More Exclamation Points

CES (the Consumer Electronic Show) has opened again this year in Las Vegas. Among the newest in OLED TV screens, voice assistants and self-driving tech, there has been an early (and unusual) fan favorite: the BreadBot. The machine, created and presented by Wilkinson Baking Company out of Walla Walla, WA, starts with dry ingredients and then mixes, kneads, shapes, proofs and bakes loaves of bread (churning out 6 loaves a minute) all in a transparently housed spectacle of modern engineering. The company is currently testing the machines in select grocery stores, with plans to roll them out across the country this year.

So What? In high school English class, I specifically remember Mrs. Chambers chastising me over my frequent use of exclamation points in my essays. She often told the class that ‘you are only allowed a handful of exclamation points your entire writing life, so choose your use of them wisely.’ Therefore, I was pleasantly surprised this week when I read a report that indicated that times have changed. Today, according to linguistics professionals, when people are writing texts or posting to social media they feel the need to use three exclamation points in order to truly exclaim something!!! One exclamation point, apparently, is so common that it fails to express more than a standard period. What happened? Technology happened. As less emotive and less emotional forms of communication (i.e. Twitter and text) were prioritized for the sake of convenience, users struggled to fully express themselves. Perhaps this explains the proliferation of excess exclamation points and the increasing popularity of videos and GIFs.

Tech has had a similar effect on CPG. For the sake of convenience, consumers have started to move away from traditional grocers and sit-down restaurants. E-commerce, c-stores and food delivery are easier and faster for our busy lives, but these convenient offerings have removed the emotionality from food and beverage shopping. Picking tomatoes from a screen dropdown or retriggering your mobile sandwich order is a sterile act. The sensorial excitement of food selection (most likely embedded in our DNA) has been removed.

If grocery stores, restaurants and cafes want to reengage customers, they’ll need to add more of those sensorial exclamation points back into the conversation. I predict we’ll be seeing more BreadBots in grocery stores for this very reason. An emotional and performative spectacle will be the new reason for people to physically come back to brick-and-mortar—otherwise why even leave your house? Perhaps that is why Target and HEB have experimented with vertical farming in select stores, not because they could ever hope to grow a store’s produce section, but to pump up the sensorial element of the in-store experience.

Whether you are a manufacturer, a retailer, or somewhere in between, you must start considering how you will add emotional and sensorial exclamation points to your products and experiences. Yes, the future will have advanced automation and AI but don’t dismiss the power of tapping into the primitive drivers of your consumers’ psyche.