What I am curious about is how marketers and advertisers intend to gain the attention of those they are trying to reach, especially as the market gets more and more cluttered with ads. If we treated advertisements like a product we are selling, then what kind of customer experiences and insights would be helpful for us in getting our product out?
In the Persuaders movie, the fact that consumers are being bogged down by so many advertisements and interruptions is quite prevalent. We choose to TIVO our TV shows and skip the commercials or register for the “National Do Not Call Registry” to get away from telemarketers or buy satellite radio to avoid the interrupting radio commercials. Some of these ways were mentioned in the UnME Jeans: Branding in Web 2.0 Harvard Business School article which I will be pulling some of my ideas from. This only shows us one customer insight: we hate to be interrupted and will go pretty far in order to avoid it. We don’t show patience towards advertising. What can advertisers do then, if they aren’t allowed to interrupt us? What do we really want? Or would accept?
This past Super Bowl, I saw a commercial for Jack-in-the-Box that was more or less like a mini drama series that left a cliff-hanger and told you to go visit a specific website made just for the commercials. I almost did it too, if there was a laptop open at the time. The point being was that it was entertaining and catchy. I actually wanted to watch it. The same goes for iPod’s earlier musical commercial with the dancing figures that jammed out to Jet’s “Are You Gonna Be My Girl?”. I instantly loved the commercial because the song was so catchy and then again, entertaining. Advertisers are picking up that customers will watch advertisements…if they are entertaining. Some advertisements have gone to the extreme of entertainment, in which you found the commercial so funny, stupid, fun, or whatever it was, that you left what the advertisement was for. This might be the example of Burger King’s Dancing Chicken website. Entertaining, but not helping your business.
What else do consumers accept about advertising? When given an opportunity to connect with and experience the brand, users are more likely to pay attention to what you have to say. Web 2.0 is perfect for more customer interaction and invites those that you are advertising to, to actually communicate about your advertisement. For example, think about Facebook Fan Pages. Why are we fans with Victoria’s Secret? It is just advertisement. Isn’t it? Perhaps that may be true, but it is interactive advertisement. We like that. We want to get to know the brand, hear the inside news, and receive coupons for free stuff. When advertisers start treating their work as a more relational communication instead of a brand message, consumers are willing to listen.
Another customer insight that the UnME Jeans case points out is the impact of peer-to-peer sharing of advertisements. I think of the Microsoft TV commercial with Kylie, a 4 ½-year old who declares that she is a PC. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rhre2C4THT4&feature=related I actually didn’t watch this on TV, but saw it shared on a friend’s Facebook wall. I believe that whether it is traditional media like a TV commercial or a Web 2.0 webisode, we are more open to it. Advertisers need to make their ads so that they can easily be shared with others, either through social networking sites, bookmarking sites, blogs, YouTube, photo collection websites, etc. When advertisers understand what customers want out of their ads, then they are much more able to create successful ads, whether that is in traditional or Web 2.0 media or a hybrid of the two.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Monday, March 23, 2009
Dr. Rapaille's 3 Stage Technique and Song Airlines
Dr. Rapaille’s 3-stage technique is a unique approach to market research that uncovers the primal instinct or reptilian code (as Dr. Rapaille refers to it) behind a product or product category. Dr Rapaille started this by trying to understand autistic children who couldn’t speak and tell him why they did what they did. His theory is that everyone has this reason to do what they do, but that it can’t be easily explained by their reasoning. His 3-stage marketing research technique is a way for him to understand the code of people’s purchasing behavior. In the Persuaders, many of these luxury brand names are willing to pay money to Dr. Rapaille for that code, in hopes of beating their competition with better advertised products.
The 3-stage technique starts off with the reasoning step in which Dr. Rapaille asks his focus group about why they would logically buy a product in this category. What words do advertisers use to describe their product? Dr. Rapaille considers this step to be appealing to the group’s intelligence and sees it as essentially useless to finding the reptilian code, but needs the focus group to get these ideas out of their heads before he moves on.
The second step is the emotion step. Dr. Rapaille asks the focus group to explain to him the concept of the product or product category as if he were a 5-year old child from a different planet. The purpose is to get to their emotions in how they perceive this product that is relayed through their story on this product to the child. Many of the participants leave uncertain about what that step was all about.
However, the focus group participants are in for another shock with Dr. Rapaille’s third and last step. This step is called the primal core in which the reptilian code underlying the product or product category can be revealed. Dr. Rapaille sets up the room with just pillows and paper and pen while taking the typical chairs away. He asks them to write down their associations with the product or product category during the first time they experienced it. From this, he extracts what he calls as the reptilian hot buttons or code that explains why we buy what we do.
