Emotions in Business
Interesting question on the LinkedIn Consumer Insights discussion group today: “How do you do a better job of giving clients an emotional reason to retain you?”
Here are my thoughts on it:
We need to be clear on what we really mean by emotion. The emotional bond a client feels toward an agency isn’t the emotional bond you have with your girlfriend. They may not even think of it as emotion, because it feels rational: it’s the confidence and trust they have that you’re going to solve their problems. It might be ROI, but more likely it’s guiding them to the right ideas, making things happen for them as marketers.
That might not seem like an emotion, but ultimately as a client, if you save my butt and my job, that’s a huge emotion. If you give me a crystal vase for the holidays, and buy me Super Bowl tickets, and tell me I’m wonderful, those are emotional reasons too. But they’ll never rise to the level of those big, butt-saving emotional moments.
Of course, it’s a lot easier to snag a pair of tickets, so do what you can.
How's your eye for hues?
Take the Munsell Hue Test and find out how good your color skills are. To add a little pressure, try to do it in under 5 minutes. With or without the time restriction, try the test and post your score. I scored 16 (lower is better) when I gave it a go.
Neuromarketing
The Consumer Insights Interest Group on LinkedIn today had a question about “What is the future of neuromarketing?” For those of you not in that group, here was my comment:
There are three streams of neuromarketing, and all will become more important in the future, because neuroscience and psychology has turned our understanding of decision making upside down.
1. Deep understanding of what happens in the brain, using fMRI. This will remain a fundamental research tool that will help us understand consumers at a basic level. But it will not become usable for tactical, or even strategic, marketing applications, because it will remain very expensive.
2. Gross understanding of what happens in the brain. Using EEG to understand what areas of the brain are active in response to marketing stimuli will continue to have a place. As Howard notes, its value is so far not established. We already have the means to measure conscious, cognitive events that take place in the brain by using traditional question and answer research. What is missing is an ability to understand what is going on at the non-conscious level, where emotions assemble and correlate the data that eventually get summed up as a conscious decision. I believe that EEG is going to have a difficult task finding consistent data that correlates to those emotional events. However, I am not an EEG specialist, so I am prepared to be wrong.
3. Understanding fundamental non-conscious emotional response by observing outcomes of changes in the autonomic nervous system. These include changes in skin conductance, heart rate, facial muscles, and eye movement. Before anything happens in the brain, our body is already reacting, and all of these signals are easily measurable. Emotions happen in the heart, not in the brain. And yes, there is a bank of data that a marketer can understand. While these signals are easily measurable, they are not easily interpretable. That is the area that is underdeveloped, and that is what we are working on. The AnswerStream system we developed at Howard Merrell is such a bank of data.
Traditional survey and qualitative methods will never go away. But they will become just one part of the toolbox. As our understanding of how human beings use emotion to make decisions expands, the importance of the “rational” choices we measure with techniques like conjoint will shrink.
Are you prepared?
You grab your sweater if the weatherman says it may get cold later in the day. You have gum or a mint with you at the luncheon in case the meal has garlic or onions in it. You bring along an umbrella if they are predicting rain. You hide a spare key under a rock outside your home.
Why do you do these things? Because you want to be prepared…just in case.
In business, this is also important. Is your company ready if/when a crisis hits? A product recall. An incident at a plant. A natural disaster. An industry-wide safety concern. Whatever the crisis, it would better to have a plan in place of how to handle a crisis situation. How do you inform employees, customers and the general public? Do you have the contact information for all the key folks you need to reach? Who is your media spokesperson? Who is the backup for your key spokesperson? What is the protocol for crisis A, B and C?
Some crisis communications plans detail the protocol for different types of crises. Some are just a few pages long and contain the top line info needed to take action quickly and intelligently. No matter how long or short, it is better to have a crisis communications plan in place.
Does your company have one?
2009 Telly Awards Recognition
Raleigh’s Oldest Advertising Agency Wins Three Silver Tellys
Howard, Merrell & Partners won three Silver Telly Awards from the 30th Annual Telly Awards competition. Awarded by the Silver Telly Council, the Silver Telly is the highest honor that can be given. All three awards Howard, Merrell & Partners received were in recognition of work done for Georgia-Pacific Professional. Two entries – Mo Office and Mo Kitchen – created for enMotion® touchless towel dispensers, won in the Online Video/Humor category. The third entry, New Baby, is part of a Georgia-Pacific Professional brand campaign and won in the Online Video/Corporate Image category.
“These spots were all part of campaigns that have various parts and pieces,” said Billy Barnes, creative director at Howard, Merrell & Partners. “It’s nice to see them recognized individually, but we’re especially proud of how they work along with all the other campaign components like print, interactive, social media, trade show materials and collateral. It all has to work together.”
The Mo Office and Mo Kitchen videos are part of the Mo/enMotion campaign, which promotes the touchless towel dispensers. Mo embodies characteristics of the enMotion dispenser – Mo is efficient, cool, reliable, a team player and most of all, hygienic. Mo Office and Mo Kitchen were shot by director Michael Metcalf, with editing by Ian Krabacher at Serious Robots and sound design by Aaron Keane at Blazing Music & Sound.
The New Baby video, which tells the story of a little boy and his dad getting ready to go meet the boy’s newborn sister in the hospital, is part of the Somewhere/Somebody branding campaign for Georgia-Pacific Professional. New Baby was shot by director Mark Claywell, with editing done by Scott Roy at Serious Robots and music and sound done by Keane at Blazing Music & Sound.
About Telly Awards
The Telly Awards honors outstanding local, regional, and cable TV commercials and programs, the finest video and film productions, and online film and video. The Telly Awards annually showcases the best work for the most respected advertising agencies, production companies, television stations, cable operators, and corporate video departments in the world. The Telly Awards receives over 13,000 entries annually from all 50 states and 30 countries around the world.
Sewer Monster Invades Raleigh!
Well actually, as the N&O reports, it’s tiny organisms. But, it looks like something out of a b-rate horror flick. Let’s hope it stays out of our pipes.
The Truth About Scott's Favorite Pastime
As his close friends know, Scott is an avid camper. So to celebrate his love of setting up camp and just hanging out, he put this lovely ‘I [heart] Camping’ sticker on his truck. Or did he?
Get the truth after the break.
