The Buying Brain: Secrets for Selling to the Subconscious Mind (29 page)

Before it even gets there, though, your sense of smell is heightened as the yogurt approaches your face. Both your nasal cavity and your mouth receive the scent. Once inside, your mouth and tongue experience the flavor, texture, solid contents, and temperature of the yogurt, signaling your brain with the information that it is (1) delicious, (2) cool, (3) somewhat thick, (4) contains semifirm bits of an identifiable fruit, and (5) is OK to swallow, which you proceed to do.

And that concludes the typical yogurt consumption process—and therefore, by definition, our TCE.

There’s nothing new or surprising in this series of steps. As you read through them just now, your brain was recognizing them and registering nothing novel or worthy of extra special attention.

So where’s the special power and value of the TCE?

It’s hidden in the information above. But you won’t possibly guess it until I tell you what it is. Neither did our friends the Brand Manager, the Consumer Insights (CI) head honcho, or the rest of the brand P1: OTA/XYZ

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management and CI departments, along with the marketing group, sales staff, ad agency, supermarket chains that stock the brand, and on and on.

So, what would
you
guess would be the biggest, most prominent Neurological Iconic Signature embedded in the simple process and pleasure of consuming a container of fruit-laden yogurt? Would it be feeling that cool, slick surface of the plastic container? Sticking the spoon in? Maybe stirring up the fruit? (Hint: that’s usually the choice most people make when I pose this question.) Or actually tasting the yummy stuff itself?

Which one do you choose?

The correct answer is
none of the above.

Nope, the real standout Neurological Iconic Signature that arose, clearly and unmistakably out of the billions of bits of brainwave and biometric data that we collected in this study was . . . wait for it . . .

grasping and removing the foil covering over the top of the container
.

As it turns out, the brain loves that action and the multitude of sensations that it produces. Places it above all others in the hierarchy of subconscious preferences. Why, we can only conjecture. But there is no mistaking that something about the tactile, auditory, visual, and olfactory sensations involved in peeling off a foil barrier atop a container of yogurt brings the brain great satisfaction. Remember: it’s 100,000 years old. It knows what it likes, even if our conscious sense of our own brains can’t tell us what that is. And that is why we invented the TCE.

Spoon-Fed Surprises

We discovered some other surprises along the way in this particular test (as we do on many).

The client hadn’t specified which type of spoon to use in the TCE.

Truth be told, we hadn’t thought much about it in advance either. But, as we began the TCE sessions, we decided to test two different types of spoons, just to see if the brain would differentiate and rank one higher over another.

Sure enough, it did. Somewhat to our surprise, the
TCE turned
up plastic as the preferred utensil material, rather than metal.

Something about the texture; or perhaps that it was a warmer material than the yogurt (and warmer than the metal alternative); or maybe the light, matte color; or the slight but unmistakable flexibility of the plastic (
continued
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(
Continued
)

handle . . . honestly, we don’t know, nor can we query the brain to find out for sure.

All we know is that the brain loves fiddling with the foil . . . and prefers plastic over metal.

But if you’re the yogurt marketer managing a major brand, that’s
important and valuable
to know. Because that’s
actionable
information.

If I, Master Yogurt Marketer, know what the brain loves and prefers, I can apply that knowledge to my packaging, to my advertising, to my in-store displays and product demos . . . the list goes on. I have a fundamental competitive advantage, because I have detailed, scientifically proven, actionable steps that I can take to leverage that knowledge.

Fast forward: while I can’t disclose client trade secrets, I’ll just say that armed with those two key pieces of brainwave-based insight, our yogurt manufacturer is hard at work developing novel ways to leverage the foil-peeling experience. And exploring ways to signal to consumers that the plastic they prefer in their yogurt-spooning utensils is heard, understood, and answered.

I’ll add that our postresearch recommendations included specific ways in which the company can leverage their new NIS knowledge across their advertising, marketing, and retail activities.

We put the brain to work by asking what it likes—and then listening to the whispered answers that guide us to the truth about how best to package and sell something like yogurt.

Notes for the Practitioner:

1.
The TCE study is done for one product experience at a time.

2.
The TCE study can be done in two modes:
a. Self experience
—that is where each consumer goes through the entire experience himself or herself and we measure his or her brain throughout the continuum of the experience.

b. Observed experience
—that is where consumers watch a video of someone else going through the same consumption experience, and we capture their brains’ responses during this viewing.

3.
It is wise to perform a Deep Subconscious Response test on brand/

product attributes prior to the consumption experience and perform another deep subconscious study after the experience. This differential P1: OTA/XYZ

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enables us to track how experiencing the product transforms perceptions about the product. This helps companies determine the individual critical elements of the consumption experience and how each affect perceptions of the brand/product.

A company that exemplifies this superior grasp of consumers and their involvement and engagement with the actual product is Apple. In their retail outlets, you can find most Apple products readily available to be experienced firsthand by the consumer. All Apple computers are fully loaded with all software available for use. iPods and iPhones are present so their full functionality can be experienced. As consumers experience the product, any preconceived notions are dismissed and the brand attributes that Apple wants them to take away are reinforced.

