Voices: the CMB Blog

Last week, a few of my colleagues and I headed down to San Diego to soak up all the sun, insights, and networking opportunities we could from the Marketing Research Association’s Insights and Strategies Conference (ISC). Here are my top 4 takeaways:

1. Stop thinking like a farmer. In Jeremy Gutsche’s opening keynote, he stressed the importance of learning how to adapt. Companies are able to identify market opportunities, but they’re often unable to fully capitalize on those opportunities. Here’s an example: Blockbuster had multiple chances to buy Netflix, but declined each time because the board thought Blockbuster should focus on retail. Why do companies fall into this trap? Because we have farming instincts that make us complacent and repetitive. In order to successfully adapt, we need to tap into our hunting instincts and (1) dedicate resources to opportunities that might fail, (2) constantly search for new opportunities, and (3) seize those opportunities.

2. Emotions matter. The whole conference was abuzz about emotions. It’s important to fully appreciate just how much influence they have over our daily decisions. People do not think emotions. They feel them, and, amazingly, emotions are universal—they’re hardwired into each of us, regardless of culture, age, gender, etc. This makes understanding emotions critical to fully understanding your customers’ experience. It’s that understanding that allows brands to implement strategies that will spark more of the right emotions and fewer of the wrong ones. Make sure you check out our latest webinar on our decision-focused approach to emotional measurement!

3. Sear your brand into long term memory. How can a brand sear themselves into consumers’ long-term memories? Samantha Moore and Ralph Blessing from Ameritest suggested that brands have to tap into all three long-term memory banks: the procedural (do), the semantic (think), and the episodic (feel). As an example, they showed us a photo of two chairs on a beach and asked us what brand was being represented. The whole room simultaneously answered “Corona.” This is a brand that has successfully tapped into all three of those memory banks. There is a ritual associated with Corona (adding the lime), which taps into the procedural. When we think of Corona, we associate it with the beach, which taps into the semantic and makes us feel relaxed, which taps into the episodic.

4. Presentations should be clear, insightful, and beautiful. When you’re creating a presentation do you: include any and every data point you can on a slide? repeat the same stat over and over? rival a novel with the amount of text you have on any given slide? keep your audience guessing with unnecessary chart builds? These are the most common traps market researchers fall into when creating a presentation, according to Kory Grushka from Work Design Group and Andrea Blingen from PepsiCo. How can you avoid falling into these traps? Keep in mind that color should be used strategically, simplicity is often best, and consistency keeps the focus on the story you’re telling. Each presentation can be evaluated by asking yourself these three questions: is it clear? is it insightful? is it beautiful?

If you were at the conference and have anything to add, please feel free to share your insights below!

Kirsten Clark is a Marketing Associate at CMB. This was her first trip west of Texas, and it ultimately resulted in her first sunburn of the season. 

Put down the brain scans and learn how we use EMPACT℠—our new decision-focused emotional measurement approach—to inform a range of business challenges—including marketing, customer experience, customer loyalty, and product development. 

Introducing CMB's EMPACT^SM: A practical approach to understanding the emotional impact of your brand.

Emotions matter in driving consumer choices. 

This is fast becoming a truism—thanks in part to behavioral economics making its way to the mainstream press.  For evidence from your own life, take a moment to think about your favorite brand.  What do you like about it?  What are the products or experiences it provides?  Now think about how those things make you feel.  Or think about the last time you swore off a brand.  Like the last time I bought something from Ikea.  They sold me an extra part they said I would need.  They didn’t deliver the part, then they told me I didn’t really need it.  But they charged me for it, and never credited me despite my investing 3 hours of time in calls with their customer service.  I felt so frustrated, and so angry, that I swore I’d never buy from Ikea again.  NEVER AGAIN!  [shakes fist at sky]  And, to date, I haven’t.  But I digress… The point is that scientific research, marketing research, and conventional wisdom all suggest that, if you’re trying to attract and engage consumers, emotions are an important piece of the puzzle.     

So what’s the best way to understand how your brand or product makes consumers feel, and what role those feelings play in shaping their choices?  Many marketers and market researchers have been wringing their hands over this question.  Which, in turn, has led research vendors to serve up an array of solutions—including some positioned as ways to get at “unconscious” emotions, or to tap into how people feel without having to ask them. I call these “Superman Methods.” 

