I attended a very interesting Advertising Age seminar last week. Steve Knox, CEO of P&Gs Tremor, talked with us about “Why Consumers Talk” and the art of consumer advocacy. In the context of this presentation, consumer advocacy was about word-of-mouth recommendations, whether online or offline.
Two “mental models of how the world works” were described: interrupting schemas and conceptual schemas.
Interrupting: Something that makes you take notice because of how different it is from the norm. For example, the plane (crash) landing on the Hudson was discussed for months; with a “regular” plane crash, we pay attention, but maybe for only a day or two. The greater the disruption, the more impact on us.
Conceptual: When two familiar products or services are put together to form something new, the disruption of this new idea captures our attention. For instance, when the cell phone was put together with a PDA, we noticed.
Disruption causes us to talk – to share.
Steve said that research has shown that word-of-mouth advocacy can take place at any stage of product adoption due to “connectors” (those people who have wide and deep social connections and who spread trends more than they set them). He showed a very interesting quad-graph that highlighted where one wants to be in “guiding” a word-of-mouth effort: you want your connectors to strongly advocate your product/service and you want the word to spread quickly. Intuitively, this makes complete sense.
Being a P&G company, they’ve created an online community of “connectors” (there’s a screening survey to identify those that meet the profile), called Vocalpoint. They’re using this panel to help identify which communication strategies, created in the context of the different disruption schemas, will be most effective in generating consumer advocacy.
A couple of examples:
Secret Clinical Strength – “The more you move, the better you smell” captures attention because it’s the opposite of what we’re used to believing.
Venus Razors – The new campaign got women talking about the main product feature – that they didn’t need lotion after they shaved.
Most companies don’t have the resources of P&G and other CPG companies. But we can learn from these models when developing communication strategies – or even new products – for brands.
In the first part of this series, I provided an overview of market research and how our tools are evolving. In this second installment, the focus will be on Quadrant 3 – Physiologic Techniques.
As shown in the diagram, physiological methods are all conducted with the knowledge of the test subject, and, for the most part, the focus is on the physical response (even when verbal responses are obtained). Whether for eye tracking, galvanic skin response, fMRI, or any other form of physiologic response testing, measurement equipment is involved.
People spend entire careers in this field of study. Many applications are borrowed and then modified from medical research applications. This has not been my primary professional area of focus, but it’s clearly an important field to watch and learn from as it evolves.
To use these methods, one must first know something about the basic brain structure. The brain is divided into three primary “levels”…
The brain stem is the first. It controls autonomic nervous responses, such as respiration, heart rate, perspiration, and reflexes. It keeps the body running and secure. It doesn’t think and it doesn’t feel – it responds; in humans, this response is often in response to something it is thinking or feeling (conditional reflexes, for example).
The second level to evolve was the limbic system. According to the NIH Medical Encyclopedia, “The limbic system of the brain is a group of structures which govern emotions and behavior [and]… is involved in the formation of long-term memory, and is closely associated with the olfactory structures.” There’s much debate as to whether the limbic system really is a distinct secondary level, but I bring it up here because the brain has many components, not all measured equally well by various methodologies.
The third level, of course, is the cerebral cortex. When we describe “left brain” (rational / logical / language) vs. “right brain” (emotional / artistic) activity, we’re most often talking about the cortex.
The Vest
I’ve always been a bit skeptical of marketing research methods that focus on measuring autonomic nervous responses because it’s often unclear what a participant is responding to. At a professional training event a few months back, Innerscope Research talked with us about its monitoring vest. A very impressive advancement in biometric monitoring as individuals no longer need to be “hooked up” to a machine with sticky electrodes or other sensors; all are embedded in the vest.
Let’s assume that a biometric company such as Innerscope really can tell the difference between a positive and negative emotion based on length of response time (which is what I remember being told) and that there is a way to quantify the differences between similar emotions, such as fear and anxiety or anger and frustration. And let’s further assume that reactions can be measured in milliseconds and don’t take multiple seconds to register – so that we can accurately correlate emotion to stimuli. Granted, that’s a lot of assumptions and I’m not sure I’m completely on board with this. But let’s assume we’re there. If we used this in ad testing or in shop-alongs or another method, we’d still be left wondering “why” someone had the reaction(s) they did – which requires us, as marketing researchers, to hybridize these approaches to include verbal probing.
