Cereal, the food of the gods. Who can resist the crunchy, sugary deliciousness in a box? Kids (admit it - adults too) would eat it for every meal if they had the chance.
But have you ever wondered why you choose the cereal that you do? Did one in particular catch your eye?
See, there’s a heck of a lot of money that goes into marketing, especially products made for kids, and especially cereal. Fruit Loops, Coco Pops, Frosties - what do they all have in common? Those happy spokes characters on the box suggest to us how delicious the cereal is with their inviting facial expressions! It’s almost like they’re gazing right into your eyes telling you to pick them up and put them in your trolley.
Now one group of people who understand the importance of eye contact are marketers. And there’s a very specific reason why cereal companies place their sugary breakfast food (if we can call it food) on the lower shelves: prime real estate for kids with hungry eyes.
A 2015 study led by Professor of Marketing, Brian Wansink, aimed to take an even closer look at ways in which cereal companies could persuade children to beg their parents for their products. The study was aptly named “Eyes in the aisles: Why is Cap’n Crunch looking down at my child?” It’s a great name, we’ll give them that.
They already knew about the warm and fuzzy feelings spokes characters ignited in kids. What they wanted to know was, what precise angle did they need to draw their eyeballs to create direct manipulative eye contact with children in the grocery store?
You’d think marketing to kids would just be a matter of whacking a bunch of colour on a box and stamping it with a happy cartoon character. But no. Apparently it comes down to trigonometry.
The study was a bit outrageous really. A stupidly complicated three-step process to determine the exact eye contact angle, followed by a very loose interpretation of data and some fairly unsubstantiated claims.
Like, there are actual problems in the world. And then there's this. But hey, they say breakfast is the most important meal of the day (you know who actually invented that saying? Dr. John Harvey Kellogg! Father of breakfast cereals! How’s that for an undeclared bias!?).
So, do cereal sales actually increase if a spokes character locks eyes with a child in the cereal aisle?
Or does the creepy eye contact make you feel watched, observed, judged and subsequently want to make a healthier choice? Perhaps carob-flavoured steel-cut oats instead.
Also, what does a cereal box have in common with a Hindu god?
-
[00:00:00] Rod: One of the really popular techniques is the Spokes Characters. And we're talking like Sam the Toucan, Coco Pop Monkey.
[00:00:05] Will: Yeah, the tiger, the tiger on the frosties.
[00:00:07] Rod: Tony the Tiger, and those evil elves from Rice Bubbles.
[00:00:10] Will: Yeah, they're like pixies. Snack, crackle, and pop. Yeah. What would be the spokes character for Steel Cut Oats?
[00:00:17] Rod: Oh, it's just some dude in handmade dungarees with a bland expression, slightly set jaw, just looking at the distance going, Everything's hard!
[00:00:24] Will: 10, 000 yards down. Everything's hard. Like, he's looking through the horizon into the further horizon.
[00:00:30] Rod: If you're suffering, you're not suffering enough. Steel Cut Oats. Eat them.
[00:00:32] Will: I wonder about Captain Granola, though. He sounds like a nice guy.
[00:00:36] Rod: He'd just be crapping himself all the time. He's got so much fibre. Just be a constant laying of cable.
[00:00:48] So, did you know that other than fast food like KFC, Maccas, etc. Cereal is the food that's most targeted advertising at children.
[00:00:56] Will: Because cereal is the food of the gods, isn't it? And you want your children to become mini gods as well, and so you start them off on that journey. Cereal is perfect.
[00:01:05] Rod: Kid's cereal. Not granola.
[00:01:06] Will: Granola is part of the cereal world, the king of the cereal world.
[00:01:09] Rod: Yeah, no, we're talking frosted flakes, sugar frosted flakes, sugar with sugar, and there's a lot of kids targeted cereal out there, as you probably know quite well.
[00:01:20] Will: Granola again,
[00:01:21] Rod: exactly. Steel cut, oats.
[00:01:25] Will: In fairness, as one who knows children that I know children that are quite a fan of the steel cut oat. They brought up wrong.
[00:01:33] Rod: But so they reckon there's roughly 50% of the shelf space in your standard grocery store in the US at least, is targeted at children's slash family cereals, at least half.
[00:01:42] Will: 50 percent of the cereal aisle. Cereal. Yeah. Yeah. We're not talking to 50 percent of the shop.
[00:01:46] Rod: No God, though.
[00:01:47] Will: In fairness to them, the boxes take up size and you know, it's a good convenient package. Box food is the greatest food.
