Archiv der Kategorie: Courageousness

IN YOUR FACE, RESEARCH!

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How facial recognition can revolutionize consumer engangement.

Market research often leads to epic failure. And while the word “research” is normally associated with science that leads to product innovations for a better living and economical prosperity, things are unfortunately the other way round in the marketing industry.

With research institutes asking people artificial questions and getting artificial, irrelevant
results that appeal to the rational thinking related part of our brain (neo cortex) – which may be best suited for giving clever answers but not for giving even the slightest hint on how the customer feels and what his true insights are – most brands are waisting money and
opportunities on an grand scale.

But help is on the way! Rana el Kaliouby and her MIT Media Lab colleagues are the minds behind Affectiva, an ambitioned start up
with the potential to rewrite the rules of marketing research and consumer engagement.

Affectiva invented Affdex Facial Coding, an automated facial-expression-recognition technology able to measure and even interpret
viewers´ emotional responses to brands, advertising campaigns an any other digital video content.
Good news for the few people in Adland that are capable of telling the story behind their clients´ brand in an emotional way and relevant way.

Facial Coding will finally seperate the wheat from the chaff when it comes to analazing and understanding consumers needs, feelings and wishes. “You can understand so much about how consumers perceive a brand by analyzing their spontaneous,
subconscious responses. If you are a contant creator looking to elicit a certain emotion, we can validate that. In cases where an ad
is trying to elicit e.g. humor, we can tell you if people consider it funny.”, el Kaliouby reveals in the US magazine Entrepreneurs´ January issue.

The Affdex software works with any standard webcam across connected laptops, tablets and smartphones, paying tribute to fact that consumers
interact with brands via various screens and putting emphasis on multichannel marketing as well.

“People chek their phones an average of 150 times a day – to us, that´s an exciting opportunity, el Kaliouby points out.

And to all creatives in the advertising industry, Affdex is a big step towards getting adequately paid for a great idea.
Not to mention getting rid of time wasting & redundant focus groups or telemarketer surveys by – literally – technical knockout…

Dare to challenge your consumers – How a hard-earned discount upvalues your brand

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To all you discount sermomizers and hardselling advocates out there – sorry to rain on your parade,
but if a customer gets something for nothing, he´ll be unthankful. At best.
If he gets a 20% discount, he won´t appreciate the present. He´ll think “It´s not worth more than the 20% off”.
But you want to build yourself a beloved brand, not a pitied one, don´t you?

No, we don´t try to persuade you to waive your bargains. Especially if you work in the retail business, you would immediately stop reading if we did. So we don´t.

What we DO try to convince you of is being more demanding towards your customers.
Give them their discount. But only in exchange for performance. Afraid of scaring your target group away?
Don´t worry. The opposite will be the case.

Care for some examples?

Well, if you are Nike or adidas, give them a discount for showing their football skills on YouTube.

If you are BMW, reward them for performing the best lap time on a driving simulator at the dealer (as a side effect, you will get more people to the dealer and prevent them from buying their car at an online dealership (that has no qualms
about giving discounts for nothing). Sheer driving pleasure will meet sheer sales increase.

Make people cook, run, paint, write poems. But ALWAYS make them do it in accordance with your brand story.
Your target group will not only worship the interactivity. But also dig deep into your brand and the story behind it.
And a richly deserved -10% off for the consumer will turn into an easily earned +10% sales increase for you.

Last but not least will your brand enjoy a LOVE boost as well…

DO RESEARCH THE NSA WAY – LISTEN & OBSERVE.

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WERNER HEISENBERG – GREAT PHYSICIST, BRILLIANT RESEARCHER.

Sorry for the excurse. But I think it´s crucial to know why research in it´s most common form leads to failure and how we can implement a better method.

The third and newest layer of the human brain is the Cortex, the place where complex cognitive processes take place. Ratio instead of emotion. Complexity rules.

The human cortex has brought us great inventions from lightbulb to car. But it also has brought us the most redundant marketing campaigns. It has even killed brands and jobs. In large numbers.

Why? Because research forces people to give rational answers and explanations on things they can´t explain.

IS RESEARCH JUST A WASTE OF TIME?

No. It CAN make sense. Least to some extend.

Weigel just tells us to keep some simple rules in mind:

OBSERVE

Don´t rely on claimed behaviours. Understand those behaviours in their real world context

LISTEN

to real real conversations – not just to answers to your questions

DECODE

unpack the silent, implicit and often unconsciously consumed content of communications

INTROSPECT

you´re a human being, too!