For those who argue that people have trouble articulating their emotions, I’d argue that’s more often true with emotions on the extreme ends of the spectrum: love, happiness, depression. If we’re good at our jobs, we can probe our way to understanding most other reactions.
EEGs
An EEG, or electroencephalography, studies brainwave activity along the scalp – virtually in real-time. Over the years, the electrode configuration of the “caps” used have become more complex (as shown in the picture), but it still remains quite true that the EEG can’t measure deep limbic system functions. Having said this, there are some great applications, when used in conjunction with other techniques, such as copy testing. (See Quirks for an example.)
fMRI
Functional MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) is at its earliest stages of being used by marketing researchers. In this quadrant, this method falls in the extreme lower / right corner. There’s no getting around the fact that you’re taking a test when you’re asked to take off all your metal (eyeglasses, jewelry, etc.) and go into a tube for 15 minutes to an hour. (While in the tube, the participant’s brain blood-flow is being monitored in response to what they’re seeing / hearing / smelling / etc.)
For general marketing research purposes, this (currently) seems too extreme and invasive to me. I appreciate the fact that fMRI can measure the whole brain, and just not certain parts. And I look forward to how marketing research applications will evolve into in the future. I hope my ethical and liability concerns can be addressed, but I’m not sure.
Eye Tracking
Of all the physiological research methods, the one I’m the most familiar with is eye tracking. Some might argue that it’s the least invasive and that it allows the participant to understand why the researcher is using this tool. Early applications in market research were in assessing outdoor advertising or print ads in magazines. The experiences were simulated (e.g., driving on a highway, flipping pages of a mocked-up magazine) and its application was almost always done as an adjunct to other ad-testing measures.
Advances today are pretty impressive. Doing a usability test? The eye-tracking cameras are built into some monitors so the user has no “extra presence” or unusual equipment in the room. In fact, the interviewer can be out of the room, watch the usability exercise, and use the video from the test as a discussion springboard.
Another application I like is having participants shop wearing a special pair of eye tracking glasses. In a real store, not a simulation, we can see their entire shopping experience; again, we can use the video to follow-up with them in a post-shop interview.
Closing
There are other methods to be sure. My hope was to provide a flavor of what’s currently going on in this quadrant. Further, the point must be made that research in this quadrant, in my view, needs to be contextualized; I wouldn’t conduct any of these methods alone without some means of probing potentially less-than-clear reactions.
What would you add to this discussion?
Social networking sites, first MySpace and now Facebook, are losing their cache with young adults age 18-24. And that has implications for marketing to this hard-to-reach group.
Mindshare, a WPP agency, has been doing some interesting work in trying to understand how best to reach this media target. I read about their “Scout Network” several months ago. They recruit trend scouts in key cities within a region to “collect street-level, local observations and insights into youth tribes.” In effect, they’re trying to follow an adoption curve: from “seeds” of ideas (what’s starting), to when they catch hold with “tribes” (what’s growing), and then go mainstream (the “herd” or what’s big). Mindshare is trying to ride the crest of waves, moving on to the next wave before the old wave becomes too mainstream and passé. It’s their way of anticipating the market so they know how best to reach and communicate with it.
I like the idea that they’re going back to the streets to see what’s happening. There’s a vibe one gets from being in a place that can’t be achieved online.
So Facebook fades, while texting remains strong. What’s next? Maybe Poken.
Imagine this: you’re at a party, a restaurant, or business function and you strike up a friendship with someone. You might shake hands at the end or give a quick hug, but you could also have your Pokens shake their little hands, instantly wiring your “info card” – which includes your picture, phone number, website, and social netwo
rk listings (if you so choose) – to each other’s devices. No more business cards or writing things down on slips of paper. Get back to home base, plug in your USB Poken (it also functions as a flash drive), and upload your new contacts. I would love this if it came with a contact management system (so I knew when to follow up with people). And wouldn’t it be great for conferences, we’re everyone could Poken all their new “friends”? My only concern for the young adult market (of which I am no longer a member!): If I think this is cool, will this fizzle out quickly with them?
Your thoughts?
