What is Cool? A response to Virginia Postrel's blog- THE DYNAMIST

Virginia Postrel is the author of The Substance of Style and The Future and Its Enemies.

She writes the Economic Scene column for The New York Times business section every fourth Thursday. She writes a column for Forbes four times a year and publishes articles on cultural and economic topics in a wide range of other publications. Her influential web blog, the Dynamist, can be found at www.dynamist.com.

In a blog entry, dated December 4^th, Mrs. Postrel talks about an interview she had recently in which the interviewer asked her the question “What is Cool?”

“Friday afternoon, I had an interesting phone conversation with Steven Levy, who is writing a book on the iPod. At one point, he asked why I thought the iPod had managed to stay cool even after it became ubiquitous. Doesn't a gadget have to be exclusive to be cool? No, I said. That's one kind of cool. There's another kind that depends on the intrinsic aesthetics of the product. An intrinsically cool product doesn't have to be expensive or hard to get to stay cool.

It's easy to think of cool electronics. Flat-screen TVs are cool. So is the Motorola Razr. Come to think of it, flatness is simply a cool feature in electronic products. Their cool factor doesn't depend on who owns them. That doesn't mean flatness will always seem cool. It could easily become normal and boring. (I remember when silent light switches seemed incredibly cool.) If we get used to the looks of something, if it starts to fade into the background, it loses its cool factor. But it's a mistake to confuse freshness with exclusivity.”

When I tried to think of how I would define cool, I seemed to contradict Mrs. Postrel’s statement about ownership. I think that in order for something to be cool it has to have an air of exclusivity about it.

In Malcolm Gladwell’s book, The Tipping Point, he discusses the possible means by which Hush Puppies became a major fashion trend.

“The brand had been all but dead until…somewhere between late 1994 and early 1995. Sales were down to 30,000 pairs a year, mostly to backwoods outlets and small-town family stores. Wolverine, the company that makes Hush Puppies, was thinking of phasing out the shoe that made them famous. But then something strange happened. At a fashion shoot, two Hush Puppies executives ran into a stylist from NY, who told them that the classic Hush Puppies had suddenly become hip in the clubs. ‘We were being told there were resale shops in the Village and SOHO, where the shoes were being sold. … In 1995, the company sold 430,000 pairs and the next year it sold four times that and once again Hush Puppies were a staple of the wardrobe.

How did this happen? Those first few kids, whoever they were, weren’t deliberately trying to promote Hush Puppies. They were wearing them precisely because no one else would wear them.”

It wasn’t because the design of Hush Puppies had changed and incorporated a new feature that made them cool. They were the same brushed-suede shoes they had always been. What made them cool was a basic principal of economics – supply & demand. It wasn’t easy to find Hush Puppies anymore. Trendy, club hoppers looking for something different to wear stumbled across these old shoes and started wearing them. They became cool because not everyone had them.

I think one of the comments made on the Postrel blog hit it right on the head. “You can’t define coolness because “coolness” is more about the emotional than the intellectual. Sometimes you can explain why something, it is super fantastic. Other times, you can only feel the super fantasticness - the recognition that the emotional response to the item under consideration precedes and sometimes preempts the rational consideration, so that we want something before we know precisely why we want it. It is his opinion that if we train out tastes over time, through exposure to truly wonderful things, we can come to rely upon such emotional responses as being worthwhile of acknowledgement. For example, the shoe designer, Manolo, does not need to articulate and explain why he loves a particular shoe, because he can feel, and he has learned to trust his tastes in such matters of feeling.

This it is exactly what is happening to Virginia. She cannot articulate why something is cool, but she nonetheless knows.” So, ultimately cool is a personal attitude that is developed over time and can be influenced by ones surrounds and ones experiences.

When is an insight truly insightful?

As we begin to wrap up the semester, and reflect on the lessons learned and the topics covered, I realized that one of the topics that had been over looked in the discussion of consumer insights is WHAT MAKES SOMETHING AN INSIGHT?

We have talked about how to conduct research to uncover insights about our customers, but when is research just more data and when is it elevated to the point of an insight? Early in the semester we had a presentation from the Consumer Insight folks at General Mills and I was off-put by their attempt to convince me that their latest product offering, Cheerios with Berries, was a product borne out of insight. “Well, you see we observed people putting bananas in their cereal and realized that people like fruit with their cereal.” Honestly people…wake up. You don’t have to do ethnographic studies to know that people like fruit with their cereal. Hello…Kellogg’s Raisin Bran???? It’s been around for 60 years. Actually the first version, developed by a company called Skinners, was launched in 1926. Or even granola…how long has that been around – oh, since the late 19^th century? The next thing they are going to tell us is that people like nuts in their cereal.

