a new (most
often consumer technology related) product. In essence, its the now
essential "pre-review" of a product. You can find unboxing sequences on
popular technology and user experience blogs and now they are working
their way to more mainstream tech sites like CNET. Some sites like to
take the art a bit further and aggregate the best of the unboxings,
such as unboxing.com or unbox.it.
Fancy that new Treo 680 and can’t wait for the holidays? Why not satiate your desire and live vicariously through someone else’s experience of opening the box. The recent launch of the Microsoft Zune, Playstation3, and the Nintendo Wii have all spurred many unboxing initiatives which have forced enthusiasts to step up their game and enhance their technique, however, Semiconductor Insights, a technology analyst firm which specializes in reverse engineering, has taken things to the next level by actually disassembling the components of the Wii.
Unboxing is a component of the tribute media experience as loyal brand/product fans create, share and comment on social media to express their appreciation (or attack a competitor). Does unboxing help promote a consumer experience, we think so, and a lot of our clients are paying close attention to how a consumer feels about their product’s unboxing experience and the comments that ensue from the community – think of it as focus group, but without anyone influencing the opinion. Props to Frank for sharing his unboxing fetish (he’s not alone) and photo is property of engadget.
Chad Stoller
Comments
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“pseudo-porn-like ritual?”
Hmm, I think I get what you mean by that, but that’s a pretty poor phrase. Ritual, sure. But the psuedo-porn-like part isn’t good enough.
Unboxing is a physical process involving the peeling away of layers of packacking to get to the object of desire. There’s nothing even remotely “porn-like”, or to use the right word, “pornographic” about that. Porn is about avoiding all that wrapping and anticipation altogether. It’s the money shot, not the romantic buildup. “Porn” is an interesting metaphor for a lot of things in contemporary culture, but this ain’t one of them.
I think what you probably mean is that unboxing is a “fetishized” process. Fetishization imbues great power to an object, but typically involves some sort of ritual access to it.
An environmentalist gone bad, or progressing?
Hi there, I have been working on climate change and been involved in climate activism for some time.
I have become increasingly interested in the marketing of Ideas and behaviour changes.
I am interested in finding out more about both marketing in general and in relation to climate change.
A couple of reports that I have read on climate change marketing so far can be found here:
http://climatechangeaction.blogspot.com/2006/11/marketing-climate-change.html
Any suggestions of reports/articles to read would be very wellcome.
Regards,
Calvin