BrainJuicer Keynote

The keynote this morning was centered around creating outstanding engagement and winning customer’s hearts and was brought to us by Bill Ratcliffe from BrainJuicer, a consumer-focused research firm.

While the talk was a little scattered, it was good.  They’re all about “feel.”  And for me, this is something that really resonates.  I’m very much a “feel” person.  I decide many things, in and out of work, based on “feel.”  So, these guys center their research around emotion and at the end of the day, want the customer to leave with a “little gift,” feeling happy (as we all do.)  This was just an interesting way to look at research and then think about how it could be applied to create the best content for the best channel.

In these days, getting attention, much less engagement, is very difficult.

Within the industry, we think of pushing out information (talks to the brain), providing some form of entertainment (talks to the heart), or transactions (talks to both).  Consumers really know when you’ve hit the mark.  When they feel an emotional reaction, they talk to other people.  How do we become part of that conversation?

Where we’re going with this was best summarized by James Brown – “I feel good!”  Emotions drive our motivations and our decisions – we think less than we think we think.

We move too quickly (in mkt research), we look too quickly to “evaluating” things, not particularly audience emotions.

People know when it works – they just feel it.  But why is it that we never ask people how they’re feeling?

If you win hearts, you’ll make money.  Just ask Apple.  You can have the same measure of effect and greater efficiency by really tapping into emotional response.

Key message ads – one piece of advertising looks a lot like the other – falling within existing expectations, your content/creative won’t stand out.

How do we know if we are winning hearts?

Paul Ekman – did a lot of work universally recognized facial expressions – ID’d 7 emotions – sadness, fear, disgust, anger, contempt, surprise, happiness.  These guys (BrainJuicer) added another expression – neutral – no reaction.  They put all of these together in an emotion wheel (actually 12 different types of happiness) .  Then, they ask people how they feel.  Their formula – “Which of these faces best describes the way you feel?”  And “How intensely?” And then “What triggered these emotions?”

He showed a 1:30 ad with a gorilla, playing drums – to Phil Collins “In the Air Tonight” – was by Cadbury – on an emotional scale, this is one of the top performing ads, but from a marketers key message POV, didn’t score high.  It was a gift, not a “selling” ad – they went out and bought the product, sales rose and sustained before Kraft bought the company (“of course.”)  The thing that really works is not going into something that’s way out there that will put people off  – you want to create a little bit of surprise and then leave them happy.

You can go for the “same ol” or you can go for “crazy new” – we’re starting to see more going to “crazy new” – this is good.

Questions:

Any books that you can recommend on topic?  Wisdom of the Crowds, Pow – Right Between the Eyes

Real-time facial recognition implementation into these?  This would require high powered analytics behind the scene.  Could be in the future, we wouldn’t have to ask.  But we would have to ask the drivers.

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