If you simply had some competitive intelligence data you could have recognized this preference. I have a hard time even calling this a trend because it has been around for 100+ years and doesn’t seem to be experiencing any sort of intense growth.

So, this brings me to my first criteria for classifying research as an insight. If others have already perceived an act or outcome and addressed it through social commentary or business problem solving (ie. new product development), it can no longer be considered an insight. Instead it is merely an observation, when you bring it up. An insight must be unique and original.

Last week, I listened to Jerry Seinfeld’s last stand-up act “I’m Telling You for the Last Time”. And no matter how many times I listen to this routine, I never cease to be entertained and impressed with his ability to uncover human insights. Seinfeld's observational humor is as timeless and sharp as the day he first performed it. The great thing about Jerry Seinfeld's sense of humor is that he makes you see completely ordinary everyday circumstances as hilarious events. His jokes are familiar to you in a way because they incorporate a universal element to them.

If you ever hear him talk about how he comes up with his jokes, you will learn that most of them come through direct observations. Comedy is a very serious business, and the easy flow of a smooth performance belies the deep digging that goes into the art of creating it. Seinfeld closely links successful humor with logical discipline--needed to trick your audience into believing in the setup--and declares that "laughs contain thought." Not given to looking at a psychological angle for what motivates great comics, he does ultimately define the comic's project as "an exploration into the self" that requires a hyper-detailed awareness. It takes him at least half a year to hone a routine into a finished project, he observes.

I believe the most successful comedians are those that find the commonalities of life that people experience but don’t necessarily go around talking about to one another nor do they even think about the underlying motivation. For a comedian, discovering the motivation that only exists in secrecy is where the joke or the insight lies. It isn’t about the vulgarity or shock value that makes a comic popular; it’s about finding a subject matter that relates to many people.

This brings me to my second and third criteria for an insight. The act or outcome must be widely substantiated by a significant number of people. And despite its applicability to a large group of people, it can’t be obvious.

So, the next time you are trying to learn something insightful about society…take a lesson from one of the greatest comics of this generation. You too can be the “master of your domain.”

To Give and Receive - The fallacy of the Gift Card

With Christmas shopping in full gear, the stress of the holiday season is upon us. For many people the chore of trying to find an appropriate gift for everyone on their list has forced them to resort to the gift card as the best alternative. For your Aunt June, whom you see only once a year, you get her a Coldwater Creek Gift Card. For the ladies at the office, you get those William Sonoma gift cards, etc. The gift card has become the lazy man’s version of a real present. When you have no idea what to give someone or you don’t want to put the thought into figuring it out …viola…how about a gift card.

The problem with gift cards goes beyond the impersonal nature of the exchange and gets right at the heart of business and society today.

Retailers eager to make a sale, proudly display their gift cards in all available denominations by the register, making it as easy as possible to purchase a card. However, when it comes to redeeming the value of the card - forget about it. How many times have you been given a gift card to a store you would never shop at and then find yourself trying to simply return the card for cash? If you are like me, this is an all too familiar event with an all too familiar outcome. The card goes unused because there is nothing in the store you want to purchase and the retailer won’t refund your money.

In the retelling of this event, I didn’t infuse enough anger into the words to appropriately reflect my hostility towards both the gift giver and the retailer. What right does the retailer have to withhold my gift or the monetary equivalent of my gift? If the card giver wanted to donate $50 to Pottery Barn, why did he need me to serve as his intermediary?

I have often wondered why retailers are so stubborn about returning the cash. From an accounting standpoint, retailers can’t recognize the purchase of a gift card as revenue until it is redeemed. Furthermore, if the card is not redeemed within a specified period, instead of continually logging the card as a contingent liability there are regulations, called escheat laws, which vary from state to state, forcing retailers to give any remaining balance or abandoned amounts to the state as unclaimed property after a lapse of time, according to Pillsbury Winthrop, a law firm specializing in laws relating to gift cards. I can understand that retailers hold out as long as possible in the hopes that it will be redeemed, but after a certain period of time they have to know that the sale is lost. So, why wouldn’t they rather give the money back to a potential customer instead of giving it over to the government? It’s like some sick love triangle…”If we can’t have your money, then nobody can.”

