The Pandora Effect OR Why Weird Flavors Work
Handbag designer Anya Hindmarch has opened a pop-up called The Ice Cream Project in her five-story shop The Village in London. The pop-up serves a collection of unusual ice creams fashioned after iconic packaged foods. In addition to ice creams flavored with Kellogg’s Coco Pops and Bird’s Custard, the lineup includes ice creams with Heinz Baked Beans, Heinz Ketchup, HP Sauce, and Kikkoman Soy Sauce. The pop-up is open until August 28th.
Artisan ice cream brand Van Leeuwen has announced that they are releasing unique ice cream mashups for summer. Available exclusively at Walmart, the new ice creams include dessert favorites like Summer Peach Crisp French Ice Cream and Campfire S’mores, but also Grey Poupon with Salted Pretzels. The ice creams will be available on 10-week rotations throughout the summer.
Visitors to the Canadian National Expo this summer can enjoy ketchup and mustard flavored soft serve ice cream. The limited time only treat will be available from a company called So Cute Ice Cream. The company says that the condiment-inspired ice creams can either be enjoyed separately or swirled together.
Brooklyn-based scoop shop The Social has launched a new ice cream called ‘Let the Dogs Out!’ Honoring Nathan’s Famous, the ice cream base apparently tastes like buttered, toasted buns interspersed with pieces of caramelized hot dogs. No mustard ripple or onion garnish, just straightforward bun and hot dog. If you are interested in trying the new flavor, you are already too late. The concoction was only available on July 3, the day of the annual hot dog eating content.
So What? Imagine you are asked to take part in a study. You are taken into a room and shown samples of novelty products and asked questions to gauge your interest. The researcher offhandedly mentions that the three boxes of pens you see next to you are a new product. She tells you that the ones marked with a red sticker are rigged to deliver a painful but harmless jolt of electricity when clicked. The pens marked with a yellow sticker might deliver the same painful volt or nothing when clicked. While the green-stickered pens are just normal pens (no zap). The researcher then leaves to grab something from the other room. While she’s gone, what do you do?
Well, according to a 2016 study, you reach for the yellow-stickered pen and click it. In fact, you are 5X more likely to grab this pen than any of the others. Researchers call this the Pandora Effect, the intense pull of curiosity people have to uncertain, but likely negative, experiences.
What’s so fascinating about this study is what it tells us about consumer curiosity. It’s not motivated by the ordinary (i.e., the green-stickered normal pen). However, it’s also not about seeking pure unhappiness. Most people aren’t masochists, they don’t go out of their way to be tortured (i.e., the red-stickered pen). Instead, curiosity seems to be driven by consumers needing to validate how bad something might be.
Let’s translate this to consumer products. Imagine if you make breakfast cereal. One way to interpret these findings is that if you want to drive consumers to your aisle, don’t launch an LTO with a neutral, unsurprising cereal flavor (e.g., strawberry shortcake), and don’t try to shock consumers with a flavor so vile that it is guaranteed to be disgusting (e.g., vomit). Instead, launch a flavor where the degree of awfulness is uncertain (e.g., Chicken & Waffle cereal). What this appears to do is set up a tension in consumers which they feel compelled to resolve. They must see if the resulting product is truly horrendous or tolerable.
This is likely why we are seeing a stream of unusual limited-time only mashups in market, everything from ketchup ice cream to mustard-flavored donuts. It’s not that consumers think these products are going to taste good, but more that they want to see how bad they really are. As a way to engage consumers, and get them in the aisle looking at your core offerings, it’s a powerful ploy. It’s also something we’ll likely continue to see as consumer attention becomes increasingly difficult to obtain.
Anxiety Apertures
Meal kit maker Blue Apron is now available on The Knot Registry, an “all-in-one wedding registry platform from The Knot, the popular digital wedding planning site. Couples can now add a range of Blue Apron subscription services to their online registry, and Blue Apron is currently the only meal kit service on the site. With pent-up demand from 2+ years of the pandemic, The Knot anticipates that this wedding season will be the strongest in years.
Zero Acre Farms has launched a new, all-purpose cooking oil made solely via fermentation. The company claims that their oil, made with microorganisms not vegetables, has a 90% smaller environmental footprint than vegetable oil. The oil is high in healthy mono-unsaturated fats and low in unhealthy poly-unsaturated fats, has a high smoke point, and a clean, neutral taste. The product is available via the company’s website.
Tech startup company Tortoise, which began life as an ultrafast delivery solution, has now pivoted to a mobile vending machine business model. The company has announced that they are testing ’15-second commerce’ in partnership with Walmart at a few superstores in Bentonville. The roaming robots are selling Kinder eggs and Jack Link’s beef jerky to customers waiting for their curbside pickup orders. Customers merely tap their credit card on the robot’s lid to retrieve their purchase. As customers embrace the convenience of click and collect, impulsive buys are slowing. Walmart is investigating whether roving vending machines might help fill this gap.
