Critter Labels, or the Power of "Priming"

What happens when you take an interesting but otherwise marginally important consumer trend and through a load of science at it?

Anyone who has walked though wine stores in the past few years has almost certainly taken notice of the “critter label” trend, the amazing plethora of animals that show up on wine labels nowadays. One in five new table wine brands introduced in the past three years features some sort of animal on the label.

So why is this such a seemingly effective and common marketing strategy? An upcoming article in the Journal of Consumer Research entitled “Of Frog Wines and Frowning Watches: Semantic Priming, Perceptual Fluency, and Brand Evaluation” provides an answer. Priming, or using an image for which the consumer already has some sort of prior cognitive association, leads to consumers holding an unrelated product that bears that image association in higher esteem. This is especially effective for products that may only be briefly considered, such as one wine bottle out of many on wine store shelves. A flash of color to attract notice, an image of a pretty pony to generate a positive mental association and voilà, “I'll take this bottle of Merlot, please.”

Honestly, who doesn't like a pretty pony?

A press release from the University of Chicago about this upcoming article can be found here.