Red tea: giraffe identification

Another post on packaging today...

I like to drink red tea, or rooibos, and recently tried a new brand - Clipper organic rooibos.

As you can see from the image to your right, the Clipper box has a large picture of a giraffe on it. This is presumably because both rooibos and giraffes come from Africa, not because rooibos is made from giraffes. A tenuous connection, but fair enough.

What you probably can't make out, however, is the small writing along the side of the picture of the giraffe. It says 'Giraffe', for anyone who is unable to identify the strange, long-necked, yellow animal. Thanks, Clipper.

Not only that, but it then gives the Latin name for the giraffe, 'giraffa camelepardolis' - perhaps to assist any red-tea drinking, non-English speakers with a grasp of Latin out there who cannot identify a giraffe from a picture alone. Marvellous.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Your comment about tea not being made from giraffes reminds me of the story about the well-known baby food manufacturer who wondered why their product was not selling in Africa despite extensive marketing and some fairly aggressive sales tactics.

Apparently it took them some time to realise that local products habitually featured a picture of the food item itself on the packaging. This simplified things as the majority of the population could not read or write and therefore could identify what they were buying by the picture on the packaging.

It should therefore have come as no surprise that jars containing unidentifiable grey goo with a big picture of a happy smiling baby on the front didn't exactly sell too well...