One of the examples of a product category code that Dr. Rapaille gives is for SUVs. He orders that SUVs be made larger and with dark windows (the typical Hummer) because SUV consumers are going for domination. Yes, that is right. The SUV code is domination. I am not sure if I would label it domination. I think that my biggest reason to get an SUV is safety, but perhaps safety is part of dominating the smaller cars that may not fare as well in an accident, in which case I am buying for domination.
As for Song airlines, I really like the idea of them targeting the 30-40 year old women who have 3 kids and are not particularly loyal to any airline. I enjoyed their feel-good commercials especially with the Downtown song that would probably be familiar to that age group. The colors were especially vibrant which makes one feel young and free again, which is a nice feeling when you are arranging travelling plans. I particularly appreciated the variety of bold colors for their airplane seats and excitement of their flight attendants. Song airlines seemed like a viable option to fly when the company launched.
However Song airlines may have spent too much money on commercials that didn’t related to their airlines. They made a great brand recognition, but most people had no idea what the product of that brand was. I think that hiring Andy Spade was a decent idea for creative thought and understanding the emotions and culture that needed to be Song airlines, but they shouldn’t have given him that much control of their marketing. He is specialized to focus on the emotion and forgot about the actual airline company that he needed to be helping. There needed to be a greater link between Song as an airline to the Song as the cultural verb. Overall, they seemed to be on the right start, but unfortunately Delta couldn’t afford to keep them in business anymore and had to shut down Song in 2005.
The 3-stage technique starts off with the reasoning step in which Dr. Rapaille asks his focus group about why they would logically buy a product in this category. What words do advertisers use to describe their product? Dr. Rapaille considers this step to be appealing to the group’s intelligence and sees it as essentially useless to finding the reptilian code, but needs the focus group to get these ideas out of their heads before he moves on.
The second step is the emotion step. Dr. Rapaille asks the focus group to explain to him the concept of the product or product category as if he were a 5-year old child from a different planet. The purpose is to get to their emotions in how they perceive this product that is relayed through their story on this product to the child. Many of the participants leave uncertain about what that step was all about.
However, the focus group participants are in for another shock with Dr. Rapaille’s third and last step. This step is called the primal core in which the reptilian code underlying the product or product category can be revealed. Dr. Rapaille sets up the room with just pillows and paper and pen while taking the typical chairs away. He asks them to write down their associations with the product or product category during the first time they experienced it. From this, he extracts what he calls as the reptilian hot buttons or code that explains why we buy what we do.
One of the examples of a product category code that Dr. Rapaille gives is for SUVs. He orders that SUVs be made larger and with dark windows (the typical Hummer) because SUV consumers are going for domination. Yes, that is right. The SUV code is domination. I am not sure if I would label it domination. I think that my biggest reason to get an SUV is safety, but perhaps safety is part of dominating the smaller cars that may not fare as well in an accident, in which case I am buying for domination.
As for Song airlines, I really like the idea of them targeting the 30-40 year old women who have 3 kids and are not particularly loyal to any airline. I enjoyed their feel-good commercials especially with the Downtown song that would probably be familiar to that age group. The colors were especially vibrant which makes one feel young and free again, which is a nice feeling when you are arranging travelling plans. I particularly appreciated the variety of bold colors for their airplane seats and excitement of their flight attendants. Song airlines seemed like a viable option to fly when the company launched.
However Song airlines may have spent too much money on commercials that didn’t related to their airlines. They made a great brand recognition, but most people had no idea what the product of that brand was. I think that hiring Andy Spade was a decent idea for creative thought and understanding the emotions and culture that needed to be Song airlines, but they shouldn’t have given him that much control of their marketing. He is specialized to focus on the emotion and forgot about the actual airline company that he needed to be helping. There needed to be a greater link between Song as an airline to the Song as the cultural verb. Overall, they seemed to be on the right start, but unfortunately Delta couldn’t afford to keep them in business anymore and had to shut down Song in 2005.
Sunday, March 8, 2009
Ugly Packaging or Weird Product? I'm not going to buy either.
In Kenna’s Dilemma: The Right – and Wrong – Way to Ask People What They Want, the author explores and explains several principles of how we ask the wrong questions or perform the wrong marketing research tests and wonder how we can get more accurate results. It seems that most of the time, the problem is realizing how people behave. It isn’t necessarily a bad test or a poor product, just the underlying way that people tend to react. The lessons in the chapter should be applied to how we do our market research because the human behavior factor is a huge influence on our results.
