BREAKING NEWS!

We’ve been busy and we would like to share the good news!

We are always seeking better ways to provide excellent service to our clients through our continuous improvement process, and here’s our latest accomplishment:

Nufer Marketing Research, Inc. has been named 1 of 52 companies to be certified as a Platinum Woman-owned business, based on completion of a 5-week business development program.

         

Back to the Lab: Neurosciences’ Contribution to Evaluating Ads and Programming

Last week I attended the SoCal MRA Entertainment Research Forum titled Product Placement, Sponsorship Integration, and Advertising Effectiveness.  The 4 speakers represented various facets of the entertainment and research industries.  What was particularly interesting is the continued investment in a neuroscientific approach to understanding advertising and programming effectiveness.  This is captivating to me, since my Ph.D. dissertation was conducted in UCLA’s Medical School, studying the anatomical and physiological differences between male and female brains, and I started my grad work in a lab that used EEGs as part of biofeedback training to help pilots maintain alertness.

In a nutshell (or skull, sometimes one and the same): neuroscientific approaches use one of a few technologies to assess our physical responses to visual stimuli such as ads or brief snippets of programming.  There’s an informative blogger, Roger Dooley, who tracks this developing industry.  There are two basic approaches in use these days:

1. EEG – this involves a cap placed on the respondent’s head with lots of small sensitive devices that read changes in brain wave activity that manage to be read through the skull.  Pair it with an eye tracking device, and you can track changes in brain wave activity moment by moment in response to particular parts of the visual stimuli.  Add devices to read other physical measures (galvanic skin response, heart rate, etc.) and you can tie this to other measures of engagement with what is seen on screen.  Downside: rather gross measures.
2. fMRI – this provides the deepest read of what is going on in the brain in response to stimuli.  We can see different parts of the brain “light up” as the brain processes various visuals.  Neuroscientists apply their knowledge of the function of specific areas of the brain to interpret these patterns.  Downside: very costly; respondent has to be inside an fMRI machine, that’s a very unnatural setting.

In last week’s forum, Bruce Rosenblum, EVP Warner Brothers Media Research & Insights, presented a compelling case history of their experimentation with the EEG method at their state of the art media lab.  He was quite effective in setting this new neuroscience tool in context, as just one of the tools researchers can deploy. The case history demo’d WB’s evaluations of engagement with not just 30 second ads, but entire 3.5 minute programming segments.  In this case, the segments were Brand Integration segments, a 3.5 min piece showcasing a sponsor’s (Walgreen’s) product (mobile health van), integrated into a talk show.   The moment by moment analysis enabled his team to determine what aspects of a segment were particularly engaging.  They can use this type of information to fine tune the scripting, the visuals, and the flow of these costly segments. Some general rules are emerging from the WB work, and they are quite consistent with tenets developed without this hi tech approach.  The neuroscience data may not only validate these tenets, but also refine our measurements, making them more actionable.

• arouse curiosity, but not confusion
• speak to the benefits not the features
• use natural conversations, humor, and narratives – not technical lingo, and definitely not marketing sales-y lingo
• interesting …don’t showcase Brand logos at the start, that triggers “ad alert!” and people disengage

This is an exciting new world for marketers and consumer insights, a field that is very much in its infancy, as the panelists acknowledged.  The links between brain waves or “lit up” brain areas and behavior or attitudes have yet to be mapped in any depth.  This is just a quick synopsis of a very interesting forum topic.   If you would like to discuss this in more depth, please contact me at 805 497 9090.

Advocating a Deeper Read on Consumers’ Financial Status

It’s a mixed state of affairs for shoppers and retailers today.  Same store sales are up at Macy’s, down at WalMart. Consumers are finally loosening the purse strings or keeping them tightly closed. Commodity prices are trending up (especially cotton) but inflation is still held at bay; there is strong pressure against raising prices.  It’s the young, no it’s the old who are driving PL sales.

