UK readers have probably seen this advert; International readers may need reminding that our crisps are your potato chips. Regardless of where you are in the world, consider what Walkers Crisps are demonstrating with their latest advertising campaign. They have created three new flavours, none of which is instantly recognisable as the food upon which it is ostensibly based. They then exult in this flavour opacity by selling them “blind”, and asking eaters to guess what the flavours are, in return for a cash prize.
The success of this campaign depends on any one – or a combination of – the following axioms being true:
- Walkers are unable to accurately recreate complex food flavours in crisp format
- Crisp flavours are so divorced from real food flavours that devoid of an active packaging lable nudge, they cannot be recognised as such
- People are hopeless at actively identifying any flavour, relying heavily on explicit prompts in any setting
- Actual flavour doesn’t matter; only the idea of the flavour matters
- (we can take it as read that a somewhat bemused elderly lady speaking slowly to camera is also a necessary but not sufficient factor to crisp marketing success…)
My suspicion is that all the above are true to some extent, but it’s the point about the Idea mattering more than the Actual, that is the most interesting.
Seekers of truth have long debated whether there is a reality separate from human perception. Walkers’ contest demonstrates the impossibility of answering this question. Each entrant submits an answer based on their own perceptions. Walkers determines who is correct by reference to their food scientists’ design brief. But if a majority of people do not identify the flavour as the one Walkers meant their crisps to taste of, is it the taster or Walkers that is wrong?
The extreme Idealist position would be that neither camp is wrong, but rather that there isn’t such a thing as an objectively identifiable food flavour, only a consensus agreement between a large enough mass of people. This circular logic, of course, is what accounts for the longstanding joke that any previously unencountered food “tastes like chicken” (chicken having a sufficiently broad flavour so as to cover a multitude of new tastes). This dependence on perception & cozy consensus also underpins the problem outlined recently at the Oxford Wine Blog, discussing how to fairly rate wines.
What is true in the realm of food & drink applies equally in all fields of knowledge. For instance, there is much debate about the new psychiatric diagnoses being created by the upcoming DSM-V, with the concern (shared by myself) that it will encourage an over-medicalisation of the normal human condition. DSM-V loosens the diagnostic criteria for many existing disorders, and creates fresh ones too. This is a clear boon to the pharmaceutical industry (who will be able to sell into a whole new set of niches), to some blinkered professionals (who believe in their ability to heal everyone, if only they had more power to do so), and to those individuals seeking (consciously or unconsciously) to divest themself of responsibility for their situation and to adopt a sick role where they require treatment instead. Deciding where illness ends and normality begins has always been difficult, and in large part depends on consensus, something recently discussed at the start of a friend’s TEDx talk. The future seems murkier still.
There is a path forward. As individuals, we can try to acknowledge the gossamer-thin nature of reality. The lack of an objectively identifiable truth does not negate the emotional meaning of a subjective one. But crucially, neither does it elevate the subjective into the position of unquestionable fact simply because objectivity is difficult to ensure. Meaning is possible alongside such tolerance, even when Truth is not achievable. And with meaning, comes the potential for happiness.
In other words, Walkers crisps may not have a flavour all can agree upon, but we can still decide whether we like them or not.
cool!
Thanks!
An interesting post, thanks, I reposted it on my Faceook page. I found your thoughts on how this relates to over-medicalisation particularly interesting, because I suppose it can’t be the job of the health practitioner, when confronted with a patient who seems to need treatment, to try to convince them that their illness doesn’t need treatment. It must be particularly difficult if the practitioner thinks the illness that is being exhibited is shaped in part by societal factors of, as you say, consensus.
Would this mean that in order to treat the patient/s in the way that the practitioner thought was best, they would need to first convince the patient/wider society of the accuracy of their worldview? I think this relates to a comment discussion we had on your previous post about the placebo effect. It’s a fascinating topic. How much do you know about hysteria in the nineteenth century? It’s an interesting case study of a disease which was, in part at least, almost certainly caused by, and diagnosed in accordance with, this kind of societal consensus.
Thanks again!
Michael.
