Orbit

A big part of the packaging of a product is the lexis and graphology that’s used to persuade the audience to buy it. I have been looking at Wrigley’s Orbit Professional White Peppermint Sugarfree Gum. So how does it appeal to the oncoming customer when it is such small packaging? Well, this is a good example of how something so small can have so much to say. The layout of the text plus the image is done in a way to grab the attention of customers.

We can firstly see that ‘Orbit’ is in the standard text that is used with all Orbit products; as this is so well known, when the customer sees that as the first thing, they know it is this ‘big’ product, one that a customer could trust. The graphology used is vast on this packaging and plays a big part into the persuasion of the buyer. The ‘Orbit is big and bold and is central. The colour blue brings in the idea of a nice fresh, icy, minty taste. ‘Professional’ is in a large text and in red, red being a primary colour it is very distinct to the individual eye and attracts the customer.

Everyone has a little bit of materialism in them, and the designers pick up on little facts such as this, and this helps them choose the choice of lexis. For example, a customer reads ‘professional’ and immediately thinks this is better than a normal packet of gum even if it does cost more. ‘Whitens teeth’ in the top right corner is in a box, where the background is red, again this red is used because it’s so striking. The wording here attracts people because it says what people want.

The actual text colour is white, which is a hidden ploy because the whitening of the text next to the bold red background is obvious and the colour white is what this chewing gum is saying it will do for your teeth. Wherever the packet talks about ‘white’, there is an image is a white star as though to make the words gleam like your teeth would gleam if one used this product. And again there is a star coming from behind an image of a tooth, thus making the tooth gleam and this has been placed with the text ‘whitens teeth’ which is appropriate.

The banner that cuts the top left corner again has a red background with white text. ‘new! Great taste Great crunch’. Firstly the ‘new’ is in uppercase, grabs peoples attention and people will then want to see what is new and will read on. ‘Great taste Great crunch’ is clever because it is in the same text and same size and the ‘Great crunch’ is placed directly below the ‘Great taste’, this creates a sort of rhythm like you would find in a poem. They are both short sentences but without the standard grammar, as it does not have a full stop when there is clearly two sentences.

Phonology is used here as well, using ‘Great’ both times creates alliteration which is pleasant sounding towards the ears. Also, it sounds good because both two sentences have an equal amount of syllables and each word has one syllable. Another thing about phonology to be pointed out here is that ‘taste’ and ‘crunch’ are very bold strong sounding words. Sometimes the designers have to think about the actual design of the product. This one for example is a box which is not very deep at all. The designers have to think about the design and how it will be placed in the shop.

The main lexis which the designer obviously thinks is the most important is ‘Orbit Professional White’ because this is repeated from the main face of the box on the thin side of the box, because often when this type of size of box is packaged in the shops, the face is usually covered because they’re in stacks and you can only see the thin side of the box, the lexis they have chosen would grab the customers attention so that they will then pick it up and be able to read everything on the face of the box which has a more attractive layout and some more important lexis.

All these thoughts into the grammar, phonology, graphology and lexis, is to make the product more attractive to the customer and therefore persuade the customer to buy the product.