How Coca-Cola turned Santa Claus red

Have you ever noticed that the colour of Santa Claus’ suit is the exact same red as the label for Coke? “That’s not a coincidence; the Coca-Cola Company holds a patent on the colour. The consequence of being exposed to messages associating Coke with things like Christmas is that when we see the logo on a Coca-Cola can, we feel good, and these positive emotions augment the taste of the soda,” says Sheena Iyengar, a professor at the Columbia Business School, with a joint appointment in the Department of Psychology. She is a leading expert on choice and has most recently written the best-selling The Art of Choosing — the decisions we make everyday — what they say about us and how we can improve them. All this, without the ability to see — Sheena is visually challenged. In this interview she speaks on various aspects of choice to DNA.

You write that animals in captivity live much lesser than those in natural habitats. Why is that? How is that linked to choice?
Yes, it’s true that captivity can have a number of deleterious effects for zoo animals, including decreased lifespan. In part, this is because zoo life comes into conflict with the animals’ natural survival instincts. For instance, there’s no possibility of migrating or of hoarding food for the winter, and the animals have no way of knowing whether the food that has magically appeared each day thus far will appear again tomorrow. This lack of control triggers a stress response, in which the animals are constantly in what we might call “crisis mode.” Remaining in a constant state of heightened alert can induce a weakened immune system, ulcers, and even heart problems. Humans can also suffer, both physically and mentally, from the inability to exercise control; these negative effects can surface not just when we experience profound restrictions on our freedom, but even when we perceive a lack of ability to choose in more everyday situations, like the workplace.

What happens at the workplace?
At the workplace it seems people at the upper helms, even though they have greater pressure at work, are the ones who are less likely to die of a heart disease.

Why is that?
It turns out that despite having greater responsibility people in the upper echelons of the career field generally have greater control over their day-to-day activities than those in the lower tiers. So for example, although a CEO’s shouldering of accountability for his company’s profit is certainly stressful, it turns out that his assistant’s responsibility for, say, collating an endless number of memos is even more stressful.  The Whitehall studies (a decade long research project conducted by Professor Michael Marmot) found that the less control people had over their work, the higher their blood pressure during work hours, and the more likely they are to experience other physical and mental health difficulties. The most important message from these studies, though, is that it’s really the perception of control that matters: a well-compensated executive who feels helpless will suffer the same type of negative physiological response as a low-paid mailroom clerk. On the other hand, this suggests that viewing our lives in terms of choice and control could have a beneficial effect on our mental and physical state.

More choice is always not good, is a point you make. But it has largely been perceived to be otherwise. Why do you say more choice is not good?
When making a choice, first and foremost, we have to be able to identify what it is that we want. That means that you have to know what you’re looking for.

Then, you need to know what the options are before you, how they differ from one another, and which one is closest to what you want. This process is hard enough for all of us to do when we’re choosing from just a couple of options, and it only gets harder and harder for us as the number of options proliferate. We can only handle so much choice, cognitively and emotionally, before we get confused and frustrated.

Can you give us an example?
This effect was first demonstrated by my “jam study” with Mark Lepper, which we conducted at the Draeger’s grocery store in Menlo Park, California, to determine whether the store’s abundant variety of options actually translated into higher sales. We set up a tasting booth near the entrance of the store at which we put out either 6 flavours of jam or 24.  We looked at two things.  First, in which case were people more likely to stop at the tasting booth?  In which scenario were people more attracted to jam?  In fact, 60% of the shoppers walking by stopped when 24 jams were displayed. When only 6 jams were displayed, only 40% stopped.  The second thing we looked at was in which case people were more likely to buy a jar of jam.  Now we see the reverse.  Of the people who stopped when there were 24 jams on display, only 3% actually bought a jar of jam.  In contrast, when there were 6 jars of jam on display 30% of the people who stopped ended up buying a jar of jam.  If you do the math, when there were 6 jams on display people were over six times more likely to buy a jar of jam than when there were 24 jams on display.

