1. Gamification – encouraging a closer relationship with customers by providing rewards for interaction with the Brand.
2. Content marketing – providing additional material with the goal of building interest, affiliation, trust and purchase. 
3. Leveraging the second screen –  people are interacting with their smartphones, tablets, etc. while watching TV; advertisers and content providers are feverishly seeking ways to build the brand relationship by engaging multiple screens for a deeper experience.

Here’s a nice example of a content provider doing all three of these, from today’s LA Times, about the new show, Banshee.  Viewers who enter a code that is provided in the opening credits of each show are able to access on their second screens material about the characters and storyline, enriching their Banshee brand experience. This is a tight linkage, goes beyond simply having a multi-channel platform with a twitter feed, a website, etc. 

Caution: In order for this integrated approach to be productive in building your Brand, there has to be compelling reason for your targeted consumers to move across channels, and the experience has to be easy and rewarding for them.  This is where it gets exciting for me – marketing research (UX/SUS, for example) can play a crucial role in optimizing that cross – channel experience. Contact me to continue the conversation!

Here are the four bits of advice:   

1. Tired is ok! For cracking straightforward problems, or linear thinking, being at your most alert is useful.  But for creative, abstract, thinking, being a little less focused can be good. The mind wanders, and it lets connections come to the fore that it would otherwise ruthlessly pare away or dismiss.  Those unusual connections may be just what the problem needs.
2. Silence isn’t golden. Turns out, just the right level of ambient noise and hubbub “induces processing disfluency”, meaning, makes it harder to process information, just a bit.  That jars your mind out of its usual ways of thinking, stimulating abstract thinking and open the door for creativity. 
3. Embrace the conflict.  Accept the paradox that you are trying to address without stress and anxiety, see it as more of an interesting puzzle, and you may be better able to make sense of the contradictions you are seeing, come up with some creative resolution.
4. Give yourself time and space.   Carve out a specific time to mull over whatever the issue is, creativity needs that time set apart.  We are not likely to be hit by inspiration while the mind is totally engaged and focused on other tasks. 

Why do these work? Another Psych Today article, Unlocking the Mystery of Creativity: Why Great Artists Steal, adds some light – to be creative, we are using disparate parts of our brain, making novel connections across neurons that don’t often “talk” to each other, and these 4 steps may help free us up to do that.  

1. Space the learning.  Don’t try to cram it in the night before, look at the material a couple of times, maybe a few days apart. 
2. Work it.  The harder the brain has to work at something, the more likely we are to remember it, so try to recall, don’t just immediately look it up online.  Push yourself.
3. Recast it.  Summarize what you’ve heard or seen in your own words, ideally just after.  This is more effective than just transcribing what you’ve seen (see #2!)
4. Move around. If you usually read/study in one place, move to another from time to time.  The very experience of a change of scene can aid learning. 
5. Switch it up. If you are studying something complex, it is useful to move across concepts rather than studying straight through on one and then moving on to another.  Making the brain do those mental jigs and jags stimulates it and embeds the learning.  For example: don’t study just the next set of verbs in a language then later the next set of nouns, mix back and forth. 
6. Test yourself.  Sorry but it appears to be true: being put to the test galvanizes the brain. Dr. Bjork:  “When you’re tested, you do more than just reveal what you know; you make that information more recallable in the future”. So there is a strong benefit of testing.  

Since I’ve recently taken up golf and studying Italian, I can vouch for the efficacy of these tools.  Ciao, baby. 

Shifting demographics:

Progressive Grocer cites the shift from Baby Boomers to Millennials as a key driver of changes in shopping patterns. 

There will be lots of Millenials.  By 2020, Millennials over the age of 25 will make up 19% of the population (they are only 5% in 2010).  By that time the Baby Boomers will finally fall to below 20%.  

They have money to spend.  Unlike retired Baby Boomers, on fixed incomes, these Millenials will be entering the time of life associated with high spending as careers progress,  households form,  and children are born. 

Millenials are less loyal to channels and brands. 

Millenials: 47% rate brand name “extremely” or “somewhat” important in driving grocery choices, vs. 61% of Boomers.  They may also be more open to trading down to private-label products (require less of a discount to trade down).

Millenials: 41% of total food $ are spent at traditional grocers, vs. 50% for Boomers.

MIllennials spend differently. 

They are more price sensitive than Boomers, willing to shop for deals,

They are also more willing to pay more for natural/organic foods (58% would pay more, vs. only 43% of Boomers).  

Shifting channel use, increased role for digital media:

We are increasingly fragmented in our channel use, and we are using technology to facilitate our grocery shopping and food decisions.  This doesn’t necessarily mean buying groceries online, that’s still a tiny business (but growing robustly).  It does mean using smart phones and other technology to expand and express our engagement with food.    In just one year, 2011, the penetration of smart phones has skyrocketed, from 27% to 42% (ComScore, 2012 Mobile Future in Focus, February 2012­).  In a recent article The Hartman Group  reviews results of proprietary research on the role of the Internet in driving grocery purchasing patterns.   Some trends they call out:

Online purchasing of CPG  “works”only in some cases.Those most like to be satisfied with buying consumer packaged goods online: dual income, harried households – they pay more for online goods, but the convenience is worth it. 

The weak spots for online buying are opps for bricks & mortar. Fresh foods just don’t work well online, still.  Successfully engaging consumers around perishables will be a differentiator for retailers. 

Social media can be used to engage consumers – and support retailer loyalty.  The Hartmann article cites some great examples, such as Whole Foods, of retailers that are successfully engaging their customers around the food experience, both digitally and in the store.  Building that strong engagement ties their target consumer to the WF brand.    

Another study cites the emotional benefits of physical activity – college kids who are more active reported higher levels of enthusiasm and excitement than the couch potatoes. 

Implications: We tend to focus on the weight – regulation benefits of physical activity, but these analyses provide other meaningful benefits to cite for products that foster physical activity.  The key is to tie these benefits to activity.  Impacts on mood and mental sharpness might be faster to experience than weight loss, and if they are called out, associated with the physical activity, they might offset negatives (tired, sweaty, achy) that could sabotage any efforts to be more active.  In our own lives – if we are mindful of these benefits, and attribute them to the exercise, it can help support our efforts to stay active and to cultivate an active lifestyle for our families.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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!