Now more than ever a marketer has to a have clear understanding of what drives consumers of his particular business: general economic trends will be of limited usefulness in this fragmented world.  One implication: Build a 360º understanding of your customer. For many retailers and CPG manufacturers, consumer understanding typically focuses on category-specific attitudes and behaviors, with a smattering of demographics.  That’s still necessary, but it may not be sufficient.  Digging into the target households’ financial condition is more relevant and actionable now than in the past.  Here are some of the variables I’d suggest may be particularly relevant to understand:

• Consider measuring these dimensions of financial health: income, (salary, overtime, bonus); employer contributions and benefits; expected inheritance value; home value; value of retirement assets; non-retirement savings; college savings; debt; job security. These types of variables may have very different impacts on consumer attitudes and behaviors.
• Measure current status, but importantly, measure what’s changed:

• Define the scope of change in households’ financial condition (how pervasive, how many variables have shown declines)
• Assess the magnitude of the changes (how steep a fall)
• Measure where they are now: a small shrinkage of a little pie can drive more drastic change in behavior than a large shrinkage of a big pie.
• Measure the head of households’ confidence about their financial future.

Link these financial measures with measurements of attitudes, and measurements of behavior towards the category and your product.  With this more in-depth perspective, a marketer will be able to design more compelling product offerings, promotions, price points, and advertising that speak to the target consumers’ current state of mind and wallet.  And, depending on the strength of relationships you find across financial variables, attitudes, and category behavior, you may well have some guidance as to what to expect as that financial status improves.

Today’s Carpentry Lesson: Building a Virtuous Spiral

Create the Vision - Hire the Right Architect

MAY 11 210
This week’s post speaks to Retailers. We know there’s a strong correlation between the work environment retail employees experience and key store metrics such as customer loyalty. An article in the May 2010 digital edition of Progressive Grocer succinctly updates this with a report based on SUPERVALU’s work with its Independent Retailers. Here’s a quick synopsis of the steps retailers can take to build a virtuous spiral, strengthening both the loyalty of their customer base and the depth (loyalty, quality) of their employee base.
• Hire a skilled architect Design a program of research and action that will work within the realistic constraints of your organization. The research investment has to be balanced with investment in resources to drive change.
• Choose your materials wisely: select the right metrics
Know what matters – before you measure customer or employee behaviors or attitudes, you want to know what the key drivers are – so you measure only what matters, and what you could possibly change.
Operationalize those key drivers – specific behaviors, conditions, experiences can be changed. These are the foundation of your virtuous spiral.

• “Measure three times, cut once” Measure what matters. Three measures to consider:
o Measure your employees’ behaviors, attitudes, satisfaction
o Measure the customers’ experiences, satisfaction, loyalty
o Measure your employees’ perceptions of customer satisfaction
Employees are often tougher on themselves than customers are, so it is encouraging for them to see how well customers rate the store on various dimensions. Demonstrating where gaps exist between employees’ perceptions and customers’ realities brings the employees into the process and makes them more likely to embrace necessary changes. This is especially true for today’s Gen Y employees.

• Provide the right tools. The results of any measurement will be productive IFF effective steps are taken to change what’s holding back performance. This means laser sharp approach to diagnosis, selecting targets for change, and implementing that change
o Communicate results and plans, get stakeholder alignment
o Train focused on specific action areas

• Build! What is measured is managed.
o Coordination is key. Integrate your customer satisfaction program throughout your organization, including functions such as Six Sigma, Training, Communications, HR, Ad Agency….the more pervasive, the more impact it will have.
o Stay on top of the schedule. Understand the lag time between reading customer satisfaction, taking corrective action, and time for those actions to be recognized by customers.

• Celebrate success, recalibrate, keep building. Communicate and reward progress effectively. As the motivational literature attests, there is a science to accomplishing these goals:
o Showcase employees who embrace the program and have grown as a result of it –
o Let your customers know how you respond to their feedback – we listen, we act!

Today’s Cooking Lesson: Making Luck

Julia Child is a fabulous example of someone who made her own luck, and while most of us may not match her in the kitchen, making our own luck is a skill we can all master. There is much to be said for being alert to life’s possibilities, resilient and flexible in the face of obstacles, and optimistic enough to take a reasonable chance when it presents itself. That’s what Julia Child did when she found herself somewhat adrift in Paris, tried her hand at a few things, and eventually embarked on the cooking path that led to so much success and satisfaction in her life. So how do we set the “mise en place”, and up the luck in our lives?

These are a few of the characteristics to cultivate, according to an article in this month’s Psychology Today by Rebecca Webber.

• Broaden your network. A broad, diverse network of acquaintances increases the likelihood of fortuitous encounters, gives you more resources to tap into.

