The Choice Happiness And Spaghetti Sauce Summary
Choice, Happiness, and Spaghetti Sauce was a well thought-out brain teaser type of video. Author and writer Malcom Gladwell introduces the audience to the food industry’s pursuit of the perfect spaghetti sauce, but ends up making a larger argument about the nature of choice and happiness in a comical yet intelligent manor on TEDTalk. Gladwell uses his friend and Psychophysicist Howard Moskowitz’s crazy idea with Pepsi, and breakthrough formula for success with Vlasic Pickles and Prego spaghetti sauce to expose diversity, variability, and finding the true meaning of happiness. Based on the company’s Dr. Moskowitz worked for and inspired, this video has shown me some personal changes in my life that need to be changed. The whole purpose of
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Gladwell’s speech was based on one specific quote, “Embracing the diversity of human beings is the way we will find true happiness” (Gladwell). When we the people learn to accept and not judge the fact that all humans are different; only then will be we able to understand ourselves. Gladwell goes in depth with several scenarios that Dr. Moskowitz experienced in the food industry to help back up this theory; which in time he learned from Dr. Moskowitz himself. The very first company to approach Dr. Moskowitz was Pepsi. Being a Psychophysicist, “person who measures things” (Gladwell), Pepsi came to Dr. Moskowitz in hopes of finding out how much Aspartame they needed to put in their sodas to make the perfect soda. After several experiments, Dr. Moskowitz was stunned and confused based on his plotted results; the results were everywhere and inconclusive on which amount of Aspartame Pepsi should actually use. This bothered Dr. Moskowitz for a while until he realized that he approached the experiment all wrong. Instead of testing to find the perfect Pepsi, he should have been looking for the perfect Pepsi’s. Howard approached Pepsi with this theory and was quickly turned down; big mistake by Pepsi. Soon after the rejection, Dr. Moskowitz’s breakthrough idea came alive when Vlasic Pickles approached him for the same idea that Pepsi did; find the perfect recipe. Unlike the Pepsi approach, Dr.
Moskowitz went to work on creating not the perfect pickle, but creating the perfect pickles. He came up with tons of different flavors and had focus groups try them out. His theory proved to work as instead of asking them what their favorite flavor of pickle was and plotting it, he had them try all the pickles and rate them between 0-100; by forcing the focus groups to have an open mind and try everything, the data turned out to be quite sufficient. Vlasic currently has 36 different flavors of pickles. My favorite and also Malcom’s favorite quote from Dr. Moskowitz is “To a worm in horseradish, his world is horseradish” (Moskowitz). Meaning, whatever you’re current situation is, if you live your life the way you’ve always been taught to live, all you see is the world you see now; however, if you try and see the world from another person’s perspective, the world is completely different. The world is a big place, go explore it. Now as for part of the title of this video, Campbell’s approached Howard with the same problem as everyone else; make the perfect recipe, in this case the perfect spaghetti …show more content…
sauce. Howard eventually came up with 45 different varieties of Prego (Campbell’s spaghetti sauce) spaghetti sauce; sweet, spicy, solid, watery, etc. He went and gathered hundreds of people to be his taste testers for 2 hours, try 10-15 different types of bowls of spaghetti sauce and rate them from 0-100. With the results, he didn’t look for the most popular sauce, Dr. Moskowitz looked at the data points that were close to each other and clustered them all together. After doing so, he found there were three sauces that stood out as the most similarly rated by the focus groups; plain, spicy, and extra chunky. Prego then went and remade their sauce just with those three sauces and ended up making revenue of $600 million. Now why is this important to know? Dr. Moskowitz fundamentally changed the way food industries focus on making you happy by correcting two assumptions. False assumption number one was to have people tell you what they want or what they like in order to make them happy; however, for the majority of people, nobody knows what they actually want or how to explain it, they think they want something based on what they have eaten or have been told to eat in the past. You need to be able to offer people new ideas or new foods in this case in order to expand their knowledge of food and taste buds. For the next assumption, we will use the example of the Grey Poupon Dijon mustard theory of horizontal segmentation. Before the Dijon mustard era, there were just the simple yellow mustards in a squeezable plastic container. Then came the Grey Poupon Dijon mustard that made their mustard brownish, and put it in a glass jar that had fancy French labeling to make it appear as if it was better mustard because it seemed to have come from the French culture and was more expensive than the other mustards. Thus bringing up false assumption number two; the way to make people happy is to make things more expensive and give the people something to aspire too; make them look at what they have now and make them want to reach out for something better. Makes sense at first, but Dr. Moskowitz showed that there are no good or bad mustards; there are only different mustards to suit different needs and tastes for everyone. This theory is what Howard calls horizontal segmentation. Meaning every single food is on the same horizontal line, there’s no superior food to other foods; just some preferred more to others due to their tastes and needs. Dr. Moskowitz also believed in the platonic dish theory, meaning there’s only one perfect way to make the perfect dish. The theory behind the platonic dish of spaghetti sauce came from Italy; the sauce had to be thin and blended well in order to make it culturally accurate, thus making it the right way to make spaghetti sauce. Everyone always thinks that the more cultural your food is, the better it’ll taste. Howard once again proved that assumption wrong because back in his Prego spaghetti sauce experiment not one person told him that extra chunky was their favorite type of sauce before the experiment. After the experiment; however, one third of the testers rated extra chunky as one of the significant favorites. This scenario proves the idea of variability, the more you know from different ways of knowing, the better off you’ll be. My second favorite quote from Gladwell was this, “We don’t wanna know how cancer works, we wanna know how your cancer is different from my cancer” (Gladwell.), because once we discover all the different ways cancer can affect us, we can then start to put pieces together to find out how to cure one of those cancers someday, then the next type of cancer and so on. “Embracing the diversity of human beings is the way we will find true happiness” (Gladwell).
