It’s probably – or even better: certainly – not intentional, but Oreo is running the most extensive real-life study on print quality. Why, you might ask. Well: they changed their logo, including the logo color, the brand color. It might look like a subtle change, but the new brand color is about 10 dE00 off the previous one. So, if the old ‘truth’ that color differences in packages will impact sales, Oreo sales should be plummeting right now. Old and new versions are being used jointly in several supermarkets I visited. Some products have the old logo and color, some the new… Let’s check it out!
CONTENTS: Chinese Oreo | The other little experiment | The ‘icky’ part, again… | Why is this important? | Updates
A few weeks ago, I went to the Chinese supermarket, a short bike ride from home. To shop for some Chinese specialties. But when I was in the shop, I noticed they also had Chinese varieties of Oreo… And those packages didn’t look like the Oreo packages I remembered from my ‘regular’ shops. So, I bought one, obviously. To put it next to a Belgian one and write a nice article about it.
But when I put it next to the regular Oreo I bought in a Belgian shop (Delhaize) a few days later, I was in for a surprise! These blues were not that different… My color memory had failed on me, once again. (as an excuse: I’m not an Oreo addict, I otherwise never buy it) Now, that’s not something special: several academic studies have already come to the same conclusion. I’ve covered a few in two articles before (article one, article two).
When looking a bit closer, I was in for a second surprise: I had bought two varieties of Oreo in the Belgian shop. Next to the regular one also the ‘Enrobed White’. And guess what: not only did these have a different ‘brand color’, also the logo had changed! I didn’t notice that while shopping! I did take some time – at least half a minute – before I noticed it, it’s a subtle change.
In case you haven’t read this article yet, during shopping, ‘System 1’ of our brain is active. It’s fast but inaccurate: blue = Oreo = buy! But when at home, ‘System 2’ was activated, the one that is slow but accurate. The one you are using when judging color in a printing company, when comparing proofs with print jobs… Next to that System 1 and System 2, there is also a newer theory called ‘predictive processing’. This explains that the brain and our senses are not bottom up (senses feeding the brain), but more a top down approach, where the brain makes a ‘prediction’ of what you will see / sense, and uses as little sensory data as possible to confirm (or reject) the prediction. This approach will save energy, by not usnig the full set of data, but only just enough to confirm it’s Oreo. More about that theory in this article.
After finally noticing that the logo had changed, I went to another supermarket close to my home (Jumbo) and bought multiple other Oreo packages. And there I noticed that the ‘Enrobed white’ logo differed from the package in the first supermarket! Plus the fact that the different versions of the logo were used next to each other. And it’s not just the logo that went from a ‘3D’ version to a ‘flat’ version. Also, the signature color in the logo went from a medium blue to a dark blue. When I returned home I checked the color difference with my Nix Spectro 2: over 10 dE00. That’s a lot more than the maximum tolerances many brand owners demand because they believe they would lose sales with higher deviations.
So, here we have two versions of the Oreo logo AND Oreo brand colors in the same supermarket, on the same shelves. With a rather different color, over 10 dE00, that’s something no brand owner or print buyer would accept. My brain immediately said: this is an exciting experiment! Will this 10 dE00 difference impact sales, as some color consultants and vendors offering color tools tell us all the time? I can’t wait to see the Oreo sales numbers from 2024 and compare them to 2023!
Here’s an overview of all the packages I bought.
And here are some details from the ‘new’ (flat logo) and ‘old’ packages.
Interesting side note: when I was looking for information on the change in logo, I noticed that the EU website has the two different logos on the same page! In the header, it’s the old one; in the lower part, the new one…
The other little experiment
I recently also ran a smaller, but related experiment on LinkedIn. One about AB InBev that had launched a new pilsner beer – or to be correct: the reincarnation of an old one – but didn’t spend any money on publicity and marketing, except a press release. I asked LinkedIn whether this could work, launching a product without marketing and publicity. To show what I was talking about, I added a picture of two six-packs, plus a can from one of them. I happened to have bought the six-packs in two different stores with a few days difference, and when I put the second in the refrigerator, I not only noticed that I already had a six-pack in there (forgot about that…) but also that the blue brand color was quite different! Plus, the color of the cans also differed from the foil, keeping the six-pack together.
Although almost 300 LinkedIn members viewed my post, only one person was commenting on those different colors (the usual suspect 😉 ). Also one other person – with a packaging background – commented, but that was about the marketing strategy, not about the colors. And that was what I wanted to find out: since I only talked about a successful product launch and marketing and publicity, NOT about color, I wondered how many people would notice and comment on those color differences. Well, just one…
BTW: a few days later, I noticed in one of the supermarkets (Delhaize) that there is also a difference between the 33 cl and 50 cl packs…
The ‘icky’ part, again…
For the record: I also measured the color difference in the Piedboeuf foils, and I was surprised it was only just above 5 dE00, while it looks very different to me. And this brings us back again to the ‘icky’ part of our current color models. I have seen color differences around 5 dE00 that looked much ‘closer’, but this is in my perception a huge difference, but when measured, it’s also only 5 dE00… That’s half of the color difference in the Oreo examples above! Is that your preception, that the difference between these blues is half of the one in the Oreo samples? It’s certainly not my perception… it’s much bigger.
The clever color scientist should address this. Having an ‘icky’ model on which we base everything is not a good idea. If you build a house, you want the foundation to be rock-solid.
If you have no idea what this ‘icky’ is I’m talking about, please check out this video by John – the Math Guy – Seymour. Very enlightening!
Why is this important?
For decades some people in the industry have been telling us that brand color reproduction should be very consistent and within tiny margins. Because larger color differences would impact sales. And that’s obviously something no brand owner wants!
With this change in the Oreo logo and brand color, we now have a real-life experiment that will show whether this is true. Or that it’s just baseless fear-mongering, intended to sell color-related services and tools…
If there is no significant impact in Oreo sales in a year, despite the 10 dE00 change in brand color, we can bury that claim – or should I say: an urban legend?– once and for all. Why? Because it is hurting printing companies. If brand owners want premium quality, they should be willing to pay a premium price. Not come up with an unfounded claim that ‘it needs to be like that’ because it would otherwise hurt their sales.
BTW: over the years the Oreo logo has changed significant. Did you know it used to be red? And cyan?
PS 1: I visit one of the shops (Jumbo) a few times a week, and the rotation of Oreo packages is quite high. There are no Oreo’s left behind, not even with this 10 dE00 color difference…
PS2: For the record, as I explained many times before: I’m not promoting bad print quality, absolutely not! But there is no basis for tiny tolerances,. The tolerances specified in the applicable ISO standards and ‘best practices’ like PSO/PSD and G7 have decent tolerances and are within reach for every printing company with decent equipment and skilled operators. Let’s stick to those and not engage in a race to the bottom: demanding ever smaller delta E’s.
UPDATE 20/10/2024: Also in Finland Oreo is rolling out the new logo design. Check out the picture below by dr. Kai Lankinen (the packaging and ECG specialist)! For the record: the two different versions were not in the same display, one of them was on the shelves, Kai put them together in the display to be able to compare them.
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