The Goleador Index: when ten cents are worth more than ten cents
You are at the tobacconist’s and find yourself spending 4,90€. What do you do: take ten cents in change or buy a Goleador? For more than twenty years, ten cents represented the minimum unit of economic exchange in Italy. In other words, the smallest coin worth spending. You cannot buy anything for 2 cents, or even for 5: with 10, however, you could get a sweet. Goleador occupied exactly that fragile boundary between value and non-value; and it did so for so long that it became a cognitive reference point even before it was a product. In principle, we could almost speak of a Goleador Index, a nod to the famous Big Mac Index, which has long served as an informal economic indicator of purchasing power. Yet while the Big Mac tells us about the differential between markets, the Goleador index shows us the minimum amount Italians can afford to spend. When this amount doubled, Italians’ purchasing power was, as a result, halved. The 10-cent threshold no longer exists in the 2026 market. What was always affordable is no longer affordable in the same way. The neuroscience of price perception describes this mechanism precisely. The human brain does not process prices in absolute terms: it processes them in relation to cognitive anchors established over time. When an anchor is suddenly removed or altered, the emotional response is disproportionate to the actual change. We are not processing ten extra cents. We are processing the loss of a point of reference.
The context Goleador made visible
The reaction to the doubling of the Goleador price was so intense partly because of the historical moment in which it happened. Between 2021 and 2022, Italian real wages fell by almost 6 percentage points (the steepest drop in the EU: more than double the European average). According to the International Labour Organization, Italy is one of only three advanced G20 countries where real wages in 2022 were lower than in 2008. Italians’ purchasing power has not merely been “halved”: the loss compared with pre-Covid levels exceeds 8% in real terms, with higher peaks for the lowest incomes. And in a country where wages were already among the lowest in Europe before inflation, a further 8% loss has had effects that are felt even in the small things. Like a 10-cent sweet that now costs 20. The Perfetti Van Melle group did not cause this discontent: yet it made it tangible. It gave concrete form to something that already existed but was hard to measure. A function that iconic products perform unintentionally, acting as emotional thermometers of the economic context in which they exist.The second mistake: the catalogue that lost the thread
If the price doubling was, then, a problem of economic positioning, Goleador’s strategic response over the years created a further positioning problem. From the original three flavours (fruit, cola and liquorice) the range expanded to include Maxi Shock, Fizzy Soft, Xplosion, Dribbling Rainbow, Mystery, Ooolaaa, Gooold, as well as limited editions with collectable heroes, manga, sour variants, fizzy variants and filled variants. Seventeen active SKUs, against the original three. On the surface, Perfetti Van Melle’s approach was a growth strategy. In reality, it diluted the most valuable asset Goleador had: instant recognisability. When a consumer thinks of “Goleador”, they picture the double gummy sweet. A precise, shared, instant image. Today that response has become fragmented. Some think of Dribbling, some of Maxi Shock, some no longer know what to expect. The brand has gained SKUs but lost clarity.
The neurobiology of iconicity: why simplicity is worth more
There is a precise neurological mechanism behind this phenomenon that is worth exploring. The human brain does not process brands as lists of products. It processes them as cognitive schemas: simplified structures that allow information to be categorised and retrieved quickly. The more consistent and predictable a schema is, the easier it is to recall. In doing so, it generates an emotional response associated with recognition. Coca-Cola kept an essential range for decades not for lack of creativity, but because every new variant introduced an uncertainty that eroded the established cognitive pattern. Apple built its iconic status by removing products, not adding them. IKEA made its model replicable worldwide precisely because the experience in every store in the world is predictable. The fragmentation of the Goleador range produced the opposite effect: every new sweet requires the consumer to make an additional cognitive effort to understand what they are buying. And when cognitive effort increases, the perceived value of the brand as a whole decreases. Not because the products are worse, but because the brain struggles to form the association automatically.The mistake small brands make by imitating big brands
There is a seemingly rational logic behind the decision to expand the catalogue. If fruit Goleador sell, perhaps sour ones will sell more. If children love Dribbling, perhaps adults will love Fizzy Soft. If every taste niche has its own dedicated product, you capture more of the market. The problem is that this logic only works if the brand already has governance robust enough to maintain consistency through the expansion. Large brands can afford sub-brands, parallel lines and seasonal variants because they have identity management systems that ensure every new product strengthens the main brand rather than diluting it. Goleador did not have that governance. The result is that every new SKU eroded a little of what made the brand unmistakable. Goleador have not disappeared. They have become less iconic. And a brand that stops being iconic is a brand that can be replaced.What Goleador teaches those who build brands
The Goleador case is not a story of decline. It is a story of silent erosion: the kind of erosion you do not see until you look back and ask why something that seemed solid no longer does. There are three lessons that apply to any brand, large or small. The first is that price is not just an economic figure but a positioning signal. When you change a price that has become part of the brand’s perceived identity, you are altering the way the brand exists in people’s minds. And doing so without explaining why, without building a narrative that justifies the change, creates a cognitive rupture for the customer. The second is that a simple catalogue can be an asset. Adding products can create an illusion of growth. Yet more often than not, it is dilution. Strong brands are not those with the most products but those with the clearest cognitive schema, the one hardest to dislodge. The third, and last, is that iconic brands are economic thermometers. When the price of a Goleador doubles and people react as if a disaster had struck, they are in fact reacting to everything the sweet stood for. Understanding this function is essential to grasping what is really being sold, and what one risks losing by changing something that seemed irrelevant. Goleador is more than a sweet. It is a reminder for every brand.Domande frequenti
What happens to the perception of an iconic brand when it raises prices significantly?
It depends on how far the brand has built perceived value independent of price. For brands with high equity, a price rise is accepted as necessary to maintain quality: trust covers the increase. For brands perceived as commodities, every increase is an invitation to look for alternatives.
Does an overly broad product catalogue harm sales?
Yes, through a mechanism documented in research by Iyengar and Lepper: the paradox of choice. Too much variety raises the cognitive cost of the decision, reduces post-purchase satisfaction and increases regret. For iconic brands, the damage is twofold: the proliferation of variants fragments the mental image and weakens the primary association that made the brand recognisable. A lean catalogue is often more profitable than a comprehensive one.
How do you manage the evolution of a heritage product without alienating those who have loved it for decades?
By separating the essence from the tactics. The essence is the emotional promise the brand has built over time: that is not to be touched. Tactics are pricing, packaging, channels and format; those get updated. Brand governance exists precisely to draw this distinction: to define what is fixed and what can evolve. Those who update tactics while respecting the essence retain historic loyalty and open up new markets. Those who change the essence lose both.
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