Marketing departments have convinced the public that this is not only a gift, but that it is a better, more thoughtful gift than simply giving cash. A gift, ideally, says, "I thought about you. I considered your likes and dislikes, your needs and wants, your dreams and desires, and found you this token of my esteem that I hope will delight you." A gift card says, "There! Checked you off my list." Miss Manner dismisses gift cards -- as "a pathetic compromise convenient to people who do not trust their judgment about selecting the right present for those whose tastes they ought to know." Pandering to the younger consumer that feels empowered by the notion that they can pick out their own gifts, instead of being subjected to whatever Grandma Caroline bought you this year, they selfishly believe that Christmas or any other gift giving event is about the gift and not the thoughtfulness of the gift giver. Well, I hate to break it to you, but you could have just given your grandchildren cash without trekking to the mall and consequently really empower them.

It is precisely the fact that gift cards are not a form of currency, which makes them utterly useless in most situations. Remember the old Visa commercials with the tag line “Everywhere you want to be”. The value of a Visa card over any other credit card was its wide network of businesses that accepted it. Unlike cash that holds most of its value and can be used as a medium of exchange anywhere in the world, gift cards have limited utility. They also loss value if not used within a certain period of time. Thirdly, they are inconvenient. By giving a gift card you are shifting the burden of shopping onto the recipient. Simply remembering that you have a gift card is a task, not to mention finding the gift card, when you want to use it. In order to redeem the gift card, you either have to carry the gift card at all times in your purse or wallet, or remember on every shopping trip to bring it along.

In addition, no matter how large the logo is on the card. Few people can recall anything about the stores or the items purchased with a gift card. Maybe this is simply a timing issue because the actual purchase doesn’t occur until after the event has happened or maybe it’s because some of the magic of gift giving and receiving is gone because you bought the gift for yourself. While you might easily recall the X-mas you got your first bike, or the year your husband bought you a diamond pendant, would those events have been as memorable if you were simply given a gift card on X-mas and then afterward you went and bought these gifts? Would you have been able to identify the company that manufactured or sold the gift? How then do companies that intend to build customer loyalty through their product offerings make a gift card unique and memorable? The answer is they can’t – because it isn’t unique, thoughtful or memorable.

So, as you contemplate giving gift cards this year, my I urge you to simply give cash if all you want to do is provide someone with disposable income. But if you truly want to share the joy of Christmas by exchanging gifts, take the extra time to think about the recipient and give something from the heart.

The Army of One

From Uncle Sam’s posters to TV commercial taglines proclaiming “Be All that You Can Be” or “The Few, the Proud, the Marines,” the historical messages used by the military to recruit have been ones of empowerment, elitism, and responsibility. Targeting the masculine audience, these commercials portrayed actors slaying dragons and conquering mountains. The newest ad campaign, however, has wandered away from the hyper-masculine proving ground and into middle America’s kitchens. Depicting father-son moments and “mom-I-want-to-talk-to-you-about-my-future” conversations, the campaign focuses not on what new recruits can do for their country but what their country can do for potential recruits.

The recruitment stance switch from patriotism, heroism, and duty to careerism marks a distinct departure in the traditional marketing techniques of the armed services, particularly in a wartime environment where self-sacrifice has typically been emphasized. Are these new marketing techniques simply aimed at increasing recruitment in a dwindling market or do they reflect a fundamental switch in the military’s recruitment paradigm?

If these efforts are indeed aimed at increasing enrollment by targeting an untapped market, they are not doing so through an emotional appeal. The new campaign represents a cost-benefit type of analysis in which the largest cost is overlooked completely. Rather than present the drive to push one’s limits in an inherently dangerous environment, these commercials focus on life after the military. The military isn’t showing the flames and the swords anymore, they are showing parental approval and college tuition.

Similar to the evolution of anti-drug and anti-smoking campaigns, which now appeal to parents as the most likely combatants of teenage substance abuse, the military seeks parents’ involvement in the decision-making process. Both campaigns are seemingly out to “educate” parents on the ways to parent. In these commercials, the decision to join the army signifies an opportunity to help parents raise strong, independent children who are also good citizens with career and college options. If, in fact, the army has started to target middle-income parents, then perhaps they, not their children, are the ones in need of a hard sell in the new target market. Having lived to hear their lottery number chosen, it is easy to believe that many of these parents would not endorse a military career in the present environment without the presentation of a compelling case. These commercials along with the Web site serve to allay parent’s fears by humanizing soldiers, solely presenting the benefits, and selling parental involvement as “good” parenting.