[00:01:54] Rod: Crunchy nut cornflakes. Oh Jesus. That is crack with heroin in it. So anyway, when you're trying to flog things like this cereal, there's some very simple things that matter. You want to sell a lot more very simple shit matters like shelf placement. And so there's many studies quoted but one of them, for example, says there was a study done in Chicago university of Chicago.
[00:02:13] And they said, look, if you move toothbrushes, From the top shelf down to eye level, sales go up by like eight or more percent profits go up, et cetera, that you, where you place things as you'd expect. And so the middle shelf just below the average height of an adult. eye line is prize real estate.
[00:02:31] Will: What if you go shopping weird and you're like sort of crawling.
[00:02:34] Rod: It's not as big a market, the crawlers.
[00:02:36] Will: That's fair enough.
[00:02:37] Rod: No. We're a specialist store. All shelves are at about a foot and a half off the ground for people who just dribble on in.
[00:02:45] Will: Look at you, aiming at normal people.
[00:02:47] Rod: I know, I'm so normal. I'm a normative dude. So what this means, at least in the US, and I don't know if they do it here, but it wouldn't surprise me. It's cereal companies pay premium to supermarkets to have this stuff put on the right shelves. Makes sense. Yeah. And so basically the ones who market to children, they generally get them down a bit lower so that as people walk along, they'll see him at child level.
[00:03:07] Will: So the granola they put at the kid height.
[00:03:09] Rod: Exactly. And steel cut oats next to the non instant organic red tractor oatmeal guaranteed. No flavor unless your parents let you add sugar. I have no problem with that.
[00:03:23] Will: Man. Hippie food is the worst. It's like carob and shit.
[00:03:28] Rod: So it's like chocolate? Oh, except there's no sugar. And you're like, then it's not chocolate.
[00:03:31] Will: The first time hippie parents or friends of parents, you know, carob. And you're like, what is it? It's chocolate. And you're like,
[00:03:41] Rod: I remember it. These are carob buttons. Gulp. Can I have some chocolate now? This is fucking garbage.
[00:03:48] Will: Why do they taste like burnt ants?
[00:03:51] Rod: It's true. The texture of chalk, a little bit of butter, fucking hideous. So, yeah, cereal markets for children, marketing for children, they drop the shelf down a bit. Yeah, cool. That's the simple stuff. That's the shelf placement. There's also things like, as you kind of started to allude to package design. No, to make it more appealing.
[00:04:10] Will: I remember once this is when I was not a kid, but living in a share house and Nutri Grain came with a giant bowl one time. It was like a giant plastic bowl and a giant plastic spoon. It's like, do you eat your Nutri Grain giant? And I'm like, yes, I fucking do. It's like, well, I'm buying two of those.
[00:04:27] Rod: I love that Nutri Grain when it first came out, I remember it. It was the Iron Man health cereal. And you're like, it's really not. It's just a bag of sugar with some crunch. Delicious. So loved it. Packaging matter. So in the early two thousands, we were talking in the U S at least more than 3 billion spent just on packaging design to market to kids.
[00:04:44] Will: Don't doubt it. Surely it's just a riot of colors. Like you don't need to do much science on that. You just go, give me more color.
[00:04:51] Rod: Oh, wait, one of the really popular techniques is the spokes characters. Spokesters is obviously I would call them.
[00:04:57] Will: What would be the spokes character for steel cut oats?
[00:04:59] Rod: Oh, it's just some dude in handmade dungarees with a bland expression, slightly set jaw, just looking at the distance going, everything's hard.
[00:05:06] Will: 10, 000 yards. Like he's looking. through the horizon into the further horizon
[00:05:11] Rod: suffering. You're not suffering enough steel cut oats, eat them.
[00:05:14] Will: I wonder about captain granola though. It sounds like a nice guy.
[00:05:17] Rod: He'd just be crapping himself all the time. It's so much fiber, just be a constant laying of cable. And we're talking like Sam, the toucan, Cocoa pop monkey. Yeah. The tiger on the frosty, and those evil elves from rice bubbles.
[00:05:29] Will: Snack, crackle, and pop.
[00:05:32] Rod: So they're called spokes characters and they're super attracted to kids because they're both a lot like people, but also interestingly different to people.
[00:05:40] Will: So they're cartoons. They little cartoon versions you get on your box.
[00:05:43] Rod: They're exciting. So also a lot of research suggests that by age two children can identify common characters and unambiguously demonstrate how desirable those characters are and the products to which those characters are strapped.
[00:05:55] And they tend to, they're even saying kids identify with these characters. These are two year olds in a book. God, they may even aspire to be like these characters. I want to be like Sam the Toucan or the Cocoa Monkey.
[00:06:03] Will: Or Captain Granola.
