How Seagate learned to package like Apple.
The other day I saw a deal on external hard drive, FreeAgent from Seagate, on SlickDeals.net. As I was looking for an external hard drive for quite some time, I quickly grabbed this deal. My drive arrived yesterday and trying to unpack it and use it was a ‘Wow’ experience. Here’s my photo story:
1. The product box. Product tag line: ‘Now your digital content has room to breathe.’
Those one liners in different colors read ‘is this obsessive’, ‘nice rug’, ‘found my tax returns’, ‘this song rocks’, ‘i took these with my new camera’.
2. Here’s back of the product box. No stupid technical specifications, no ‘Works with Windows XP/Vista logos’, simple answer to questions I might have.
3. When you flip open the box, you are greeted with this text. ‘If only this box held as much content as your FreeAgent desktop drive’. Nice. 
4. When you open the box, first thing you notice is the ‘quick start guide’. It actually doesn’t say that it is a quick start guide…it reads..
5. Below are the photos of the quick start guide. The guide was not black-n-white OR printed on some cheap paper, it was colorful and printed on high quality paper. Looks like folks at Seagate listened to Kathy Sierra when she suggested that ‘Marketing should create the user manuals.’
6. The drive was wrapped in anti-static bag. And the sticker on the bag reads ‘Hello’.
7. Design touches:
- It has no on/off switch. It auto suspends itself with your computer.
- The power plug doesn’t have a transformer. Instead, transformer is at the bottom of the product, giving it a solid base to stand on.
- Other than Seagate logo in bottom corner, product is clean and smooth. Beautiful.
- The drive comes pre-formatted. So when you plug it in and Windows creates the drive letter, it’s ready for you to use! The only thing present on the drive is the PDF containing Warranty and Customer Support manual. Very clever.
I immediately started copying my photos and other stuff to this drive and so far it has worked great.
My only gripe? The wierd product name - FreeAgent. After reading all the beautiful copywriting on product box and quick start guide, I think Seagate could have come up with a better name.
Overall, full marks to Seagate for not only creating a product but for creating the ‘experience’. If you are looking for external hard drive, go buy one now.
July 4th, 2007 at 3:02 am
That’s fantastic. I wish more non-Apple products were like this.
July 4th, 2007 at 6:35 am
wow, progress.. I’m shocked
agree about the name, I think there is a news reader named FreeAgent too
also, some of the manual, and the comment on the inside of the box, and the hello sticker, have a marketing-masturbatory feel to them that takes the polish off - I’d much prefer the simplicity without the ‘knowing’ attitude
July 4th, 2007 at 8:42 am
yes the package design and instructions are nice and a breath of fresh air. unfortunately, i don’t share your enthusiam for the product design…
for an internal drive, i always choose seagate first but that external case is silly and limited.
by silly i mean, it appeals more to trekkie fans than imac lovers. by limited i mean it can only sit vertical.
i wish someone would make an external drive with built wireless (airport compatible) and shaped flat to sit under a television. it could be slightly smaller than a home dvd player or it could be as small as the mac tv (althought i think that is too small as you can’t put a 3.5 inch drive in it. my dream external would have built in wireless, sit flat like a tv component and be at leatst large enough to hold two 3.5 inch drive in a RAID.
oh, and it should be silent / fanless like a dvd player too.
call it your digital living room. here’s hoping seagate or another manufacturer reads this comment.
July 4th, 2007 at 9:01 am
I appreciate “clean” design, but something about this style of packaging seems like the thing inside the box/wrapper/casing has been robbed of all its underlying technology. It feels like the entire focus is on the end-user, rather than the core functionality that you were buying the object (computer, harddisk, whatever) to do for you.
Maybe it’s cause i’m geeky, but I prefer to buy a piece of technology and know exactly how it works, and have the opportunity to view detailed technical specifications - should the need arise.
July 4th, 2007 at 9:06 am
The name makes pretty good sense to me (as a loose sports analogy), but yeah, it does share its name with the newsreader.
Nonetheless, it’s a big step up from typical hyper-technical boxes and manuals the average Joe couldn’t figure out even if you spotted him all but the last step. Simplicity in both packaging and product definitely pays off.
July 4th, 2007 at 9:08 am
Actually, I don’t like this overcuteifying of big company products. It’s everywhere nowadays, and it basically says we are all like little stupid children who like to be treated like idiots.
Minimalistic packaging design is good, but the copy texting is ridiculous on this one. Apple doesn’t do that.
For further reading:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1940584,00.html
July 4th, 2007 at 9:27 am
I recently brought an external drive from LaCie and noticed they are very Apple-esque: http://www.lacie.com/au/index.htm
July 4th, 2007 at 10:52 am
That’s all very nice, but you skipped over what should be the most essential part: that the internal packaging looks to be made of recycled card- that should be a zillion times more important than wanky wording and a little yellow sticker!
