Bespectacled Rice Made by Farmers With Glasses www.spoon-tamago.com

In a crowded marketplace, how do you differentiate your product from similar products that are all competing for attention? One group of rice farmers came up with the unlikely idea of focusing their branding not on the product, but on the people who make it.

In Sabae City, a district in Fukui Prefecture, 3 small companies got together to form a new brand of rice. Rather than focusing on the type of rice, where it’s from or how it’s harvested – features that are often highlighted in rice packaging and branding – Meganemai, as it’s called, focused on the fact that everyone involved in the production of the rice wears glasses.

Indeed, Meganemai is Japanese for “rice with glasses.” The rice farmer wears glasses, the rice polisher wears glasses and the designer wears glasses. “That’s it? Yup, that’s it,” they say.

However, this is a modest statement and at the heart of the project is a lot more. It’s about giving a face to a product you buy, and ultimately eat, which provides a sense of security and transparency that is often hard to find.