Whether this campaign will meet its objective remains to be seen. However, the news media and images of war torn Iraq are powerful forces working against the message this advertising campaign is attempting to communicate. But marketing is marketing, whether you are attempting to sell shampoo, airline travel, or career options. It is as simple as addressing the needs of a market by providing a differentiable product that meets those needs in an efficient and cost effective manner. Unfortunately in this case, there are numerous alternatives that aren’t as costly and just as effective, which reduces the value proposition of this option. When you remove the emotional component of a consumer’s buying decision, all that remains is the functionality of the option. It either saves you money or it makes you money. So, in the end by attempting to rationalize this decision, the military may have sacrificed the emotional appeal it once had, which motivated men and women to enlist despite a risky value proposition, in order to make the decision seem common, a strategy that forces the military to compete head-to-head in a marketplace, where they are no longer the market leader.

Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty – As much for men as women

As a woman, I have been personally struck by the overly derogatory opinions of men regarding the merits of the Campaign for Beauty. Comments ranging from “if I wanted to see ordinary women, I would go to a bar” to “this is just the latest brainwashing attempt by marketers” have been echoed repeatedly from the opposite gender.

Initially, I took these comments quite personally because I am one of the 98% of women in this country that does not feel beautiful. How could you feel beautiful when societal expectations are so unattainable and unrealistic? If celebrities and supermodels with their crew of personal chefs, trainers, make-up artists, photographers, and masseuses are the only beautiful people, what’s life like for the average woman?

While the models in the campaign for beauty are touted as ordinary women, they still are quite attractive women regardless of size. So, hearing men’s’ comments about these women not meeting their beauty standards could have sent me in a tailspin of depression and fueled my own insecurity, but instead the dialogue generated by this campaign has given women like me a supportive community of other like-minded women to refute those negative comments and praise this marketing approach.

As a gender, I don’t doubt that women are plagued with insecurity, but they don’t have to be subjugated to men’s insecurities as well. Men are the ones obsessed with physicality and one dimensional beauty – not women. When you ask a women what is attractive to her, only a portion of the descriptors are physical, while the remaining characteristics are emotional. Men on the other hand are focused on hair color, breast size, butts and legs.

For too long women have been wrapped up in men’s insecurities and trying to meet their ideals of perfection. So, when this campaign first came out I found it to be liberating. Finally there was a company willing to take the risk and showcase their products, not with those that will make their products look the best, but with real users. Women are very savvy consumers and aren’t fooled by the promises of beauty products to completely transform them into supermodels. If a company’s spokesperson is clearly someone that has never used the product or doesn’t need the product, how believable can they be?

Naomi Morales, a marketing professor at W.P Carey School of Business at Arizona State, has recently written an article entitled “Our Bodies, Our Behavior: Should Real Ads Have Curves”, where she refutes the positive image building merits of the Campaign for Beauty and questions whether curving models will entice consumers to spend. While she points out that models like the Dove girls may be just what consumers want to see, she doesn’t believe this is a successful marketing approach because “a consumer’s self-esteem doesn’t necessarily rise when she views heavier models.” "I believe there's a reason companies use extremely thin models," Mandel explains. "It's because we have to feel bad about ourselves before we'll want to buy some company's product to solve our problems."

Well that’s an interesting take, but then why would someone continue to use a company’s product? Especially if the product delivers on what it promises, shouldn’t it make you feel better about yourself. Under this philosophy, then would you stop using the product because you no longer feel crappy about yourself?

Thankfully Dove doesn’t agree with Dr. Morales opinion that consumers only buy products when they have low self-esteem! Dove's own research leads them to believe that instead consumers buy when you help to boost one’s self esteem and that this is a much needed evolution in advertising. To probe women's thoughts on beauty and self-esteem, the company hired Harvard University professor Nancy Etcoff, author of "Survival of the Prettiest," and Susie Orbach, a professor from the London School of Economics and author of "Fat is a Feminist Issue." In "The Real Truth About Beauty: A Global Report," the Dove team reports that 68 percent of survey respondents strongly agree that "the media and advertising set an unrealistic standard of beauty that most women can't ever achieve."

Dove certainly took the initiative to address a major issue confronting women today. From a publicity standpoint it seems to be paying off. The question is whether this campaign has increased sales.

The more exposure this advertising gets and the more talking that goes on, the more I have realized that this campaign is as much for men as it is for women. Society needs to celebrate more than one dimension of beauty and to do this, its not good enough for only women to be involved in this change. Men must be included in this transformation as well. Men must be encouraged to appreciate more than just the physical and maybe increased frequency and exposure to images of “real” beauty is the first step in broadening men’s views and societies views on beauty.

