The Quest for Creativity in Research

I am a firm believer in getting your hands dirty when it comes to discovering Human Insights through 'Consumer Research'.

I was recently consulted to propose a research technique to understand why people use Instagram in Australia. Mainly, What a day in their life looks like, how Instagram plays a role, key triggers/motivations for usage, and how other brands are really engaging with people in this platform.

Past studies conducted on Instagram showed that women were more active on this platform and the content posted varied by format: For example, Photos were more about personal experiences, and Videos were about sharing bite-sized engaging content. What was interesting though, was that, there were also differences seen by region. You had more foodies in a city vs self-proclaimed Narcissists in the other city.

While a Qualitative approach was ideal for what we wanted to achieve this study, we did not want to only go in for run-of-the-mill, traditional techniques like Focus Groups. Instead, we recommended 2 studies to get an in-depth understanding of consumer motivations and drivers with regard to their Instagram usage.

1. Mini-groups with a Twist: 6-8 respondents are gathered in a comfortable setting (a cafe, beach) to discuss their attitudes about Social Media (particularly Instagram) among other things

Participants would keep a log of their Instagram usage prior to this discussion (over the past 7 days) This log is discussed in the group. Not only this, we would include Projective techniques where participants are asked to take a break for about 15 minutes, go out, do what they normally do with their phones/cameras, click photos/videos, whatever, and then come back to discuss what they did. This will make our participants more conscious about their usage patterns.

Our mini-groups would yield initial psychographic segments (For example, The Creative Artists, The Selfie Takers, The Foodies) from which respondents will be handpicked for the next exercise.

2. Instagram Diary: Shortlisted participants from the previous exercise go through their regular routine (using Instagram) as they would normally do. End of the week/weekend we have an indepth interview to discuss their usage behaviour and variations in usage according to the time of day, context etc. The idea behind this is to encourage spontaneity as much as possible, with least amount of bias.

The biggest benefit of taking the above route is that we gain diverse perspectives on how consumers interact with social media, while being as close as possible to their most natural, spontaneous behaviour to get to true 'human insights' that we can then use to guide our brand strategy to connect with people in a manner that is emotionally relevant to them.

Revitalizing tired brands - Classic examples

In this era of constantly-changing consumer tastes, a dynamic market environment, and global competition, it becomes crucial for a brand to adapt itself to changing needs and desires to prevent the erosion of its brand equity over time. Here is a framework we developed at Northwestern for brand revitalization.

We analyzed success stories like Arm & Hammer, Frito-Lay and Betty Crocker. We also looked at brands like Tropicana and Nokia who were victims of misguided revitalization. Brands that had successfully revitalized themselves to continue to win the hearts of their consumers over time had the following things in common:
1. Consumer Insights Focus
2. Innovation
3. Vision/Leadership
4. Staying true to core business strategy and,
5. Consistency.

On the basis the above, we derived the following learnings to achieve successful brand revitalization at any scale or any stage of product/service life cycle:

Consumer Insights

Identifying changing trends:

The majority of the brands that needed revitalization missed key trends that were driving the market at that time. Better late than never, some adapted to the changes successfully and were able to salvage their businesses.

Arm & Hammer had years of success as a solid brand that consumers had grown to trust. The 1960’s, however, noted a change in how people cooked and thereby affected a decrease in the use of Arm & Hammer. Originally the prevalent baking soda was used in recipes made from scratch, but with the introduction of pre-made baking mixes, the orange box was pushed towards the back of the shelf.





Product/category extension:
Since the lifestyle of the consumer population was changing, a fresh use for baking soda needed to be introduced. Church & Dwight focused on the two main differentiating characteristics of the product: deodorizer, cleaning agent. Arm & Hammer was reintroduced and successfully repositioned as a deodorizer for refrigerators and freezers. Arm & Hammer adroitly repositioned and extended a single brand to encompass new functionalities and a broader customer base. Today one can find Arm & Hammer brand as toothpaste, liquid laundry soap, cat litter, dental care gum and a deodorant/antiperspirant.

Listening to consumers:

Picking up on changing market trends is not enough. Brands need to pay heed to what it is that the consumers are saying by listening to their concerns and providing a solution for the same.






Frito Lay is the epitome of a company that stayed true to their core strategy and focused on revitalizing its existing brands rather than developing new brands. One of the major steps Frito-Lay took was to focus on rebuilding the quality of its brands like Tostitos after market research indicated that consumers felt the chips were too heavy, thick and crunchy. Frito-Lay thus, created the thinner, crispier Tostitos, which could be eaten alone, made into nachos or dipped into salsas, which were becoming increasingly popular. Frito-Lay listened to its consumers, tailored the product quality to suit consumer needs, enjoyed sales of about $200 million as Tostitos became the number five brand and continues to remain a market leader.