And why is that?
It turns out that due to our cognitive limitations, making a choice becomes increasingly difficult as the options increase, and so we might decide to skip the choice altogether. My colleagues and I have studied decision contexts ranging from buying chocolate to applying for jobs to making healthcare decisions and we have consistently found that large assortments can have three negative effects: people are less committed to making a choice, they make more errors and are less consistent in their choices, and even if they make objectively good choices they can be less satisfied with the choosing process or with their outcomes.

One of the most interesting things you talk about in your book is about the fall of the Berlin Wall. After the fall, people of the erstwhile East Germany for the first time had access to a lot of choice when it came to buying goods and services. But they were not happy about it. What happened there?
A lot of it comes down to people having different conceptions of “freedom” and “choice,” depending upon their background and upbringing. The idealized capitalist system first and foremost emphasizes “freedom from” external restrictions on one’s ability to rise in society’s ranks. The idealised communist/socialist system, by contrast, aims for equality of outcomes rather than of opportunities, guaranteeing all its members the “freedom to” obtain an adequate standard of living. Those who live in formerly communist countries have been handed the challenging task of transitioning from a society on one end of the spectrum to a democratic and capitalist society that lies much closer to the opposite end. As I spoke with a variety of people in Berlin, it became clear that one hurdle in this transition has been that people’s long-held assumptions about fairness can’t simply be swapped for another set of beliefs. For instance, Klaus lamented, “In the old days, the only place I could vacation was Hungary, but at least I knew I had a vacation. Now I could go anywhere, but I can afford to go nowhere.” Klaus and many of the other East Berliners I spoke with, in particular the older people, focused on “freedom to,” even though communism was now only a memory for them.

You write “the way we frame information can make a big difference in how we see and respond to choice”. Why is that?
Every time we encounter new information or reexamine old information, we’re influenced by its presentation. This can have a positive impact on our decisions, such as when Coca-Cola CEO Robert Goizueta got executives to think outside the box by reframing the company’s position, urging them to think of it not in terms of the percentage of the soft drink market they held, but rather, the percentage of the entire liquid market they had. This led to a dramatic shift in the company’s mission, the results of which were awe-inspiring: in 1981, the total value of Coca-Cola stock was $4.3 billion; by the time of Goizueta’s death in 1997, it had burgeoned to over $152 billion.

Talking about Coca Cola, can you tell us why is the colour of Santa Claus’ suit same as the colour of Coca Cola bottle? How does that influence choice?
The image of Santa Claus as we know it today, a jolly fat man wearing a bright red suit and cap, black boots and belt, and a generous smile on his rosy face, was created by Swedish illustrator Haddon Sundblom, who was commissioned by the Coca-Cola Company to draw advertisements of St. Nick delivering Cokes to the thirsty children of the world. Ever notice that Santa’s suit is the exact same red as the label for Coke? That’s not a coincidence: the Coca-Cola Company holds a patent on the colour. The consequence of being exposed to messages associating Coke with things like Christmas is that when we see the logo on a Coca-Cola can, we feel good, and these positive emotions augment the taste of the soda.

Do we make fashion or does fashion make us?
Are we being influenced by outside forces when we choose? Yes, all the time. We’re being manipulated, if we will, by marketers, our friends, our family, our co-workers, and so on. This is particularly true when it comes to fashion; indeed, an entire industry has sprung up around predicting what will be the hottest colors and styles in coming seasons, and these “predictions” are edging ever closer to becoming their own causes. If designers believe that white will be the new black and so only make white dresses, or if the stores only order the white ones, then that’s what consumers will buy. Even if you’re trying to go against the grain or simply don’t care about clothes, your choices will still be shaped by the trends of the moment.

What can we do about these sorts of influences on our choices?
It would be impossible to avoid each and every influence we encounter - and if we tried, we’d go crazy. The important thing to keep in mind is that the presence of these manipulating factors does not necessarily undermine our free will. What we can all do is identify the kinds of choices that are most important to us, and for those domains, consciously make the decision to guard our choosing process and say “no” to environmental influences. In my view, that’s our free will: the ability to say “no” to what’s going on outside of ourselves when it really matters, as opposed to the ability to decide what influences you will encounter.