I think packaging has got to be one of the most wasteful, unnecessary industries there is, which desperately needs some regulation.
>C
July 4th, 2007 at 11:14 am
Actuall, the transformer IS the power plug. Looking at the pictures, the boxy thing that plugs into the wall is a wall-wart (nickname for one of those nasty big things) power transformer.
If the transformer were in the base, you’d see a straight two or three pin power cable going to the unit.
July 4th, 2007 at 11:21 am
Great
Keep it simple.
July 4th, 2007 at 11:25 am
This goes to show that not only Apple can do this kind of thing. And for those who claim ‘it’s just a hard drive, get over it’, there most definitely is a quality to a product that people take care to communicate openly about.
The name is a bit quixotic but the way the product is delivered and presented tells me that Seagate cares enough about its product to have it make a great impression on the user. This inspires confidence, I’m actually inclined to try Seagate products.
Of course it is important that the quality of the product matches that of the marketing, that has to be the first consideration. Seagate is doing it right though, this is the way I want to be treated as a customer/user [note: if the product has a higher level of complexity, then that has to be reflected in the documentation, but that doesn't mean the producer can't be nice about it].
July 4th, 2007 at 12:03 pm
who needs this experience ?
if u want emotions watch a film or …
Why do i have to pay for marketing ?
I want a working product and not a smiley on the bag. I want specifications (like data transfer rate, …) and not blabla like
best product ever build, fast like lightning, super-speed harddrive …
How stupid can the average customer be ?
July 4th, 2007 at 1:17 pm
nokia 6230, the most under rated phone on the planet, nice…
July 4th, 2007 at 1:29 pm
* These drives does have an on/off switch.
* As you can see in the pictures above, the transformer is not in the base, it is in the plug. It is not as large as regular external HDD transformers, though.
July 4th, 2007 at 3:39 pm
That packaging not in a wildest deam stands close to Apple packaging.
That cheap plastic bag with the Hello sticker proves it is just a better packaging.
Apple packaging is on a highest level and that applies to Apple products too.
July 5th, 2007 at 5:53 am
Lovely packaging! You should have ordered the drive last week so I had seen it before I ordered myself a WD external hard drive.
July 6th, 2007 at 2:31 am
Love the packaging. Fantastic, really. But Keep the marketing department out of technical documentation.
July 6th, 2007 at 1:20 pm
“This won’t take long” reminds me of Douglas Adams’ “Don’t panic”
July 6th, 2007 at 1:24 pm
I too was astounded recently when I went into a large consumer electronics chain and saw a wide array of external hard disks for sale in the PC (not Mac) section, including units up to one terrabyte or quite reasonable prices.
We Mac users have loved external hard disks since the Mac Plus got a SCSI port in 1986.
I’d thought in the last couple of years that PC users had finally woken up to the convenience of independent storage with USB keychain flash drives getting to decent sizes and very cheap, but perhaps that has only whetted their taste buds for the real thing — even if they’re mostly stuck with pokey USB2.
TechNibble is correct that LaCie make some nice stuff (and have done for several decades). I bought one of their external 500 GB drives recently. It’s got USB2, FireWire400 and FireWire800, and is also a USB and Firewire powered hub. Here it is under the internet/file server in my home “rack” with UPS-powered server, 4M/2M cable modem, wifi base station (not visible) and an older 300 GB external USB/Firewire drive that I carry around with me:
http://hoult.org/bruce/server.jpg
Note how well it blends in sitting underneath the Mac Mini server.
July 16th, 2007 at 5:36 am
Amazing to see you document this. A few weeks ago a buy one myself and being a designer and a mac fan, found the package excellent. It remind me of every apple package i’ve seen so far.
There was a lot of thought on the creation of this box,
but from all of it, the thing that blew my mind was the sticker on the antistatic bag. Nice touch.
July 19th, 2007 at 5:41 pm
It’s funny; I’m actually in the market for a simple external hard drive, and had walked past this unit in the store a few times and didn’t give it a second look because I thought it was trying to be “more than” a simple drive (which is exactly what it winds up being). I didn’t want a drive with backup software, etc., and felt like the FreeAgent product MUST be more complicated than what I’m looking for.
July 19th, 2007 at 5:46 pm
I know the drive was designed by frog design. Are they responsible for this packaging too? Great work.
July 19th, 2007 at 5:51 pm
(Apostrophe) above said “It feels like the entire focus is on the end-user, rather than the core functionality…”
Right, dude. Welcome to the future of consumer electronics. Even my grandma knows what a “big-ass hard drive” is for. There *is no core functionality* beyond “store a whole lot of stuff on it.” There *is no value* in telling you how fast the platters spin or exactly how much formatted drive space you have.
July 19th, 2007 at 6:06 pm
So the packaging worked, and now we know of Seagate’s FreeAgent. The product package became the marketing. Excellent work, Seagate.