IMO, doctors have a duty to be educators (and sometimes negotiators), not just servile facilitators of whatever treatment a patient requests. Equally, patients should not be passive acceptors of our suggestions, but be thoughtful and willing to learn. It’s a balancing act, of course, and dependent on the dynamic between doctor/patient, which itself is a very variable feast. Some healthcare settings are more amenable to an even dynamic (say, an outpatient clinic with a good clinician who has some time), some are naturally tilted in favour of the doctor’s decision-making (eg being brought into A&E), and a few are heavily tilted in favour of the patient’s decision (visiting a cosmetic surgeon). Ideally, IMO, a consultation should be a positive, enlightening process on both sides, with the emergent decision being an informed, negotiated outcome that meets everyone’s needs. “Ideally” is sadly rarer than it could be, for a variety of practical reasons. And as suggested in the original post, there can be significant differences in opinion between professionals, and between professionals and society, which complicates individual interactions further.
Re: hysteria – a little. I do know that it was Freud who was responsible for reclassifing much of what had previously been considered as a physical disease of female hysteria into a range of neurotic conditions. Of course, Freud’s classifications have also been revisted over time.
Perhaps we could burn copies of DSM V when it comes out, instead of those old chestnuts the Bible or the Koran! (neither of which I have burned, I hasten to say). I hear they are doing away with bereavement as an excuse to have “depressive” symptoms for more than 2 weeks….harsh!
And also that narcissistic personality disorder will no longer be a disorder on the grounds that most people exhibit the traits (not that such people tend to trouble psychiatry too much). On the basis of the medical model, I therefore look forward to most of us having cancer, in order that it no longer be an illness. Pip, pip!
Yeah, removing the bereavement exception completely is too daft for words. Extreme Narcissists can at least console themselves with the prospect of being quasi-amalgamated into the new psychopathic grouping… sort of like being bumped up from Business into First.
Yes, there can’t possiby be a Truth when the ‘answer’ is dependent on the subjective experience, as you point out. An interesting aside, I heard a radio interview recently discussing a report on the sense of taste of wine makers/writers/critics etc. The findings were that such people had a far greater sensitivity to a range of tastes – bitterness, sweetness, etc. The implication being, that for fine wine at least, the flavour is not agreed upon by mass consensus, but rather by a much smaller group of individuals, who then communicate this ‘flavour’ by other means to the mass population – language, packaging, marketing, etc. I suspect this would be true of crisp flavours, with the food technologists the arbiters of what is ‘chicken’-flavoured and others.
I wonder if this is also true in the medical profession?
Very much so, and it’s an apt analogy. It happens in every branch of the profession, but is probably most transparently so in psychiatry, precisely because we have DSM and ICD to provide framework criteria upon which diagnoses are made. Technically, it’s not just psychiatric diagnoses that can be classified in this way, but when you lack, say, a blood test or X-ray to corroborate a diagnosis, the written criteria assume greater importance. DSM and ICD are formulated largely by panels of experts (based on various forms of evidence, ideally), so the phenomenon you describe for wine can certainly happen in medicine too.
As in wine, food, and medicine, so it is in much of our increasingly “expert”-invested and hyper-specialised world. Happy thoughts…!
First I have to say you should really do a seperate poll and ask how many Americans understood a word they said in the video. I was lucky I lived in Tenbury Wells for one summer so I get it, but most Americans sit there and pretend to giggle at British comedies with no clue what’s being said in the dialogue.
But anyway, this whole advert is a tad ironic considering that, one, even professional chefs sometimes have trouble identifying foods they taste while blindfolded. Two, those challenges involve, you know, food. This challenge involves people guessing “oh, could it be…….sausage? vinegar? Combined with, let’s see……4 preservatives and 2 types of artificial flavoring”.
That’s assuming there is any real food in there and that it’s not dehydrated beyond all recognition.
Oh, and those greasy fries (“chips?”) and sauce they have at the bars there? Heaven. Why anyone would want to have crisps instead is beyond me.
“A carb for every taste” (unofficial motto of the UK food industry…
)
Walkers should award a special bonus prize for anyone who identifies all additives correctly by chemical name. No cheating and looking at the ingredients list, of course!