The Social Media sensation appeared in a video article on how the pandemic is changing packages
Digital Renegade Mariyah May, aka mooyayah, is one of the most beloved lifestyle and comedic influencers on TikTok. Her content ranges from cosmetic videos such as makeup and nails, to comedy skits, art, and everything in between.
With her wide range of content, Mariyah has amassed 5M followers on TikTok including more than 240M likes. Most recently, her audio was used in Shelby Holliday’s video for the Wall Street Journal, which discusses the effects the pandemic has had on the shipped package industry.
As has been seen across social media, recently many people have been receiving products they ordered online in a much larger box than what is necessary, to which many find is very wasteful. Shelby takes a deeper dive into the reasons behind this mysterious pattern, and uses Mariyah’s audio to express the feeling one might have when receiving a larger than necessary package.
See the WSJ video here, and Mariyah’s original TikTok here!
The cause of this is due to the spike in e-commerce retailers experienced during the pandemic. With people confined to their homes, everyone turned to online shopping for goods, whether that be cleaning supplies, clothing, makeup or items to improve their home. As a result, cardboard boxes were in extremely high demand, causing the prices of cardboard boxes for retailers to soar. Now, companies are looking to accelerate and optimize their packaging and shipping costs.
Here are some of the changes in packaging you may notice in the future:
- More Mailers – These are lighter than cardboard boxes, cheaper, and easier to pack. They additionally are much easier to recycle.
- Minimization of Boxes – Companies are shifting toward Amazon’s “Frustration Free Packaging” technique. They are hoping to stray away from shipping boxes inside of boxes as it is sent from the manufacturer to the retailer through offering third parties incentives for being more efficient with her packaging. This also helps the retailer save money, however will not affect the prices of the products you order.
- Skip the Shipping – Many sites are pushing customers to travel to the store to pick up their order as opposed to having the products shipped to the buyer. They often incentivize this by offering coupons or even discounts. This further has led to many companies partnering with Happy Returns, which allows consumers to drop goods off without being packaged, which has led to a drastic increase in returns.
So now comes the big question: how will retailers make the unboxing experience exciting with no box? A huge trend throughout social media has been influencers unboxing products from certain companies, and sharing with their followers an honest review on the product.
Unboxing content not only helps grow an influencer’s audience as well as engagement, but further allows retailers to advertise their products to a wide audience in a more genuine and authentic way as opposed to commercials.
While retailers are moving towards a more efficient as well as environmentally friendly way of packaging goods, it’s going to be interesting to see how they will take action to further improve the unboxing experience so many look forward to in anticipation of a delivered package. Industry leaders such as Amazon are leading the charge with some of the techniques described above, and it will be interesting to see how their packaging continues in the future.