• Cultivate resiliency. Yes, look on the bright side, but it means more than that; assess, analyze, and chart a new course when obstacles or disappointments inevitably mar life’s course.

• Chart a flexible course. Have a direction in life, but know that there are many paths that can bring you to the general destination you have in mind, and be open to taking a different route than you’d planned.

• Broaden your mindset. As the author says, “conscientiousness is no friend of serendipity”. People who stay too focused and task-driven can miss opportunities and miss the big picture. I like to say, there’s perseverance and then there’s perseverativeness…know the difference, know when to say to heck with this!

• Sometimes…Jump! This doesn’t mean reckless abandonment, it means that when life presents an opportunity that may seem scary or challenging, analyze it carefully for its opportunities, downsides, fit with your life goals – and sometimes, go for it. Those “lucky” lives tend to be peppered with times when a person took a chance on something. Doesn’t always work out, which is why we need that resiliency, flexibility, and that network.

Let’s bring it back to the world of Marketing Research – Some ideas:

• Consider these positive traits when developing and testing the positioning for your new brand or product. Can your product support any of these traits? Travel products often speak to the potential for travel to broaden one’s perspective on life, and literally recreate onself.

• Apply these principles the next time you face a tough marketing research challenge, which happens often in these tumultuous days.

• Cultivate your luck by widening your perspective – not just broadening your network of people, but broadening your knowledge base in areas tangential to marketing research. To wrap up and stay with today’s French theme, this ends with a salient quote from Louis Pasteur – Chance favors the prepared mind. Bon chance, mes amis!

Five Steps Local Retailers Can Take to Build a More Valuable Customer Base

Bricks and mortar Retailers benefit from customized marketing research to optimize the way their store serves their target market. Research enables the Retailer to invest efficiently and effectively in actions that will leverage strengths, speak to correctable weaknesses, and enhance performance in the market. These are some steps a local Retailer can take. Some of these are not cheap, and they aren’t all appropriate for every Retailer. A savvy, thoughtful investment in marketing research can pay off quickly. One of the ways we provide value to clients is in providing advice as to where a shrewd investment in marketing research is likely to have the biggest payback.

1. Know your reputation in the market. A survey of all potential customers in the trading area for your store can provide a rich understanding of not only your reputation, but your standing vis-à-vis alternatives in the area. This provides the raw data which results in a current, detailed SWOT analysis. The quality of the survey design, the questionnaire design, and the analytic tools applied will determine the usefulness of the data you get from the survey, so of course my recommendation is to work with a highly skilled marketing research professional with depth of experience in this field.
2. Know what your own current customers think and do. Survey enough of your current customers to be able to analyze different sectors, from Brand Advocate loyalists to the occasional shopper. With some simple modeling, this adds richness and depth to your understanding of what drives that loyalty to your store, and what the payoff is likely to be if you improve in certain areas. This knowledge enables you to invest your time and money where it will have the biggest payoff in terms of loyalty, sales, and profit. You often get enough of your own current customers in the Market-wide study, so it calls for either an augment or a separate study.
3. Check in with your employees. For most bricks and mortar retailers, the employees are the point of the spear, the ones who can make or break your success, based on their customer interactions. Trader Joe’s has an entire radio campaign airing now about the value their checkers bring to the transaction, with their human touch with customers, to combat the prevalence of the Self Check Out Systems in our local supermarkets. There are 2 surveys that can be of great use: survey employee satisfaction, and survey employees’ perceptions of customer satisfaction. Often there is a disconnect between what employees say customers think, and what customers really think, about the store. Showing employees both types of information helps employees see where their perceptions may be amiss, and adds credibility to Management’s efforts to bring the store more into line with what customers want.
4. Know what the competition is up to. Keep a broad definition of “competition”; for a supermarket, it isn’t just the other grocery providers, consider any channel for the products you sell. You can do this through your own investigation of competitors’ marketing actions. You can hire Mystery Shoppers to shop their stores and report back. You can even recruit regular consumers to shop your store and others and report back on the experience, to get a clearer, more detailed read on strengths and weaknesses.
5. Know what’s going on in the world, and how it may affect your market. That means keeping abreast of shifting demographics, economic realities, values and beliefs, and more in your market. Millenials shop a store differently from Boomers; they use Internet-based tools far differently (think online couponing, Facebook, Foursquare, Twitter…) How deeply do you know how different generations shop, or what your demos are? The recession continues to have a massive effect, and savvy Retailers have adapted to it. For example, many supermarkets have not only beefed up their private label lines, they have developed programs to pull in dollars that used to be spent eating out at nearby restaurants, as consumers cut back on spending, and timed promotions to synch up with pay cycles.