Packaging is a very important part of a product. How does it influence our buying decisions and hence choice?
In an episode of their cable television show, American magicians/entertainers Penn and Teller crafted a clever ruse showing the importance of packaging. They hired an actor to play a “water steward” at a fancy restaurant, whose job it was to present unsuspecting diners with a leather-bound menu of bottled waters with names like Mount Fuji and L’eau du Robinet, which cost up to $7 a bottle. He described the benefits of the various brands—for example, that one was “a natural diuretic and antitoxin”—and made recommendations. If diners decided to buy any of the water, he poured it into their glasses, then set the remainder of the bottle in an ice-filled wine bucket next to their table. He also solicited their opinions about the taste, and the diners agreed that their waters had been clearly superior to tap water, describing them as “crisper” and “smoother.” Of course, all water is “a natural diuretic and antitoxin,” and L’eau du Robinet is just French for “tap water.” But in fact, all the water served to the diners actually came from a common source: an outdoor faucet behind the restaurant. It turns out that everything from the colour of a product’s logo—or of the product itself—to the shape of its packaging can change people’s preferences. Why is this? Not only do we rely on labels to provide information to guide our choices, but our choices are based as much on the identities they express as on their possible outcomes, and what a particular product says about “who we are.”

Why aren’t water companies advertising the fact that water is healthier than soft drinks and are instead of coming up with all kinds of selling points?
Often, different brands are actually owned by the same megacorporation. For example, the two best-selling brands of bottled water in the US are owned by Pepsi (Aquafina) and Coke (Dasani), which is why you’re unlikely to see them aggressively advertising their health benefits relative to soft drinks, one of the few claims they could legitimately make. 

How do views on choice vary by culture?
There are different narratives for how to choose; for example, the American narrative of individualism, and the Asian narrative of collectivism. Those raised in more individualist societies are taught to focus primarily on the “I” when choosing, giving priority to their personal preferences and goals. Members of collectivist societies are taught to privilege the “we” in choosing, to view themselves primarily in terms of the groups to which they belong, such as family, coworkers, or village, and to give priority to the goals and preferences of these in-groups. These are both ways in which people conceive of their lives that fall along a spectrum; whereas both extreme ends of the spectrum are problematic, different places along the continuum have their own particular benefits, and I believe there’s something to be learned from both narratives.

How does this play out in a real world sense?
In 1998, I persuaded John Reed, the inventor of the automated teller machines and the CEO of Citicorp that time, to allow me to examine how people from different cultural backgrounds perceive work environment, and how this in turn related to their performance and satisfaction with their jobs. In the Citicorp study, we found that there were cultural differences with regard to the amount of choice employees believed they had in their jobs, even if they were working under the same manager.

Employees in Asia, along with the Asian Americans, were less likely than Anglo American, Hispanic American, or African American employees to think of their day-to-day activities at work in terms of choice, and Latin Americans’ perceptions of choice fell in between these two groups. This in turn had important implications for how these employees were motivated. For all the American employees except Asian Americans, the more choice they thought they had, the higher they scored on all measures of motivation, satisfaction, and performance. In contrast, Asian participants, whether from Asia or the United States, scored higher when they thought their day-to-day tasks were determined primarily by their managers, and Latin American employees once again fell somewhere in the middle. What’s interesting about these results is not only that people, based on cultural background, differ in the ideas that have about what constitutes “choice” and how they perceive and are motivated by choice in the workplace.
What is the essential message that you are trying to give through the book?
The Art of Choosing looks at three questions: 1. Why do we choose - where does choice get its power from? 2. How do we make choices - what are the various factors that influence how and what we choose? 3. Given all this, how can we choose better? In writing the book, my goal was to offer useful insights about choice that any reader would be able to apply to his or her life. One of the most important messages I’d like to convey is that we can all benefit from being choosy about choosing. Ask yourself: “How much choice do I really need? Is it really worth it to me to make this choice, or is it a distraction from my more important goals?”
What amazed me the most is the fact that you cannot see and still you have managed to be so successful in life. How do you manage?
All of us must contend with circumstances that we did not choose; for me, blindness is one of these circumstances. Being blind took many options off the table, among them my childhood dream of becoming a pilot. But this bodily condition that I did not choose led me to make the most of what I could choose. It reminds me every day that I must focus on the choices that matter.
     k_vivek@dnaindia.net