[00:06:04] Rod: Captain Granola, the constant shitty. But a firm stool. These characters instill a sense of trust leading to positive attitudes towards the brand.
[00:06:15] Will: Oh, there you go. Trust. Ah, fair enough.
[00:06:17] Rod: I trust Cocoa Pops. For what? To look after your dog? So this is the boxes and the spokes characters. Let's get some more specific. Facial features are particularly seductive.
[00:06:26] Will: Smiles. tears,
[00:06:28] Rod: Crying monkey
[00:06:28] Will: sobbing over the cereal.
[00:06:30] Rod: So they'll kill me. I don't want to be eaten. So apparently faces, they're super salient to humans. So, you know, we, and they draw what they call covert attention. So you don't even have to move your head or make a lot of effort, but faces draw your attention even subliminally or peripherally.
[00:06:47] Will: Yeah. We spot faces.
[00:06:50] Rod: We really do. So they're strongly emotionally attractive and they work. So basically we have neurological imperatives to tune into the faces, whether we try or not. Eyes or more specifically eye contact
[00:07:03] Will: the box is looking at you?
[00:07:04] Rod: Eye contact. So eye contact in general, it shows it's been shown to make people view others as more attentive, assertive, socially skilled, competent, credible. It increases social cooperation and trustworthy behaviours and comfort levels. Eye contact, not creepy eye contact. Also, there's a lot of work that suggests that people behave better or more pro socially if they're being observed.
[00:07:28] Will: Of course they do.
[00:07:29] Rod: Or they think they're being observed.
[00:07:30] Will: Of course they do. Isn't there something about painting the eyes on a prison cell or on school detention? And even if it's clearly just painted on eyes, people do that.
[00:07:37] Rod: Fake eyes still work. Yeah. Fake eyes still work, which is interesting and horrifying. And there's so much research on it.
[00:07:42] Will: Fake eyes are real though.
[00:07:44] Rod: This is interesting. So this is why this, all of this leads to a 2015 study, which I'm going to tell you about called eyes in the aisle. Why is captain crunch looking down at my child?
[00:07:54] Will: Welcome. To the Wholesome Show, the podcast that quivers with ecstasy under the smouldering gaze of the whole of science. I'm Will grant.
[00:08:02] Rod: I'm looking at you, Rod Lambertson. So this is a study, right? This is literally one study, but it's interesting. Eye contact from spokes characters should increase trust, generate positive feelings, and consequently, As they put it, aid persuasion.
[00:08:19] They go on say, this could significantly contribute to cereal sales, should it be found that there indeed is eye contact as the child walks down the aisle. So the two bits of the study, study one and study two. Study one. Do serial characters actually make eye contact?
[00:08:33] Will: Well, firstly it's a box. And it's some cardboard and it's some it's like bits of paint on cardboard, so no.
[00:08:40] Rod: Oh really? So certain are you? Well, they wanted to check if like, this is obviously looking into marketing and stuff. Do the people who design these things actually line them up deliberately to make eye contact?
[00:08:54] Will: Well, given what we know about marketers,
[00:08:56] Rod: you've got to figure yes, right?
[00:08:58] Will: There's no way that they're going to say, well, let's make it lame. Let's make it like, it's not looking into your soul.
[00:09:04] Rod: Unconfidently off to the upper left.
[00:09:10] Will: This is your sheepish cereal.
[00:09:11] Rod: So they wanted to check whether the angle of gaze of spokes characters on children's cereal is such that it would create incidental eye contact with children. And this is science at its best. And by at its best, I mean, they got 65 different types of cereal featuring 86 different spokes characters, 10 different grocery stores in New York and Connecticut.
[00:09:31] So, they got a bunch of different characters over a bunch of boxes from a few stores around a couple of states. For each of these spokesters, the final metric calculated was the height of the spokescharacter's gaze from four feet away. Oh, it gets worse.
[00:09:44] Will: Yeah, okay. They gotta do the method.
[00:09:46] Rod: This is the height at which a person's eyes would need to be as they walk down the center of the aisle in order to make eye contact with the character. There were three main steps in calculating the height. This is serial fucking boxes. First, the angle of each spokescharacter's gaze had to be calculated trigonometrically.
[00:10:01] Will: Jesus. Okay. Is this like trigonometrically based on like the eyeball or something?
[00:10:05] Rod: I'll show you a diagram and just a tick. So they'd done that. Next, the average height of spokes characters eyes on the supermarket shelf had to be determined. Finally, there are three steps. These two measurements were used to calculate the height of the spoke's character's gaze from four feet away. It was assumed that their eyeballs were three dimensional and spherical.
