Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly - S11E20 - Brilliantly Bland: Why Boring Sells

Episode Date: May 21, 2022

This week, we look at boring products. There is a truism in the marketing world - boring sells. And in some of the biggest categories, boring products are the runaway best-sellers. Why do we overwhelmingly choose white cars, gray wall paint and beige carpets? And what does that say about us? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly. As you may know, we've been producing a lot of bonus episodes while under the influences on hiatus. They're called the Beatleology Interviews, where I talk to people who knew the Beatles, work with them, love them, and the authors who write about them. Well, the Beatleology Interviews have become a hit, so we are spinning it out to be a standalone podcast series. You've already heard conversations with people like actors Mark Hamill, Malcolm McDowell, and Beatles confidant Astrid Kershaw. But coming up, I talk to May Pang, who dated John Lennon in the mid-70s. I talk to double fantasy guitarist Earl Slick, Apple Records creative director John Kosh. I'll be talking to Jan Hayworth,

who designed the Sgt. Pepper album cover. Very cool. And I'll talk to singer Dion, who is one of only five people still alive who were on the Sgt. Pepper cover. And two of those people were Beatles. The stories they tell are amazing. So thank you for making this series such a success. And please, do me a favor, follow the Beatleology interviews on your podcast app. You don't even have to be a huge Beatles fan, you just have to love storytelling.

Subscribe now, and don't miss a single beat. This is an apostrophe podcast production. Your teeth look whiter than no nose. You're not you when you're hungry. You're a good hand with all the teeth. You're under the influence with Terry O'Reilly. There is a small community southeast of downtown Portland with a memorable name. It's called Boring, Oregon.

It was built on an extinct volcanic zone, which is called the Boring Lava Field. About 8,000 people live in Boring. Once you pass the Welcome to Boring sign, you start to see the various shops and services, like Boring Lumber, the Boring Post Office, the Boring Fire Department, the Boring Shell Station, the Boring Garden Center, the Boring Barbershop, the Boring Brewing Company, the Boring School, poor teachers, and a rebellious place called the Not-So-Boring Bar and Grill. Boring was a logging hub back in the day. The community is named after a deeply boring man who came from a long line of boring people. His name was William Boring.

He was a Civil War veteran who moved from Illinois to Oregon and was one of the first to farm in the area in 1874. Mr. Boring was successful and donated land to build the first Boring schoolhouse. His Boring relatives still live there. My grandfather's name was William Boring and my grandmother was Sarah Boring. My father's name was William Boring, and my grandmother was Sarah Boring. My father's name was Orville Boring.

My mother's name was Lucy Boring. Advertising agency Ogilvy & Mather filmed a short documentary about Boring for a laundry product not long ago. They interviewed the residents. People would say, Boring, Oregon? Is it really boring there? Boring is a kind of a laid back little town, you know It's a fun town. Yeah, it is. It's just fun

The name is embraced by the locals, who use the unofficial slogan, Boring, the most exciting place to live. Yeah, the weather in Boring, I guess you would call middle of the road comfortable. We had a week. Yeah, a week of snow that was about 18 inches deep, and that was in 73, I believe. There was a short-lived Netflix TV series set in Boring, Oregon back in 2018, titled Everything Sucks. It was a coming-of-age high school story where members of the A.V. Club clash with the Drama Club. One of the best things about Boring is that it has two sister cities, Dull, Scotland, and Bland, Australia.

Boring, Dull, and Bland consider themselves the league of extraordinary communities. Boring, dull and bland have an extraordinary place in the world of marketing too. A surprising percentage of the goods sold in the world of marketing, too. A surprising percentage of the goods sold in this world fall under those categories. Yes, exciting things are often advertised and marketed, but the unvarnished truth is that boring is profitable. Boring cars, boring ice cream, boring paint, and boring household goods are the best-selling items by far. There are even advertising campaigns designed to be boringly effective. Boring, dull and bland means bucks, dollars and brands.