Thanks for sharing, JD.
July 19th, 2007 at 6:44 pm
I bought a FreeAgent Pro a couple months ago and I also really enjoyed the experience of unwrapping my new drive. I showed the packaging to some friends, but never got around to blogging about it myself.
The drive itself is great and I was especially glad I had it after my internal drive recently started dying. However, the included software performed horribly slow so I have been using NTBackup instead.
July 19th, 2007 at 7:27 pm
Kahlil right on, my thoughts exactly. I got the 750GB model a couple weeks ago and was just impressed in general. I’m not a huge Apple fan but I recognize good marketing, and Seagate is making the right move. I bought a WD MyBook a year or so ago and I don’t even remember what it came in, but I don’t think I could forget the Seagate presentation.
Marketing and image are just so powerful I’m surprised more companies are not doing this sort of thing. I realize “programmers” may not care, but designers and regular Joes and Jills in general will.
I liked the simplicity, and at first I was frustrated that there was no manual type paper explaining the details of my product, but it’s all in electronic format on the drive itself which is the way these things should be done, why waste paper when everything these days is electronic?
Anyhow, props to Seagate, I’m betting WD gets on the bandwagon.
July 20th, 2007 at 9:59 pm
Just wait until something goes wrong. And try to get something done… seagate is a joke, the sell cheap quality drives that fail in the first three months and want 1,200 bucks to recover data. I barely had a chance to set up my tape back up before the drive went south.
July 29th, 2007 at 12:52 pm
You’ll want to adjust the NTFS security permissions on the root of your drive if you’re using it with XP. They ship with settings that can cause the drive to be filled with undeleteable temp junk when you run windows update. Set it to give system and administrators full access, and any other user accounts you want to give it to.
July 29th, 2007 at 4:10 pm
I agree with Michael. I’ve never seen a Seagate drive do anything but fail (a friend’s failed three times in one week). I will never understand WHO EXACTLY is having such a great experience that these should be the “de facto” external drives. LaCie is a far better product in my experience.
And as for the packaging: It’s cute, but “cute” in itself doesn’t make a good product presentation. I see a lot of marketing teams these days exchanging “simple” for “useful”. It’s not about paring information down to the bare minimum, it’s about delivering useful content in a more accessible fashion.
I, however, do not agree with Steve: Engineers and developers should NEVER directly address a customer base. That leads to the sort of unintelligible, misanthropic jargon that scars the surface of most display boxes and manuals today.
August 9th, 2007 at 4:52 pm
So you’ve never seen a Seagate drive do anything but fail??
Guess what drive is in the LaCie products! It’s a Seagate.
August 28th, 2007 at 5:27 pm
That packaging is great, simplicity with a smirk is best.
And I couldn’t agree more, the name it outright moronic, they should have let their package designer rename the product as well.
August 29th, 2007 at 7:09 pm
Only problem I ran in to w/ the packaging is that the “quick start guide” didn’t have the AutoBackup software Product Key printed on it like the AutoBackup Help instructions state: “You must register your AutoBackup software before you can use the AutoBackup program. To complete the registration, you need the AutoBackup Product Key attached to the Quick Start Guide in your FreeAgent drive shipping carton.”
Where is this product key?
October 8th, 2007 at 3:40 pm
Reminds me of IOmega’s advertising and packaging for their Zip drives, down to the cutesy slogans - IOmega’s were actually preprinted ZIP cartridge stickers.
January 11th, 2008 at 7:52 am
Great piece and by the looks of it great packaging. Nice to see other’s care about this stuff as well. It still amazes me when I see those “it doesn’t matter”-posts. Of course it matters! It practically screams: “We care about our products!” Certainly the kind of stuff that makes me more inclined to buy from a company…
January 31st, 2008 at 9:41 pm
OH let me tell you! Just “plug it in and away it goes” KISS MY ASS. There are no f’ing instructions with this goddamn thing. SO I called Seagate after being disconnected twice by their moron in India, get this, and it’s 1/31/08 at 4:38 and I just got off the phone with them. Where are the instructions on how to RECOVER the date to a new machine?!?! (My laptop completely died and I bought a new one two days ago). So I went to the Seagate website and couldn’t find a manual and I called - YOU HAVE to , HAVE TO call Seagate to learn how the hell to recover your data and tranfer it to the new computer. READ THAT ONE MORE TIME - YOU HAVE TO CALL THEM.
Because on my brand new computer, when I plug it in, and mind you, I sit in an office all day and am pretty good with computers, I could not for the life of me figure out how to “easily transfer files.”
WHAT A CROCK. I’m livid.
I’m a life-long Consumer Reports person, this is the first time they have been WAY WAY off the mark. This thing sucks with no instructions HOW STUPID.
March 3rd, 2008 at 6:03 pm
Nice bedsheet dude!