High Five: Product Flaws and Made-Up Words

This has been voted the greatest ad of all time. When you look at the ad through the lens of behavioural science, you can see how they turned a perceived product flaw (that time you have to wait for the foam to settle before you drink it) and put it front and centre. It enabled them to make a brand benefit from a weakness: "Good things come to those who wait."

Hot new water brand Liquid Death has tapped into a psychological observation called price relativity. This is the idea that price perceptions are relative depending on what you compare yourself too. Liquid Death harnesses that in a humorous take on the taste test by comparing themselves to wagyu beef, caviar and lobster than other bottled water brands. This comparison makes $1.99 per can feel reasonable. 

The Haagen-Dazs brand was built on a made-up name and word (umlaut included) designed to imply a Danish heritage. This moniker set an expectation for the ice cream of sophistication that immediately set it apart in the marketplace, and created the category of 'luxury' ice cream.  

As the Bourbon boom took off in the US, Elijah Craig found its bottles ignored. Consumers experienced 'unintentional blindness' because the bottle reminded them of a rum bottle. At Method1, we slenderised and resigned the bottle and label, creating a distinctive look that drove renewed consumer interest and demand.

'The New Fangled Chip' was created to solve the problem of the crushed potato chips that come in a bag. To introduce the concept, they leveraged a behavioural science principle called a key heuristic, that research has shown reveals that consumers actually believe things that rhyme, more than things that don’t. For Pringles, the slogan 'One Pop and You Can’t Stop' built trust, trial and success. Today, we call that sonic branding.