Food delivery startup Wonder is trying to raise the bar on companies like Uber Eats or GrubHub. The company par-cooks foods at a central location then sends a chef in a van to your home to finish the meal curbside. The company has partnered with high-end restaurants and celebrity chefs to offer upscale meals at home. The company (valued at $3.5B) has big-name investors such as Marc Lore, former head of e-commerce for Walmart and founder of Diapers.com and Jet.com. Wonder is just coming out of stealth mode, where it has been testing its offering in the affluent suburb of Westfield, NJ (where its idling trucks have been upsetting eco-minded residents and apparently running tests with Starbucks).
So What? When brands look to push potential consumers down the marketing funnel, a common tactic is to target people during life-stage transitions. When consumers are faced with a new event in their lives (e.g., starting college or welcoming a new baby) they are often more open to new brands and products to help them navigate uncharted waters. Going forward, these brands have a good chance of maintaining a long-term relationship with these consumers, even after the life stage has long since passed (e.g., Huggies got you through baby #1, so they become your default on baby #2).
The Blue Apron partnership above is a great example of this type of marketing. If Blue Apron can solidify its relationship with couples early in a marriage, there is a good chance that the brand can create a long-lasting, defendable beachhead against future competition.
However, I’ve recently come to think that fixating on life stage is a bit old-fashioned. Life journeys today are not as rote or as linear as they used to be. For example, instead of attending college out of high school, more people are moving into trades, taking time off, getting a job, or going back to college at a much later time in life. Not to mention the fact that college can now be mostly virtual, bypassing the traditional needs and changes associated with dorm room life.
However, even if life doesn’t follow a standard path, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t moments of angst and uncertainty; moments when consumers are especially open to accepting a new brand to help them navigate. I call these moments ‘anxiety apertures’ and, unlike traditional transitions, we’ve seen these proliferating recently because (if you haven’t noticed) the world’s kind of crazy right now.
Everything is shifting. Waves of disruption are impacting every corner of our lives and consumers feel it. From rising infectious disease outbreaks (e.g., COVID, monkeypox), supply chain disruption, climate change, political turmoil, global conflicts, labor unrest, and racial, gender and identity issues, there are multiple pockets of uncertainty impacting people’s lives; uncertainty that compels consumers to find resolution.
For example, climate change will continue to create anxiety apertures as consumers not only worry about the environment and their role, but also how they will get the food they need. Products like Zero Acre Farms helps mitigate this anxiety (see the recent warning that the scorching weather in the EU will impact olive oil production). Similarly, COVID disrupted consumers’ routines, pushing them into new activities. From picking up groceries curbside to staying away from restaurants, each change creates anxiety that must be resolved, bringing us companies like Tortoise and Wonder.
Net-net: The biggest opportunities of tomorrow will come from the resolving the anxiety apertures forming today.
Thinking Outside the (Little) Boxes
Fresh off its Kickstarter success, Ujjo is making waves as the first hot sauce for coffee. Made without the garlic and vinegar found in standard hot sauces, Ujjo uses a mix of chilis and spices to help consumers make their normal coffee more exciting (“put some lava in your java”). Ujjo comes in two varieties, light and dark roast. Both are available at the company’s website.
Elia (which means ‘olive’ in Greek) has created a line of cake mixes that include a small bottle of Greek olive. The mixes, to which consumers must add milk/buttermilk, an egg (or flax egg) and the oil, come in three varieties: Grecian Olive Oil, Vanilla Olive Oil and Chocolate Olive Oil. The mixes are available at Elia’s website.
Nestle’s Carnation brand has launched a new Chocolate Drizzle sauce that can be used to top everything from cupcakes to drinks and ice cream. The finishing sauce will be available in the UK at B&M and Lidl stores.
B&G Foods has launched SNICKERS™ Shakers Seasoning Blend, a blend that captures the peanut, caramel and chocolate flavor of the iconic candy bar. The company suggests that consumers sprinkle the seasoning on “foods and drinks, including ice cream, cookies, milkshakes, cookies, yogurt and more to enhance the flavor profile.”
So What? As a kid, when I’d go on a car ride with my parents to visit my grandma, we’d drive through a series of new suburban developments on the outskirts of Chicago. As we’d drive past the new homes, all extremely similar in style and color, my mom would hum the song ‘Little Boxes’ under her breath, then dismiss them all as ‘ticky-tacky’ as we passed on by. It wasn’t until much later in life that I understood the depth of that song (you might know it as the theme song to the show Weeds).
Written as a counterculture anthem by activist and folk songwriter, Malvina Reynolds, Little Boxes laments the uniformity of our modern world. Her warning, set to a very catchy tune, is not only that capitalism and modern industry damns us to a world of sameness, but that WE are losing our own uniqueness because of it (i.e., we put ourselves in little boxes). That feeling—the gnawing worry of every teenager—is an extremely powerful driver.
