Hacker News Reader

Comment by close04 | Hacker News Reader

Size and shape are powerful differentiators in marketing. Just think of how recognizable is a bottle of Coke compared to a generic soda. With the money most companies invest(ed) in this they will be very reluctant to go to a standardized model soon. But I guess eventually efficiency will win.

View on HN

We can ban different shapes, and the company will have to manage without this "differentiator".

Soda supplied to bars and restaurants in Denmark is usually in returnable bottles, including Fanta and Sprite (which elsewhere have shaped bottles). Coca Cola has a shape, but perhaps they sell enough to make it worthwhile to sort these from the usual shape.

https://www.bevco.dk/vand-og-mixer/sodavand/filter/flaske_ty...

(I drink close to zero soda at home. I know supermarkets sell cans and plastic bottles, both single-use but with a deposit. Possibly they sell the glass ones too. Most Danish beer is sold in a reusable bottle, foreign or microbrew beer just has a deposit but the bottle isn't reused.)

aluminum soda cans are a great example of standardized containers that work right now

The cans are almost never reused, instead they're recycled as the metal is too expensive to throw away and easier to render clean than almost every plastic.

It requires a lot of energy though to clean and melt. This recycling aluminum is not exactly green.

Recycling aluminum is very green when you compare the energy expenditure of recycling vs creating a net new can.

Did until recently- notice that you can now get regular Diet Coke (and I assume other sodas) in mini cans and the new Diet Coke flavors come in skinny/tall cans only.

It's a funny thing - manufacturers of products want to "stand out" from competition - so they use unique shaped containers for their products...

...the same is true for the container companies! The want to stand out from their competition - so they introduce new products (containers) with new shapes or sizes for that purpose.

While I am certain that some product manufacturers can dictate or have custom-shaped containers for their brand only, for many they just choose an off-the-shelf version and brand using labeling and/or color.

So - while going with standard-sized containers would be great for a whole host of reasons, for the product manufacturers - both for what is being contained, and the containers themselves - it presents a huge loss of profit and market share.

I'm not sure what we can do about this; it seems like something that would have to be dictated by government, because I doubt any of the other stakeholders (not even the consumers) will sway the decision toward standardized containers.

Soda cans (and for that matter, soup cans) are almost the only examples we have (ok - plastic milk jugs and paper milk cartons?), but as you have noticed, that's starting to fragment (it had already started with beer cans long before).

Of course a standard container would work just fine from the consumer's point of view and of course the companies will survive. The problem is for how long are they willing to delay this until losing the uniqueness of the shape is a better alternative to the social stigma attached to environmental carelessness.

And the Coke was just one example. A Google search for "iconic packaging" [0] will give you a lot of other examples of packaging so recognizable and unique that you can identify the product just by glancing at the shape.

[0] https://www.google.com/search?&q=iconic+packaging

Standardizing size and shape across brands does not appear to bother soda companies when they are packaging their product in cans. It doesn't seem unreasonable to require them to do the same for bottles in order to avoid mountains of plastic waste.

just ban plastic bottles.... cans work just fine.

Whole cans are easy to recycle, but doing so requires melting the metal back into stock and noxious chemicals to clean the metal.

That is all very expensive and environmentally unfriendly compared to potential for reuse of strong bottles.

Unless you force a redesign so that cans are reusable. (No more tab - instead a bottle cap, standard shape, no crushing, heavier, thicker, more expensive.)

I expect that soft drinks could easily be sold in a mini-keg form factor.

There exists aluminum bottles - Coke at one time sold their soda in them (I think it was some kind of commemorative edition or something like that).

That would have the same benefit as bottles: The ability to drink only part of the contents (like people do with water). The downside is that you can't see what is inside (an important factor for many people when they purchase - especially water).

There's the iconic Coke glass bottle, sure, but larger plastic beverage bottles have no discernible differences; same with cans, cardboard cartons, gallon jugs, even, for the most part, glass beer bottles.

On the other hand, many container types are already de facto standardized: the lid of the pint of the cottage cheese and the quart of yogurt in my fridge right now, for example, are interchangeable even though they're from totally different dairies. Milk jugs and cartons are standardized. Cereal boxes, most pop bottles. Instant noodle bricks. The list isn't as long as the list of all possible products, but there are clearly benefits to standardization even in the absence of legislation mandating it.

There are only a handful of carton providers in the world (TetraPak is leading in carton in Europe, for example). Everyone uses or clones their machinery and designs.

Right, the point being that even absent the requirement to do so, dairies have figured out that it's cheaper/better to all use the same packaging.

Size and shape reminds me of the arguement the music industry made about CD packaging and inserts being tangible, value-adds to the listening experience.

Turns out, especially with a lot of CPGs now being sold online, consumers care more about price and quality/quantity than size and shape....

Glass bottles had variation, because they had their own deposit/return chain to hang on to their own bottles for reuse. They could afford to use them as unique branding too. If they were getting Pepsi or Irn Bru bottles back, or no bottle back, it wouldn't work.

Now, a bottle of Coke is identical to a bottle of Pepsi, Irn Bru or cheapest own label, except for the label, colour of contents and cap. Just a standard, almost generic, 2l or 500ml bottle. Do they even sell glass Cokes any more? I can't remember the last time I saw one. Beer still comes in glass, so there's far more variation. Deposits are no more. Reuse is no more.

Can't be that powerful in differentiating or marketing in comparison to saving a penny or two using generic plastic.

While 2L bottles are roughly standardized in most markets, other commonly found bottle sizes are not as standard. A 20oz bottle of Coke looks extremely different from a 20oz bottle of Pepsi. And yes, Coca-Cola still sells Coke in glass bottles in many markets.

Marketing is zero sum. If we standardize everything, then marketers will find some other way to differentiate themselves. It's not a problem we as a society should give any weight to.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com