You're under the influence. In the marketing world, there is a tone that most commercials and ads strike. Excitement. There are a lot of exclamation marks in an advertising script, and most ads claim to offer the quickest, fastest, or cheapest. Urgency is another word that is thrown around a lot in the ad biz, as in, that ad needs more urgency. And most new products are positioned as thrilling,

be it a car or a cell phone or a hamburger. Advertisers believe that what we buy expresses our personality to the world. Yet, when you look at what the majority of people buy in a number of big categories, we clearly crave boring. Take automobiles. Can you guess what the number one car color is? Answer? White. White is, far and away,

the number one paint color for automobiles. As a matter of fact, 35% of all new cars are white. Not just in Canada, not just in the U.S., in the world. Gray is the number two color, tied with another muted hue, black. In Asia, 48% of new cars are white. About the only place where white is the number two color is Europe. That's because it was nudged out of the number one slot by the color gray. As a rule, we simply do not want or buy colorful cars. Blue limps in at 8%, red at 5%, brown at 3%, and purple,

green, and yellow park at 1%. Next time you're in a busy parking lot at a mall, cast your eyes over the cars. It is a sea of neutral. And if you have trouble finding your car in that parking lot, your car fails the personality test. But then again, you wanted it that way. A businessman told a funny story recently. He was at a car dealership to buy his dream car, a Corvette. He spotted a yellow one and said to his wife, I love that color. His wife asked the salesperson, who typically buys a yellow Corvette?

The salesperson said, usually a guy who is recently divorced and is announcing to the world he is available again. That's how the husband ended up with a black Corvette. There is a firm belief in the world of car makers that the interior of a car is your personal space. But the exterior of a car is the outward expression of your personality. And even if you spurn new cars and prefer to drive around in a dented, scratched-up 20-year-old beater, that's a statement too.

But if the exterior of our cars projects our personalities to the world, why do we overwhelmingly choose boring colors? Yes, you could argue that there are practical reasons for that. They're easier to keep clean, they don't go out of style, and they have a better resale value. On a used car lot, purple cars don't move. Car dealers also influence car colors. They order colors they think will sell.

So the majority of models on their lots are white, gray, and black. So it's a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Or, is the real reason we don't buy colorful cars is because most of us don't really want to stand out. We prefer to meld, to nestle safely inside the herd. What about ice cream? Fortune magazine estimates the global ice cream market

is over $70 billion and will reach over $90 billion by 2027. The average Canadian eats 4.4 liters or 1.16 gallons of ice cream per year. The average American eats 20.8 liters or 5.5 gallons per year. Can you guess what the best-selling ice cream flavor is in almost every country in the world?

Correct. Vanilla. It has been the predominant flavor for over 200 years. Some research suggests chocolate and vanilla are neck and neck in Canada, but vanilla is the international king by far. Vanilla is often seen as the safe, unexciting choice. Yet vanilla, to quote an ice cream expert, is a stunningly complex and subtle spice containing anywhere from 250 to 500 flavor and fragrance components. It is also the second most expensive spice in the world.

Synthetic vanilla can be made from petrochemicals or from a byproduct of the pulp and paper industry. It can be produced from castoreum, a molasses-like secretion from the anal glands of beavers, please tell me I haven't had that, or from a component of clove oil. Many of the other top ice cream flavors, like cookies and cream and chocolate chip cookie dough,

are variations of vanilla. Vanilla is popular because it doesn't get in the way of other flavors. It tastes great topped with whipped cream or fudge sauce in a sundae, with root beer in a float, or on top of a warm slice of apple pie. Vanilla is the world's favorite ice cream. Yet, the term vanilla also means boring, dull, or bland. Look at the walls of your home. What color are they?

The predominant interior house paint color seems to be, you guessed it, gray. When the Pantone Company announced its Color of the Year for 2021, it was a shade called Ultimate Gray. Most people choose neutral colors for their homes, grays, whites, and beige. Neutral wall colors offer a blank canvas. Like vanilla, they are politely compatible with virtually every shade and color of carpet and furniture. Neutrals really took off during the financial crisis of 2008. The reason?

People chose neutral colors in case they had to sell their homes in a hurry. Realtors will tell you that neutral wall colors help potential buyers picture themselves in your home easier than vivid colors. Of the top 50 Sherwin-Williams paint colors, 20 are shades of gray. Have you ever looked at a brochure for gray paints? I can tell you, there are way more than 50 shades of gray. And they have seductive names like beach glass, November skies, and Carolina gull. And like vanilla, the word gray is not associated with positive things.

