Playful color skews enhance the consumer's sensorial flavor experience
Implications - While traditionally, colors have a strong association with flavor, brands are purposefully blind-siding consumers visually, offering foods and snacks that make them guess at the true taste. By doing so, brands are encouraging consumers to be more mindful while enjoying their foods, dramatically enhancing their flavor experience and creating a more sensorial connection. Even if the flavors themselves are not drastically different, brands are leveraging the consumer's propensity for novelty to generate excitement and curiosity.
Workshop Question - What small aspect of your current offering can you tweak to create a whole new consumer experience?
Trend Themes
1. Color Deprivation - Brands are offering consumers foods and snacks with unexpected colors, giving rise to more mindfulness, enhancing flavor experiences and creating more sensorial connections.
2. Mystery Flavors - Nabisco's Mystery Oreo flavor emulates a more mindful eating experience by engaging consumers with the surprise element on the flavor that won't be revealed till after the consumer makes a purchase.
3. Inverted Symbolism - Skittles create Pride-themed candies branding around white candies so as to uphold the unique symbolism for the Pride Movement.
Industry Implications
1. Food and Beverage Industry - Food and beverage companies can explore the possibilities of using unconventional colors, mystery ingredients, and inverting symbolism for branding.
2. Marketing Industry - Marketing companies can work with brands to create unexpected and innovative ways to engage customers.
3. School Supplies Industry - School supplies companies can align their advertising with bizarre imagery that connects with students in unique ways.