Innovation




Frito Lay’s reformulated both Lay's and Ruffles potato chips—the first time the Lay's formula had ever been changed. To enhance the flavor of both chips, the company developed a new frying process and switched from soybean oil to cottonseed oil. With consumers preferring less salty snacks, the sodium content of the chips was also reduced.



Betty Crocker is another example of a brand that consistently revamped its identity. Iconic Betty Crocker- the personality that never really existed but changed with time- had been embedded in the fabric of the American society so subconsciously, that no one ever questioned her real existence. When General Mills started offering tours of the Betty Crocker Kitchens, they had to be equipped with friendly staff and tissue papers to console women who painfully found out that Betty Crocker never really existed. Many quipped it was like knowing for the first time that Santa Claus did not exist. Since it’s inception in the 1920s to date, Betty Crocker has gone through many adaptations and changes to remain relevant to the changing times successfully.

In 1924 Betty Crocker first gained a voice in the nation first ever radio-cooking show. In 1936, she got a face. The widely circulated portrait reinforced the popular belief that Betty Crocker was a real woman. Over the next seventy-five years, her face has changed seven times: she became younger in 1955; she became a “professional” woman in 1980; and in 1996 she became multicultural, acquiring a slightly darker and more “ethnic” look. General Mills soon realized that they could not please everyone and replaced Betty Crocker’s face with by the easily recognizable red spoon logo.

Providing a unique customer experience by engaging consumers beyond products:

The Betty Crocker brand excelled at engaging its core consumers going beyond the premise of its products since the time of its inception. From the radio show about cooking and other housekeeping related topics to tours of their home-inspired kitchens where they developed recipes for the brand and recipe books etc, Betty Crocker positioned itself as an experience more than just a product. Today, the Betty Crocker brand is the category share leader in desserts.

Packaging:
A brand’s packaging is its most continuing and tangible communication medium, it’s important that it convey the brand experience that is aligned with the overall brand strategy. New packaging is like dawning a new identity for a brand. The change in its physical form should be refreshing and appealing and the same time, it needs to somehow, in an abstract manner, carry the legacy of the old packaging.



Sometimes, functional packaging changes are made to the packaging so as to make the product that much more convenient for the consumers. A few years ago, the Betty Crocker Warm Delights packaging took the brand to a new level of convenience. In less than two minutes, a consumer can enjoy a delicious dessert from an individual-serve microwavable bowl. The package sleeve design shows the bowl and clearly communicates that the product is single-serve, microwavable, convenient, and delicious. In a grocery aisle, where most products are sold in cartons, this package really stood out.


Vision

Top management support:

Brand revitalization needs the courage and perspective of strong leaders. Cadillac is a good example of how the decisions to bring back the brand from the dead came from the top management.



The brand started by bringing in new leadership with a holistic brand vision who had more than the credentials, but also the audacity to take the risks that were needed to overhaul the brand. Cadillac’s new lineup strived for breakthroughs in both design and engineering, providing fresh new product offerings that excited a younger customer base, but were very different from what the traditional Cadillac buyers would expect from the brand. Cadillac chose to travel down the daring pathway of a new performance-oriented positioning by introducing hot concept vehicles that came with the freshly streamlined Cadillac logo.





The new management team created the new vision and brand promise, led the re-engineering and re-designing efforts and developed sound marketing strategies that complimented the new direction that the new management team envisioned for the brand.

Staying true to the core business strategy:

A brand promise is an articulation of relevant and differentiating experiences that the brand will deliver to its customer, every time. Revitalization is necessary when either the core customer’s taste and preferences have changed, core consumers have aged or when competing products have pushed the brand off the retail shelves. However, the brand promise or the idea that the brand owns in its consumers' minds never changes.

Frito Lays wanted to be known as the “best snack on earth”. Using this as a guiding force, Pepsico altered, changed and mended all possible routes to achieve it’s business goal and ensured that the brand stayed true to the promise it made to its customers.





_____

*Special thanks to my teammates at NWU - Kripa Narayanan, Anka Jedry, Angela Ma

Cadbury: "Spread the joy"

Here is an example of one of the most phenomenal campaigns I have come across in a long time. This is an example of a brand that did an amazing job of using a country's cultural context to spread the joy and make people's lives so much more happier and beautiful.



