I am working with a client on a new product to be rolled out to several grocery store chains.  She is a typical entrepreneur that observed a need in the market and is now on the way to filling that need.  Being a one person operation, she has done all branding and design herself.  We met a few days ago and she brought samples of the packaging she is going to use.  While very descriptive of all the scientific attributes of the product, the labels do nothing to catch the consumers eye. It is the equivalent of putting the ingredients on the front of the package...lots of blah that no one would stop and read.   In a grocery store you have only a few seconds to catch the eye of the harried consumer, particularly for a new product that the consumer is not looking for.  I suggested she get rid of all the text and replace it with  simple logo, picture, etc.  A concise attention-grabbing image had much better odds of getting me to pick it up, flip it over and then read about the details.  No one cares about the chemical makeup of a product; they want to know how their life will be made incrementally better by using it.  I know my life is much better when I grasp my square Fuji water bottle.  The shape of the bottle MUST somehow make the water taste better, right?  Nope, but the unique shape made me buy it, and pay a little more for it. 

What the client needs to realize is people buy on emotion, not logic.  A recent book , buy-ologyanalyzes why we buy what we buy by using medical MRI machines to monitor consumers brains to measure their subconscious reactions to brands and products.  Time after time, the subconscious thoughts deep within the gray matter overruled the more logic-driven conscious.  Decades of traditional marketing research, including focus groups, have been predicated on the conscious being the "right" answer.   Group think, and other issues,  influence answers in so many ways that traditional research methods may no longer be the best tools to gain true insight.  Coming to a mall near you, the Pepsi Challenge, part II,  complete with MRI machines and neurologist.