Chapter 13 Action and Reality: Using Video for the Package Experience 127
tain the respondents as to create a method by which to test a package - related “ experience ” among both children and adults.
As we begin, let ’ s go back a moment to some memo- ries of that study, provided especially for this book, by Alexis Fried.
When we initially designed and launched FunFeast, we conducted focus groups (Casey and Kreuger,
1994 ), with children and tested many different con- cepts with moms, all of which led to a wonderful product with many unique features, including the only lift - out frozen ice cream dessert to come with a microwaveable dinner, a cast of unique and fun cartoon characters, and collectable fun prizes inside the box. The product launched in the early, 90 ’ s to great success, during a period when the kids frozen dinner segment was under - performing due to economic factors and a battle within the adult frozen dinner category resulted in those products often selling for less than the kids ’ meals.
As a result, we needed to validate the impor- tance of the products ’ most expensive components, and understand which elements were required for market success, and enable a better product margin. To accomplish this, we needed to isolate the value of each individual package element. The challenge, of course, was you couldn ’ t just ask a 6 - year - old child if a lift - out dessert made them more or less likely to ask their mom to buy the product! Instead, we hoped showing them the product elements in a way that simulated watching a TV commercial would enable us to identify the true value of each component .
When the results came back, we found that the methodology really worked. We had identifi ed clear preferences among both kids and moms, and identifi ed those elements that increased product value for moms as well. The results answered ques- tions regarding which food components were most important (the main!; sides could be standardized around most popular/low cost options), if we should invest in character licenses (not required), and if we could eliminate the prizes (not if you wanted to appeal to younger children!).
As an added bonus, not only did the method work, but it was a lot of fun to create the video elements or “ snippets ” used as stimulus for fi eld- ing the study.
I remember my trip to a Microsoft conference, where the new video technology for Windows was being shown. A natural reaction to seeing the fi rst implementations of the emerging multimedia capabilities of Windows was enabling short video clips (with sound) to be used as stimuli instead of a static picture. A huge step ahead but we did not stop there. A question naturally emerged. I ’ m not exactly sure how it came out, but during the discus- sion the notion came up … “ Could we put two videos, side by side? ” This was a technical challenge then, but the discussion triggered a new and unheard of before idea — why not sequence the clips, the same way it ’ s done in commercials, but this time do it according to an exper- imental design?
The rest is the typical story. Thousands of lines of C - language code developed in just the fi rst eight days, followed by the inaugural test in a facility in southern New Jersey for which we had to rent minivans and load them to the top with several desktops to run the project. As discussed here, the project was FunFeast. We didn ’ t know it at the time, but this work would open up the door fi fteen years later to using video for many more things. But then it was just that fi rst FunFeast project, followed a few months later by the towelette project, and then a few more.
Swanson ’ s “ FunFeast ”
In the early 1990s, Swanson Foods, manufacturer of mid - priced frozen foods, began a program of aggressive development. One of the key issues at the time was to identify specifi cally what type of frozen food “ dinner ” would appeal to moms and kids. Swanson ’ s research director at the time, Alexis Fried, recognized that the design of the specifi c frozen meals might be improved if the marketers and product developers at Swanson could get an idea of what the product should contain, and how some of the packaging might work.
Packaging was an extremely important issue for this particular project and brand, because the frozen meal was, in essence, a combination of differently packaged foods, with the opportunity to use some new packaging technologies, incorporate some different types of prod- ucts within it (i.e., Kool - Aid packet), and, fi nally, to use graphics design (characters on the product, which were taken from familiar as well as unfamiliar sources).
With this introduction to the project, let ’ s see how the packaging research dealt with the problem of what should be in the meal, and how to represent different alternatives in a way that children and mothers would fi nd interesting. The objective was not so much to enter-
Working with Kids and Adults
We began this work on FunFeast with a bit of trepidation because we were exploring new lands, terra incognita , unknown territory. For many years, there had been a great reluctance to work with children as if they were young adults who understood scaling and evaluation in the way that adults do. We were faced with the problem of what to present to children, and how to get the children to react to the test stimuli. There are many in the research community who believe that children cannot really understand the meaning of numbers, and, therefore, it ’ s best to use some type of pictorial scale, such as a so - called Smiley scale. That scale has faces cor- responding to different levels of liking, ranging from a frown to a wide smile (Kroll, 1990 ; Chen, Resurreccion and Paguio, 1996 ).
We chose not to follow that point of view, and simply to let children rate the test concepts as if they were young adults. We reasoned that these children are exposed to numbers in school, and they seem to do perfectly well. Since we were about to work with children ages 6 – 12, we simply required that the children have fi nished First Grade. This stipulation was not hard to fi ll since we were working with 95 children, approximately equally distrib- uted by ages (95 children all together, 45 in the 6 – 9 age bracket, 50 in the 10 – 12 age bracket).
What We Wanted to Do
Our project was to provide the child and the adult, sepa- rately, with a set of test stimuli on the screen. The stimuli would show different FunFeast packages. The package was a full dinner comprising six silos. The silos were main course, side component, dessert, a surprise pack, a cartoon character, and a price. Each silo comprised several options, from the smallest silo of side compo- nents (only two elements, French fries/corn; mashed potatoes/corn), to the largest silo of six different cartoon characters. Video was critical to show that the dessert component could be removed.
