In 2005 P&G coined the term “first moment of truth” to describe the importance of packaging in their marketing model.
Back in the beforetime, a friend of mine asked me over dinner in London if I knew about the Lyle’s Golden Syrup logo. I did not …
and was surprised to find out it was a dead lion with a swarm of bees emerging from its carcass.
I went on to discover that it was based on a Biblical story called Samson’s Riddle, that most people had never noticed what it was [friends, Twitter and various news articles validated this] and that, in 2006, Guinness World Records had declared it Britain’s oldest brand.
Beneath the decomposing feline is the tagline “out of the strong came forth sweetness”, which is an old saying derived from the aforementioned story.
Also, lion sounds a bit like Lyle, so there’s that.
I was reminded of this whilst in a French supermarket. I adore exploring foreign grocers as an alien anthropologist might: to understand why the layouts are as they are, what brands are the same or different. There is always at least one insightful realization, one moment where the strange suddenly becomes familiar…
