Engaging brands
Out of context: Reply #11
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- lowimpakt0
http://hoppsan.org/jamesb/blogge…
People think that preferences are immutable but in fact they are unstable. As a further example, Gladwell looks at the series of events that caused Coke to introduce New Coke. Despite the fact that Coke was the #1 drink ahead of Pepsi, Pepsi ran a remarkably successful ad campaign called the Pepsi Challenge. Basically people in malls were given samples of Coke and Pepsi without being informed of which is which and they were asked to pick which they preferred. Overwhelmingly they said that the preferred Pepsi. What could be more unbiased than a blind taste test? So Coke launched a campaign to produce a drink that would do well in the blind taste test. The product was New Coke and it was preferred over Pepsi in a blind taste test ~ 55% / 45%. The product was introduced and went on to become a business school case study in product launch disasters. Much has been made of bad marketing or lack of market place acceptance but Gladwell thinks the answer is a lot clearer than that. The problem has to do with the instability of preference. The principal problem with the Pepsi Challenge test is that you only take a sip. It turns out that if you are sampling drinks and you only take a sip you will invariably pick the sweeter sample. But a sweeter drink that is more palatable for a sip becomes revolting when you drink a whole glass. This was the genius of the Pepsi Challenge - Pepsi knew that they had a sweeter drink so they developed a test (by design or not) that would favor their drink.
- or you could just read the notes on my above post.kelpie
- *sticks out tonguekelpie
- Yeah, I was expecting some big conspiracy. This, as the notes above, we already knew.Jnr_Madison
- would you call this bullshit or a bit of marketing genius.Jnr_Madison
- is there any difference?kelpie