Coca-Cola follows Kraft in research plan
It’s better being green
Weird ideas that help you win

Coca-Cola follows Kraft in research plan

Just months after Kraft Foods set up a high-powered research institute to advise it on nutrition, bioavailability and other neat stuff comes the news that Coca-Cola is following suit on the beverage side.

The came just before Coke’s UK office launched its Dasani water brand to jeers that Dasani is just outrageously expensive tap water.

Meanwhile, Coca-Cola, which is under investigation by accounting watchdogs for “channel stuffing” (inflating sales by early or over-delivering) has hired 13 top researchers to form an advisory council to oversee scientific research, education and outreach projects at The Beverage Institute for Health & Wellness. Coke claims the institute is an independent organisation, within The Coca-Cola Company.

“The institute will support research to help better understand the role that beverages can play in diets and health, in developed and developing countries, around the world. This effort may lead to the creation of new beverage products, by The Coca-Cola Company, in addition to providing health and nutrition education,” the company says.

“It will support consumer and health professional education on a variety of topics, such as hydration, sweeteners, micro-nutrient deficiencies, weight management and physical activity,” Coke adds.

Topics under consideration include the role of hydration in nutrition, malnutrition in the developing world, sweeteners and beverages, fruits and vegetables as beverages, nutrition and beverage education, community outreach, and clinical research for beverage applications.

Branding

It’s better being green

Kermit the Frog may have found it hard to be green, but it could mean greenbacks for snack and sweet makers.

Reseacher Cathrine Jansson told the British Society of Chemical Industry today that chocolate bars and other supermarket products might sell better from green-coloured point-of-sale stands. Her advice is based on new research into the effect of colour on consumers' behaviour, which suggests that we spot green items faster than any other colour tested.

Research into effective design and packaging usually focuses on brand awareness. Jansson looks at consumers' subconscious responses to colour in a busy retail environment like a supermarket or shopping mall.

She asked volunteers to find a coloured target hidden in a range of “distractors”. Targets were in “basic” colours of blue, red or green, and “non-basic” colours of turquoise, beige and peach. The colours significantly affected the speed and accuracy with which the volunteers identified each target.

She found people take the longest time to identify peach-coloured targets and find it hard to pick out turquoise-coloured targets. People spot green targets faster and more accurately, but blue, red and green are always easier to spot than non-basic colours, she says.

Consumers make between half and two-thirds of all their decisions to buy snacks when they are about to pay at the checkout. So Jansson asked the volunteers to look at two point of purchase displays similar to those usually found near supermarket tills. Researchers recorded their reaction to Twixes and KitKats in turquoise, green, or red stands. They found Twixes in the green stands got attention fastest, but in the KitKat experiment the familiarity of red KitKats gave the red stand the best response.

Familiarity with a brand is still the most important factor in getting a customer to notice a particular product, says Jansson. "These results suggest that if you have invested in your brand, don't change it. But if you are designing an entirely new product, the colour green could give you an important advantage".

She also points out that so far, only six colours have been tested: "Future studies may pinpoint colours that are even more effective as a marketing tool".

Innovation

Weird ideas that help you win

Robert Sutton, A Stanford University professor has come up with some weird (ie counter-intuitive) ideas that are pretty much guaranteed to jolt you out of your creative slumber.

First published in 2002, Weird ideas that work was an instant best-seller in the US, where there seems to be more pressure to discover The Next Big Thing than elsewhere. Here are some of his ideas. For a full explanation of them go to Amazon.com and buy the book.

The Weird Ideas

1. Hire "slow learners" (of the organisational code)

2. Hire people who make you uncomfortable, even those you dislike hire people you (probably) don't like

3. Use job interviews to get ideas, not to screen candidates

4. Encourage people to ignore and defy superiors and peers

5. Find some happy people, and get them to fight

6. Reward success and failure, punish inaction 

7.  Decide to do something that will probably fail, then convince yourself and everyone else that success is certain

8. Think of some ridiculous or impractical things to do, and then plan to do them

9. Avoid, distract, and bore customers, critics, and anyone who just wants to talk about money

10. Don't try to learn anything from people working on the same problem

11. Forget the past, especially your company's successes