Why do we indulge the clearly undesirable tendency to create "me-too" products with mundane packaging to match? Recently, I came across some interesting perspectives.
At the annual FUSE: Design & Culture, Brand Identity & Packaging conference in New York City, NY, culture and human behavior author Malcolm Gladwell offered several valuable insights. Gladwell argues that we assign too much weight to market research numbers and tend to spend too little time on what consumers might be thinking, but can't always express.
"The market researcher is not a statistician," says Gladwell, the author of Blink-essential reading for anyone with input in the package-design process. "Consumers are much too complicated to be summed up like the traditional focus group suggests."
Gregg Fraley didn't dispute that point when we talked during the conference. "In my experience, many CPG companies won't go to market unless their ideas are quantitatively validated," says Fraley, an author and creative consultant. "In the process, they're losing opportunities to come out with products that are ahead of what the consumer is thinking."
What emerged from Gladwell and others at the conference were the following suggestions for package-development teams to think ahead of the curve.
Resist asking consumers to verbalize what they want. Gladwell says that approach could actually change how they feel about what they want. When that happens, they might gravitate away from what they actually want. A better option, says Dan Hill, President of Sensory Logic, a consultancy, is to study the meanings behind consumers' facial expressions, and then observe those expressions as consumers engage with products in environments where they state preferences or make purchasing decisions. "We're all emotional decision-makers," Hill says. "We feel before we think, and we emotionally think in less than one-fifth the time it takes to make a rational response."
Change the illusion of what Gladwell describes as "cultural authenticity." This is the idea that if it worked once, that is only what works. "It's foolish to suppose there is such a thing as the perfect product," he says.
Watch out for too many brand extensions. Choice is good, but there comes a point when the sheer number of options begins to overwhelm and confuse consumers. This is true whether it's spaghetti sauce or eye-drops. It's better to understand what components or attributes really matter to consumers for both product and package.
Follow these suggestions and your brand just might break out of the "me-too" conundrum.
Our content will continue to be archived at www.shelfimpact.com.
I welcome your comments. Please call me at 630/897-7158 or contact me by e-mail.
By Jim George, Editor
