The New York Times has a story about how Kraft Heinz decided to reformulate its iconic macaroni and cheese, removing artificial preservatives and replacing artificial dyes with a combination of paprika, annatto and turmeric, and then executed the change without really telling anybody about it.
The change "had been under development for three years," the Times writes, "and last April Kraft announced that it planned to make the switch. But when the reformulated version hit shelves in December, only customers paying careful attention to the ingredients listed on the side of the box would have known. Even the orangeish color of the mac and cheese remained the same."
The company knew that the change would raise concerns among dedicated users, and so it concluded that the best thing would be to get as many of them to try the new formula without knowing it. Which is what happened; the company estimates that some 50 million boxes of its macaroni and cheese were consumed without any significant reaction ... and now it is marketing the change by using the lack of response as a selling point.
The change "had been under development for three years," the Times writes, "and last April Kraft announced that it planned to make the switch. But when the reformulated version hit shelves in December, only customers paying careful attention to the ingredients listed on the side of the box would have known. Even the orangeish color of the mac and cheese remained the same."
The company knew that the change would raise concerns among dedicated users, and so it concluded that the best thing would be to get as many of them to try the new formula without knowing it. Which is what happened; the company estimates that some 50 million boxes of its macaroni and cheese were consumed without any significant reaction ... and now it is marketing the change by using the lack of response as a selling point.
- KC's View:
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Sort of unique, to make these kinds of changes and not really talk about it. But clearly it worked.
Makes me wonder what would happen if companies start labeling products with GMOs but not making a big deal about it. Might be a good way to defuse some of the controversies...
