Imagine doing your weekly grocery shop. You flip a smoothie bottle over to check the size. Printed on the underside is “Stop looking at my bottom”. You crack a smirk and throw it in your basket. UK smoothie brand Innocent has hidden that joke under its bottles and cartons for years. It was never televised or backed by any media spend. But many people remember that same smirky Sunday shop. So, what are shoppers looking at? Retail spend concentrates at the top on the big and shiny stuff. Think
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Imagine doing your weekly grocery shop. You flip a smoothie bottle over to check the size. Printed on the underside is “Stop looking at my bottom”. You crack a smirk and throw it in your basket.UK smoothie brand Innocent has hidden that joke under its bottles and cartons for years. It was never televised or backed by any media spend. But many people remember that same smirky Sunday shop.So, what are shoppers looking at? Retail spend concentrates at the top on the big and shiny stuff. Think: campaigns, billboards, windows, launches, the seasonal calendar. Sure, the ad sounds like them. But what about the confirmation email or the details on the label?Customers absorb most of your brand much closer to the sale. The things often classified as operational – tickets, signage, emails – fall into the gap between marketing and store ops. But these little pockets of real estate become unmistakable brand experiences. Even the underside of packaging, as Innocent shows so well. These small touchpoints are what shoppers read up close, in their most decisive moment. This is a massively untapped opportunity for brands to tell customers who they are.Focus Insights’ 2025 Australian Grocery Shopper Report found shoppers scrutinise shelf tickets for total price, dollar and percentage savings, and price per kilo more than they take in any claim about how good a product is. So it’s certainly not an attention issue. Consumers can sniff an ad a mile off. And when they sense a hard sell, they pull back and ignore it. That’s why flashes of character in small moments matter so much. They catch consumers pleasantly off guard because they’re not braced for it.Some brands are getting itOat milk brand Oatly couldn’t match the dairy industry’s media budgets, so it made packaging its primary marketing channel. Waffly nothingness on the sides of cartons takes the mick and brings everything back to pure enjoyment.When Oatly launched its coffee creamers in the States, they came in round plastic bottles, leaving nowhere for the waffle to go. Oatly had none of it, so it changed the format to let the voice take centre stage. “A large part of us redesigning the packaging was to make sure we could bring back the Oatly voice on those pack sides,” North America creative director Malia Killings told AdExchanger.New Zealand cheese brand Dairyworks puts its personality where you’d expect a use-by date. The plastic wrapping around the slices comes with cheesy nuggets of wisdom, like “Layer Me In A Lasagna” and “Tuck Me In A Taco”. A bit of play before sandwich lovers even start assembling their masterpieces.The Melbourne coffee-scrub brand Frank Body lives almost entirely in its small copy. Flip the bag over, and it’ll command you to tear its top off, get naked and get dirty. Frank! Online, the brand notes its products are “tested on babes, not bunnies”. The email sign-up: “Go on, babe, you know you want me (in your inbox).” It’s the flirt on the packet and in the corners of the website that gives the brand its frankly flirty charm.Zoë Foster Blake’s skincare brand Go-To hides its best lines in the driest places. A discount code carries the disclaimer: “T&Cs apply. (G&Ts welcome/appreciated)”. Its men’s sister (or brother?) brand, Bro-To, promises “skin care that won’t piss your skin off,” and swears it tests on only one animal: Zoë herself.Toilet-paper brand Who Gives A Crap writes on every surface it can. There’s copy on every side of the delivery box, getting a giggle out of customers, couriers and the neighbours. Open it up, and you’ll find each roll individually wrapped with its own printed one-liner. And even when nature calls, the brand character is there, calling out. The red-wrapped “Emergency” roll doubles up as a gentle nudge to reorder, making it more memorable than any email or notification.It’s never too late to startWalk (or scroll) your own store and read the smallest thing there. The ticket, the tag, the sign by the register. Is it connecting? Does it feel unmistakable?No campaign asset gets to speak to your customers that close to the final decision. So make every word count.Turn your blank space into a brand momentNone of this took a bigger budget. These brands simply tune into their customers’ worlds and turn up their character on the touchpoints that everyone else treats as admin. And they’re more unmistakable for it.Leave them untapped, and you’re going quiet at the exact moment your customer’s listening.About the author: Tom Law is a writer at brand language studio XXVI, part of the Principals Group.
