2 ms·
A good read, as with anything by Gladwell, but I have a few quibbles (as with anything by Gladwell): > There are five known fundamental tastes in the human pal
by zeveb 10y ago
A good read, as with anything by Gladwell, but I have a few quibbles (as with anything by Gladwell):
> There are five known fundamental tastes in the human palate: salty, sweet, sour, bitter, and umami.
I always hate when folks call savoury 'umami' instead. We already have a perfectly good word in English for the taste; we don't need to add a new one!
> And so he turned to ketchup, because, alone among the condiments on the table, ketchup could deliver sweet and sour and salty and bitter and umami, all at once.
I'm pretty sure A1 & HP deliver much the same effect. Even Worcestershire sauce does.
Finally, and most importantly: there's a much simpler reason for the failure of World's Best Ketchup to take over the market: no-one is likely to trust a product named 'World's Best' to actually be the best. Grey Poupon seems to come from France, with its name & packaging: one is tempted to believe that it's an ancient brand, one which might well be excellent — or even the world's best. But World's Best Ketchup is clearly new, and there's no particular reason for me to believe it's actually all that good. It could have just been invented by some team of accountants in a conference room at the Holiday Inn.
Never mind that Grey Poupon isn't actually French. Never mind that Jim Wigon really seems to love his ketchup. The vast majority of folks don't know those facts.
- chasing 10y agoAnd I suspect if Heinz and World's Best switched marketing budgets that somehow this article would suddenly be about how World's Best hits all the right flavor notes and Heinz is "lower amplitude."
- devopsproject 10y ago> how World's Best hits all the right flavor notes and Heinz is "lower amplitude." How would the marketing budget affect blind taste tests?
- noxToken 10y agoWell if you're actually using blind taste tests, then none of that matters. The point is that branding yourself as "World's Best" can negatively affect your product due to psychology. Two ketchup brands on a hot dog or sitting in a souffle container for dipping fries doesn't fall victim to this. I don't know which brand is which, so I cannot pre-judge the ketchup. If you place the bottles in my face, "World's Best" preemtively makes me say, "'World's Best'? I doubt it." I've set negative expectations for the ketchup before I have even had a taste. There was a spot on NPR (I think the TED Radio Hour) that talked about taste being linked to more than just the senses. Mood, lighting, atmosphere, and a whole host of other things can affect taste. They went on to say that a $75 steak from a steak house tends to be better rated in taste than a $20 steak from a normal restaurant for the reason listed above. The steaks can come from the same cut, stored in the same location, prepared by the same person using the same cookware, utensils and seasonings. The upscale steakhouse would have a better ambiance, and the psychological preparation for eating a $75 steak plays with your taste.
- KingMob 10y agoI suspect the reason it's called "umami", and not "savory", is that Japanese researchers were the ones to actually isolate and characterize the taste buds involved, so they went with the Japanese word. Same reason physicists who create new elements and biologists who discover new species get the naming rights. You're dead-on about the name, "World's Best", though. Proclaiming your awesomeness is actually a counter-signal. Like all the "Famous" and "Original" hot dog and pizza places in NYC.