Before anything else—that is Bae, for short.
The consumer is not a moron, nor is she a dork, especially now, with the advent of exploding technology. She knows what she wants, has seen a lot, and it is easy for her to tell what has been said, and what has been told. In a cluttered world, and explosion of new media, you should speak to her as honest as you can. For she can distinguish what is a fake story and what is real.
You see her everywhere. Brands hound her from morning to sunset, even from bedtime to wake-up time. The cycle is repeated endlessly. Be better wide awake.
That being said, you must put her first. She is the Lord of Supermarkets. She roams and navigates through nooks and crannies of malls. So it pays to check if the same strategy you have been using is still working.
Because by year-end, you will be asked: “How much revenue did we get? How was our sales performance and what percent or volume shares have we penetrated and capture a slice of the market pie?” No rest for the wicked. For the wicked must make sales, you, salesmen, brandmen and advertising agency.
Sales are down or sales are up? Whatever is the reason, it is always smart to review how your brand is communicating to your market. Do buyers pass you by? Did you use a well-planned market research to effectively know your market, inside out?
Be relevant
IN his recent Mumbrella Asia article, digital transformation officer Alex Thoma said: “If your brand becomes irrelevant, don’t expect consumer loyalty to save you.”
“Think customer-centric,” he said. “Greater customer satisfaction delivers higher returns to shareholders by putting the consumer first. Everything needs to be geared towards delivering great consumer experiences,” he stressed.
In becoming relevant, many successful marketers amplify the value of research for it unearths valuables insights for better product development and ad campaigns. It’s like a chain reaction. Great research results to a great product that inspires great advertising that really connects to the hearts and minds of consumers that speak their language.
Speaking of “speaking your consumer’s language,” brandmen should also not get stuck or be pigeonholed in their comfort zones. Great brandmen can be good storytellers, and they can be great as anyone else.
The BusinessMirror interviews Germaine Reyes, CEO and President of Synergy Market Research and Strategic Consultancy on why market research, consumer insighting and great storytelling, all rolled into one, is the bedrock of successful brand marketing. “Everything begins with consumer market research, but businesses rarely undertake such studies for new product development and innovations, even testing new advertising campaigns,” she said.
The Philippines has seen millions of pesos wasted from failed new product introductions or mediocre advertising campaigns. “Even companies go bankrupt or retrench people, simply because research was not done at all, results were ignored, or research was improperly done,” Reyes sighs. To minimize chances for failure and maximize chances for success, it is imperative that one must think like a brand builder. “Do your homework. Do your research,” Reyes said.
The BusinessMirror: Let’s go back to basics, what is consumer insighting?
Germaine Reyes: Let me start by saying what is not. Consumer insighting is not just finding which is based on just a single data point or verbatim. Consumer insighting is about looking beyond the words and/or data points to either infer or “mine” the true meaning of what consumers are trying to say, do or think.
It’s about “connecting the dots” or linking the verbatims, numbers or even nonverbals and relating these with the bigger realities of the world that the consumer is living in.
In psychology, insight apparently is not just defined in terms of knowing what the illness is but also understanding how such illness affects a person’s “world” and how he or she interacts with it. This is somehow similar with consumers and obtaining insights about them.
Per experience, to recognize that one has arrived at an insight, it’s when you reach an “aha” or “light bulb” moment. It is because the truth about consumers becomes obvious, and start to make sense to the researcher or marketer after diving deep into the “whys.” Thus, resulting in a “eureka” moment.
Why is it important in brand and creative storytelling? Why is it a powerful tool to build a brand and creating a campaign?
Anchoring brand and creative storytelling from consumer insight/s will give it more meaning and, thereby, has a higher chance of connecting well with consumers.
In the digital-transformation age, engagement is highly important. Otherwise, consumers will just dismiss a brand that’s not relevant to one’s own needs, aspirations. Worse, they may even question the brand on the “truth” that they’re claiming.
Why is there a need to know the consumer? How does it impact on consumer purchase behavior?
As Peter Drucker said, “The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well, the product or service fits him and sells itself.”
In other words, marketers need to ensure that his product or service addresses a relevant need so that the customer will not just buy or avail himself or herself of it once (because result was he or she got disappointed), rather, will repeatedly buy or avail himself or herself of it because it serves a certain purpose.
How to do this? Need to go deep into consumers’ needs, dreams and hopes, and pain points across their journey with various brands.
Will a brand or ad campaign be successful without consumer insights?
Well, yes, it can. An ad campaign can be very entertaining and may even become viral. However, it will be classified only as “entertaining” and may just be fleeting as another entertaining ad can come around sooner than later. The deeper connection may not necessarily happen here. Hence it may not attain the strategic objective for running the campaign in the first place.
Can old storytelling be relevant to millennial audiences?
I always think that a story told well in a manner that is appropriate for its audience will resonate. Thus, an old story, delivered and/or narrated in a way that is relevant to millennials, can engage.
