You can't move for transformations these days. It doesn't matter if you're trying to shift brand preference, doing some sort of direct response, nine times out of ten the objective tends to be transform people thinking this to thinking that, from considerers to buyers. You'd think customers were all living in biblical times, awaiting Damascene epiphanies that would divinely transform them from 'Saul' into 'Paul'.
Of course, it's useful to have a clear starting point and a clear goal. The classic 'where are we now and where do want to be/could we be?' is still basic (and often forgotten) discipline of good strategy.
But it's not so good when applied to people as some sort of golden rule...'get people from here to here'. It assumes they have a very clear opinions and easily defined patterns of behaviour. You know, you either like Nike or you like Adidas, you're either a high value customer or a low value customer, you're either loyal or a repertoire shopper.
But the opinions people have on brands and stuff is far less even and consistent than the brand consultancy gurus would like us to believe. People might like one brand a little more than another, but it rarely goes much further than that.And our preference opinions fluctuate. Think about it, if customer preference was so fixed why bother advertising at all? We do of course, usually to either defend a big share of customers by stopping them liking someone else instead, or get new ones by changing who like from someone else to us.
People are also really annoying when it comes to their behaviour. The received wisdom likes to put people into convenient segments, but it doesn't really work like that. Luxury buyers also buy economy, people buy healthy food and downright artery furring, life shortening food too. Nike buyers also buy Adidas and probably Converse and Puma too. of course they do, in depends on mood and the situation. When it comes to food, you might be 'good' all week and eat really healthy food, then pig out on Fridays. If you work in an agency, it's highly likely you might wear Nike for running and Converse for work. If you like wine, you might drink plonk during the week and but good stuff to go with your 'pig out meal' on Saturday night.
So if people don't really have rock solid beliefs about brands, and they don't behave in simple, one dimensional patterns what are we to do? It comes back to boring data.
The IPA Databank shows that campaigns that build 'Fame' have the greatest effect, because create a talking point and cut through the brand clutter. They also provoke a strong emotional response, and neuroscience shows us this is far more critical to how customers make decisions than 'information'. When you need to attract mostly uninterested people, the primary objective needs to be gaining attention in a favourable way. In turn, that's why adding some sort of value to the issues and tensions in their lives is so effective. They don't care about your category, but they care about themselves.
It also shows that campaigns with proper commercial and /or behavioural objectives, rather than soft 'preference' or 'awareness' (God forbid!!) objectives have a higher success rate. Obviously if you set out to understand what's really happening around your product service etc, you have a much better chance to affect it. Put another way, the first stage of any strategy development should be converting a commercial objective into behavioural objective.
Here's two examples where brand preference and behavioura objectives are brought into sharp focus.
The first is a very small bed retailer I used to work on. On a limited budget, we couldn't affect brand perceptions in a useful way, and in such a low interest market, we argues at the time that the word 'brand' was getting in the way. I much more relevant problem was the terrible levels of purchase v footfall. Why were people not buying when no one bothers researching new beds unless they really need to, and, let's be honest, want to get the job out of the way as quickly as possible?
We found that people just didn't have a clue how to choose bed and didn't trust sales people. So they drifted around retailers until the settles on something. Then bitterly regretted their purchase when they found it to be uncomfortable afterwards.
The problem was simple, help people choose the right bed with minimum fuss and without the need of a salesperson. The solution was even simpler - an idiot proof bed guide. The solution wasn't a huge ad campaign, it wasn't very clever or sexy. It was a simple printed leaflet and some point of sake. Sales went up exponentially.
(By the way, I still don't think that 'brand preference' is the most commercially effective approach. There's a much more potent blockage to clear. The main reason people put off buying a new bed is that they can't be bothered getting rid of the new one. It's too much hassle, so they put up with bad backs and bad sleep. I'd rather bring procrastinators into the market quicker and and straight to a client. Maybe it would involve creating a national talking point around how Britain seemed to be willing to do without decent sleep (a cultural fact, we all manage on less sleep and even brag about how knackered we are).
Another example if the, often discussed old Spice Guy. Brilliant creative, of course, but what makes it stands out is two key points:
1. The 'Fame' element comes from tapping into lots of issues young men have with masculinity and what it means to be a man these days.
2. It's built from two key pieces of behavioural information. Most men's shower gel is bought by women, so they needed to create conversation between men and women. Most of the shower gel men use smell's perfumy and girly, they needed make the manly smell of Old Spice attractive, or, if you like, make guys want to smell more like 'jet fighters and punching'.
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