What gives color its meaning? Why does red feel urgent, blue feel calm, or green feel fresh? Marketers and designers have long understood the emotional power of color—but a recent study (“The origin of color categories.” Garside et al., 2024) published in PNAS pushes this understanding further, into the foundations of human cognition. 

In a world where consumer attention is fleeting, brands must walk a fine line between innovation and accessibility. The MAYA Principle—"Most Advanced Yet Acceptable"—offers a strategic approach to packaging design and marketing communication that maximizes impact without alienating audiences.

Category managers face a critical challenge: proving and improving shelf performance at scale while moving quickly enough to capture market opportunities. Traditional methods have their merits, but today’s fast-paced market demands a more sophisticated approach. Discover how leading brands are empowering their teams with science-driven solutions to make faster, more confident decisions that deliver measurable growth.

Did you know that your brain makes purchase decisions before you're even consciously aware of them? For category managers, understanding these split-second neural processes is becoming a crucial competitive advantage. While ensuring product availability remains important, the real magic happens when we tap into how the brain processes visual information at the shelf. 

Let's face it – category management in the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) sector has always been about the art and science of maximizing sales through effective product placement.

But here's the challenge: in today’s crowded retail environment, even the most experienced category managers face an overwhelming array of challenges.

The AI-powered platform brainsuite by the MarTech startup aimpower now enables testing of product placements in shelf environments. aimpower's unique technology demonstrates over 95 percent accuracy in assessing attention impact.

The Italian coffee roaster Lavazza will begin analyzing and optimizing shopper marketing and category management assets in Germany using the AI-based solutions from the MarTech company aimpower on the Brainsuite platform. Following a successful three-month pilot phase, Lavazza is now expanding Brainsuite to additional areas.