If Superman wants to know what color your underwear is, he doesn’t need to ask.  He can see it without your saying a word.  He can see it even if you forgot which pair of underwear you chose this morning.  And if you don’t want Superman looking at your underwear, too bad!  HE CAN SEE IT ANYWAY. 

Wouldn’t it be nice if we had Superman-like methods that tapped consumers’ emotions directly, without ever having to ask them how they felt? 

I was witness to many a sales pitch for “Superman Methods” while I was on the client side.  It's hard not to be drawn in by their promise.  But ultimately I was bothered by a few key things:

• Biometric measures (e.g., skin conductance, facial EMG, brain waves) are often positioned as Superman-style tools.  But even when they do a great job of measuring how good or bad someone feels (as with facial EMG), they don’t provide good measures of discrete emotions.  For example, they can’t tell you if negative feelings are driven by Anger vs. Anxiety, or if positive feelings reflect Amusement vs. Pride. 

• Facial coding does measure some specific emotions.  But it only gets at the “basic” emotions, which are: Happiness, Surprise, Anger, Sadness, Fear, Disgust, and Contempt. 

  Notice anything about that list?  There is only one positive emotion.  The rest are all negative—except Surprise, which could swing either way.  So unless you’re trying to help Dan Aykroyd sell the Super Bass-o-Matic (for which disgust, anger and contempt could top the list of consumer reactions), understanding how your product makes people feel would ideally capture more granularity in terms of their positive emotions. 

  For example, what about feeling relaxed?  Proud?  Entertained?  Secure?  Indulged?  And even among negative emotions, there is more nuance.  What about feeling frustrated?  Bored?  Disappointed?  Or embarrassed? 
  
  Consumers’ emotional lives are more complex than what the “basic emotion” faces can reveal—and understanding that complexity can help you find a more direct (and competitively differentiated) route to capturing their hearts. 

• While it’s true that people don’t always know why they do what they do, it doesn’t follow that they don’t know how they feel.  I might not know all the reasons why I choose Seventh Generation for my kids, but I know how its brand promise makes me feel.  And while we can’t always trust the reasons consumers give, isn’t that why we derive importance through experimental designs and predictive models? 

• Furthermore, how much “Superman Methods” really tap the unconscious—or add value to self-report measures in consumer domains—is debatable.  For example, many scientists question whether the oft-cited Implicit Association Test (IAT) actually measures unconscious associations.  And meta-analyses (including one led by a creator of the IAT) have found that it doesn’t work as well as self-reports to predict consumer preferences. 

What measures like facial coding, EMG, and the IAT do do well is subvert socially sensitive situations—where people know how they feel, but don’t want to tell you.  (The IAT was first developed to study prejudice—a great use case, since people with racist attitudes usually try keep them on the DL).  But if you want to know how your brand, ad, or product makes people feel, in most cases you can trust what they tell you.  Especially in a context where they feel comfortable being honest, like an online/mobile survey.  In the hands of a skilled moderator, in-person discussions can also be a great way to uncover emotional reactions, but that method isn’t scalable to large samples. 

At CMB, we do a lot of research that calls for large samples, so we wanted to develop and validate a way to measure how brands/touchpoints make consumers feel that is: practical (e.g., scalable, fast, cost-effective, easy to combine with other measures such as brand perceptions); comprehensive (in terms of the range of emotions measured); robust (leveraging insights from the scientific study of emotion); and systematic (to enable brand comparisons, or track over time).  Oh yeah—and we also wanted results that are clear and compelling.  Because, if you can’t effectively communicate them to people who need to use them, what’s the point? 

Our solution is a survey-based approach to measuring the emotional impact of brands, communications, products and experiences called EMPACT^SM. Curious? Watch our webinar!

Erica Carranza is a CMB Account Director with supplier- and client-side (American Express) experience. She is also our resident social psychologist; she earned her Ph.D. in psychology from Princeton University.

Dear Dr. Jay,

How can my organization create a Key Performance Indicator (KPI) that’s really useful?