New Product Launches—Innovation

What other roles does neuromarketing play in the product category? The answer is plenty. For many companies, new product introductions are a fresh source of oxygen. But the cost—in time, corporate resources, dollars, and sometimes reputation and brand image—can be substantial. The failure rate of new products in the marketplace is daunting.

Estimates hold that anywhere between 70 and 95 percent of all new products fail, depending on the category. Even skewing toward the low end of those figures, the picture is clear. Hundreds of billions of dollars are spent, and lost, on product launches that nosedive, leaving a wreckage of budgets, and sometimes careers, in their wake. One projection has it that just under half of all corporate resources dedicated to new product development and launch end up having been devoted to marketplace failures. Fewer than 10 percent of all new products and services survive their three-year birthday.

The obvious thing to ask is, couldn’t that money be better and more wisely spent?

Of course, corporations plan for some failure; they have to. It is in the nature of new product introductions that some will miss the mark, for a wide variety of reasons, some of which are beyond the control of their creators. But that said, it is a brutally expensive experiment. The good news is it doesn’t have to be.

New Product Effectiveness Framework

While no one can guarantee 100 percent likelihood of success in this sec-tor, neurological testing can improve the success rate considerably. It enables P1: OTA/XYZ

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companies to understand in advance, before major sums are expended, several key elements of the new product experience:

r How consumers will respond to a new product
concept
r How they will react to the product’s
formulation or function
r How they will process the proposed
positioning
for the product r Whether the
packaging design
will trigger the critical NeuroMetrics of attention, emotional engagement, and memory retention r How the product will stand up against the current competition in the real-world
retail environment

r How consumers will connect and value
new product extensions
against the existing
brand

r Which
features
consumers value most highly, and which the least r Which
bundles of features
will carry the highest valuation in consumers’ minds

r Which new product
names
will trigger the strongest subconscious response

r Which
price point
will strike the elusive but prized “sweet spot” in buyers’ brains

All these and many more questions can be answered simply by asking the brain and listening to its replies. Gaining that knowledge in any one of these categories can
reduce risk;
enhance the chances, even the likelihood, of marketplace success; and improve the ROI on new product launches.

We utilize neurological testing to determine the effectiveness of various innovation concepts. But, the power of the method is that, as we continually analyze brain responses, even if the concept at the overall level is not particularly effective, we can tease out the pieces of a concept that had high levels of effectiveness. This allows us to salvage the high points of a concept even if the overall concept did not resonate with consumers. This also allows us to combine the high points of various concepts and create newer, much more effective variants and hybrids. Quite literally, we involve the consumer’s subconscious to help design the final concept, thereby ensuring in advance the strongest likelihood that it will be embraced by that same subconscious when it actually reaches the marketplace.

There are two methodologies we use here: the first is creating a neuroscientific version of the traditional test. The way that the concept is positioned and shared with the consumer follows the accepted product innovation framework.

We gather NeuroMetrics for every element of this framework as it is being presented to the consumer.

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The methodology is that every concept is represented through the following core elements:

1.
Name with Headline (2–5 words): the name of the concept with a few words that form the core headline associated with it.

2.
Consumer Insight (2 sentences, 3–8 seconds/sentence—basic human truth): this represents a basic human truth, desire, or need that arises from a deep understanding of human nature.

3.
Consumer Benefit that supported the Consumer Insight (1–2 sentences, 8 seconds/sentence—what the product brings to the consumer that fulfills the insight): the consumer benefit is more than the provision of the desired function, but it is also the satisfaction of a deeply felt social and emotional need.

4.
Product Descriptions to reinforce the Consumer Benefit: the product description is a statement of the value proposition and the proof points that confirm it.

The second methodology adopts a slightly different view of how a concept might be presented. Based on our studies of how people recall products and services, we found a hierarchy of how a product or service is naturally experienced:

1. With whom
the product or service was experienced
2. Where
the product or service was experienced
3.
What was the
occasion
of the product or service being experienced?

4.
Salient
attributes
of the product or services With this hierarchy in mind we created a description of the product or service that would follow suit with the following scenario: imagine you are with [blank] at this beautiful place [blank] on the occasion of your [blank]

enjoying an experience that [1, 2, 3 attributes of the product or service].

We have found that creating these social/spatial/emotional landscapes is a prerequisite to stating the purported functions and benefits of the product.

The product lives in an ecosystem dominated by people, places, and feelings.

Providing those contexts is necessary for evaluating the inventiveness and innovation associated with the product.

In either methodology, the innovation concept is created as a radio ad and the consumer listens to the verbalization of that concept. Brain responses are continuously recorded and the features or descriptions of the product that generate the greatest levels of Attention, Emotional Engagement, Memory, P1: OTA/XYZ

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Purchase Intent, Awareness, Novelty, and Overall Effectiveness are highlighted.