Ordinarily, we might present these components as words or as still pictures. This time, however, we changed the approach somewhat. We created small 2 – 4 second “ clips ” — one clip of each of the product elements (mains, sides, desserts) in each silo. Look at Figures 13.1 and 13.2 to get a sense of the clips for the brownie, showing how the product was actually “ lifted out of the package for eating. ” These two clips, part of the
13.1
13.2
Figure 13.1 and Figure 13.2 Two portions of the 3 - second video clip for the brownie dessert.
3 - second video clips, made the experience come alive for the respondents.
The FunFeast Stimuli
Creating the test stimuli was straightforward. If you look at the different silos and elements in Table 13.1 then you will see that the sizes of these silos are different. There are a total of 25 different elements. Since experimental designs are analyzed by regression, we need more com- binations than we have predictor elements. For the
Chapter 13 Action and Reality: Using Video for the Package Experience 129
the project to generate the insights it did. We are fairly certain that the video helped a great deal to generate strong interest, as we will see.
Even before we walk away with the “ fi ndings, ” the real question is whether or not the project actually worked! All through this book, we have been dealing with the responses of adults to these stimuli, rather than the responses of children. We know from everyday expe- rience that kids are attracted to packages (Robinson, Borzekowski, Matheson, and Kraemer, 2007 ). What mother or father, dutifully shopping in the supermarket, trying to buy the products written down on a carefully prepared shopping list, has not during the course of reading, been importuned by their child to “ pick up that package, please , Mommy (or Daddy)! ” Those may not be the exact words, but they get the message across. Kids are attracted by packages, by stuff that is interesting, and when they get a bit older, by packages that are “ cool, ” or whatever word is, “ in. ”
One interesting point worth remarking on before we actually go into the data is that the 95 kids who participated in this study had a wonderful time. The senior author was at the session with the kids. No kids complained. In fact, the kids were fascinated by the task and paid attention. Of course, part of the reason was that an attending (female) interviewer, running the session with something like 12 kids, treated the situation like school. Kids liked the discipline, felt that they were doing something important, and after a few moments of the typical raucous behavior that kids show, they all settled down to do their task, just as they would do in school. In fact, in two of the sessions, the children were so occupied with the task that you could “ hear a pin drop. ”
What We Learned about What Kids Want
Let ’ s look at the results in more depth. We see the results laid out for adults, all kids, and the two ages of kids, in Table 13.1 . We also see the results for the rating of “ value for the money ” at the right side of Table 13.1 . As is our custom, we recoded the 1 – 9 points into a binary, with ratings of 1 – 6 recoded to 0 (denoting not interested, or not a good value), and ratings of 7 – 9 recoded to 100 (denoted interested, or a good value, respectively).
We begin by looking at what wins, but just as impor- tantly, how strongly the item wins. Our fi rst look focused FunFeast project, we created 40 different combinations.
Elements in the same silo appeared equally often. However, when a silo had relatively few elements (i.e., side components), its elements appeared far more often than when a silo had more elements.
Creating these combinations is not particularly diffi - cult. One needs only to set up the combinations so that the individual elements from different silos are statisti- cally independent of each other. It will be impossible to make all of the elements in the same silo completely independent of each other because there are constraints (some items cannot appear with others). However, for the most part, the elements are reasonably independent of each other in a statistical sense.
To make the study interesting for the children, we presented each FunFeast as a sequential video, compris- ing components that were spliced together. Some parts of the video were simply “ still shots ” of the meal com- ponents in a package, along with the name of the item. We did this for the main and side dishes, as well as for the price. The remaining parts of the stimuli were video clips, selected in order to make the package experience come alive to the respondents, especially the younger ones.
The actual stimuli were 40 different test videos, constructed combinations, with identifying labels when necessary. The labels identifi ed the different silos and elements, along with the appropriate video. By presenting the stimuli as videos with clearly marked labels when necessary, the research engaged the children, especially those ages 6 – 9, who might not have been able to comprehend the test stimuli were they to be strictly text descriptions. The video helped to bring to life the unique removable nature of the frozen dessert, which could NOT have been done as easily with a photo and text.
