Takeaways

• In April nineteen eighty-five, Coca-Cola changed its formula for the first time in ninety-nine years, after taste tests with nearly two hundred thousand consumers preferred the new one. Seventy-nine days later, after floods of calls and protests, the original came back as Coca-Cola Classic. The tests were blind sips, and by the accounts we have, people were never clearly told the old drink would be gone.
• A blind sip can remove the very thing loyal customers are buying. In one lab study of sixty-seven adults in the United States, a group of sixteen leaned strongly towards a cup labelled Coke even when both cups held Coke. Kraft changed the ingredients of its macaroni and cheese but kept the box, the name and the colour, and by its own count sold more than fifty million boxes before saying the switch had happened.
• Something to try: design one test that happens in the real moment your customer uses your product (where, how much, and under what name) and count something that cost them, such as a second purchase, before Friday.