2016: Swimming in a 'C' of trends

G’day and wishing our readers a very happy 2016! As we welcome the New Year, we also get to embrace a fresh set of trend predictions. JWT’s Intelligence Future 100 Report gives us plenty of trendy food for thought.

I like to use the framework of the 4C’s (Consumers, Culture, Category and Context) as a way of categorising information, transforming learnings into insights and creating a powerful consumer ‘connection’. We can also apply this model when analysing trends and their underpinning insights. In this light, here’s a look at some of the top 2016 trends and ways in which brands have already started to take advantage of the forces at play.

Consumer trend:

Neuromarketing: Advances in technology have elevated ‘Neuromarketing’ from being a noughties buzzword to a serious 2016 science which helps shape our understanding of consumer motivations. While neuroscience is in no way a substitute to speaking with consumers and observing their actual behaviour, when used alongside classic research techniques, the implications can be powerful – offering a deeper understanding of how consumers make decisions. In recent times, neuroscience techniques have helped brands predict advertising effectiveness during the development stage as well as analyse drivers of post launch success/failure. An example of this is where Snickers’ used Neuroscience to predict the success of their Aussie Builders campaign where researchers investigated the differences between how 50 females & 50 males responded to the controversial ad.

Culture trend:

Untabooing Womanhood: Feminism has entered a new wave on social media that celebrates previously taboo aspects of femininity. From underarm hair and hygiene to menstruation, social media is saturated with women who are sharing images reflecting the reality of being a woman, with the main objective of raising consciousness and prioritising issues like equal pay and body image. While a few brands like Kotex U have already started to bring hushed topics to the fore in their humorous advertising, we can definitely expect more brands to jump on this cultural bandwagon in 2016.

Category trends:

Chefs as thought leaders: Chefs continue to make a big impact on FMCG and food retail categories. As food increasingly becomes a means of self-expression, further fuelled by the Instagram #foodporn frenzy, chefs have become new-age trendsetters. Here in Australia, some of the world’s leading chefs met at the Taste of Melbourne to discuss 2016 cooking predictions. Keeping food fresh, local and simple will be the order of the day. As one famous chef stated ‘’When people go out to eat, they want a story on a plate.’’ Given the overdoses of Jamie and Heston publicising supermarkets on TV in 2014/15, there will be more creative ways for brands to leverage this celebrity chef super power this year.

Hyper-personalised experiences: Bespoke is the magic word where customers expect tailor-made, unique experiences to suit their individual interests. And this is a trend that crosses all product and service categories. Extreme Dining experiences like ‘Dinner in the sky’ gives customers an ‘out of the world’ experience (well, almost) by seating 22 people around a bar-table, secured by a four point strap system on seats, elevating them 50 metres above ground.

And speaking of Heston, his restaurant, The Fat Duck asks customers to submit information about themselves while booking, allowing The Fat Duck to build customer profiles and tailor meals to individual experiences and childhood feelings of adventure and curiosity.

We see this trend even in retail, where consumers expect highly personalised shopping experiences. This year, ShopStyle, a style search engine launched Tailored Shopping.

A new feature that personalises a user’s shopping experience based on their searches and activity, helping them discover new brands, stores and style inspiration through crafted suggestions.

Ingestible Beauty:

The lines between beauty and food are blurring with the holistic way in which consumers see wellbeing. The Beauty Chef , an Australian superfood beauty brand has a range of ingestible inner beauty powders and offers a platform with recipes including a choice of desserts that incorporate its products, such as a Cheesecake.

Context Trend: Virtual Reality: Brands are continually experimenting with Virtual Reality (VR) to give consumers immersive experiences to drive purchase consideration. As an example, Hamilton Island, Qantas and Samsung partnered to create a three dimensional, Virtual Tourism experience. Customers can choose to fly with pilots in the cockpit of a Qantas jet as it lands at Hamilton Island airport, swim with sea turtles, explore the marine life at the Great Barrier Reef, play golf or just relax at the beach.

So as you can ‘C’, there are lots of great trends which are set to become even hotter in 2016. We look forward to seeing how brands further capitalise on these over the next 12 months. Exciting times ahead!

From Consumer insight to Human insight: The importance of Brand E.Q.

Being a Qualitative Researcher, I get my kicks from understanding consumers scratch that, people, their eccentricities, and how they vary across cultures. Why people do what they do and what influences their behaviour.

The most striking quality of successful brands is their E.Q. (Emotional Quotient) Their ability to emotionally connect with people in a manner that make them Feel something! Excited, Motivated, Strong, Safe, Attractive, Nostalgic, Respected. These are just some of the positive emotions people associate with brands that make them feel good.

Back in 2009, I consulted a national paint brand in Chicago, Valspar, in developing their marketing strategy. What was particularly distinctive about Valspar, was that they had a deep understanding of the different emotional states people go through when they were looking to paint their homes. The key issue discussed in the board room was not about selling more paint cans to more people, it was about identifying human pain points in the customer journey and discovering ways to resolve the same.