Nufer Marketing Research consults with Retailers to understand their unique shopper-related challenges, and provides custom research solutions that result in targeted, actionable business recommendations.

This Earth Day, the Focus is on the Consumer

The 40th Earth Day is April 22, so naturally there is a lot of buzz about it just now. Today’s Advertising Age cites the importance of getting consumers to change their behaviors – because the potential for a big positive environmental impact is far greater at the user’s end of the purchase cycle than at the manufacturing end.

So how do we encourage people to behave in a more environmentally conscious way, in their purchasing and disposal of products? Speak to their self-interest. I love the term, Accidental Environmentalist. The reality is that most of won’t be ardent tree-huggers anytime soon, so let’s use some psychology to shape behavior in ways that help. A few easy, small steps by vast numbers of us will have a significant impact. As we practice more environmentally responsible behavior, even if it’s just for our own self-interest, we come to see that kind of behavior as integral to our sense of selves “that’s just who I am”, and it paves the way for more of that virtuous behavior.

• People do what’s good for them. In March I cited David Almy’s trenchant observation about Shelton Group’s Eco Pulse 2010 study that products with higher purchase interest had environmentally responsible benefits focused on those that are “good for me” or “good for my budget”.

Research Implication: as you develop potential benefit statements for positioning your brand with consumers, see if you can test benefits that wrap an environmental feature in self interest (good for your personal environment).

• Make it easy. As Genna Mazur says in her 4/15/10 article, consumers want to be green, but they are also lazy (I’d say stressed and harried). Marketers can work with this; she cites an example of a bamboo company creating a line of products that can either be reused or disposed. Her point: has to be easy enough to be accessible. This opened a whole new product line for the bamboo company.

Research Implication: when you are developing a new product that may have an environmental spin, consider testing (at the concept stage) the tradeoff between being more/less environmentally responsible and being harder/easier to get, use, and discard. It has to be authentic though – consumers are jaded, leery about environmental claims.

• Make it ordinary – give them approachable role models. The entertainment industry has incorporated many “behavioral placements” (like product placements) to subtly encourage us to be more green. This works the same way product placements do: makes it seem like this is just the way people live. Works for Jimmy Choos and Vuitton….

Research Implication: the placement will be more powerful if it is linked to an emotionally engaging part of the storyline. Keep it positive, guilt is not an effective motivator.

• Make me feel good – BTW, see photo of Christmas tree – these were all over Paris in December, made from plastic soda bottles.

Manufacturers’ Actions Fight the Tide of Private Label Share Gains

Over the course of this deep recession, private label sales have grown substantially over 2008 (+2%) and 2009 (+1.1%), but may be stabilizing in 2010 as reported in today’s Ad Age article, at about 13.8% in household/psl goods.  Jack Neff, the author, makes the point that Brands will have difficulty recovering share lost to private label for many CPG categories, as the private label products are delivering well enough on consumers’ needs.  Here are some of the actions Manufacturers are taking to win back some of that lost share. 

Manufacturers are focusing on package design to differentiate and communicate at shelf:

• Just today, Ad Age reports P&G’s focus on packaging to differentiate itself at shelf and the challenges the retail environment poses.
• Campbell’s focus on packaging  resulted in a revamp of its soup packaging, to stimulate an emotional response as well as make it easier to find the “right” product faster.

They are augmenting this with ad spending to drive share growth:

• Although magazine ads sales in Q1 were lackluster, (# pages down 9.4%), there are signs of renewed vigor in that sector.  Toiletries and cosmetics ad $ and pages actually grew substantially in Q1, and CPG giants like Heinz, Clorox, and notably P&G have  increased their ad spending, reflecting the theory that increasing share of voice beyond market share will lift market share.

