Nothing against lawyers, but quite frankly i’m hoping for all of our sakes that they are to blame for a all of the (really bad) product names/product packaging/packaging messaging. It couldn’t, could it, be the fault of well, me or others in our industry, right?

Now, possibly not as immediately important as the discussions of engagement, ROI and the changing economic engine of advertising, but from the ‘moment of buy’ perspective–that moment when the actual consumer is actually reaching for your product on the shelf–it’s the be all and end all.

I started paying a lot of attention to this a few months ago when we were pitching the Smart Balance business…I spent a lot of time ‘pretending’ to shop, wandering various grocery stores really looking at packaging, names, language, etc.–the rhetoric of the aisles. It was overwhelming and after a while, it made me want to run screaming from the store–and straight to some decision-makers office where (in my head anyway) I would do something that would save the rest of us from this awful experience. I now understood that I wasn’t a born bad shopper, I was created.

Barry Schwartz, the author of “The Paradox of Choice”, definitely had it right: “Unlimited choice…can produce genuine suffering”. He is sooooo right. I, a marketer, someone who should be immune to the overblown rhetoric of messaging, abhor with everything I am the act of choosing a butter, a laundry detergent, a children’s vitamin, or a loaf of bread for fear that I won’t choose the ‘right’ one for me, my children, my husband and that, God forbid, it will ultimately reflect on how ‘good’ I am as a woman, mother, wife.

This was brought into clear focus for me in the liquid dish detergent aisle the other day–in the store where I shop, it’s the third aisle I hit and already I was sweaty and mumbling to myself. I might have had a twitch as well, but frankly, I wasn’t that aware anymore. As I was standing there looking at the choices, I had one of the ‘movie’ moments where everything but the shelf in front of me rapidly receded, it got quiet and (I think) the lights dimmed all around me. There in front of me were 9 different products with 21 different extensions. One erases odor, even from plastics. One got dishes squeaky clean. Another absorbed 2X more grease than regular dish detergents. And finally, the kicker, Dawn with Bleach Alternative. It not only powers away UNSEEN FOOD RESIDUE!, but it’s also “gentle on hands”. How can this be? The questions were swirling. What is a bleach alternative? What is “unseen food residue” and how long have I been living with that–can it make me sick?

And don’t even get me started on scent. Now, the Dawn botanicals–the same grease fighting power but in wonderful blended scents, were right next to Dawn with Bleach Alternative. I wanted the new “Uplifting Lemongrass and Orange Blossom” (if it were really uplifting, is that easier and more accepted than Prozac?), but that whole thing about unseen food residue was really kicking my ass. But that scent wasnt’ blended…i could only choose “Fresh RapidsTM or Lemon Surge (not tm’d?). So then I got stuck in the whole “Fresh Rapids” thing–aren’t rapids always fresh because they are, by their very nature, moving thus constantly replenishing themselves. What is really “fresh” about this scent then? ReFreshened Stagnant Pond. That I’d be amazed by.

So what was happening here? There is a great article in the March, 2004 New Yorker. “Select All” by Christopher Caldwell does a great job of examining this whole issue. There is a great line that sums up my entire shopping experience, “Life is complicated, the options of the marketplace are numerous, and the human intellect is frail”. That’s how I felt in that aisle, frail…and pissed off. I just wanted to wash my damn dishes (not really, but you know what I’m saying). How many ways can there be to wash dishes–and why can’t one get rid of odor, absorb grease and leave my dishes squeaky clean? Let’s think about that–if that were true, then consumer choice would be about the BRAND and not the twenty seven million product nuances. The choice would be equally emotional (a brand i like or feel connected to) and rational (does it fit my budget). Isn’t that what branding is supposed to be about–our ability to create a desire for something abstract–and are we taking the easy way out by bringing it down to whether more people want “GreaseCutter with MuskyLemonHibiscus Spring Day Picnic” over “ResidueFighter with Titillating Bubbles of Innocence”?

There a guy I read about in the same New Yorker article. Albert O. Hirschman. He has fascinated me ever since–mostly because I wanted his life experiences. Thought of as both an economist and “social thinker” his life spans the gamut from helping many of Europe’s leading artists and intellectuals escape from the Nazis during the war. To being a Rockefeller Fellow at Berkeley. To serving in the United States Army, then being appointed Chief of the Western European and British Commonwealth Section of the Federal Reserve Board …yada, yada, yada. Most importantly to this moment though, in 1982 he authored “Shifting Involvements,” where he wrote about concept of “disappointment” as it related to mainstream economic theory. He stated, “The world I am trying to understand, is one in which men think they want one thing and then upon getting it, find out to their dismay that they don’t want it nearly as much as they thought or don’t want it at all and that something else, of which they were hardly aware, is what they really want.”

This is what I’m saying. We, the consumer, want something that works and we don’t want the choice to be so damn hard. I think if Shakespeare were writing today he might have said, “First, let’s kill all of the marketers”, making the point that they and the unlimited choices they are are the basis of our misery and problems, not lawyers.

So, back to Barry Schwartz and his book (which was well read, but obviously not well listened to). In it he postulates that the profusion of choices we face is turning us into maximizers, and maximizers, he thinks, are prone to misery and depression. In other words, I had a right to a breakdown in the detergent aisle. So, since the manufactures don’t seem to be heeding the need for simplicity and the consumer and all of our professed power aren’t leading marches on Madison Avenue to create change for the better, I’m off to my doctor to get some help for my condition. He says he has lots of options for me to choose from. Argh.