Book Excerpts
Excerpt 2
Welcome to the wonderful world of consumerism in which unlimited choice is available and spending power means freedom from having to pick just one. Is Colgate-Palmolive ashamed or bewildered it offers us adults more than 25 varieties of toothpaste (there are countless for kids) and all under the Colgate brand, each coming in astoundingly different pack sizes for quantity and tube size/style?
Ah yes, these include gels and pastes and several able to remove plaque and gingivitis, plus a couple for teeth whitening and others are for those with sensitive teeth. (We’re convinced the toothpaste people made the last variant up.) The types have names like Total, Max Fresh, Simply White and Sparkling White. The shopper will definitely know that their every tooth-cleaning whim has been considered and catered to. Sweet.
And if the shopper is unable to read through all of the product information on the packs while standing on one foot—perhaps because the eggs in their cart have started to hatch already—they can postpone their buying decision until they get back home and log onto the dandy Colgate site. Though slightly disorganized and hype-y, Colgate.com offers the shopper a plethora of helpful decision making processes based on what might be most crucial to a toothpaste aficionado.
What do you need? Cavity protection, long-lasting fresh breath, tartar control, false teeth bath? Let them find your match. It’s brilliant, right… Or is that quite brilliant and good for partially fresh breath? Gosh, even if you made a part-time job out of reading through all that production knowledge you would still end up making one choice and feeling like you sacrificed something.
Most people haven’t got time to stand at the supermarket shelves staring at hundreds of different choices and certainly don’t have the will to seek out the information on a corporate site (and if they do we want to avoid you at a party). We would personally rather use twigs to clean our teeth and spend the time saved rearranging a sock drawer.