-Meeta R., Seattle

Dear Meeta,

A key performance indicator (KPI) is often used to communicate to senior management how well the company is doing, with a single metric. It could be based on a single attribute in the questionnaire, e.g., the top two boxes of intent to continue using the brand. Another popular KPI is the Net Promoter Score (NPS), based on likelihood to recommend, where we take the percentage of customers who are promoters and subtract the percentage who are detractors.

Over the years, likelihood to continue, overall satisfaction, and likelihood to recommend have all been candidates for inclusion in creating a KPI. We find these measures are often highly correlated with each other.  This suggests that while any one measure might be a decent KPI, there is a unique piece of each that is not captured by the others. Likelihood to continue and likelihood to recommend both have a behavioral dimension to them, while overall satisfaction is most likely purely attitudinal. 

There are a few key things to consider in selecting (or creating) a KPI: 

1. The number should be easy to explain and compute. 

2. It must be tied to some key business outcome, such as increased revenue.

3. Finally, it should be fairly responsive to future changes.

In the third consideration, a balance of behavioral and attitudinal measures comes into play. If you’re trying to predict future purchases, past purchases are a good measure to use. For example, if my past 10 credit card transactions were with my Visa card, there’s a very good probability that my next transaction will be made with that same card. Even if I have a bad experience on the 11th purchase with my Visa card, the prediction for the 12th purchase would still be Visa. However, if I include some attitudinal component in my KPI, I can change the prediction of the model much faster.

So what is the best attitudinal measure? Most likely, it’s something that measures the emotional bond one feels for the product, something that asks: is this a brand you prefer above all others? When this bond breaks, future behavior is likely to change.

A final word of caution—you don’t need to include everything that moves. As your mentor used to say, keep it simple, stupid (KISS). Or better yet, keep it stupid simple—senior management will get that.

Got a burning research question? You can send your questions to DearDrJay@cmbinfo.com or submit anonymously here.

Dr. Jay Weiner is CMB’s senior methodologist and VP of Advanced Analytics. Jay earned his Ph.D. in Marketing/Research from the University of Texas at Arlington and regularly publishes and presents on topics, including conjoint, choice, and pricing.

Watch our recent webinar to learn about the decision-focused emotional measurement approach we call EMPACT℠: Emotional Impact Analysis. Put away the brain scans and learn how we use emotion to inform a range of business challenges, including marketing, customer experience, customer loyalty, and product development.

Warning: This post contains spoilers for George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire and HBO’s Game of Thrones.

“When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die.” This is the message of popular book series A Song of Ice and Fire and hit HBO TV series Game of Thrones. In the fictional world of Westeros, you learn pretty quickly that honor, duty, and loyalty will get you nowhere.As market researchers, we can learn a lot about loyalty from Westeros. There are more kinds of loyalty than there are self-proclaimed kings of the 7 kingdoms—and just like those kings (sorry, Tommen), these types of loyalty aren’t all created equal. Luckily, we have a way of categorizing (and then quantifying the value) of different types of loyalty—a concept I’ll illustrate using some of our favorite Westerosi characters.

In the world of loyalty measurement, everyone starts in the first archetype, which is just plain “Loyal.” Assuming that everyone is loyal in some way is certainly a dangerous assumption in Westeros, but we’ll take our chances and put everyone who isn’t a Wildling into that category to start.

True Loyal: You can argue that as the sworn sword of Renly Baratheon (deceased) and Catelyn Stark (also deceased), Brienne of Tarth has not been terribly successful. But, you can’t deny that she’s gone out of her way to fulfill her vow of reuniting the Stark girls. Come the Hound or high-water, she’s devoted. This is the type of customer (or sworn sword) we’d all like to have in our corner.

At-Risk Loyal: Varys may say he’s true to the 7 Kingdoms, but the former Master of Secrets’ loyalty extends only so far. . .which Tywin Lannister (RIP!) learned a little too late. In Westeros, and in the marketplace, this type of loyalty is the one you’ll have to work to hold on to.

Deal Loyal: Your customer may enjoy your product as much as Bronn enjoyed being with Tyrion, but don’t forget that sell swords and Deal Loyal customers are primarily motivated by bags of gold—or discounts.

