Something my grandmother taught me when I was a kid has stayed with me to this day and has been an important tool throughout my entire life.  It’s probably something that I shouldn’t mention here, but I honestly think I’d be remiss if I didn’t, so I’m going to share that secret with you today: never doubt the power of tortilla packaging.

I’m sure that right about now several of you are probably looking at the above phrase and think I’ve gone off the deep end, while others’ eyes are probably glazing at this latest nugget of bizspeak, thinking it to be along the lines of leveraging and whatever other buzzwords business gurus tend to invent when they think people are starting to realize they’re just blowing smoke.  But hear me out: it’s not a buzzword, and it’s not the crazed ramblings of a guy spending one too many hours at his desk.  It’s actually common sense, the kind that comes from the heart of old Mexican abuelitas.

You see, my grandparents brought their kids from Mexico City for a better life in the US back in the 60s.  As she adjusted to life here, she had to deal with the marketing methods of America of the time (those of you who watch television shows such as Mad Men or Bewitched have a very good idea of how Madison Ave. was at the time).  While Mexico City is no backwards bastion (it is, after all, a major metropolis), it is of a different nationality and thus culture clash ruled the roost.  Anyone who has moved to a country with a different culture will tell you that oftentimes the old ways won’t always work and this certainly was the case – Bimbo bread and Wonder bread might have the same colors and layout in their packaging, but they’re not the same.

It was during those years adjusting to American life that she learned the products that had the most to offer, had the highest quality and were undoubtedly the best were the ones that had the simplest packaging and marketed the least.  On the other hand, the second-rate and shoddy merchandise, the products made by the also-rans, were the ones that had the flashy packages and high-profile advertising every marketing example and cliché there ever was.  To her, this was most obvious in the Mexican food section of the supermarket: the best and freshest tortillas always came in packaging that looked, with some irony, like someone who could have cared less about how the container appeared.  Meanwhile, the stuff that no self-respecting person of Mexican descent would ever touch (you know, like that salsa “that comes from…New York City!?”) always came in the beautifully ornate packing that always screamed BUY ME! This was a lesson that she would pass on to her children, and eventually she and my mother passed on to me.

I’ll be honest: the first time they mentioned it, I laughed, shrugging it off as some outdated wisdom from the old country, something applicable to shopping in the tiendas of Mexico, but not applicable to, say, real life.  But as the years passed, I always remembered that saying, if only because of…um, “nostagia’s sake.”

It wasn’t until I began my own adult years that I saw the wisdom behind this statement.  And it wasn’t in LA or Mexico that I saw it, but rather in various locales around the world during my years in military service.  The best wines of France and Australia come in bottles adorned with the simplest of labels, while the swill was always outfitted with ornate displays of art that looked as though each was individually commissioned.  The best restaurants I ever ate at in Spain and Korea were basically greasy spoons, while “the finest restaurant”(s) in said countries turned out to be a joke.  The best ramen shop in Japan, in my opinion, is this ramshackle place in downtown Yokosuka; many of the famed shops of Tokyo were all noise and storm, signifying nothing.  I could go on, but I think I’m making my point: the best products were always the least “packaged” or came from places where the exterior décor was a second thought, while those who couldn’t hold a candle to them try to scream (literally or metaphorically) louder in the hopes you’d notice them first so they could sucker you out of your hard earned dollars (peseta, yen, whatever).

But it’s not just food that this applies to.  There’s an electronics store in Australia by the name of Dick Smith’s that is unrivalled in their service.  The competition are nowhere near as good and are thus forced to be louder and blitz advertising more to get Aussie money, but it’s Dick Smith’s that ultimately stays atop the chain.  The finest porcelain mask I’ve ever had came from a almost-forgettable corner nook in Venice, while many of Italy’s most vaunted potters could never have created something of such quality.  Then there’s the best example of them all: Google.  Anyone ever notice they spend no money on advertising?  Zero, zilch.  Yet their products, from the Google search engine and Gmail to YouTube and Picasa, are reknowned and outdo their competitors by a country mile.