Driving sales growth will depend on the Brand’s ability to sell both the consumer and the Retailer:

1. Differentiate the Branded products from private label based on tangible and emotional benefits, to get the consumer off the price focus.
2. Make it worthwhile for the Retailer to stock this Brand – by providing products (and supporting them) that not only meet sales targets but can demonstrably increase category sales, increase basket size or trips, or increase commitment to this Retailer’s site. Retail Leverage has some insightful thinking on this. 

Marketing research often plays key role in assessing a product’s potential to not only entice shoppers, but to help build the Retailer’s business. We work with both Manufacturers and Retailers illuminate consumer response to products both in isolation, and in context at shelf.

Can Brands “Nudge” us via Social Media?

In our 3/30/10 blog there is commentary about Brands’ use of social media, ideally stimulating consumers to generate and spread user-generated content.   One thought is to use the principles laid out in Nudge by Thaler and Sunstein to “nudge” people to take action on the brand’s behalf.  How to do that is not well documented yet, but maybe there are some lessons from the passionate brand foes – as in Nestle’s current imbroglio around palm oil sources.  There are about 95,000 Facebook “fans” protesting Nestle’s sourcing, and there has been a lot of publicity about this.  How has this protest achieved its scale?

1. There is a group of passionate consumers – in this case, passionate about protecting rain forests – there has to be passion about a core belief or value at the heart of any initiative, it is the motivator. Ideally, a Brand would tap into deep seated core values (think “laddering”).
2. The activists who have protested on Nestle’s Facebook page have deployed a variety of tools, including altered brand logo avatars, to personalize and communicate their message.  Providing the tools for users to personalize the Brand engages them and provides content they can share but it must be a light touch. This taps into the same psychology that results in people using Lexus travel mugs or sporting Nike logo clothes.
3. The Nestle protestors are integrating social media with good old PR, to achieve a big media impact.  

How Nestle responds to this is being closely watched.  Should Nestle shut down this Facebook page altogether to limit this as a channel for the protestors? Or keep it open, reflecting the philosophy of “staying accessible”?  Nestle has provided a reasoned, environmentally sound, and calm defense of its sourcing policies, but wants to avoid a shouting match.   What more should the Brand do to deflect the damage and rebuild its image? Does it undertake a more ambitious PR and social media campaign to showcase its environmental stewardship, enlisting its core users?

Brands’ use of social media is very much in its infancy, not only because it is a new tool to Corporations, but because the technology is evolving so fast, and the user base is diverse and evolving so fast.   We might expect that any “rules of engagement” that work today, may not work tomorrow, as the technology, and those who are using it, continue to evolve. 

Here are some ways Marketing Research can contribute to effective use of social media for your brand.

1. speak to consumers’ passions: Use qualitative research to uncover these core values, use quantitative to prioritize and evaluate how to best communicate about them.
2. provide ways to personalize the brand: Marketing Research could be used to discover and evaluate potential “personalizing” tools, which are likely to differ by Brand.
3. Integrate with PR, facilitate sharing with others: Reward consumers for interacting with others about the brand to build loyalty –just as we test promotional vehicles, we can test the power of alternative ways to motivate sharing about the brand.

Brands’ Use of Social Media Marketing

There is a well written article posted today by Chris Wallace titled Social Media is Not a Content Channel.  He makes the point that social media is really akin to PR, not marketing; it has to breakthrough and generate interest and action to an extent not usually achieved by advertising or other marketing activities. 

But to use social media well, the Brand has to not only generate interest and engagement, it has to stimulate (or nudge) the audience to generate content that will be shared.  Basically the goal is to provide the rationale for people to become your vocal Brand Advocates.  That’s a tall order, and I don’t think many of us know yet how to do that.  Incentivizing Mommy Bloggers to promote the product is not what this is about.  

Chris doesn’t quite lay this out, but one can picture a vector of engagement, ranging from passive viewing of advertising to more memorable, emotionally engaging/inciting Public Relations actions, to effective social media initiatives that result in user-generated content and converting consumers into fans.  The social media content or actions deployed by the Brand will depend on the Brand’s goal for its social media initiatives (acquire new customers, build share within the existing base, strengthen brand equity….) Right now, those social media activities are likely to reach rather few people compared to traditional media (TV, print), but there is the tantalizing potential for explosive growth in social media reach, given the technology.

Here’s how we might visualize the relationship between degree of engagement and reach.  Next week, I’ll blog about using “nudges” to stimulate social media activity and user-generated content.