Uninvolved: This could have described our friends in Dorne until very recently (thanks, Cersei), but perhaps the most accurate example of the Uninvolved are the average citizens of Westeros. These people don’t hold much allegiance for any king—they just want to make it through another winter with their heads attached. It’s the same (well, not exactly the same) for your uninvolved customer. They use your brand but are pretty indifferent overall.

Distribution Loyal: Petyr Baelish’s allegiance is questionable at best. Baelish (who is better known as Littlefinger) spreads his loyalty across the kingdom, manipulating people and resources to slowly claw his way into power. He may be loyal to House Tully (and the Starks by extension), but we know he’s also made major plays for the Lannisters. It’s all about the end game for Littlefinger, which is why he’ll use people as a means to an end and then switch when something better comes along.

Captive Loyal: Poor, poor Sansa. Can’t a girl catch a break? She’s had three fiancés and two husbands, and she's still held prisoner by her claim to the North. While she’s recently learned how to use her circumstances to her advantage, I’ll go out on a limb and say she’s probably on the lookout for a better option—the North remembers. Like Sansa, Captive Loyals aren’t satisfied with your product, but they’re likely to continue using it for the time being.

Where does your loyalty lie?

Heidi Hitchen is a true loyalist to House Stark. She’ll continue to root for the King in the North until the White Walkers come for her. Winter is coming!

Watch our recent webinar to learn about our results-focused emotional measurement approach we call EMPACT℠: Emotional Impact Analysis. Put away the brain scans and learn how we use emotion to inform a range of business challenges, including marketing, customer experience, customer loyalty, and product development.

Last week’s Front End of Innovation (FEI) Conference brought together today’s brightest innovators to showcase designs, discuss developments, and. . .build marshmallow towers? (More on that later.) This three-day event provided countless opportunities to discuss innovation in today’s marketplace. Here are our top 5 takeaways: 

1. Be prepared to pivot. Peter Koen, Director of the Consortium for Corporate Entrepreneurship, kicked off opening night by having teams build a freestanding structure from marshmallows and wooden sticks. Although my team didn’t win, we did gain some insight into how using a learning strategy can enable quicker reactions to any issues during a process. Setting up processes for reacting efficiently and effectively after failure is becoming increasingly important for companies looking to keep up with the fast-moving marketplace.

2. Be a hero. Dustin Garis, Founder of LifeProfit, gave some great examples of brands (such as Coca-Cola and Expedia) that are becoming “heroes” for consumers by breaking up the mundane routines of our everyday life. Given that 80% of millennials prefer experiences over “stuff,” brands that can create an experience will have a much better chance of having top-of-mind awareness with younger consumers.

3. Fail fast. Deborah Arcoleo, Director for the Innovation Center of Excellence with The Hershey Company, reviewed some key points to remember when incorporating innovation into your corporate strategy. Her motto? Fail fast, fail cheaply, and make sure you capture the learnings. Innovation is often an iterative process. By catching failures early, companies can prevent costly failures further down the pipeline.

4. The innovation paradigm is shifting. Eric von Hippel, a professor of innovation at the MIT Sloan School of Management, drew our attention to the shifting paradigm of producer innovation and user innovation. Steve Jobs famously said, “A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.” While producers and manufacturers were considered primary innovators in the past, users are taking an ever-growing role in the innovation landscape. Users are developing products on their own and taking advantage of open source programs to spread and build upon ideas. Even producers themselves are getting in on the fun by providing users with the tools to innovate.

5. Follow your passion. Miki Agrawal, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Wild, THINX, and SUPER SPROUTZ as well as author of Do Cool Sh*t, had a wake-up call when she slept through her alarm on September 11, 2001 and didn’t make it to work on time. From that point on, she dedicated her time to following her passions, including opening a health-conscious pizza restaurant and creating a children’s television program dedicated to healthy habits. In each of her ventures, Agrawal identified her strengths and weaknesses, and she built teams that complimented one another to achieve her goals, rather than taking on the venture alone.

While the face and pace of innovation may be changing, one thing remains clear—incremental change leads to incremental growth. It’s time to start pushing the envelope.

Blair Bailey and Hannah Russell are Associate Researchers at CMB and recent graduates from Boston University. Personally, they prefer egg drop competitions to building marshmallow structures.