natural evolution of products

I took my four year old daughter to the Natural History Museum recently and we had an entertaining chat about evolution.  As you can imagine, she had some very funny questions.  And she's convinced her little sister might be a little more closely related to a monkey than she.

Anyway, it got me thinking about branded products, and how most product evolutions have to do with margin improvement rather than better performance.  Consumers may not notice one round of cost-cuts, but over time, the reduced product quality can get really obvious. Why is it that cereal boxes never close properly after you open them once?  My guess is that that little "advance" caused a 0.4 point margin gain at some point in the 90's. But, oh how irritating to consumers.

Of course, continuous margin improvement taken to an extreme gets hit by Darwinism too.  Not from a pack of hyena.  From a pack of private label - which actually seems to be getting better over time.

Comments

[Miki]

As usual, your cartoons are both funny and honest to the core. Our agency regularly tacks these up in the elevator - and this one made it there quickly today.

[Drew]

My favorite? "How can our product performance be down? The testing showed that none of our (12) changes were significant!" No matter how thinly you slice the salami, you take enough cuts and you'll notice that it's getting smaller.

[Drew]

My favorite? "How can our product performance be down? The testing showed that none of our (12) changes were significant!" No matter how thinly you slice the salami, you take enough cuts and you'll notice that it's getting smaller.

[Michael Wagner]

Great bit of observation!

Private labels match or nearly match the quality of the branded product in many cases these days.

The challenge is to be different and better at the same time.

Thanks for extending great conversations via your cartooning.

Keep creating,
Mike

[omer rosen]

That is so true. i thought that only in Israel knew that trick.
Apparently i was wrong.