The Campbell Soup Company has been making condensed soup and packaging it in those iconic red and white labels for decades. The business is huge for Campbell--over $1 billion in red and white cans are sold annually.
But soup sales are stale, and so, like any good CPG company, Campbell set out to find what magical variation on a theme would increase consumer's propensity to buy soup.
Campbell researchers decided to use a research method called "neuromarketing." They studied 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.The resulting packaging design change: The bowls are getting bigger and steamier, and the soup spoons are going away.
From The Wall Street Journal:
Shoppers will begin seeing changes in the Campbell section of supermarkets this fall. Among them: Condensed-soup varieties will be sectioned into four, color-coded categories such as "taste sensations" in orange and "classic favorites" in light brown. The company's logo will be smaller and moved lower so it's not as prominent.
Campbell's three biggest sellers—chicken noodle, tomato and cream of mushroom, the soup can labels immortalized by Andy Warhol—will remain the same. But on other labels, steam will rise from larger, more vibrant pictures of soup in more modern, white bowls. And those unemotional spoons will disappear.
Whew. And here we thought they were going to do a re-design that would have Andy Warhol rolling over in his grave.
Much more at WSJ.com
