"Mind control" has always been the aim of advertising, to convince you, the consumer, that you need a certain product to fulfill your life and generate true happiness, and only XYZ brand is the one capable of supplying said life-fulfilling happiness. In generations past it was the "Mad Man" through his/her "uncanny" understanding of human nature with huge dollops of creativity that designed these "mind controlling" ads that convinced you to buy that XYZ brand and make it your own. Ah, for the good-old days.
Not anymore. Now we have real mind control. All the rage in Europe is something called "neuromarketing" that uses various mental testing techniques to "look inside your brain" (quite literally) to understand what makes you, the consumer, pull out your credit cards. Once focus groups and market testing measured the effectiveness of an ad, but such "old tech" has been replaced by state-of-the-art technologies such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), magneto-encephalography, and more conventional electroencephalograms (EEGs) to observe which areas of the brain "light up" when test subjects view, hear, or even smell products or promotions. (I told you we are getting inside your brain!)
Using this process Unilever has discovered that ice cream provokes even greater visceral pleasure than eating chocolate or yogurt. (I could have saved them a lot of money and time and told them that.)
Christian Dior used this technique to test a campaign for the perfume J'Adore featuring Charlize Theron, which turned out to be one of their most successful launches ever. (I would think Charlize Theron could even sell ice to Eskimos!)
Package Design Magazine had a very good article by David Lemley of Lemley Design on the design process in their June 2007 issue. It was an excellent treatment of how the process ought to work.
Lemley's point is the designer must become like a Method actor and "become the product", embodying the brand identity and personality in the design, that is understand it so well he can deliver a "performance" (design) that is believable. When this is allowed to happen, the resulting design is a winner for the brand.
What is the largest single demographic (26% of the US population in 2007)? Which demo is sitting on $2 trillion in spending power? Which demo has the most disposable income? Which demo has a poverty rate lower than any other demo? Which demo currently owns 80% of the financial assets in the US?
If you answered the "baby boomers" to all of the above questions you would be a winner. Then why are "we" so underrepresented in TV shows and commercials? Why does it seem everyone is targeting a much younger (and less affluent) market?
I believe it was the movie Jerry Maguire where Rod Tidwell (Cuba Gooding, Jr.), the professional athlete, tells his agent Jerry Maguire (Tom Cruise), "Show me the money!" I just did.
Here are some links to boomer sites you might find useful.
If you have been following the AMC series "Mad Men" like I have, it would seem that the show is having an impact on advertising - today.
I found an article on Ad Rants about the new Canadian Club ad campaign that makes zero apologies for "the way we were". Is this the future of spirits advertising, where we bring back the sixties?
UPDATE - 24 Oct
Ad Age has an article on this same campaign with a bit more information. They are saying Beam embraces "timeless masculinity". Well, I guess you could spin it that way.
Since conventional media fragmented in the seventies, marketers of packaged goods products have been looking for a mass-reach media to speak to their customers. Some recent research is suggesting that Search may fill that void.
Conventional wisdom says consumers will search online for big ticket items like cars, televisions, or washing machines but they will not for packaged goods. But a study recently released by ComScore defies these long-cherished beliefs and suggests that people do indeed go online and search package goods products and go to their websites. Interestingly, packaged goods marketers continue to under-spend many other industries in this medium.
The study also suggests that more females than males are using search to find packaged goods products online and information about them, and they tend to be better educated, have higher incomes, and spend more in the category.
That is a pretty big number to get one's head around, but conventional wisdom and some research support it. But is it true? Frankly, I think that 70% number needs to be qualified and placed in a context.
There is no question a final decision what to buy is often made in the store, but - BIG BUT - I believe there is much that fed, supported, and facilitated that decision, and most of that feeding, supporting, and facilitating took place before the consumer even entered the POS. Consumers buy the products they know and trust. That trust often comes as a result of being exposed to promotional messages about the product, and that usually means some form of advertising, be it traditional, new media, word-of-mouth, or PR.
When the consumer gets in the store and is faced with an array of products to choose from, they will choose the brand they feel at least some minimal level of comfort with. That comfort (or trust) must be based on something. It may be based on having seen advertising on the product, which gives it credibility, or it may be because someone they trust has used the product and vouched for it. They have somehow somewhere been exposed to a promotional message about the product. I believe it is rare that a purchase decision is made in the store without the consumer having some level of familiarity with the brand.
In the absence of previous exposure to a brand message, is it possible to make the sale at the POS? Yes, it is, but much harder, and it must be done in an extremely efficient manner, because the POS environment, by nature, does not generally allow for complicated brand-building efforts. In-store promotions are good at supporting other brand building efforts, but less effective as the only brand-building effort. If you expect to only promote your brand in the store, you should also expect be outsold by your competitors who build their brands outside the store.
New term but not a new idea. It is however an idea that is underutilized. Seventy percent of purchase decisions are made in the store, at least that is what conventional wisdom says. But only 6% of advertising budgets are allocated to in-store marketing. We have a disconnect!
The problem is there aren't many advertising mediums for use in stores. Oh, we do have shelf talkers, banners, and floor graphics, but is there more that can be done to be more effective promoting your products at the point of sale? This article suggests there might be, at least we ought to be looking for ways to better take advantage of that 70% in-store-decision number.