[00:10:24] So the angle of gaze of the spoke's characters was produced by calculating the tangent of the distance between the centre of the eye and the centre of the pupil divided by the diameter of the eye. You know?
[00:10:32] Will: You know, you know, you know, I love all scientists equally. They are wonderful people. But there is a little bit where you just go, do you know? Do you know we have real problems?
[00:10:41] Rod: Calm the shit down. There's a diagram with a trigonometrical 3D rendered eyeball and angle of the triangle.
[00:10:47] Will: Fair enough. I believe them. That is not untrustworthy. I'm sure it's great. I can see which way that eye is, maybe.
[00:10:54] Rod: But you're right. There are actual problems in the world. And then there's this. So they go on into even more detail how they calculated the average gaze of each character's yawn, blah, blah, blah. And they offer a detailed explanation of the procedure, which can be read in the methodological appendix.
[00:11:08] I've read the paper. I didn't get to the appendix. There was enough. I didn't need more. So the results of this section study one of two. The average height of the spokes character's gaze, four feet away, differed wildly between adults and children's cereals.
[00:11:24] Will: Hang on I was being facetious before about Captain Granola. How many adult cereal spokes characters are there?
[00:11:30] Rod: I'm not aware of any, but maybe I just don't pay attention because I just buy, what was he, Captain Angry Pants and Steel Cut Oats? Bottom line is, yes, cereal spokes characters marketed to adults make eye contact with adults. Serial spokes characters on children's make eye contact with children.
[00:11:45] Will: Thank you, science.
[00:11:46] Rod: Thank you, science. But of course this isn't enough. Does the eye contact actually serve to increase positive feelings and choice about serial?
[00:11:52] Will: No, because of course marketers are just going to try stuff.
[00:11:55] Rod: And then they don't care if it works.
[00:11:56] Will: Yeah, well, no, they care if it works. I know that marketers love social research. They do absolutely. But they will keep trying stuff that they think might work.
[00:12:03] Rod: Oh, look, I used to think I wanted to go into it. And then I started to do psych research and went, Oh, I don't want to do this anymore. I've changed my mind. Study two. Does creating the eye contact boost feelings of trust and connection with the brand.
[00:12:14] So how'd they do this? So they had participants in this study, 63 students at a quote, large, private Northeastern university, not children. And they were asked to view and rate a box of Trix cereal. Yes, they modified the boxes. So one, the box is looking down, the character is looking down at the cereal and the other, it's looking out at you like this.
[00:12:34] Will: That is definitely looking at me versus looking at the cereal.
[00:12:37] Rod: Very different, isn't it? So they were shown one or the other. People were asked to rate the cereal based on things like trust, connection and attention.
[00:12:45] Will: Attention? The cereal.
[00:12:48] Rod: And so they're asked to write things on a scale from you know Strongly agreed to strongly disagreed like things like I trust this brand. I feel connected to this brand
[00:12:55] Will: trust this brand. It's a bunch of like colored lumps of non food. What's the trust? I'll get a mortgage from them?
[00:13:04] Rod: I'll give them my secret. Here are my passwords The other thing they asked was, you know, things like attention. So a question like this box is attention getting, they were also asked, because you've got to get a baseline because he's a good scientist. Would they choose Trix or Fruity Pebbles cereal?
[00:13:19] Will: Fruity pebbles. Is that an alternate brand that exists? Or the scientist said
[00:13:24] Rod: No, apparently it's real.
[00:13:25] Will: Fruity Pebbles? To me, in Australia, if someone said, I've I've got some Fruity Pebbles, it's like, you, you've got some weird
[00:13:32] Rod: you've got gay landscaping going on? What are you talking about?
[00:13:33] Will: No, I'm thinking that's poo. I'm thinking that's, I'm thinking like to me, Fruity Pebbles is like, I got a weird problem with the poo at the moment.
[00:13:43] Rod: Like my back door is doing dumb things.
[00:13:46] Will: That's what Fruity Pebbles says to me. Fruity Pebbles.
[00:13:50] Rod: Nothing about that makes me go yum, yum. I want to pour milk on it and scoff it. So results. Participants who looked at the eye contact cereal boxes, the one that was staring at you and mesmerizing you. They reported feeling greater connection to the cereal. Also, apparently feelings of trust were marginally higher. Anyway, what I love in this is for the science and stats people.
[00:14:14] And if you're into P values, if you're into probabilities, the one, they actually quote this and say, this is marginally higher, but the P value is 0.065.
[00:14:22] Will: 0.065.
[00:14:22] Rod: I think it's not significant.
[00:14:25] Will: That would be it.
