Baconmilk was used by our guest lecturer Hampus Jakobsson of The Astonishing Tribe as an example of how to bring ideas down to simple three-year-old logic that appeals to the different parts of the consumer.
Scientists in the USA were concerned about obesity levels rising and calculated that drinking lower fat milk would have a measurable impact for many people. A successful marketing campaign to this end found out that they could explain the content of full fat milk by placing a display in the supermarket with a glass of milk next to a sample of bacon that contained the same amount of fat.
People were naturally shocked at how much fat was in each glass and promptly started reading the fine print. Information handouts at the side of the display showed consumers the figures and facts and gave recommendations. The information told them to look out for a special symbol on the milk, which showed that it was healthy. Sales of the lower fat milk increased due to the campaign as people ditched their full cream for skim.
The moral of the story is that there are three parts to a successful message. The consumer is broken down into two parts in Hampus' metaphor: the elephant and the rider.
Elephant: big, cumbersome, has huge inertia, not so bright, slow to react
Rider: smart, nimble, logical
The elephant is our emotional side and the rider is the tiny cognitive brain that sits atop the beast. Usually the huge elephant wins out, but sometimes the rider can influence where the elephant walks. The third part to the metaphor is the road. Both the elephant and the rider like to know that the road is there to follow.
As marketers or entrepreneurs we can learn from Baconmilk like so: the elephant was shocked by the bacon/milk comparison (the equivalent of seeing a mouse), which prompted the rider to have a closer look at the information. Then they looked for the safe path: the markings on the milk packaging that showed which milk was best.
Break it down. Elephant, Rider, Path.
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| "Would you like some more skim milk?" |
