Labels for shipping products come in sizes and shapes and most are not made from what you think they are from seeing them at first! It is not only how some of them are made that may give you pause for thought but sometimes, shipping labels originating from one part of the globe can give a wry smile when it ultimately arrives at its final destination.
Vintners for example have been working on numerous ways to accentuate the look and feel of their wines and packaging, notably concentrating on the bottle and labeling which has itself become big business within the industry. The state of California is typical of the developments in marketing wine by focusing on the labeling and packaging even when they have an already fine wine inside. A good example is the 2006 Retour Willamette Valley Pinot Noir with a bottle that weighs in at 2 pounds 5 ounces and that’s empty! The weight is due to the heavy metal label attached to the bottle which adds a large amount of weight (almost a pound) which may be great if you are into that sort of thing but if you buy a case and you are shipping 12 pounds of shipping label!
In a case of cultural differences playing their part, an Australian firm manufactured the country’s leading brand of sticky tape under the brand name “Durex”. In an export drive, millions of rolls of the stuff were shipped overseas but a degree of consternation occurred when the initial shipments arrived in the UK – perplexed customs officers were confronted by shipping labels and manifests declaring the goods to be “Rolls of Durex” – in the UK, Durex is the leading brand of prophylactic!
A near marketing disaster was created when Johnson & Johnson chose a cutesy little baby as the poster child for a baby food they were selling into certain African countries. Sadly, in Africa many of the people can't read and in any case there are so many languages and dialects being spoken that labeling a food package, or any package, is almost irrelevant. Instead, what you see on the tin is what you expect to find when you open the container and while here at home, the Johnson baby may be as cute as button, in Nigeria consumers were put off the product because they thought they were actually buying cutesy white babies ready for the pot!
When it comes to language and mistranslation, shipping labels can be a wealth of side-splitting stories and accidents. Customs inspectors in New Jersey were confronted with a shipment imported from India which the shipping labels declared to be full of “Burned Cow” and they certainly had an aroma of bad BBQ emanating from it too. A team from the Center for Disease Control arrived and after establishing a quarantine and mobile laboratory to conduct tests and deal with the contents they proceeded to treat the packages with rubber gloves. Opening the packages revealed nothing more innocuous than hand carved wooden sculptures of cows in various poses (the cow being the most sacred animal for many Indians) and which had been charred as part of their finishing.
Shipping labels may be the source of fun and controversy for some but they are in fact simple to produce and source as well as performing a valuable function. You can design your own shipping labels easily in a custom format to suit your needs or simply source pre-designed ones for a special message such as “Fragile” – cheap and fast, it’s your choice but try to avoid the funny mishaps too!
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