Aged, Creamy, and Stinky: What Cheese Can Teach Us About the Power of Language – Francis Percival

Francis Percival speaking at CoLab Barcelona 2016.

Within the Anglo-Saxon world, farmhouse cheese sits in a very similar niche to specialty coffee: although consumers eat plenty of cheese, most do so at a commodity grade. The precipitous decline of the industry over the course of the twentieth century has not just made farmhouse cheesemakers an endangered species, consumers have themselves forgotten the art of how to buy cheese. So how can we re-engage these customers across the counter? Drawing upon examples from the UK, USA, and France, and recent research into the power of metaphor, this presentation will discuss how the language that we use to describe the product itself shapes consumer preferences.