Here's the gist:

Need Identification:

• Cadbury was suffering from the backlash of Kiwis unhappy with product changes made to their beloved Dairy Milk. The company had surrendered to global pressure to use palm oil in its product and move production offshore, taking jobs away from New Zealanders.

• Those who had previously loved Cadbury Dairy Milk felt let down and betrayed by a brand they had taken into their hearts as one of their own.

• Cadbury lost share from 68% to 50% in a matter of months. The business was now unsustainable, maintaining share only through a competitive pricing strategy.

• No joy in New Zealand: New Zealand still struggled with recession blues and was reeling with grief over the recent Pike River mining disaster and devastating Christchurch earthquakes.

Business Goal:

- Extending their leadership position by taking lost share in Everyday Milk Chocolate, from 64% to 71% by Year 2011

- Maintaining share growth while increasing the average price back up to profitable business margins

Agency:

DDB New Zealand

Objective:

- Save Cadbury Dairy Milk’s relationship with New Zealanders
- Create moments of joy so irresistible to New Zealanders that they couldn’t help but fall in love with Cadbury Dairy Milk again.

Opportunities:
• Cadbury had very strong brand equities in the hearts and minds of New Zealanders
• Remind New Zealanders of the gift of Cadbury Dairy Milk and give it new meaning within the current cultural context. Taking it from being associated with frivolous moments of joy, to meaningful moments of joy that really matter.

Current behavior:

People love eating chocolate for the joy of it, not for its rational virtues. But this had been tainted by the events of the last year and by having to think about chocolate rather than just enjoy it.

The desired behavior:

Getting the majority of milk chocolate block buyers to purchase Cadbury Dairy Milk regardless of price

Goal:
• Change the process of decision making to one of pure emotion
• Create something that defied reason and got people acting differently and as a consequence, feeling something about chocolate again.
• Stop thinking and start feeling when it comes to Cadbury Dairy Milk




The Idea:

Incite a movement that invited people to experience the contagious power of joy.

The idea centered around creating, capturing and passing on the real sounds of New Zealanders’ joy. “The Joy Collective” whereby the most addictive sounds of our joy are captured and used to build a song that rings out for the entire world to hear.
The Joy Collective was the finest example of co-creation. The team comprised Cadbury, DDB, Rapp, Tribal and Mango (PR/Experiential).

How it works:
The sights and sounds of joy for The Joy Collective – made up of musicians, producers, directors, film engineers and legendary vocalist Bobby McFerrin – were captured to make a song of the sounds of collective joy. The first Glass and A Half Full Production created by a nation.

The idea comprised of three critical phases:

1) Ignite the feeling
A year-long series of entertaining events across the country which allowed New Zealanders to experience and share the true contagious power of joy and at each event Cadbury captured the spontaneous sights and sounds joy from these events which have been hosted online and shared with the online community.




Giant Snow Globe - making the Kiwi dream of a white Christmas come true.
The first time it snowed in Auckland was 1939. The second time was in 2010. In the middle of summer three busy public spaces turned into a winter wonderland. For 12 days, Kiwis could feel falling snow and a giant Christmas tree with chocolate decorations at its center. Almost 35,000 people experienced the joy of a white Christmas that summer.

Sounds collected: Squeals of delight, oohs, ahhhs and giggles.

2) Build on and capture the feeling
The second phase focused on constructing the song and making sure they captured as many nuances of sounds of joy as they could.



The phase was kicked off with a 30” teaser ad asking New Zealanders “What does joy sound like”? It purposefully peppered Bobby McFerrin with obscure footage from events and user generated videos to create a sense of excitement and intrigue. Critical to this was taking the campaign up a gear and sparking New Zealanders’ interest without giving too much away.

3) Give back the feeling
This is the phase where the nation learnt about the song, was asked to sing with Cadbury and heard their song of joy.

Cadbury revealed the reason: To create an epic orchestrated piece of music made by New Zealanders.

A competition was run for people to upload their joyful moments and filmed everyday Kiwis doing everyday joyous things. Like jumping off wharfs, or playing volleyball, to playing in water. This created captivating and joyous content for the site.

New Zealanders sang along.

They created a giant karaoke vending machine that travelled the country, asking members of the public to sing for joy. This served two purposes.

Firstly, it was the perfect way to truly create a song made by the entire nation as they collected sounds from thousands of people and layered them in the song.
Secondly, it gave them a joyful and magical way to distribute chocolate all over the country.