I couldn’t agree more with Gladwell’s conclusion to the video. He’s saying by staying open-minded to everything, seeing how others act and what others like, maybe we all can learn to agree on our differences, thus reducing the actual differences we think there are and essentially become happy with one another. I personally think a business or industry would benefit tremendously by having all staff members watch this video. Especially for new businesses or businesses that are trying to expand; being able to listen to your staff members for possible ideas and also reaching out to other businesses to see what advice they could possibly offer will be huge in making new/establishing relationships to make your business better. Certain concepts that relate to this article are Customer Lifetime Value, obviously the more diverse and open minded you are, the more customers will want to listen to you and want to continue using your product or services. The concept of ethics is relatable to this topic; by respecting other people’s tastes and needs, you may learn to like a new product that they like, or just by not judging them, you become a better person too. Segmentation is obviously a relative concept, by grouping people together who all like pickles and spaghetti sauce for Dr. Moskowitz’s taste test experiments. Also concentrated targeting strategy was a concept related to this video because
Dr. Moskowitz during his pickle experiment went after pickle lovers, same thing for Pepsi in soda lovers, and Campbell’s in spaghetti sauce lovers. All in all this video is absolutely incredible and I even referred it to one of my high school business teachers to show the young high school kids about the importance of variability, diversity, and being able to just try new things; whether it’s sports, study habits, food, etc. I learned from Gladwell that in order for myself to be happy, I need to experience others being happy too. I can’t just focus on my needs all the time, by putting others first, I might learn a thing or two from their experiences to help benefit my life. Plus who doesn’t like trying new foods!
Gladwell’s speech was based on one specific quote, “Embracing the diversity of human beings is the way we will find true happiness” (Gladwell). When we the people learn to accept and not judge the fact that all humans are different; only then will be we able to understand ourselves. Gladwell goes in depth with several scenarios that Dr. Moskowitz experienced in the food industry to help back up this theory; which in time he learned from Dr. Moskowitz himself. The very first company to approach Dr. Moskowitz was Pepsi. Being a Psychophysicist, “person who measures things” (Gladwell), Pepsi came to Dr. Moskowitz in hopes of finding out how much Aspartame they needed to put in their sodas to make the perfect soda. After several experiments, Dr. Moskowitz was stunned and confused based on his plotted results; the results were everywhere and inconclusive on which amount of Aspartame Pepsi should actually use. This bothered Dr. Moskowitz for a while until he realized that he approached the experiment all wrong. Instead of testing to find the perfect Pepsi, he should have been looking for the perfect Pepsi’s. Howard approached Pepsi with this theory and was quickly turned down; big mistake by Pepsi. Soon after the rejection, Dr. Moskowitz’s breakthrough idea came alive when Vlasic Pickles approached him for the same idea that Pepsi did; find the perfect recipe. Unlike the Pepsi approach, Dr.