A gray day is oppressive, graying is seen as getting old, and looking gray suggests you're not feeling well. Yet, we overwhelmingly choose gray for our homes. Decorators are saying the pandemic has influenced home paint choices. People are starting to move away from gray and are craving more earthy colors. Which brings us to something called grayge.

That's gray with a beige earth tone. How about airplanes? The overwhelming color for planes is white. The average commercial plane requires about 1,200 pounds of paint,

the equivalent of eight adults. There is a myth about white paint that it weighs less than other colors. Therefore, planes painted white require less fuel. But according to a paint company that supplies the aeronautical industry, white paint is actually heavier because it needs higher solid contents than black in order to cover a surface. And, like cars and homes,

white paint makes planes easier to resell. But when I look at planes, I think white serves a psychological purpose, too. It looks light, and it soothes that deep anxiety we all harbor that heavy airplanes struggle to get off the ground.

Have you ever heard of titanium dioxide? It is the ingredient that makes paint white. And because we prefer so many things in our life to be white, titanium dioxide is a huge indicator in the health of the economy. White paint is the top color for cars, planes, and new and renovated homes, as mentioned. It is the most used paint for durable goods, like washers and dryers and freezers. It is a top-selling color for computers and cell phones. White is the paint most often applied to office buildings

and skyscrapers. Therefore, the price of titanium are white. Five of the top ten business suit colors are shades of gray and tan. The most popular sofa color, gray. The best-selling carpet colors, beige and gray. The most popular dinnerware color? White. Most popular kitchen cabinet color? White. Most popular men's shoe color? Tan. Most popular smartphone colors? Black, white, and gray. Most popular desktop computer colors? Black, white, gray and silver. Most popular boat color is white.

Yes, there are exceptions in every category. But they don't sell like boring neutral colors. Boring is vastly more profitable. Which reminds me of a company in Sweden that wants to bore people into buying their product There are actually marketing campaigns designed to be boring. Malmö is a coastal city in the south of Sweden. It has high humidity levels all year round, with 211 days of rain per year. That makes it an ideal place to test the durability of a wood protection product.

To prove that a product called CUX protects patios, porches, and other outdoor wood surfaces, keeping them looking as good as the day they were installed, the company decided to build the world's most boring billboard. So in 2018, they chose a location outside a busy shopping mall in the center of Malmo.

Then, they went to the home of the company's CEO and tore up the boards on his patio. Then CUX used those boards to build their outdoor billboard. Here's the best part. CUX is going to leave the billboard there for 12 years. The message on the billboard says,

This is the world's most boring billboard. We're going to leave it here for 12 years to show how long our products last. The company's advertising agency got the idea from the movie Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, where Frances McDormand's character buys space on billboards for a very long time. Taking that cue, the CUX billboard will sit there, untouched and unchanged, until February 2, 2030. The company is putting their bucks where their wood is, completely confident the wood will look as beautifully silver-gray in 12 years

as it did the day it was installed, despite 4,300 days of 80% humidity and over 2,500 days of rain. As an added bonus, the wood protectant will stand up to those elements while being 100% environmentally safe. It is a completely boring billboard that will remain boringly unchanged for 12 full years, which is exactly the point. Back in 2014, Leica Cameras proudly announced it was launching the most boring ad ever made. To demonstrate the degree of craftsmanship that goes into every Leica T camera, the company posted a 45-minute video.

It showed a Leica technician slowly hand-polishing the aluminum frame of a Leica camera. Slowly being the operative word. Is this the most boring film ever made? It could be. word. Is this the most boring film ever made? It could be. Leica mills the 1.2 kilo block down to just 94 grams. It's ultra light and extremely strong. Then Leica spends another 45 minutes polishing it. By hand. That's around 4,700 individual strokes to finish each body. There is a reason for this boring message. In an era filled with short, quick advertisements,

Laika chose to go against the grain, confident that its obsessive craftsmanship would make it stand apart. From that point on, for 43 full minutes, all you see is a pair of gloved hands gently polishing the aluminum camera component over and over again, and all you hear for 43 minutes is this. When the polishing is finally done, the technician places the camera down on the table. Amazing. The foundation of a camera that's different, totally modern in design, edgier, easy to use, hard to forget, and far from boring. I doubt anyone watched the entire boring 45-minute video,

but there was no doubt about the message. The company is obsessed with attention to detail. And that's why Leica can justify a high-end price tag. If you're looking for flexible workouts, Peloton's got you covered. Summer runs or playoff season meditations, whatever your vibe, Peloton has thousands of classes built to push you. We know how life goes. New father, new routines, new locations.

