Takeaway: Consumer anxiety commonly runs high when companies discontinue iconic images — last year scores of consumers protested the redesigned Tropicana carton.
In this high-stakes branding game, Campbell’s has sided with science and will soon abandon its widely-recognized red and white labels for a design the company believes will evoke a deeper emotional response from shoppers.
To arrive at this decision, the company employed neuromarketing – an emerging discipline that augments traditional market research with analysis of consumers’ biometric responses to new stimuli.
If successful, Campbell’s approach may provide marketers with powerful new tools for understanding their customers.
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Excerpt from FastCompany, “Campbell’s Soup Neuromarketing Redux: There’s Chunks of Real Science in That Recipe” by Jennifer Williams, February 22, 2010.
About a week ago, the Campbell’s publicized a bold redesign of its iconic label with the assistance of neuromarketing. Pundits promptly predicted brand suicide, decrying the company for using pseudo-science.
With help from its parter Interscope Research, Campbell’s spent two years studying microscopic changes in skin moisture, heart rate, and other biometrics to see how consumers react to everything from pictures of bowls of soup to logo design.
By the end of a two-year study, more than 1,500 subjects were interviewed and tested using multiple methodologies–which ranged from traditional consumer feedback to cutting edge neuromarketing techniques.
The team used a combination of proprietary micro facial expression analysis obtained by in-store cameras, in-aisle eye tracking and pupilometry, and intercept interviews.
One brand team member explained that the type of cutting edge technology they employed enhanced traditional methods of market research.
An Innerscope researcher explains, “Companies that rely exclusively on traditional measures, focused only at the conscious level, are missing a critical component of what drives purchase behavior. The vast majority of brain processing (75 to 95%) is done below conscious awareness. Because emotional responses are unconscious, it is virtually impossible for people to fully identify what caused them through conscious measures such as surveys and focus groups.”
Many argue that the new label design could just as easily been arrived at by a savvy designer with good instincts. Perhaps. After all, understanding that a steamy bowl of soup is likely to elicit a positive emotional response isn’t much of a leap.
The end result offered many things that savvy design or consumer feedback alone could not have predicted. This fall, consumers can expect their soup shopping to be easier and more emotionally enjoyable than it is with Campbell’s current label. Flavor and style will be easily distinguished, and the familiar red logo will still be there. However, the logo will be smaller and out of the way in the scan and selection process, and the updated images will tap into emotions that consumers already associate with and want to feel about soup.
Was this a case of a mere marketing fad masquerading as science meant to mesmerize corporate clients more than consumers? Campbell’s synchronizing of careful research done by three agencies–research which triangulated two years of data gathering and statistical analysis–looks a lot like genuine science.
Edit by BHC
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Full Article:
http://www.fastcompany.com/article/rebuttal-pseudo-science-in-campbells-soup-not-so-fast
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