What's your foil top?

Businesses spend an awful lot of money designing what they fashionably call the user experience.

Apple’s iPhone packaging is a perfect example of how pleasurable it can be to build excitement around a product.

Before you even use it.

Feel that surface tension gripping to the silk varnish on the box as you slide off the lid…

I’m reliably informed it cost a fortune to engineer a box like this.

But you don’t need to invest billions to create a special moment.

The Sanpellegrino can is a perfect example.

It features a foil top that fits over the top of the bit you drink from.

It is crimped into place like the muslin cloth around the lid of some home-made jam.

I don’t think Sanpellegrino are unique in using this foil addition.

And, although it is beautifully designed, it is not there simply for aesthetic reasons.

It’s an attractive way to keep out the millions of germs that would normally inhabit the ring pull area.

Yes. But it feels like more than this.

It’s a tiny, tactile ritual when you remove the foil.

It makes this fizzy drink feel more special than others.

The extra lid was undoubtedly added in an anonymous looking factory by a fast-moving machine but, at the point of removal, it seems like a lovely, old-fashioned touch.

Almost as if it was added by hand by someone wearing an apron.

I think there’s a lesson to be learned here.

Maybe part of the reason our clients like us is nothing directly to do with our work but something we do that simply adds a nice touch.

Maybe we gave them a particularly lovely business card when everyone else either doesn’t have one or buys them cheaply from some online print farm.

It could be how great our office is. Or the strong coffee we serve.

Things like these seem irrelevant but they are part of our business brand and, consequently, deserve a little consideration from time to time.

If chosen correctly, they make concrete something that is intangible about our business.

Sometimes, we spend so much time concentrating on the substance of what we do (the cake) we often forget the memorable, fun bit (the cherry — or in this case foil — on top).