Is your brand a few bars short of a symphony?

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How music and sound can help to capture the hearts of more customers

Is your brand fit for the fight? Of course it is.

I bet your mission, vision and values are all nailed, glued and velcroed down and that your brand promise will never ever be broken. I’m equally sure that key tints of the colour palette are in place, there’s a crystal-clear tone of voice and an x-height demilitarised zone around the logo. (I’m guessing it sits in a corner and is never reversed out of a full-colour image. Right?)

All good so far. But can you describe to yourself, your colleagues, and your customers what your brand actually sounds like?

If not, why?

Visual consistency and tonally-compliant writing are your table stakes – critical yet necessary.

However, marketers looking to make meaningful connections know that well-developed sonic attributes can help their brand perform at its brilliant best.

Beethoven’s Dopamine Symphony

The last two decades have given us endless sonic brand triggers and a plethora of brand sound designs wide enough to make Phil Spector’s wig spin.

But research has proven that hearing songs that we like triggers a dopamine release. And, as we all know, dopamine = pleasure. But, interestingly, even the anticipation of hearing likeable songs, or upcoming parts of songs, is enough to release dopamine in some people.

Beethoven, it’s reckoned, used anticipation expertly in many of his scores. He would define the tonic chord, then never actually play complete versions of the tonic until the very end…finally fulfilling audiences’ expectations and letting loose a commensurate deluge of dopamine in the run-up.

Clever huh?

Now, imagine a pleasurable song happened to be your brand’s sound. Suddenly, you’re engaging with customers on a very different, multi-sensory level. You’re making them happy. They want to hear from you. They feel positive about your brand. So they’re more likely to tell others. What’s not to like?

But wait. It gets even better.

There is solid evidence that music can actually change the type of attention we are paying to the world around us. Iain McGilchrist (author of The Master and his Emissary) proposes that listening to music in a major key, or with a simple rhythm, tends to attract the narrow-focused attention that we use our left brain to generate. Conversely, McGilchrist argues that minor key songs, or those with a more complex time signature, tend to attract the more open attention of the right brain.

Could bespoke deliver an even better ROI?

Music is beautifully abstract, yet very powerful. It’s pure escapism, guiding emotions effortlessly through major and minor tones. And it’s memorable. Why else would we claim to suffer from ‘earworms’ or use phrases like “the soundtrack of my life/year/day”?

In practical terms, music and sound can make a congress experience more memorable; they can help an e-detail or other face-to-face sales piece create a more vivid experience by supporting the tone of the piece as the story develops.

Four watchouts when creating sonic branding

Creating the right sonic landscape for your brand could be the best commercial commitment you make this year. But it’s wise to beware the pitfalls. Wary treading is essential, as is the need to follow these recommendations:

  1. Commit to making sound an integral part of your brand’s architecture and devote concerted energy to getting it absolutely right.
  2. Determine the role(s) that sound will play in your brand’s presence – do you need it to support content, help lead the conversation, introduce innovations?
  3. Think carefully about the character of your brand and decide how best to reflect this in a brief.
  4. Diversify the talent you involve in your brand’s sound creation. Don’t be afraid to mix creatives, planners, colleagues, and music professionals.

If you need any further help, my Bontempi organ is plugged in and ready to go! You hum it, I’ll play it.

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Got a technology question? Steve Jobs still has the answer.

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A client recently asked us for our opinion on which technology software solutions could best support the creation of customer journey mapping within their company.

It reminded me of a famous Steve Jobs YouTube clip from the 1997 Apple worldwide developer conference. There he was, in his trademark black polo neck, perched casually on a bar stool, taking questions from the floor. There’s a good chance you might have seen it too as it’s been watched by millions of people.

One man in the audience stood up and says: “Mr. Jobs; you are a bright and influential man” (so far so good) but then he added, “…it’s sad and clear that, on several counts, you don’t know what you are talking about. I would like you, to express in clear terms, how say, Java addresses the ideas embodied in OpenDoc…”

Essentially, what this man was saying to Steve Jobs was: “you don’t understand the technology”. His answer to the challenge was: “You’ve got to start with customer experience and work backwards to the technology. You can’t start with the technology.” And everyone knows how well Apple grew under Steve Jobs.