One of the lessons that resonated with me was the sensation transference concept. The chapter states, “they [customers] transfer sensations or impressions that they have about the packaging of the product to the product itself…most of us don’t make a distinction – on an unconscious level – between the package and the product” (160). In a way this human behavior is slightly disturbing because it doesn’t make any rational sense, and I think we would like to see ourselves as being rational. However, when I examine my own behavior, I notice that often times I buy the packaging more than the product. It goes along with the saying that we shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. We still do and buy the book with a cover that suits us. For marketers, they need to be aware of this and package their product to match the product, as well as fit their target audience. I believe green household products have done a good job at this, because they always have simple lettering, white or clear bottles, that signify the environmentally-friendly aspect of the product. I think this concept can be applied also to blogs. The design and layout of the blog is crucial to whether or not a visitor will see it as credible and relevant enough to read. If you compare corporate blogs to personal blogs (especially the typical teenager), you’ll see a huge difference in what it says about the blogger (more or less the product in this situation) and the target audience. Marketers should also be careful when it comes to changing the packaging. Pepsi recently changed their can to be a different font, and although I’m not a Pepsi fan, I perceive this “new” Pepsi to be the basic cola…all based on the font.
Another lesson that I saw relevant to marketers, as well as very pervasive in my own experience was the problem of weird/different/new products being classified as bad. The chapter puts it this way, “people reporting their first impressions misinterpreted their own feelings. They said they hate it. But what they really meant was that the chair was so new and unusual that they weren’t used to it” (173). In order to get over this problem, marketers need to allow people to experience those “weird” products twice, not just once. They should put out coupons and provide money-back guarantees, in order to get people to buy the full-sized product. I also think that they need to make the product cool and acceptable before it reaches the market. Celebrity endorsement is perfect for this situation or hiring influencers to hype the product up. Influencers can blog about how the product may be new and different, but is still good, which can warn people what to expect. My first thought on such a weird product is the introduction of gaucho pants. It has been quite a while, but when they first came out, it was strange and unusual-looking. No such fad had ever come out before. However, as more people started wearing them (particularly my older sister), I started getting warmed up to the idea of wearing them. I bought my first pair and was amazed at how comfortable they were. No wonder so many people opted to buy them, even though they were weird at first.
The lessons learned in this chapter can pertain to so many products but it is really up to marketers to understand their market and how they are prone to react. Realizing that consumers often view packaging and product as one and tend to shy away from “different” products, marketers can address these problems better.
One of the lessons that resonated with me was the sensation transference concept. The chapter states, “they [customers] transfer sensations or impressions that they have about the packaging of the product to the product itself…most of us don’t make a distinction – on an unconscious level – between the package and the product” (160). In a way this human behavior is slightly disturbing because it doesn’t make any rational sense, and I think we would like to see ourselves as being rational. However, when I examine my own behavior, I notice that often times I buy the packaging more than the product. It goes along with the saying that we shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. We still do and buy the book with a cover that suits us. For marketers, they need to be aware of this and package their product to match the product, as well as fit their target audience. I believe green household products have done a good job at this, because they always have simple lettering, white or clear bottles, that signify the environmentally-friendly aspect of the product. I think this concept can be applied also to blogs. The design and layout of the blog is crucial to whether or not a visitor will see it as credible and relevant enough to read. If you compare corporate blogs to personal blogs (especially the typical teenager), you’ll see a huge difference in what it says about the blogger (more or less the product in this situation) and the target audience. Marketers should also be careful when it comes to changing the packaging. Pepsi recently changed their can to be a different font, and although I’m not a Pepsi fan, I perceive this “new” Pepsi to be the basic cola…all based on the font.
Another lesson that I saw relevant to marketers, as well as very pervasive in my own experience was the problem of weird/different/new products being classified as bad. The chapter puts it this way, “people reporting their first impressions misinterpreted their own feelings. They said they hate it. But what they really meant was that the chair was so new and unusual that they weren’t used to it” (173). In order to get over this problem, marketers need to allow people to experience those “weird” products twice, not just once. They should put out coupons and provide money-back guarantees, in order to get people to buy the full-sized product. I also think that they need to make the product cool and acceptable before it reaches the market. Celebrity endorsement is perfect for this situation or hiring influencers to hype the product up. Influencers can blog about how the product may be new and different, but is still good, which can warn people what to expect. My first thought on such a weird product is the introduction of gaucho pants. It has been quite a while, but when they first came out, it was strange and unusual-looking. No such fad had ever come out before. However, as more people started wearing them (particularly my older sister), I started getting warmed up to the idea of wearing them. I bought my first pair and was amazed at how comfortable they were. No wonder so many people opted to buy them, even though they were weird at first.
The lessons learned in this chapter can pertain to so many products but it is really up to marketers to understand their market and how they are prone to react. Realizing that consumers often view packaging and product as one and tend to shy away from “different” products, marketers can address these problems better.
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