What We Learned about “ Process ” from the FunFeast Study
The bottom line in all of this work is what we found and, of course, what we learned about the process. Could the children, ages 6 – 9, participate in this type of project? The answer is yes. Would they discriminate? The answer is yes. Could their data be used in a meaningful, quantita- tive way? The answer is yes. Of course, we did not do the control experiment with these stimuli as words alone, so we can ’ t be sure that it was the video clips that helped
Table 13.1 Performance of the different video elements in the F un F east project
Kids (6 – 9) Kids (10 – 12) Adults Adults
Buy Buy Buy Good Value
Varieties
B1 Chicken Drumlets 10 14 34 13
B4 Fried Chicken 13 16 32 17
B3 Pizza 13 16 16 4
B2 Fish Sticks (Reference) 0 0 0 0
Side Components
C2 French Fries/Corn 1 2 8 6
C1 Mashed Potatoes/Corn (Reference) 0 0 0 0
Dessert
D3 New brownie no lift - out 12 6 8 13
D1 Cold lift - out 6 8 6 14
D2 New brownie lift - out 13 9 3 14
D4 No dessert (Reference — True Zero) 0 0 0 0
Surprise Pack
El Current surprise pack 5 − 3 9 3
E5 No surprise pack (True Zero) 0 0 0 0 E3 Flavored Drink Mix (unbranded) 9 1 − 1 2 E4 Collect and save for free prizes 7 − 1 − 1 1
E2 Kool - Aid packet 9 4 − 4 6
Characters F2 Garfi eld 11 3 10 5 F1 FunFeast Shark 4 − 1 10 8 F5 Campbell Kid 6 11 3 8 F3 Animaniacs 7 − 1 3 7 F4 Tintin 8 − 3 0 5
F6 No character on box (True Zero) 0 0 0 0
Price
G1 $1.89 (Reference) 0 0
G2 $1.99 1 − 9
G3 $2.19 − 17 − 41
on the four varieties. Recall that there were four of these main varieties and that each of the 40 test videos had to begin with one of these varieties. The consequence of that particular decision is that the four numbers are rela- tive to each other. We can choose any one of the four varieties to act as a reference, which reference we give the value 0. It seemed logical to give the lowest scoring variety the position as reference. This is B2, fi sh sticks. Compared to that, the winning elements are very strong performers (fried chicken, chicken drumlets). Even
among the children, these are the strong performers. However, kids also like pizza a lot more than adults do. Finally, if we look at “ good value, ” we see that adults don ’ t feel that pizza is good value. We don ’ t really know whether the adults “ down rated ” pizza because they didn ’ t like it, they didn ’ t want to buy it for their children, or they thought it was poor value. All in all, it is gratify- ing to see, however, that everyone discriminated among the different varieties, especially the younger children, ages 6 – 9.
Chapter 13 Action and Reality: Using Video for the Package Experience 131
dollars), interest drops down, but good value drops down far more precipitously. We have seen the sensitiv- ity of interest to pricing before. Now we see that the value for money relation is even more steeply related to price.
Summing Up — What Did We Learn from FunFeast to Help Us Work with Packages and Kids?
The original objective of the FunFeast project was to identify the “ hot buttons ” for moms and kids. That is, what particular elements of the packaged dinner appealed to both groups? The particular fi ndings are interesting, but limited. What we discovered is that the children react, occasionally quite strongly, to packaging of actual products with which they are familiar (i.e., frozen dinners). The real discovery is that video may be a way to deal with children in packaging studies, not to mention an additional option for studies among adults.
On to Towelettes, Experimental Design of Ideas, Applications, and Conferences
Our second case history came about a year later, in the latter part of 1994. One of our clients at the time, a pack- aging specialist at a paper goods company, wanted to commission work on the development of some new ideas in towelettes and wipes. The issue was to fi nd out what type of product packaging looks best.
The guiding aspect when studying towelettes is the person - package interaction. It was quickly realized by everyone that describing the action of using the towelette might produce a reaction, but would it be the reaction from a picture or would it be better from an actual experi- ence? Another issue, less important but still operative, was that it was diffi cult to get some of these new pack- ages in suffi cient quantities for people to experience using them. A fi nal issue, always important in companies, was confi dentiality. It was one thing to talk about a new package, another to show a video of a new package, but it was quite out of the question to let the package outside of one ’ s direct control. Readers who work in companies recognize these different levels of concern, sometimes more intensely in certain projects, sometimes just as latent “ hygiene ” practices that simply are ever - present, albeit at a low intensity.
When we move to the side dish, we again see dis- crimination by adults, but no response by children. So now we see that the side dish is not particularly relevant for the children, although it is for adults.
Let ’ s move on to dessert. It was in the dessert portion of the video where we tried to emphasize the packaging of the product, especially the brownie (see Figures 13.1 and 13.2 ). For desserts we created videos that had no desserts, so when it comes to reading the impact, we have a true impact value. Kids like the video of the brownie lifted out from its package in the FunFeast; adults are not as excited, however. The excitement about the “ action ” of “ lifting out ” portrayed by the video is greater among the younger children than among the older children.
So what did we learn? First, this portion of the FunFeast project teaches us that it ’ s possible to engage younger children, show them an aspect of the packaging, and excite them. We also learned that the younger children preferred what they knew, not what the brand manager thought would be best. The younger children preferred the warm chocolate brownie, a more traditional Swanson dessert item, over the novelty frozen dessert the product line had originally been launched with!
Children like toys and extras. That ’ s the reason behind the fourth silo. The difference between children and adults becomes clear here. Kids want a Kool - Aid packet; adults don ’ t. Yet, when it comes to ratings of good value, adults believe that the Kool - Aid packet is a good value, even though they don ’ t like it. We also learn here that adults clearly distinguish between what THEY like and what is good value.
We get a good sense of what kids want, how ages differ, and how they differ from adults when we look at characters in the fi fth silo. Again there were some