like by making him a cartoon figure. We looked at him in the
context of photography down to cartoon character kinds of
things. The more you go to cartoon characters, the more of an
abstraction Hector becomes, the less and less effective you are
in perceptions of the taste and quality of the ravioli.”
Masten picked up a can of Hormel canned meat. “We did
this, too. We tested the Hormel logo.” He pointed at the tiny
sprig of parsley between the r and the m. “That little bit of
parsley helps bring freshness to canned food.”
Rhea held out a bottle of Classico tomato sauce and talked
about the meanings attached to various kinds of containers.
“When Del Monte took the peaches out of the tin and put them
in a glass container, people said, ‘Ahh, this is something like my
grandmother used to make.’ People say peaches taste better
when they come in a glass jar. It’s just like ice cream in a
cylindrical container as opposed to a rectangular package.
People expect it’s going to taste better and they are willing to
pay five, ten cents more — just on the strength of that
package.”
What Masten and Rhea do is tell companies how to
manipulate our first impressions, and it’s hard not to feel a
certain uneasiness about their efforts. If you double the size of