Marrying Technology and the Right Application

In a recent class we talked about the pervasiveness of technology and the implementation of RFID technology. While I understand it may seem from my previous ranting that I am a complete technophobe, I do see the benefit of technology in certain applications. It is primarily the fact that companies follow the herd and decide to adopt technology without careful evaluation and consideration of its fit with their business that truly offends me.

For instance, Prada has adopted RFID technology in its flagship store in NYC to provide a “truly unique” shopping experience for its patrons. Whether or not this is valuable to the consumer or the sales associate is debatable. While my classmates didn’t agree, I believed that a sales associate at Prada should know the styles and inventory it carries. If you have ever been in a high end designer’s store, you know that they carry very few items. They may have two or three suits a season. This is not a volume business. Prices for these clothes are outrageously expensive and part of the price you pay is in the impeccable service you expect from the sales staff. You don’t run into a Prada to just pick out a T-shirt. If I am going to pay $3000 for a suit and a sales associate gets 10% commission, then I expect them to anticipate my needs. Just the same way that I expect waiters at expensive restaurants to fill my water glass without prompting and to not interrupt a conversation to tell me the specials and to always take my plate from the left side. So, when Prada implemented RFID technology that allowed consumers to see the other colors available for a specific article of clothing that they were trying on or to find out coordinating pieces to go with a skirt, I felt like Prada was burdening the customer with the responsibilities of the sales associate all under the guise of technology. If I wanted to talk to a computer, I would order my clothes online. Prada explains that this new technology freed up their sales associated so they could provide more attention to each shopper, but I just don’t see it. Principally because most of these high end stores don’t have that many serious shoppers and they don’t have that much merchandise. Now sales associates could look up your past purchases and see that you purchased three pairs of shoes in the last month and recommend a new pair of shoes for you. Well, what if I don't want any shoes. It's not like I don't already have 3 new pairs!

So instead of continually berating Prada for what I deem as a poor use of technology, I tried to envision a shopping environment where this technology would truly be valuable.

And it hit me - bridal dresses. Bridal shopping is like no other shopping experience. What other shopping experience exists where the customer comes in 9-12 months in advance to purchase the product? What other clothing purchase do you make where you spend thousands of dollars and are expected to visualize what the garment will look like when it fits and what it will look like in white versus the grayish color the sample has turned into?

You can’t just wander into a bridal store and browse. You must make an appointment well in advance that lasts between an hour and 90 minutes. You have to endure instant familiarity with a sales associate, who helps you in and out of dresses as you nonchalantly chat while standing half-naked in a dressing room. Samples never fit and require bulky clips to gather excess material in the back. The samples also get dirty and grayish after multiple try-ons, so it’s hard to even tell what shade of white the actual dress would be.

Brides will spend thousands of dollars on a dress they wear for less than 24 hours. Once engaged, brides-to-be feel a sense of entitlement to be pampered and catered to by everyone they meet because “it is soooooo stressful planning MY wedding.” I pity the poor sales associates that deal with these self-centered, idealistic shoppers on a daily basis, so why not give these workers some help. Why not allow brides to view the complete assortment of colors that a dress comes in without even having to leave the dressing room? Say the bride was interested in all dresses with an empire waist, using the RFID technology she could see a full catalog of designer selections offered by that particular bridal salon. This would enable the sales associate to best utilize the 60-90 minutes she has and increase the likelihood of finding the “perfect” dress for the customer.

RFID technology is a power tool that is completely under utilized in a situation like Prada when they have barely 100 SKUs, but in a bridal salon where they have 1000s of dresses alone -- all seemingly identical from the racks -- this could be a tremendous asset. Instead of running back and forth between racks of dresses, the sales associate now can truly make this a luxurious experience by serving champagne and fruit to its bridal “guests”. This technology would provide greater privacy for the woman, who doesn’t want the sales associate in the fitting room with her discussing additional options. Lastly this technology would be helpful for customers, who didn’t come with a clear idea of what they liked or wanted. The area in which a bridal salon could utilize this technology and Prada couldn't is in the ability to cross reference past customer’s purchases. Like Amazon does, if you knew that a customer liked a specific dress you could select other dresses to show her based on past customers that tried on similar dresses. This too would help whittle down the numerous choices to something much more manageable.

Not all technology is bad. However, if it is to be really valuable it must be applied in the right setting: RFID and Bridal Salons, the perfect union.