I even run into this now: just recently I met the owners of a bakery whose fare is considered amongst the nation’s best, but their packaging is nothing more than cellophane over a bakery tin.  Yet their kiosk was crowded and pre-orders for their baked goods was so long, they were taking advance orders for their Thanksgiving and Christmas products in mid-August!

Why do I mention all of these?  Simple: those that are the best spend their time working on a superior product first and foremost, and to them, what the product comes in is second thought.  Google spends no money on ads because they sink everything into R&D in order to create services and software of sterling quality.  The folks at 1^st AVE Bakery don’t have to shout from the mountaintops about their wares because they know baking inside and out (19 years of winning purple ribbons – the best of the best – in tons of baking contests is proof enough).  The manager of Antonio’s, a local pizza place that is wildly successful at what they do sums it up in a statement he made to me once: “If people want just a pizza, they can call [a rival pizza chain] and have it brought in no time flat.  But if they want the real stuff – the good stuff – they know exactly where we are.”  Suffice to say, their pizza boxes – and the restaurant itself – doesn’t speak to the highest decoration values, per se.  But they don’t need to; the product speaks for itself.

And as was mentioned before, the best tortillas in your supermarket almost always have the packaging that looks the worst.  I recall a couple of years ago my mother-in-law (against my suggestions) bought this beautifully-designed package of “gourmet tortillas”, while I countered with what looked like a reject from the little Mexican food store a few miles down.  The gourmet ones, of course, tasted akin to Frisbees (I think I’d rather eat the Wham-O’s, thankyouverymuch), while the badly packaged ones are the brand she now swears by. Another example is that of a local supermarket chain who have excellent tortillas as well.  They also had lousy packaging, but that didn’t matter, because they were always selling out.  Well, one day they upgraded their packging to something sleeker…and suddenly they were no longer selling out.  It turned out that they had changed something and what they thought was common sense – to change the packaging to reflect the revision of their product – only served to let those in the know be aware to stay away.  Fortunately, this chain is known for their attention to customer service and detail and within a month, the old packaging was back…and so was the taste.  Needless to say, they’ve started selling out again and have learned the value of tortilla marketing.

It’s a maxim that businesses often either don’t know or, sadly, tend to forget: the best identity in the world is not going to save you from mediocre business practices or a crappy product.  Enron: beautiful building, classy logo – you can guess how well that worked out.  It’s often argued that the US car companies spend more on advertising than they do on making a car that people actually want.  The video game maker Sega spent money on putting out high-profile advertising but a series of substandard game systems; the repercussions of that led them from having the top selling console (the Genesis) to ultimately withdrawing from the console market.  My first real instruction in business was from a guy who blew money on a major ad campaign for a store whose service was so horrid, the place shut down in less than a year.

The gorgeously-displayed junkyard of history is filled with aesthetically pleasing piles of garbage that people were conned into buying, only to find out what it really like.  No amount of advertising, packaging and design genius will ever, EVER make a piece of trash worth buying or make lousy service commendable.   We here at Incstone Design, as well as our fellow designers and even the major ad agencies, cannot make the bad good.  We can help to make your product more noticeable and give it a better gleam, but ultimately, the only one who can create a business worth its salt is you, the owner.  The best products  and services are the ones that are of great enough caliber to surpass and transcend any limitations, all because the creators or business owners busted their tails to make sure it was that way.  That’s not to say that logos, websites or packaging is unnecessary (or else I’d be out of a job), but great work speaks for itself and garners word of mouth, which is ultimately the best advertising of all, bar none.  After all, who do you trust more, a friend or family member who has nothing but good things to say about Brand X, or the multimillion-dollar ad campaign about Brand Y despite the fact that nobody really likes it?

As a business owner, whether you’re making the best product you can or delivering the most sterling service possible, remember to let your work speak for itself.  Ultimately, when the wheat and the chaff are separated, the best will come out and if you’ve done your job, it’s not about what’s on the plain brown paper bag than what’s in said bag.

So, remember the power of tortilla packaging and that it’s just that: packaging.  It’s what’s inside the package that what really counts.  In short, there’s a reason why El Pato, a brand of Mexican hot sauce, hasn’t changed their packaging since at least the 70s (and it wasn’t really stylish back then to begin with)…but of greater importance, why they don’t need to, either.