Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don't Make Sense

by Rory Sutherland

don’t. Announcing even the tiniest tweaks to popular products has been a disaster for Vegemite, Milo and the Cadbury Creme Egg – even if they couldn’t otherwise, people notice a change in taste simply because a change in formulation has been announced. When Kraft wanted to introduce a healthier formulation for their Mac & Cheese, they were terrified of a similar reaction, particularly as the malignant combination of social media and newspapers keen for a story can turn a small number of hostile tweets into national news. So they removed the artificial yellow dye and added paprika, turmeric and other natural replacements – and then kept silent about it. Practically no one noticed a thing – until they announced the change retrospectively, under the headline ‘It’s changed. But it hasn’t.’ This way, they were able to gain the potential custom of people who had previously avoided the product because of its artificiality, without creating an imagined taste change among its regular customers, who suddenly discovered they had been eating the healthier variant all along.fn1