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Classic blind tests still have a following amongst marketers. And they're not all has-beens. What are blindfold tests about? Trust, you might be tempted to say, if it's the sort in the film Nine And a Half Weeks that strikes you first. Non-visual sensory response, you would say if you're a cola marketer. Blind tests have been around for a long while. Peddlers of brand theory love them because it gives them a chance to tell everyone that the brand is all that counts. Blindfold people, and they rarely distinguish between colas brands---or prefer the one they don't with eyes wide open. It's all in the branding, you see. Visual appeal. So it's not for nothing that marketers of fizzy drinks, in particular, have been so hung-up on blind tests down the ages. There's no denying the power of visual stimuli. At times, it can even fool the taste buds. Some years ago, a marketer gave a test panel of consumers servings of its newly-invented clear cola. People picked up their glasses, took nice long sips, and proceeded to identify it as a lemon drink. That's what it had looked like, and the nerve-endings on their tongue proved inadequate to the task of overturning the prior visual assumption. Yet, and yet, what blind tests obscure is the fact that cola preference in an evolved market is not about taste versus look, or even oral versus visual gratification. These are crucial components, no doubt, but smacks of a false dichotomy. Some researchers, for instance, are veering round to the view that it's the sensory experience of fizz that does it, and that this is a multi-sensory experience that uplifts, refreshes and even liberates the consumer ('drinker' would not be entirely accurate). This would call for a more holistic view of what really constitutes preference. And so it is with brand advertising---seen by some as an art form that finds patronage through quiet acquiescence to the message. Even here, the brand's sensory engagement of the consumer cannot be put into neat little compartments (visual versus audio, or whatever), though blind testing of TV commercials might reveal something interesting on audio-track preference. So long as that is the case, blind tests are here to stay.
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