As an example, research found the two biggest obstacles to people painting their homes were concerns about the amount of work involved and lack of confidence that they'd get the color right. Valspar addressed this by rolling out digital tools where online color consultants would talk to customers through issues live on their mobile devices as they apply shades to photos of rooms. Most importantly, Valspar became the first paint brand to offer refunds on paint even after it's been applied to walls at home, therefore, going above and beyond customer expectations. (http://bit.ly/18mc4h1)

In 2011, we were commissioned to develop the brand positioning of Amari Hotels & Resorts as well as upcoming projects (at the time) in Thailand: OZO & Saffron Hotels. The hotel I found particularly interesting was OZO hotels (http://www.ozohotels.com/hotels.aspx) in Thailand. What was unique about the OZO brand was that they wanted to develop their positioning around providing a great sleep experience - an uncharted territory in this market, at the time.

We developed hallmarks to bring this positioning to life which particularly meant paying attention to small things. Hotel rooms were not just rooms, they were 'Snooze zones' where hotel staff ensured a noise-free environment, high quality beds designed for optimum comfort, sleeping kits that customers can choose from which may comprise a pillow spray, scented candle, lavender oil or other amenities designed to help you sleep better, whether you have returned from a party or jet-lagged from a flight.

Customers could visit the 'Ozone' in the hotel for a selection of chamomile tea, hot chocolate and night cap drinks for the evening. All of the above ideas originated out of the key finding that customers who visit Ozo hotels were looking to relax during their time there and often that was something as simple as making sure they get the right amount of sleep.

The importance of local cultural nuances cannot be emphasized enough when it comes to developing successful brands. Just for Men is a hair colouring product for men and they were looking at increasing their market share in the Middle East (UAE & Saudi Arabia being key markets). Our research uncovered that Arab men place a lot of importance in their outward appearance. In fact, the grooming of their beard took precedence over hair as this was typically covered with a traditional headpiece. Their beard was a mark of their masculinity and pride.

While in other markets, men did not have any qualms talking about colouring their hair, a key cultural insight for the Middle East was that hair colouring was a taboo topic of discussion. Arab men considered it an extremely personal topic and not something you discuss with your mates or family.

This had obvious implications for marketing Just for Men in the middle east. In a category where colouring your hair is a sensitive subject, Just for men had to engage with its target audience using discreet channels where men felt comfortable in their own skin (For example: Trial & placement in designated areas exclusively for men, TV program selection with a strong male skew, content creation & partnerships with trusted partners operating in the Men's lifestyle & grooming sites etc.)

The above are just a few examples of how these brands were able to build stronger E.Q. Go beyond just the surface level, to dig deeper, to arrive at key human insights in order to create stronger brand connections that emotionally resonated with people.

As marketing continues to evolve, it is perhaps best we do away with words like 'customer insight' and 'target audience' and focus on gaining a deeper understanding of the human behind the customer. What are his/her needs, how is his/her behaviour impacted by their culture, their upbringing. It is this human insight that ties people & brands together and manifests itself in different ways depending on a person's social surroundings.

Unlocking Cooking Attitudes across Cultures

I came across this really interesting study on Cooking Attitudes across 22 countries, conducted by a global research firm. What was interesting about the study was that they took into account 3 criteria that could potentially influence a country's attitude towards cooking:

1. Knowledge about Food & Cooking: How knowledgeable are you when it comes to things like the best time of the year to pick tomatoes, flavour/spice compatibility, the right cut for your meat?
2. Passion for Food & Cooking: How passionate are you about the Cooking Process? Do you get excited about it? Do you cook because you LOVE cooking or do you see it as a necessity?
3. Reported hours spent cooking per week: How many hours per week (approximately) are you cooking?

The following infographic highlights attitudinal differences regarding cooking between Men & Women. Understandably, women score higher points across all the 3 criteria as gender roles continue to remain traditional, when you look at all of these countries holistically.

Another infographic demonstrates the results from the Survey conducted across 23 Countries:

Interesting to note that the Overall Figure is led by only 5 countries: India, Ukraine, South Africa, Indonesia and Italy. However, we see reported differences across all the 3 criteria.

While South Africa leads in terms of knowledge related to Cooking, people in India reportedly spend the maximum amount of hours per week cooking.

In India, home-cooked food is seen as more nutritious and healthy in comparison to Street food. In traditional Indian homes, a mother prepares home-cooked meals for her family and this is just one of the many ways in which she demonstrates the depth of her love for the family.

Italians are most passionate about cooking - where their key driver for Cooking is the pursuit of enjoyment. Cooking in Italy is associated with pleasure and discovery, compared to some other countries where Cooking is seen as a necessity.

South Korea are at the bottom of the list for feeling passionate about cooking. This is possibly driven by the fact that the street food culture is very strong in South Korea, which makes Cooking at home seen as an unnecessary burden.

Another interesting finding was that the knowledge & experience one has of cooking need not positively correlate with a passion for Cooking. For example, Turkey claimed the 3rd place for cooking knowledge, however fell to 7th place (like the US) with regard to passion for cooking.

The lowest ranking countries were: Poland, Sweden, Belgium and Russia where relatively lower scores for both Passion and Knowledge for Cooking, led to lesser amount of time being spent in the Kitchen.

An important point to keep in mind is that, just because these countries are not big on cooking, it would be wrong to assume that they are not big on food in general.

Take Belgium for example, Food is an extremely important part of Belgian life and Belgians reportedly spend considerably more money on food than the Average American, devoting a lot more time and energy discussing about it, shopping for it and ultimately consuming it.

On that note, Bon Appétit, Buon Appetito,Selamat Makan*

*Enjoy your meal in French, Italian & Indonesian

Sources: gfK Research, Global Gourmet

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.





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*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.