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If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. There is a cheesemaker in Westcombe, England named Tom Calver. He's a member of the West Country Farmhouse Cheesemakers, and he is very proud of his aged cheddar cheese made from the milk of his herd of Holstein Friesian cows. Mr. Calver wanted to figure out a way to demonstrate to people just how long it takes to make a really good cheddar.

So the cheesemakers hit on an idea. They set up a live 24-7 webcam and focused it on one 44-pound round of cheddar as it sat on a shelf and aged in Tom Calvert's climate-controlled cheese-ripening warehouse. They called it Cheddar Vision TV, and they posted the webcam online. Calvert thought it was a really funny idea, because nothing really happens. The camera never moved, and the cheese just sat there,

aging, day after day, for one full year. It was the epitome of boring. That cheddar got over 2 million views. The static, aging block of fromage became a star. The story was covered by media all across Europe and North America. People from 100 countries logged on to watch it. The wedge of cheese was nicknamed Wedgenald.

Poems and songs were written about Wedgenald. It received anonymous gifts. It got a valentine in the mail. Emails and blogs debated its mold patterns. Wedginald got its own Wikipedia page. The cheese was even invited to a wedding. Wedginald became so popular, it was eventually auctioned off for charity.

There is a time-lapse video on YouTube where you can see the cheddar experiencing the effects of aging, going from young and smooth to old and mottled. The New York Times said it was similar to watching all of Robert Redford's movies in quick,

chronological succession. But that boring camera shot of cheddar cheese slowly aging on a shelf achieved something. It engaged many people who might not otherwise be even remotely interested

in cheese making. And all the press attention increased the appreciation of Tom Calver's fine aged cheddar cheese in particular. It was brilliantly boring. Understanding the psychology of the human condition

is frustrating and revealing and endlessly fascinating. As David Ogilvie once said, customers don't know what they feel, don't say what they know, and don't do what they say. That makes advertising difficult at the best of times. Everyone wants to believe they are unique. Everyone secretly holds a deeply held desire to stand out from the crowd. Yet, our behavior suggests otherwise. Because there's also an overriding instinct that tells us it's safer in the herd.

And if you stray, it's easier for predators to pick you off. It may be why we overwhelmingly choose white cars and gray walls, and white shirts and gray suits, and white washers and gray sofas, and vanilla ice cream. Boring doesn't upset the apple cart. Predators can't take a run at your outlier decisions.

But most importantly, boring sells. Boring is profitable. Car dealers flood their lots with gray and white cars. Stores stock white appliances. Paint companies offer endless choices of whites and grays. And sometimes, advertisers even try hard to bore you. Like Leica cameras, who are proud to say boring attention to detail sets them apart. And a block of cheddar cheese with a boring webcam that attracted worldwide attention and over 2 million views.

And CUX Wood Protector, who hopes to bore people for 12 years by keeping wood beautifully gray. Which proves something our old friend William in Oregon knew all those years ago. There's money to be made in boring when you're under the influence. I'm Terry O'Reilly. This episode was recorded in the Terrastream Mobile Recording Studio. Producer, Debbie O'Reilly. Sound Engineer, Jeff Devine. Research, Allison Pinches.

Theme music by Ari Posner and Ian Lefevre. If you enjoyed this episode, you might also like Color Schemes, How Colors Make You Buy, Season 1, Episode 18. You'll find it in our archives wherever you listen to podcasts. And by the way, my latest book is titled

My Best Mistake. I tell stories about people who have made catastrophic career mistakes, but it ended up being the best thing that ever happened to them. And if you'd like a personalized signed copy,

I'd be happy to do that for you. Just go to my website, terryoreilly.ca. I promise, it's not boring. See you next week. Fun fact. Boring Oregon holds an annual Boring and Doll Day every summer on August 9th. Their website says, come celebrate with your boring neighbors. How exciting!