I came across these banner ads on How Stuff Works. It is an interesting approach, advertising the packaging rather than the product. Hacking Altoids tins is nothing new. In fact, tutorials related to Altoids tins comprised 58% of Make: magazine and Instructables‘ content in the early years.
It is interesting to see this DIY/Personal fabrication ethos being used to sell candy. Altoids is a fairly mainstream brand so it takes a good amount of sales to move the needle on revenue. Are there enough hardware hackers to comprise a serviceable demographic? Or is it just aspirational marketing for the DIY crowd?
Altoids are an instructive example for customization entrepreneurs. Help your customers show off. This “Altoids Tin Hack” meme has had a lot of traction over several years. The free media generated by stories about these hacks have probably moved more mints than these banner ads will. The projects aren’t usually very high tech or high quality, but they do create a kind of cool “TA-DA” moment for the maker.
Instead of selling the final good you might want to sell a kit with the ability for the customer to add some small twist to make it unique.