Technology, Convenience and Social Interaction – Response to Kristen’s Blog

When talking about technology today, it is easy for consumers to overlook the long-term effects of technology on society for the short-term benefits.

▪ I want a cheap airplane ticket to Chicago so I am willing to give up personal information in order to partake in discount airfares.

▪ I like being able to order my movie theater tickets online, so I don’t have to stand in line.

▪ I want to avoid conflict or delivery bad news to a colleague face to face, so I send an email.

In theory these all seem like advances, but when you dig deeper you see that there are consequences to this convenience. I think Kristen illustrates an excellent example of one way technology can be limiting and that is socially. Technology removes peoples need to interact. Email, Blackberry’s, and text messaging are making it harder to build rapport. There is so much nonverbal information that occurs in a conversation that can’t possibly be conveyed over IM – emoticons or no emoticons. Tone of voice, facial expressions, and eye gazes are all important when it comes to deriving meaning from words.

We talked about the over use of cell phones and iPods in public places as a means to avoid interacting with fellow passerby’s. I would argue to a certain extent that people hide behind technology and use it to close themselves off from others. Today most people don’t even know the phone numbers of their best friends because their cell phones store all that information. You don’t need to remember an important birthday or anniversary because your outlook calendar tracks all that information. God forbid you lose your phone or your computer crashes. If this information isn’t important enough to remember, then what is?

Whether it’s a memory crutch or a social crutch or a productivity crutch, I think we all should be concerned about what we give up when we adopt technology into our lives. Sure we get increased efficiency, greater specialization, improved convenience, and wealth, but what did we sacrifice to get this -- companionship, piece of mind, community, health, tradition, interdependence, quality time, a sense of purpose.

If technology alone could solve all of society’s problems, then depression rates wouldn’t be soaring, divorce rate wouldn’t be doubling, and violent crime rates booming. With all the economic wealth created through technology, there has never been a greater period in history where people have felt emptier about their lives.

No amount of online dating websites, community chat rooms, and networking services will fill the need people have for genuine, meaningful interactions. While the pursuit of increase productivity and wealth is important for a society to growth and prosper, isolation and complete independence created through the extensive use of certain technologies is a recipe for unhappiness. Being interdependent, valuing close relationship, being sensitive, responsive, giving and supporting of others is necessary to create balance, meaning, and happiness in one’s life.

One final thought…Albert Einstein said “We can’t solve problems by using the same thinking we used when we created them.” If we develop technology to solve symptoms without understanding the underlying cause, then inevitably, technology will spawn new problems potentially more damaging than the original.

Heinz conducts focus group analysis before product development begins

While almost all consumer product companies conduct market research before conceiving, developing, or launching a product, not every company approaches this process the same way.

H.J. Heinz, a $2.5 billion international food conglomerate, believes that primary market research is one of the most significant elements in the product development process. “Our fundamental approach is to get close to consumers and understand what they want,” says Casey Keller, Managing Director for Ketchup, Condiments and Sauces at Heinz North America. “Get marketing and R&D—and even sometimes some of the other functions—involved in understanding, so that when we design and develop a new product proposition, it is designed with the consumer in mind for optimum success and based directly on contact and feedback from them.”

The concept behind EZ-Squirt, one of the company’s most successful product launches, was created precisely this way. Heinz knew that kids use more ketchup per capita than any other age group, and that the 125 year old brand needed some updating to attract this user group. So they went directly to the source to find out how to make ketchup a fun, creative food experience for kids. While brainstorming with a group of kids aged 6-12, the idea of what would make ketchup easier and more fun was born – turn it into a way for kids to create art while enjoying their food. These efforts led to several innovations that propelled EZ-Squirt to success. The consumer groups suggested changing the color of ketchup to make the experience more fun. “They thought that would really identify it as a product for them and not necessarily for their parents,” says Keller. Another key observation that originated from this focus group was the overall packaging. In order to allow kids the ability to hold and control the bottle, it needed to be shaped different to fit smaller hands and to be much softer.

More than 10 million bottles of EZ Squirt Blastin Green were sold in the first seven months, with Heinz factories working 24 hours a day, seven days a week to keep up with demand.

Although, primary market research is the most costly form of research a company can conduct, the benefits can be reaped two fold. However, when you are in a mature market like Heinz is, spending the money to understand first hand what problems your customers face, better positions you to be able to provide a viable solution. This research should not be the only data collection you perform as your company works to develop new products.

---