The full song and accompanying music video was launched and 80,000 people lent their voice to the anthem. Cadbury arranged local musicians to remix the track and the song was freely available to anyone after making a small donation to help rebuild Christchurch.

The website acted as a window into the movement, allowing all New Zealanders to view each of our Glass And A Half Full Production events and share their own images of joyful moments through social media with the rest of the online community.

Result:
• Joy is now synonymous with Cadbury
• For a country of 4 million people, Share the Joy made an enormous impact with a PR reach of over 6.5 million and a PR value of $2,000,000
• A staggering 150,000 people experienced a Share the Joy event personally.
• 150,000 visits to the campaign website and 500,000 page views
• Sparked over a 100,000 online conversations and YouTube views
• Over 900,000 New Zealanders were reached by word-of-mouth from their family and friends, based on an average word-of-mouth of 6 degrees.



Business Impact:
• Maintained Cadbury Dairy Milk’s share, while increasing their retail price
• In the first month with all of the elements of the campaign live Cadbury saw sales lift between 16% and 27% varying between supermarket chains
• Sales increased in the supermarkets that raised their price by 12% compared to three weeks earlier

Reason for success:
• The idea connected people to the brand by inviting the nation to join in, play and share in the joy of it that in turn, created a chain reaction of people sharing the joy.
• The idea went beyond just connecting people to people, to uniting a nation through the power of joy.

Sources:

DDB Worldwide
Tribal DDB

Valspar paints TV commercials

Here are a couple of my favorite TV commercials by Valspar paints. A perfect example of innovative and emotional advertising blended into one. What I like the most about the concept is that Valspar successfully cut through the clutter existent in the category where other paint brands would show people with their rollers painting their houses - so much so that you could not tell one brand from the other by just looking at their advertising. Valspar, on the other hand realized that painting is an emotional process for its target consumers - the DIYers and they successfully played an emotional chord by staying consistent with their brand promise "Bring the colors of nature home with you" across all key consumer touch points: Print, Television, Outdoor and Social media.

Social marketing - A primer

There is a lot of buzz right now about social media and the right way to carry out its implementation. Quick, When you think about social media what comes to your mind? No prizes for guessing - Facebook? Twitter? Linkedin? Youtube?

All of the above are only tools that are to be used to support your entire social marketing strategy. Social marketing is a far bigger strategy which is a crucial part of the core marketing strategy of any organization. So why is it necessary for a company to invest in social marketing? Because social marketing has revolutionized the way we do business. Social marketing is about conversations. Our customers are out there talking about our brands, what they did and did not like and how it made them feel. There are valuable consumer insights out there which a company can leverage to pave its path towards success.

So how do we get started? Here is the process that I took in coming up with a social marketing framework which has been particularly effective in my experience:

1) Listen:

Firstly, define your goals - It is essential for a company to determine measurable goals which would potentially lead to increased market share, growth and profits.

Secondly,a sincere attempt has to be made to listen to your customers.



This involves primarily 2 steps:

- Determining the persona segments of your audiences and high value communities

The right way to determining persona segments is to conduct an indepth research on the triggers, motivations, behaviors and needs of your target consumers. By doing this you will be able to tailor your outgoing messages to suit the unique needs and requirements of your consumers on a one-on-one basis which is far more relevant and engaging to them.

- Identifying what conversations are taking place online and where

Tools that can be used for this step are numerous.If you are under a budget and you want to get a whiff of the industry, free tools like Google Alerts and Social mention will do. There also exist paid tools like Radian6 and Lexalytics which tells you the sentiment of the conversations that are occuring online. You would get deep insights on whether your customers are speaking favorably or unfavorably about your brand.

- Identify your influencers

I believe that this is one of the key points to consider before even thinking of creating a social platform. Whether they are the mavens - "a trusted expert in a particular field, who seeks to pass knowledge to others" or the connectors - "people who have a wide network of casual acquaintances by whom they are trusted", it is extremely important to find out who your influencers may be. This may not be apparent on first notice but by making use of services like Klout and Technorati, you will be able to take the first step in identifying who your core influencers may be.