[00:14:25] Rod: But described as, you know, marginally higher anyway. I read that and I go, Oh, for fuck's sake, like, come on.
[00:14:32] They make some claims. Done these two studies. They've gone, yes. There's been some eye contact, deliberate, you know, manipulation and also whether the cereal characters looking at you or not can make a difference. In adults, even though they were talking about children's cereal to begin with.
[00:14:46] So they make some claims at the end of this. Eye contact thus, not only has the potential to sell more cereal, but may also create more loyal customers through fostering positive feelings and a sense of trust and connection. And they leap from this... They leap from this, the idea that when we're observed, we feel more self aware and images of eyes have been shown to motivate cooperative behavior, likely because people in these studies who've done this feel like they're being watched.
[00:15:12] So they go from that to, this awareness can make the shopper more conscious of his or her body and health, inspiring healthier choices, which could be examined in future studies. So if the cartoon character is staring at you, you might feel observed more self aware and therefore make healthier choices.
[00:15:26] Will: So, actually would be bad. So the original Trix there, just looking at the picture again. Which one is the original?
[00:15:33] Rod: Not looking at you.
[00:15:34] Will: Yeah. So it's looking at the cereal. Oh, that's really interesting.
[00:15:37] Rod: Yeah. So potentially it would backfire. So they do a lot of elaboration on ideas. What we could do further research standard study stuff, you know.
[00:15:45] Will: I remember when I last was in India and I was watching people doing the finishing touches on making an idol in a temple and you'd be painting different bits, but the last bits that you always do whatever the idol is.
[00:15:56] And remember in, in Hindu tradition, this can be a manifestation of that God is you paint the eyes and the theory there is that's when it becomes real. That's when it becomes alive. That's when it becomes that God. You know, that's when whatever that God is, Ganesha or Vishnu or anything manifests in that thing.
[00:16:16] And you know, I look at these pictures and Yes, cereal boxes are radically different from a Hindu god. But there is something there that you are making a choice that says something about what that is doing to you. It's saying, what is it? What is it? Is it looking at me? Is it looking at exaltedness? Is it looking at delicious pebbles or something like this?
[00:16:38] But there is a tradition there that says we, we grapple with being looked at quite a lot and I think we've been doing it much longer than cereal boxes. So I don't know. I think that's true. I think these marketers are touching on something that is much deeper than
[00:16:51] Rod: I have no argument. Like I totally agree with that. Like the eye contact thing matters, whether it's real or fake eyes. What I scoff at is the ridiculous, like the salami slicing bullshit and tiny little statistics.
[00:17:02] Will: Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure.
[00:17:04] Rod: So they talk about limitations going on in this actually related to this. So ethics and stuff like If this is really effective in your marketing to children and fucking with them, that's a bit uncool.
[00:17:14] Will: Just remember the marketers don't work under academic ethics.
[00:17:17] Rod: No, they don't. But this is what they said in this paper. But I'm going to talk about my own thoughts on limitations. So, very small sample, very small differences between groups, dodgy stats, etc. Now, Wansink, Brian Wansink the senior author who said, Oh no, these other two are the senior authors, really. They're equal first authors, but you should correspond with me.
[00:17:34] Will: Well, who knows what happened.
[00:17:35] Rod: No, that's what it actually says.
[00:17:37] Will: But it could just mean that they've been students and they've done the study. He's been the supervisor and then they've moved on to other jobs and so.
[00:17:43] Rod: It could be, but he is famous for this. And we did an episode, Food Hacks or Pee Hacks, The Dodgy Insights of Brian Wansink.
[00:17:50] Will: I do remember.
[00:17:51] Rod: And this guy who's called the data thug as a positive thing called Nick Brown, who worked with Wansink and talks about his lab. And he says, what they're doing with other studies, and this sounds similar, is making a very small amount of science go a very long way. You spread it thinly, you cut it with water and you modify the starch, the product, which is the paper is designed and marketed before it's even been built. So. What we call in academia, salami slicing. You take one, whether the study's good or bad or indifferent, you slice it into 18, 000 different little small elements and you put them out there.
[00:18:21] So this study to me, reeks of that. It reeks of this very tiny maybe whatever's...
[00:18:27] Will: You know, I feel for me, it's skirting around the edge of something really interesting.
[00:18:32] Rod: It's not nothing, but it's also...
[00:18:34] Will: It's amazing, but... Doesn't go. I just feel like there is something interesting, you know, maybe they should put all of those cereal boxes in people's bedrooms and see what they'll get up to. If the cereal is looking at you what do you feel like doing?
[00:18:47] Rod: You're gonna flip, flip it over.
[00:18:53] Will: Woo!
