Emotional Soup

(Now that would be a great name for a band!) Campbell’s is using biometric insights to try to get more shoppers to pick up their condensed soup at the soupermarket (sorry), reports Ilan Brat in the Wall Street Journal (2/17/10). The problem is that apparently most people have no idea why they buy soup; if you ask them they’ll usually say they don’t know. So, Campbell is now studying "microscopic changes in skin moisture, heart rate and other biometrics to see how consumers react to everything from pictures of bowls of soup to logo design" (the article didn’t say whether Campbell also tests for how consumers react to the soup itself).

The limitation is that although biometric tools can determine that someone has had an emotional reaction to something, they "can’t pinpoint what emotions a person feels" — be they positive or negative emotions. "But if all the biological metrics move simultaneously in the same direction, the subject is likely to be emotionally engaging with something." Working with Innerscope Research, Campbell had shoppers wear tiny video cameras at eye level to track eye movement and wear vests that recorded things like skin moisture, heart rate, breathing and posture.

They found very little emotional reaction to Campbell’s soup at the shelf. But they did discover that the brand’s iconic logo actually is distracting, and "makes its many varieties of soups seem to blend together." The spoon pictured on labels didn’t generate any emotional charge, either, and shoppers told interviewers that the soup didn’t look warm. So, Campbell’s is making its logo smaller and moving it to the bottom of the label, removing the spoons and picturing a whiff of steam for warmth (image). The only exceptions are labels for Andy Warhol’s famous chicken noodle, tomato and cream of mushroom labels, which remain Campbell’s best sellers.