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

by Rory Sutherland

Remember that words do not only affect the price of a dish – they can also change its taste. Five years ago, we received a worried phone call from Belgian colleague. One of their largest biscuit manufacturers had replaced their most popular brand with a new, lower-fat variant, but as soon as they released it onto the market, sales plummeted. They were bamboozled; they had performed extensive research and testing and many people could notice no difference in the taste of the new biscuit, and yet no one was buying the new version. This was one of those problems which I was able to solve without even leaving my chair. ‘I see,’ I said over the speakerphone, ‘And did you put “Now with lower fat” on the packaging of the biscuits?’ ‘Of course we did!’ they replied. ‘We’d spent months reducing the fat content of the biscuits – what’s the point of doing that if you don’t tell people about it?’ ‘There’s your problem,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t matter what something tastes like in blind tastings, if you put “low in fat” or any other health indicators on the packaging, you’ll make the contents taste worse.’ In the testing that they had conducted the biscuits had been unpackaged, and they had forgetten that packaging will also affect the taste.