There are two aspects to this:

• The use of superlatives is becoming (more of) a turn-off in concept statements and advertising.  I am seeing this more with younger participants, but I hear it from time-to-time from the “older” folks as well.   “Best” or “better than” is not the tone they want to hear; using or including the “best of something” (e.g., best quality ingredients) – if the key benefits support the claim – is more acceptable.
• Greater value is being placed on the parts (individual) vs. the whole.  I haven’t heard in quite some time someone say “that’s a great CD.”  They like a particular song.  They download it, put it on their iPod or other device, and customize their listening experience.  That focus on being able to customize experiences is helping to drive how they react to new products and ideas.

For example, I can’t image Pepsi coming out with an ad campaign today saying “The Choice of a New Generation.”  This new generation would blog about the ridiculousness of that claim – “you’re telling us what’s our choice?!”

If this is all sounding very left-brained and logical, that’s not my intent.  I’ve often said that unless there’s a connection between a consumer and a brand, a sale will never take place.  That connection can be emotional and/or rational, but it needs to happen.

And yet, my sense is that there this is an evolution to individuality that’s becoming more pronounced.  Companies need to become increasingly more sensitive when choosing how to position themselves and their products.  Until this morning, the best case example I could give was the “I’m a Mac” campaign from Apple.  As you know, they put it out there – I’m a PC vs. I’m a Mac.  In effect, they’re asking, “which one are you like?”

But just today, I saw a headline of “Design-your-own skincare, including ingredients and concentrations” (via Springwise).  Of course, I had to go visit this site.  Turns out that you can custom blend your own cosmetics from natural ingredients. From the www.mycodage.com/an website:

Convinced that every skin is unique and deserves special treatment, in 2006 Amandine and Julien, with the help of many experts, developed a technology that allows you to customize your product to suit the specific needs of each skin.  Codage was born.  100% made in France, CODAGE today delivers worldwide – from its French laboratories directly to you.

A bit stilted in the French to English translation, but how much more personal can you get than that??

As always, I’m interested in your thoughts!

We have monthly phone plans, unlimited data plans, and pre-paid phones, but what about a service that says if you agree to view two ads a day on your mobile, you’ll get X off your monthly carrier changes, and five ads a day you’ll get Y off your charges?  Or extra minutes?  Or free text credits?

Certainly, marketers love the platform because people are literally attached to their phones at the hip.  And, if like TV programming viewed on the Web, a person couldn’t get their messages unless they saw the 10-15-second ad first, theoretically, they would be more attentive to the ad.  At least this form of mobile advertising is more opt-in than any other.  The consumer makes an agreement with their cell phone provider and by extension the ad network:  I’ll agree to watch you ads if you lower my bill.

Are we so entrenched in the cable TV model that we’re not thinking outside the box?  I think there could be an opportunity here.  What do you think?

In the 80s, Dick Vaughn spearheaded the FCB Grid which identified alternative learning models, such as  Feel -> Think -> Do (for categories like luxury cars and perfume) and Do -> Feel -> Think for (instant gratification products like candy bars).  Still linear, however.

In the 90s, based on the research I was conducting, I started counseling clients that the decision-making process was actually iterative – often with lots of back and forth between the thinking and feeling components.  It’s often the case that we rationalize our feelings with thoughts and our thoughts with feelings.

But that’s only one dimension.  What’s the situation a consumer finds themselves in?  What are they actually thinking and feeling about?  How they prioritize, based on their situation, can provide marketers will critical consumer insights.

Take restaurants for example.  The diagram below shows quite a number of attributes that might be considered when deciding where to eat.

Here are several situational examples:

1. I don’t have a lot of time to eat and I’m alone.
2. I’m dining out for a special occasion and don’t have a lot of time because we’re going to the theater immediately after dinner.
3. I feel like full-service Thai in a family-friendly setting.
4. I’m driving on a highway and I’m hungry; the next rest-stops are in 5 miles and 50 miles.