Of course, the 1960’s are long over, and most of us have accepted the Faustian bargain of living in the 21st century with mass produced items. However, that doesn’t mean that the tension isn’t still there. Deep down, there is still a desire to be different. We don’t want to drink the same things as everyone else, cook the same thing as our neighbors, or buy what everyone else has. We want to be original, but we don’t really have the energy to push outside of our ‘little boxes.’
Sometimes this shows up as personalization, and other times it shows up as simple acts of late-stage modification to products. In counterculture parlance, this is called ‘decommodification’—in other words, taking a mass-produced commodity product and making it our own.
Honestly, I believe the future is less about true personalization and more about increasing levels of decommodification. In fact, decommodification is already ubiquitous today. For most consumers, cooking is no longer about taking raw ingredients and making unique dishes. Instead, its about buying semi-prepared foods and putting their own spin on them, often with the aid of another packaged product (e.g., frozen meatballs cooked with bottled BBQ sauce). Call it ‘speed scratch’ or ‘semi-homemade’ but it all comes down to removing the feeling that you just reheating meals made by a manufacturer. Consumers want to do something—even if that something is as simple as adding a seasoning packet (i.e., this is Trader Joe’s entire business model).
There is immense innovation potential in the continued decommodification of everyday foods—helping consumer think outside their (little) box.
Brands I’m Watching
Meal kit company Hello Fresh has teamed up with power couple David Burka and Neil Patrick Harris to promote a limited-time recipe series of products. Developed by Burka, a chef and cookbook author, the series of four recipes were created to be family-pleasing and easy. Together with funny, creative content from Harris, Burka and their children, Hello Fresh is promoting this partnership via OTT, linear TV, social media, and paid social.
Mosh, a brain-boosting protein bar company started by Maria Shriver and Patrick Schwarzenegger, has launched a new flavor: Cookie Dough Crunch. Just as with previous bars, the new edition contains 12g protein, no added sugar, vitamins B12 and D3, Lion’s Mane mushrooms, ashwagandha, and omega 3s.
Earlier this summer, Beyond Meat signed Kim Kardashian as the company’s Chief Taste Consultant. The company says that this role will have Kardashian in the “creative taste-making field” as well as the content creation side of the business. The deal also has her sharing Beyond Meat recipes and product placements via her social media channels. Beyond Meat has recently signed ten high-profile celebrities, including Kevin Hart who has made commercials for the brand.
So What? Celebrity endorsements in food and beverage used to be rare. Perhaps big-name celebrities felt it was beneath them or not worth their time. Then George Clooney made $1B selling tequila and food/bev became a lucrative side gig for the Hollywood elite. However, its starting to feel saturated. I’ve heard more than one of my advertising and brand friends question the ROI in writing such a big check to A-listers.
For example, Beyond Meat’s ten celebrity endorsements didn’t save it from its recent stock selloff or McPlant conclusion; something I’m sure doesn’t go unnoticed when Impossible’s only celebrity attachment is in the form of investors (which includes Jay-Z, Katy Perry, and Questlove).
If anything, it appears that we are seeing a hierarchy appear in terms of the benefit of celebrity-brand involvement. Commitment makes a difference. Today, just having a celebrity make a few social media pitches for your brand doesn’t cut it. Instead, you need celebrities to be investors, partners and founders for their fame, money and connections to raise your brand above the normal noise of the market.
Founded in 2016, Crisp is a food software company that allows food companies to be more efficient in their supply chain forecasts. Using proprietary software, the company collects real-time data from retailers, cleans it, and organizes it into actionable, visualized insights for food/bev brands. The company claims 80% integration with top grocery retailers and distributors in the US.
Started in 2019, Phoode serves as a clearinghouse for food creatives and companies that need food creatives. The LA-based company allows food stylists, photographers and culinary content creators/directors to bid on projects for a variety of food/bev companies big and small.
So What? After WW1, Germany’s army was decimated via hyper-inflation and the treaty of Versailles. However, by the time WW2 rolled around, Germany’s army was one of most powerful in the world. How was that possible in such a short span of time? One overlooked advantage for Germany was that they were building everything new. Unlike the winners of WW1, Germany wasn’t retrofitting old armies, using old technology or dealing with centuries-old bureaucracy. WW1 had given the Nazi’s a clean slate to introduce devastating new tech into warfare.
Big companies often over-estimate the advantage of their resources. While having whole departments to deal with Sales or Logistics is amazingly beneficial, there are downsides. So many heritage companies have ancient systems running code that can’t talk to one another. I’ve seen multi-billion-dollar CPG companies still running SAP software from the 90’s! For big companies, existing tech can be an albatross. So, when I see boutique companies like Crisp and Phoode offering state-of-the-art systems to food/bev startups, I see a real advantage starting. Strapped with maintaining and converting old tech, heritage CPG companies will be playing catch-up if they aren’t investing heavily now.