Or, as Werner Heisenberg said:

“We have to remember that what we observe is not nature herself, but nature exposed to our methods of questioning”

 Research? Rethink!

THE REPTILIAN ALWAYS WINS!

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WHY BRANDS THAT DON´T WANT TO DIE OUT SHOULD LEARN FROM THOSE WHO DID.

Let´s come back to Rapailles approach and what we all can learn from it (better late than never…).

Rapaille believes that all purchasing decisions really lie beyond conscious thinking and reside at a primal core in human beings.

To Rapaille, the Reptilian brain “always wins”. Or, in other words: if a brand manages to touch people on the most fundamental level, it will have the biggest chance to grow and sell. The Reptilian brain is all about survival and reproduction.

And of all the related attributes. Like dominance. Those people who drive through the city in a monstrous HUMVEE just want to show dominance as a warrantor for survival. They just obey their reptilian brain.

But when the HUMVEE was launched in the US, it didn´t suceed at first.

They asked Rapaille for help. The frenchman told them to make the windows a few percent bigger. Why? Because if you go for dominance, you want to be seen and identified as the “sender” of that dominance. “Don´t mess with me!” Very reptilian. Very successful. Very international – because the reptilian brain is something we all have in common. From Russia to Rhodesia.

Then there is the Limbic System, the second oldest structure of the human brain.

It´s where all our emotions are located. The limbic system is developed during our early childhood and created & influenced by maternal love.

Our mother gives us an emotional imprint for each category. She defines what “love”, “care” or “home” mean to us. These emotional imprints vary from country to country.

Japanese have a different emotional code/imprint than Americans. Americans have a diifferent emotional code than Germans or French.

Example? Here you go: to Germans, the smell of fresh coffee means “home” and “childhood”. Because they smelled the coffee their mum cooked when they were lying in their cradles. The Germans got a “coffee imprint”.

The Japanese, however, don´t feel anything when they smell fresh coffee. Why?

Because they have a “tea imprint”. Which is why Nestlé had a hard time trying to sell coffee products in Japan. Until they asked Clotaire Rapaille…

–to be continued…!

RETHINK RESEARCH.

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Most advertisers believe in research. It´s a religion to them. Why? Because it delivers a bunch of good feelings. In the meantime, there are some brands who rather believe in what they believe in. Ideas. Potential. Opportunities.

Henry Ford didn´t produce faster horses now, did he?

Jobs and Wozniak didn´t do any research. After all, research suffers from the “re” in it. Research is only about what has been. Not what will be. And if there is any vision in research, it´s the vision of playing it safe. Which kills creativity. Which again kills a brand and the story behind it before it has been written. Safety is the illusion, failure is the result.

But there´s always two sides of a story, right? If we just condemn research (like I just did) we´ll hardly change anything. Not the brands we work for. Not the work we live for. Nothing. So let´s have a look at why research is still everybody advertiser´s darling and how we can end that phenomenon for the sake of beloved brands.

Martin Weigel, chief planner at W+K Amsterdam, names some of the myths we have to deal with.

 #1 RESEARCH ELIMINATES RISKS

Wrong. It can´t. The opposite will be the case. Colin Powell says why:

“Don´t take action if you only have a 40% chance of being right, but don´t wait until you have enough facts to be 100% sure, because by then it is almost always too late… Procrastination in the name of reducing risk actually increases risk.”

#2 RESEARCH IS REALITY

Research and reality have two things in common. The “R” and the “e”. Imagine the following situation: people are sitting in a badly air conditioned room, having bad coffee and old cookies. Everybody´s wearing a nameplate.

They are shown some ads with a burger and some french fries on it. Then they are shown a menu. With prices. Then they are asked what they would order at the drive-thru. Burgers? Nuggets? Fries? Salad? Shakes? What about the food photography?

Are the prices reasonable? Etcetera…

There´s just a few problems also caged in that badly air conditioned room:

- no one in there is hungry

- no one in there is in a hurry

- no one in there drives thru

Research is as real as the food shots on the ads are. At best.

#3 RESEARCH IS RELIABLE

Are you bonkers? It´s not. Clotaire Rapaille, a french psychiatrist and brand consultant tells us why. Actually he already told us more than 10 years ago.

But time moves slowly in adland, doesn´t it?