Campell’s Soup Neuromarketing Redesign: New Box, Same Old Crap
March 2, 2010
A few weeks ago the Wall Street Journal did a nice profile of Campbell’s new redesign and the neuromarketing methodology behind it. Since the WSJ has a pay-wall, you can find a nice summary of the article here.
Is this the natural progression of advertising with the onset of ubiquitous technology?
I gotta admit, from an aesthetic standpoint it’s definitely an improvement. The less prominent name alone justifies the change. It looks nice. The old design feels a bit dry… and that’s not the thing you want with soup. But while the new design feels nicer, it doesn’t make want to eat their soup.
The photoshop steam coming off the soup… it all feels a bit like those unrealistic cover girl shots. The box sure looks nice, but the food is still junk.
When we isolate our neural responses outside of a natural context, we are reduced to an aesthetic unreality. Think ‘natural grape flavor.’ Maybe we are nothing more than a bunch of quantifiable neurons to be marketed towards and maybe this type of marketing moves units, but there seems to be a total lack of respect for the customer in all this.
As a society, we are losing the ability to maintain a healthy concept of body image. We are losing the ability to discern truly healthy beautiful food from slickly-marketing trash. It feels like a complete misappropriation of technology.
How is this helping us?
How many times have you been lured into a food purchase by some slick packaging – maybe it was that smell of Subway or McDonald’s as you walked past – only to be utterly and completely disappointed when you ate the food. This type of marketing is moving units, but it’s all based on a lie. The food itself doesn’t look better. It doesn’t taste better. And it isn’t healthier. In all likelihood, they probably cut funds from the quality assurance to spend more on marketing and advertising.
When we look at and eat fresh and natural food, it appeals just as equally to our neural sensors. A wild strawberry in a field – now that is magic!
If innovation is to take the neural marketing of the wild strawberry and attach it to box, that’s fine, but I want no part of it.