Where someone “enters the decision-process” – how they prioritize what’s important to them in that situation – will determine which set of restaurants they will choose from.  In our four examples, I might have some of the same restaurants on my first two lists.  If children are in the party I might have some of the same restaurants (Thai only) on my second and third lists.  Example #4 highlights how taking action can supersede nearly all other variables.

What are the decision criteria in your category?  How can you use this approach to effectively segment and communicate with your customers?

Your thoughts?

#1: Observed and Expected

Statistics typically are based on a simple equation:  “Observed minus Expected.”

Ex 1:  Comparing the target audience (the Observed) against the total population (the control or Expected).  High or low indices can inform marketing strategies and tactics.

Ex 2:  Assessing company sales performance, where the actual sales (Observed) are compared against prior sales (Expected).

Even as statistics get more complex, we see this.  An “average” (aka “mean”) is another way of saying “Expected.”  Conjoint (trade-off) analysis, a complex multivariate technique, works under the assumption that at the start, all attributes have an equal chance of being selected.

Most marketers don’t know it, but they “talk” in “Observed minus Expected” all the time:  “If we do A, I hope to see B change by X.”  Measuring that goal becomes the foundation for designing research, for the statistics used in analysis, and for seeking unexpected insights.

(For those of us into social media/discourse analysis and data mining, a special note:  there often isn’t an “Expected” with these methods, which is one reason why they’re harder to analyze.  The goal, moving forward, is to start establishing benchmarks against which findings can be assessed – or it will always be difficult to separate new, critical insights from the undefined norm.)

#2:  Correlation vs. Causation

Because two things are related doesn’t mean that one thing caused another.  We know that over-eating (unfortunately) causes most people to gain weight.  However, most smokers – some say 90% of them – don’t get lung cancer.  Smoking doesn’t cause cancer, but it’s clearly a (correlated) high risk behavior because many more of those who smoke will get ill when compared with those who don’t.

How does this impact marketers?  You can’t really assume that doing A will cause B to happen.  However, business models built on connections between operations, consumer attitudes, behaviors, etc. are very powerful in finding ways to reach business goals.

#3:  Compound Findings

Independent facts can’t be compounded or strung together to simplify the “story” being shared with others.

Does this example tell us that our target should be women, age 25-34, who participate in outdoor sports?  Not necessarily.

Assuming a perfectly distributed sample, we’d estimate that the target is 25% of our population (65% x 65% x 60%).  But what if all the men – this is a hypothetical! – said they were into outdoor sports?  That would mean that only 25% of the women said the same – reducing our estimated target size to 11% (65% x 65% x 25%).

While compounding or grouping results makes for a clearer story, marketers need to know that the story may not be accurate.

To me, the most interesting part of the article was the description of the four-step learning process:

1. Encoding, where information enters the brain through the senses
2. Storage, what we do with the encoded information
3. Retrieval, being able to get information “out” when it’s needed
4. Forgetting, which is often overlooked, he says, but critical to learning:

“Human learning is primarily subtractive.  It’s controlled forgetting, learning how to forget in a smart enough way so that you can focus on what’s left in your cognitive landscape…[The brain has to figure] out what’s relevant and irrelevant, and then subtract the irrelevant…[this is] some of the most important work the human brain can do at any age.”

Medina goes on to say that as we get older, what we actually lose is our “filtering ability.”  What’s happening is that so much information is going into the brain and we can’t “turn down the noise” – so we forget why we went into a room or where we left the keys, for example.  We can retrieve information, but filtering is harder.

The findings suggest that, in our personal lives, exercise is most helpful in keeping our “filter” intact.  (Just one more reason to get that 30 minutes in three times a week!)

From a marketing perspective, I wonder how we can use this information to break-through the competitive clutter.  This is particularly critical in communication strategy, where the use of verbal and non-verbal cues, coupled with relevant associations, might create a more impactful execution.

What do you think?  If your target audience is older, how can you envision using this new finding?