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Category Archives: Forbes Feature
Validity in Assessing Ad Communication & Impact
Under The Radar
by David Forbes, Ph.D. & Judith Retensky
Typically, good advertising has to come in “under the radar” – that is, be persuasive in ways that are subtle – appealing to emotions and deep-rooted psychological motivations. One type of research that attempts to measure these reactions is the communication check.
Communication check research typically takes place when advertisers have reached a fairly specific vision about an upcoming ad campaign. The “check” is used to gain a preliminary look at how the ad will “work” – what messages it will convey and how those messages will be received.
However, respondents are often unable to give accurate reports about their reactions to advertising since the important communications usually take place below the conscious intellectual level, and the kinds of impact good advertising can create are precisely those that respondents don’t want to acknowledge. Given these constraints, how should researchers proceed? Following the 6 steps in the communication check process can help to accurately measure reactions and optimize the campaign.
Step 1: Use Developed Stimuli
Stimuli for advertising communication research should be as fully developed as possible. Although showing the ad at any stage (sketch, storyboard, etc.) works, well-developed executions will deliver the underlying strategy in a way that can come in “under the radar,” just like a real ad.
The more stimuli look and feel like finished advertising, the greater validity in the findings.
Which Way Should I go? Making Tough Choices in Segmentation
By Bill Spera, Senior Project Manager
Most would agree that the benefits of market segmentation are many. By identifying opportunity targets within the marketplace, understanding the rules of success with these targets, and building strategies to execute against these targets, companies can hone resources to maximize success.
SO MANY CHOICES… SO LITTLE TIME… 
Although the benefits are great, the path to actionable segments varies based on the end goal. There are a great variety of segmentation types – all involving different inputs and ultimately providing different results.
THE BASIC SEGMENTATION WORLD
At the pure identifiability end of the continuum falls the variety of more basic segmentation techniques, usually based on census tract demographics. All that’s needed to identify these folks is their addresses or 9-digit zip codes. These techniques are superb at targeting at a demographic level, but often include little to no attitudinal differentiation.
Dynamics of Permissability in Food and Beverage
By David Forbes, Ph.D.
Consumers everywhere are exposed to a constant preoccupation with health and nutrition. Packaged, processed food and beverage products are often criticized because they represent a departure from “simple, natural whole foods” that are the archetype of healthy eating. At the same time, consumers are attracted to the convenience benefits, as well as the tastes and textures of today’s food and beverage products.
To resolve the conflicts between an aspiration to eat healthy while taking advantage of the vast range of highly desirable packaged food and beverage products, consumers create what may be called “permission structures.” Permission structures are lines of reasoning about products, and about people, that reduce the potential for values conflict between packaged food consumption and a desire for healthy eating lifestyles.
Our research has led us to identify four categories of permission structures, each of which operates in a range of situations to support consumers’ decisions to use packaged foods and beverages:
Whats Does Your Brand Stand for?
Understanding Brand Architecture
By Brian Sowers
UNRAVEL THE MYSTERY
Do you know what your brand stands for in the eyes of your customers? How does your current product portfolio support the master brand? Is your brand’s meaning and purpose still relevant in an increasingly competitive marketplace? If the answer to any of these questions elicits an “I don’t know” response, an examination of your brand architecture is in order.
Having well-defined brand architecture is a critical component of an effective marketing strategy, as it provides the structure for leveraging strong brands, assimilating acquired products, and successfully launching new products.
In developing cohesive brand architecture it is important to follow three steps:
- Determine what the master brand stands for
- Assess how well current products fit into and support the master brand
- Understand how far the master brand can be stretched with new product introductions
Get Below the Surface & Uncover Core Emotions
The Emotional Mind
By David Forbes, Ph.D.
Why do consumers “really” think and act as they do? We have long known that the deep seated emotional centers of the human mind generate the most powerful motivational forces driving consumer behavior. Traditional market research, however, has historically only accessed the conscious intellectual layers of the consumer mind. The desire to learn about the emotions that “really” control behavior are largely unfulfilled.
Two barriers confront the market researchers in this quest. First, consumers are often unaware consciously of these deep-seated emotional forces. As St. Augustine wrote in the thirteenth century, “I cannot grasp all that I am.” His insight remains true of consumers today. Consumers today are no more able to grasp the motivations that arise from emotional centers of the brain that work below the level of consciousness than St. Augustine was; in the language of pop psychology, consumers are “out of touch” with their feelings on the issues important to marketers. Second, consumers are often unwilling to share their emotions with market research professionals, even when they are able to consciously access and articulate their emotions. Rare is the respondent who is willing to share reasons for behavior that might make them seem frivolous or irrational.
Time Out of Mind: Using Breathing Space to Maximize Inspiration
By Ric Dube, Ph.D.
It’s true that top-of-mind ideas can be important ideas. Focus group interviews and team ideation sessions are extremely useful tools that capitalize on teamwork and quick thinking to generate lists of ideas. These approaches use high energy and cooperation to cast a wide net to catch as many different ideas as possible.
Focus groups and ideations are very effective toward generating a breadth of ideas, however, these approaches are less effective in producing the depth needed for breakthrough insights. Despite the virtues of cooperation, there are often richer rewards in rumination, i.e., letting the mind wander and daydream, which permits the brain to create new connections and associations. According to legend, the Greek scholar Archimedes was obsessed with the problem of how to calculate volume until one day he stepped into his bath and saw the water rise. As the story goes, he cried “Eureka! I’ve got it!” as he ran naked through the streets of Sicily.
Cognitive neuroscientists studying the brain with fMRI have recently recorded electrical activity in the right hemisphere that signals impending “Eureka moments.” These scientists have discovered that certain conditions promote these kinds of insights: positive mood, absence of stress, and quiet, unfocused time spent alone, much like Archimedes’ bath.
Positioning for Motivational Impact: Does My Brand’s Difference Matter?
By Jeremy Pincus, Ph.D. and Amit Ghosh
A Brief History Of Positioning
In earliest advertising, the goal of communicating to the consumer was to convey factual ideas about a product or service to promote its unique features and benefits. The logic of this traditional strategy was well expressed in Rosser Reeves’ (1961) famous unique selling proposition (e.g., “melts in your mouth, not in your hand”).
But this approach only works well when something factual about one’s product is truly new and unique. As more and more products entered into the market to make purely factual distinctiveness less and less obtainable, Ries and Trout (1972) developed the concept of “Positioning”, arguing that marketing should stake a unique position in the minds of consumers. The focus of communication under positioning theory became a psychological one, with an emphasis not just on reality, but on perception of reality.
Over 80 percent of new product launches in the last five years consisted of “new and improved” brand extensions, and the majority of these failed.
Success in today’s marketplace requires positioning skills of Olympian proportion.
Creating Focus Group Candor
“Are They Telling Me The Truth?”
Written by David Forbes, Ph.D. & Gar Roper, Ph.D.
Perhaps the very biggest concern when trying to learn about the marketplace through focus group research is the issue of truth. Asking consumers to tell us about their thoughts, feelings and actions in the day to day real world is always an invitation to have the consumer tell us stories — stories about how they wished things were, or stories that present themselves in the most favorable, socially desirable light. This challenge to focus group learning is indeed a significant one, requiring the focus group moderator to have an explicit strategic framework for eliciting candor from focus group respondents.
The challenge of focus group candor is met with a scientific psychological approach that is based upon understanding how people think and talk while presenting opinions. Three principles are key to this approach: Ownership, Timing, Engagement
