Have you tried to buy bread or orange juice lately?
There was a time when you didn’t have that many choices. Brown or White. Pulp or Without. Pretty simple.
And now? 12 grain, ancient grains, with flax, Omega 3, 4, 5 and 6, Vitamin A - Z and my personal favourite, OJ with fish oil.
Seriously, what does all this shit mean? Supposedly, all of these added nutrients are good for me but I don’t really know why. I do know that when I’m getting sick I should have lots of Vitamin C, so I eat a bunch of oranges, drink a lot of orange juice and hope for the best. The pattern is ingrained in my brain. Me Sick. Me Need Vitamin C. Me Buy Oranges.
The problem with these new product launches, that has marketers over-whelmed with joy because they finally have something to talk about, is that they do a pretty horrible job explaining the end benefit. I don’t associate any of these new nutrients with why I need them or when I should be taking them like I do with Vitamin C.
Here’s a brilliant idea for my packaged goods friends, tell me what it means, why I need it and what it will do for me in simple English. If you can’t do that, then maybe you shouldn’t be creating entire ads around your new nutrient crush.
I’ll be honest, I’m lazy, I’m not going to go spend my spare time reading about Omega 3 with DHA and why it’s so great. So, if you want me to buy your product at the very least help me out, so my brain can create a simple associative pattern.
And whatever you do, don’t try to explain it to me like this:
I really wish I was making this up. This is from an actual packaged goods consumer site.
Oh wait, it gets better. I pity the fool who says marketing isn’t rocket science, clearly some people believe it is:
And the icing on the cake, here’s how they explain it:
“Both bifidobacteria and lactobacilli are bacterial strains that are particularly beneficial to intestinal health. These two strains especially enjoy feeding on inulin. The by-products that result from the bacterial fermentation of inulin have extremely positive metabolic effects”
I’m done, gotta go take my vitamins…
- Nish
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I think one of the problems may be your beloved lawyers. You can prove your product has all these probiotic whatevers, much harder to prove that they actually do anything.
Whatever that green package yogurt is, I think they do this on purpose to not have to back up the claim. They have a commercial where one woman asks what the benefits are and then a noisy door opens and you don’t hear the conversation.
Have you seen the President’s Choice Blue Menu Insider’s Report? They do a great job explaning in regular-people English terms what all the different vitamins, minerals, prebiotic, probiotic, etc. etc. are, and why they are important.
Example:
What are probiotics? Every day in our digestive systems, there’s a struggle between good and evil going on. Good bacteria, known as probiotics, work hard to enhance our immune and digestive systems - but the moment they weaken in numbers, the not-so-nice bacteria are ready to take over and have a bad effect on our health.
The balance between the good and the harmful bacteria can be thrown off for all sorts of reasons, like stress or disease, or if you’ve been on antibiotics. Fortunately, we can help keep the good guys strong in numbers.
Experts agree that the daily consumption of probiotics can help maintain good overall health. Per serving, you need about one billion bacteria from one of the recommended active strains, such as Lactobacillus acidophilus (the one we use in our new PC Proavantage Stirred Yogurt in 100g cups is commercially known as HOWARUtm).
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