The power of descriptiveness - Colored beverage
What do you do when your product is losing volume and shares in a declining segment, and your marketing budget is close to zero? That was the case of our clear lemon & lime product. The segment had been declining 28% the last 12 months, and about 40% the last three years.
We played the game of anagrams, and disrupted the market with two colours to replace the conventional clear product; with the slogan: ‘Colors do not change anything’. Well, the taste, GTIN and space allocation were the same, but the volume and shares were shooting for the stars
Before situation:
A: 1 brand
B: Lemon & Lime segment
C: Clear Colour
D: 4 facings in a 1-door cooler
E: GTIN / bar code 12345678
After situation (What we did):
A: 1 brand
B: Lemon & Lime segment
C: Clear is replaced by Blue and Green
D: 2+2 facings in a 1-door cooler (same space as before)
E: GTIN / bar code 12345678 (both colours had the same code)
F: Two months in market
Results:
Shoppers loved the modular change and started to enjoy the brand again, discussing whether the blue- or the green product was the better option.
By the numbers:
Volume product: +154%
Volume segment: +71%
Share in segment: +33%p (Before: 46% - During: 79%)
Share in category: +2.7%p (Before: 2.3% - During: 5.0%)
Shoppers: Preferred blue more than green (as it became the first out of stock variant / SKU)
End note:
One of the top likes by shoppers, is to be surprised. A well knows brand in brave new colours, is a by all means a great surprise. The surprise triggered the ‘Attention’, which led to ‘Interest’…’Desire’ and finally ‘Action’ (yes, this is AIDA in real life). The AIDA Process still works a centennial after it was created, and it still brings margins to the bottom line. This simple case was cheap, but also kind of clever.
A disruptive game of anagrams
As we saw in Case 6, there are almost 60 ‘free of charge’ modules you can utilize in a smart way to grow your market presence. Changing a colour is a ‘simple initiative’, at a low cost.
Are shoppers rationale?
When it comes to food and beverages, color affects aesthetics, flavor and identification, perception, and anticipated taste. Color psychology teaches us that our senses have an even broader influence – they are connected to emotional reactions and can influence our appetite. Let’s look at the psychology associated with colors of products we view every day. Read more in Beverage Digest
Colours do pull shoppers and consumers a psychological trick, and colours do lift sales. Colours do after all change everything. Right?
In Journal of Food Science, 53:1116-1119, 1988, you can read about the Psychological relationships between perceived sweetness and colour in lemon- and lime-flavoured drinks.
Conclusion: People (shoppers / consumers) think the drink become sweeter, as the colour of the drink become more intense or stronger
In another article in Journal of Food Science, 45:1393-1399, 1415, 1980, they studied how people are capable of recognizing various drinks (read: flavours) if the colours changed.
Conclusion: Only 50% can recognize a Lemon & Lime drink if the colour change. The worst result is for the orange flavour. Only 20% can identify the flavour when the colour change. This simply indicates the importance of (the visual) appearance, and the effect you can get if you play on the module of colours.