2) Create:

Based on the results from the conversations online, you can now create a platform or invest in an existing platform, depending on where your target audience interact with each other the most. It is crucial that all your social media tools are considered as secondary touch points in the process. These in turn need to be integrated with your central touch point - that is, your website. The social media tools may include but not limited to the following:
Social networks - facebook, linkedin
micro-blogging - twitter
community building - ning, kickapps, telligent
thought leadership - squidoo, yahoo answers, wikipedia
media sharing - flickr, gather, youtube etc

3) Engage:

Based on the unique features of the platforms you choose to create, you need to come up with a content strategy for each tool you plan to use within your platform. For example: The kind of content you may have on facebook will vary widely from the ones you have on twitter. Blogs may be totally different from communities created by the company online. The key thing to remember is to converse with consumers as opposed to having a one way monologue. Erik Qualman put it very effectively when he said that "it is a people-driven economy". With all the existing clutter in the market, consumers have learnt to turn a deaf ear to marketers that market irrelevant products to them. It is only when marketers find their own unique "purple cow" can they stand out in their consumers' eyes. After testing numerous engagement approaches a company would be able to find out that which works best with its target market.

4) Measure:

As no marketing strategy is complete without making an attempt to prove ROI (Return on Investment) or ROCI (Return on customer investment) the last step is to measure the success of your social marketing strategy. This requires asking questions like -

- Did our social marketing efforts have a viral effect? That is, did others pass along our message to external communities?
- Did we learn something new about our organization and customers based on the customer database we are continually building up?
- Finally and most importantly, is our social media presence strengthening over time, leading to greater market share and leading us towards our overall business goals?

Ultimately, companies need to prime their system continually in order to keep their consumers engaged. The most important factor is to ensure that you are continually and gradually moving towards your end goals in the most effective and efficient manner.

Source: http://msinetwork.com/

Color: Influence on branding

I have been playing with the color schemes in my blog the past few hours, being influenced by a course I took at the Kellogg school of management here at Northwestern, as a part of my IMC program. The course was about the influence that image, style and design has on products and services today. After reading through the book "Color:messages and meanings" by Leatrice Eiseman I was truly inspired. I have never thought of myself as a person who found inspiration in colors but this book changed my entire viewpoint.

I realized that color has a deep, subconscious influence on the decisions consumers make on a daily basis. Let's take the example of Google. The inspiring graphic designer, Ruth Kedar came up with the Google logo which is shown to embody the primary colors today and the Catull typeface (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catull) that give Google its unique brand identity. By playing with different colors and bringing a two-dimensionality to the O's, Ruth succeeded in Google attaining its distinctive playful, cheerful and helpful image in the eyes of its consumers.



According to a recent research, about 95% of product assessment and consequent purchase is based purely on color. Color enables brand recognition, whether it is the bright red of Coca-Cola's logo or the vibrant blue of IBM. Color plays a role in tapping into the emotional instincts of consumers often ignored by most marketers today. For example: Red is looked at as a color that invokes passion and is exciting. Using red for a product thus, makes a bold statement due to which marketers use it for products for their consumers who like to stand out.







Blue on the other hand is associated with serenity, peace and calm. Take the tiffany blue color for example which is also available as a paint color.In addition, blue also communicates a feeling of assurance to the consumer which explains the use of blue in Intel's logo - assuring consumers that they can go ahead and purchase the laptop due to the fact that there's an "intel inside."

Take the final example of the colors that embody Northwestern University - Purple. It has been very cleverly designed to communicate the message of inspiration, creativity and ambition found in the students of Northwestern. Purple is also seen as a color that is strikingly different from the other colors which gives it an aura of exclusivity.

Thus, companies need to perform in depth research to understand the unique attributes of their brand they want to communicate to their core consumers. The expression of a brand's core personality can be done through its color. It's not about asking "what is your favorite color?" It's about asking "What are the attributes of your brand and what color best expresses it effectively?"

An example of Innovative technology

Introduced about 2 years ago and still going strong is a form of innovative technology in the website - http://www.wefeelfine.org describing itself as "an exploration of human emotion, in six movements." This technology continually harvests sentences from the broad field of social media that contain the phrase "I feel" or "I am feeling". This information is collected from Internet blog entries, twitter, facebook and other social networking websites and is displayed in an interactive java applet, that runs in any web browser.

The color of each dot represents how a user is feeling. For example: Bright dots are happy and dark dots are sad. In addition, demographic information like age,gender and location are also provided for the user to play with.

What are the implications for marketers? 2 words - Consumer Insights! Due to the depth of information provided through this one website marketers can gain an insight into the needs and wants of their core audiences and target relevant messages accordingly.

On the flip side, this technology does raise privacy concerns. For example: I have signed up only for having my profile on facebook - I would not want my updates and other demographic information broadcasted on an external website.

Nevertheless, this is a revolutionary technology and will be extremely helpful in the current digital economy. Watch Jonathan Harris - the creator of the website in this video
http://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_harris_tells_the_web_s_secret_stories.html