Moskowitz went to work on creating not the perfect pickle, but creating the perfect pickles. He came up with tons of different flavors and had focus groups try them out. His theory proved to work as instead of asking them what their favorite flavor of pickle was and plotting it, he had them try all the pickles and rate them between 0-100; by forcing the focus groups to have an open mind and try everything, the data turned out to be quite sufficient. Vlasic currently has 36 different flavors of pickles. My favorite and also Malcom’s favorite quote from Dr. Moskowitz is “To a worm in horseradish, his world is horseradish” (Moskowitz). Meaning, whatever you’re current situation is, if you live your life the way you’ve always been taught to live, all you see is the world you see now; however, if you try and see the world from another person’s perspective, the world is completely different. The world is a big place, go explore it. Now as for part of the title of this video, Campbell’s approached Howard with the same problem as everyone else; make the perfect recipe, in this case the perfect spaghetti …show more content…
sauce. Howard eventually came up with 45 different varieties of Prego (Campbell’s spaghetti sauce) spaghetti sauce; sweet, spicy, solid, watery, etc. He went and gathered hundreds of people to be his taste testers for 2 hours, try 10-15 different types of bowls of spaghetti sauce and rate them from 0-100. With the results, he didn’t look for the most popular sauce, Dr. Moskowitz looked at the data points that were close to each other and clustered them all together. After doing so, he found there were three sauces that stood out as the most similarly rated by the focus groups; plain, spicy, and extra chunky. Prego then went and remade their sauce just with those three sauces and ended up making revenue of $600 million. Now why is this important to know? Dr. Moskowitz fundamentally changed the way food industries focus on making you happy by correcting two assumptions. False assumption number one was to have people tell you what they want or what they like in order to make them happy; however, for the majority of people, nobody knows what they actually want or how to explain it, they think they want something based on what they have eaten or have been told to eat in the past. You need to be able to offer people new ideas or new foods in this case in order to expand their knowledge of food and taste buds. For the next assumption, we will use the example of the Grey Poupon Dijon mustard theory of horizontal segmentation. Before the Dijon mustard era, there were just the simple yellow mustards in a squeezable plastic container. Then came the Grey Poupon Dijon mustard that made their mustard brownish, and put it in a glass jar that had fancy French labeling to make it appear as if it was better mustard because it seemed to have come from the French culture and was more expensive than the other mustards. Thus bringing up false assumption number two; the way to make people happy is to make things more expensive and give the people something to aspire too; make them look at what they have now and make them want to reach out for something better. Makes sense at first, but Dr. Moskowitz showed that there are no good or bad mustards; there are only different mustards to suit different needs and tastes for everyone. This theory is what Howard calls horizontal segmentation. Meaning every single food is on the same horizontal line, there’s no superior food to other foods; just some preferred more to others due to their tastes and needs. Dr. Moskowitz also believed in the platonic dish theory, meaning there’s only one perfect way to make the perfect dish. The theory behind the platonic dish of spaghetti sauce came from Italy; the sauce had to be thin and blended well in order to make it culturally accurate, thus making it the right way to make spaghetti sauce. Everyone always thinks that the more cultural your food is, the better it’ll taste. Howard once again proved that assumption wrong because back in his Prego spaghetti sauce experiment not one person told him that extra chunky was their favorite type of sauce before the experiment. After the experiment; however, one third of the testers rated extra chunky as one of the significant favorites. This scenario proves the idea of variability, the more you know from different ways of knowing, the better off you’ll be. My second favorite quote from Gladwell was this, “We don’t wanna know how cancer works, we wanna know how your cancer is different from my cancer” (Gladwell.), because once we discover all the different ways cancer can affect us, we can then start to put pieces together to find out how to cure one of those cancers someday, then the next type of cancer and so on. “Embracing the diversity of human beings is the way we will find true happiness” (Gladwell).
I couldn’t agree more with Gladwell’s conclusion to the video. He’s saying by staying open-minded to everything, seeing how others act and what others like, maybe we all can learn to agree on our differences, thus reducing the actual differences we think there are and essentially become happy with one another. I personally think a business or industry would benefit tremendously by having all staff members watch this video. Especially for new businesses or businesses that are trying to expand; being able to listen to your staff members for possible ideas and also reaching out to other businesses to see what advice they could possibly offer will be huge in making new/establishing relationships to make your business better. Certain concepts that relate to this article are Customer Lifetime Value, obviously the more diverse and open minded you are, the more customers will want to listen to you and want to continue using your product or services. The concept of ethics is relatable to this topic; by respecting other people’s tastes and needs, you may learn to like a new product that they like, or just by not judging them, you become a better person too. Segmentation is obviously a relative concept, by grouping people together who all like pickles and spaghetti sauce for Dr. Moskowitz’s taste test experiments. Also concentrated targeting strategy was a concept related to this video because
Dr. Moskowitz during his pickle experiment went after pickle lovers, same thing for Pepsi in soda lovers, and Campbell’s in spaghetti sauce lovers. All in all this video is absolutely incredible and I even referred it to one of my high school business teachers to show the young high school kids about the importance of variability, diversity, and being able to just try new things; whether it’s sports, study habits, food, etc. I learned from Gladwell that in order for myself to be happy, I need to experience others being happy too. I can’t just focus on my needs all the time, by putting others first, I might learn a thing or two from their experiences to help benefit my life. Plus who doesn’t like trying new foods!