Is there a formula for great storytelling?
I wouldn’t say there’s a formula but, perhaps, there are certain elements that need to be present for it to be understandable and for it to start tugging at one’s core of emotions to become engaging. These will be elaborated by our expert-storyteller and distinguished toastmaster during the conference.
What makes a campaign entertaining and go viral?
There may be ads that utilized a unique executional handle or those with funny or witty quips or those with a “cute” handle that became viral, to name a few.
A simple example is the “pen pineapple pen” ad—it was highly entertaining because of the funny antics of the guy and people wanted to share that positive feeling with other people. It snowballed and became viral. Am not saying that these aren’t good. These ads can serve a purpose. The strategic ads, though, are those that are effectively communicating a brand purpose, to align itself with a consumer problem or need.
Give us examples of case studies that have good insighting.
This may be considered a simple insighting example: Just a few days ago, we had a client who was in a panic mode. It was his first time to do research and he found out that his brand awareness was below 60 percent, and not 80 percent as what he was expecting.
He said that they’ve been doing a lot of below-the-line efforts, including visits to the end-users of his service. But the research targeted the decision-makers for the service, not the end-users (per research objectives/needs). Additionally, those brands performing better than and below his brand were more established, longtime brands in the market.
If we factor in the idea that his brand was just less than five years old, then with such performance, we would say his brand wasn’t doing badly in fact was performing well, at least on an awareness basis.
We are still finalizing the analysis for this project, thus, we will continue to assess which aspects his brand is performing well versus not well.
Give us a few examples of case studies with great consumer insights.
Sometimes insights can be gleaned from mind-sets that people have. A bank wasn’t happy with the way their maiden offering of a certain investment product was performing relative to their expectations.
The branch was after sales and didn’t realize that their target-market identification—offering to those who are financially capable—was not working. It turned out that certain customers treated such investment product like that of the stock market—they get nervous when they see the NAVPU (net asset value per unit) going down and, therefore, wanted to cut their paper losses.
Others were willing to wait till the market gets through a down period. In other words, there was a mismatch between the products offered and the risk appetite of their customers.
The consumer insight led to an institutionalization of a risk assessment profiling—i.e., depending on the risk appetite of the customer, they were able to select and align the products offered to each individual customer better: that is, if a customer is risk averse, you don’t offer a stock-based equity fund because while the upside can be really great, the downside can be horrendous.
For someone who is a risk-taker, he knows that the ups are commensurate with the potential for “downs.” He accepts this fact or can just wait it out when the market is down till it recovers.
For the sophisticated investors, they tend to invest more when the market is down because they understand how the market works.
Why should marketers and advertising practitioners not miss this kind of conference?
This is the only conference that is the intersection across insighting, storytelling and design thinking. They will learn to differentiate what true insighting means, which unfortunately up to now is a highly misused term; how to pull or hugot insights for a potential “aha” moment.
They will get empowered with the beauty of true storytelling for brand engagement to develop campaigns that will engage, and get cautioned with just telling stories for stories’ sake.
They will discover the innovative power of design thinking in creating innovative brand story that’s human-centered—a real case study will be utilized. This conference will open up many frames of reference for them to take home and mull over for potential application to their brands.
Do great stories have nationalities?
I do believe that great stories are universal—it’s like music, just told in narrative. A story that is anchored on a human truth or emotion, if well told is hoped to trigger that emotion.
The Consumer Insighting and Storytelling Conference 2018 is organized by Synergy Market Research and Strategic Consultancy, a visionary research company with over 15 years in the industry.
The conference was previously called “HuGot It Right,” a learning event founded in 2016, with the goal of furthering the industry’s appreciation of true consumer insighting as the source of brands’ storytelling and messaging strategy.
Why HuGot It Right? In market research parlance, hugot is a term used to describe the act of pulling out or drawing forth the core human insight from the trove of data that is available.
It also aims to showcase the best-in-class brands when it comes to insighting and storytelling—those who got it right. It will be a gathering of experts from different marketing disciplines. Catch them on one stage as they share their valuable learnings and experiences on how to uncover true consumer insights for effective storytelling.
The event will be held on April 26 and 27 at The Events Center, Century City Mall Makati City. Some of the exciting topics are:
- “An Insight About Insights”;
- “Finding The Deeper Human Truth from Digital Data”;
- “From The Outside In: An Anthropological Approach In Mining Deep Consumer Insights”;
- “The Psychology of Storytelling: Why And How ‘HuGOT’ Happens”;
- “Why Emotions Trump Logic: Storytelling’s Impact On Consumer Purchase Behavior”;
- “The Art of Storytelling And What Makes Stories Stick”;
- “Content That Engages: Which Have HuGOT? Best Cases, Glocally”;
- “Storytelling ROI—What Matters?”;
- “Customer Insighting Journey: Why A Monopoly Cares About Customer Satisfaction And Aspires To Leapfrog Into IOT”; and
- “Design Thinking Workshop.”