Why blind tasting sucks.
Today one of our clients at Wonder Inc. told us about how one of their beverages had done poorly in a blind taste conducted by one of their customers, a large retailer. This came as a bit of a surprise, as the same product had received very positive feedback by almost everyone who had tasted it. As a consequence, the retailer had said they would not carry the product in their assortment.
While the results were disappointing to everyone involved, there is a bigger problem at play here.
People are fascinated by blind taste tests, and so is the media. You might remember the great blind taste of the last century, Coke vs. Pepsi. In that famous test, consumers liked Pepsi more than Coke, although Coke beats Pepsi in market share and brand surveys hands down.
The test, which was a brilliant marketing tactic in itself, led Coke to introduce a “new and improved” version of Coca-Cola — New Coke. This was a fatal mistake which came with a huge price tag, both in terms of money and reputation. How did the blind test fail Coke? And why did it likely fail our client too?
Simply put, blind tasting is one of the worst mistakes you can do as a marketer and brand builder. Why? Because they are built on a the wrong premise. We falsely think we buy product quality, when in fact we buy the whole deal, the looks, the taste, the scent, the experience and the meaning. We don’t buy the commodity. We buy the brand.You cannot break it down into parts. The sum is not only greater than its parts, it is different than its parts. For that retailer in question, ranking products based on taste will not translate into sales by the same logic, at the retail shelf.
To put that in plain speak, blind taste tests do not work unless you are targeting blind people. For the rest of us, we taste through all of our senses. Unless you are running a monopoly, you are better off differentiating your product and brand on other factors than product quality.