And this is perhaps the best answer to any question that starts with “Which technology can help us with…?” We are often involved in meetings where it becomes clear that there’s a belief, a hope, that technology might answer a bigger strategic need. But that’s a dangerous place to be. The only way to effectively answer the “which technology…” questions is to first ask “what are the needs we are trying to meet – and what is the customer / user experience that we are trying to create?”.

At wethepeople, we believe that understanding people, and how they behave, must always come first. We build marketing strategies and campaigns using techniques based on how our minds have evolved to function. If you are interested in how wethepeople can accelerate the effectiveness of your marketing activity, and indeed help you to answer the big technology questions, then get in touch.

We just need to know one more thing…

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Ever seen a boss, a colleague or (heaven forbid) yourself behave in a way that, however seemingly rational, is incredibly obstructive? Before they’ll approve or support a project, there is always one more fact they need.

Chances are that they are in the grip of a cognitive bias called the “information bias”. This is what drives us to look for information about a situation long past the point that this information has any bearing on the decision being made. Worse still, if you play along hoping that you’ll eventually get what you need, you could be stuck there until you get to a point where the question can’t be answered and they’ll never approve it.

This was illustrated best by Baron, Beattie and Hershey (organizational behaviour and human decision processes 42,88-110 (1988)) in their fictitious diseases diagnostic problem. In essence, a patient presents with symptoms suggestive of one of three conditions, one of which, globoma, at a probability of 80%. There is a test, the ET scan, which would certainly rule in or out the other two diagnoses but would give a 50/50 for globoma.

In spite of the fact that the probability of the patient having globoma (80%) was unchanged before and after the ET scan, and the patient should be treated for globoma irrespective of the result, a small but significant number of subjects insisted on the test before treatment.

For these subjects it took a significant amount of questioning about the usefulness of the test before they realised their mistake.

When faced with this situation, it’s probably best to approach the person after the meeting (it’s always in a meeting, right?) and ask specific questions about what and how the extra information will change the decision. Otherwise, when you spend precious time and resources getting the answer to this question, the chances are there will be another.

Trying to influence someone?
Offer them lunch or ask for a favour?

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If you are stuck with an approach strategy to a particular person or group of people, it may be worth stopping thinking about what you can do for them, and think of what they can do for you.

When creating customer strategy, we often focus on changing attitudes or beliefs. Even though it’s often more effective to ask them do something for us, even in groups who may be less than receptive to our approaches.

The question in the headline may seem like a stupid one with a pretty obvious answer. But, as with many things involving human beings, the most likely answer is pretty surprising. There is a behavioural bias at work here which makes asking a favour more likely to be successful.

Asking someone, who you’d like to create a positive impression with, to do you a favour probably seems a bit strange, even counter-intuitive. But there is a good psychological basis for doing just that. There is a great deal of evidence that supports the idea that doing favours for people disposes us more positively to them and makes us more likely to do them another favour.

A simple example from a B2B perspective would be sending your “targets” an article you wrote and ask their opinion prior to your first meeting. Or you could ask them to contribute to your thinking by sharing what they believe to be important new products, trends etc. arising in the market. The important thing is that you are asking personally. Asking favours like these have a very low barrier to fulfilment (people love sharing what they think) and are likely to be more successful than asking if you can borrow their Aston Martin for the weekend.

The “Ben Franklin effect” posits that a person who has already done you a favour is more likely to do you another than someone for whom you have done a favour. He described it as an old maxim in his autobiography: “He that has once done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another, than he whom you yourself have obliged.” He then also described how he had practically used this maxim on a hostile rival in the 18th century Pennsylvania Legislature.

“Having heard that he had in his library a certain very scarce and curious book, I wrote a note to him, expressing my desire of perusing that book, and requesting he would do me the favour of lending it to me for a few days. He sent it immediately, and I return’d it in about a week with another note, expressing strongly my sense of the favour. When we next met in the House, he spoke to me (which he had never done before), and with great civility; and he ever after manifested a readiness to serve me on all occasions, so that we became great friends, and our friendship continued to his death”.

This effect is connected to cognitive dissonance. We try to avoid conflicts between what we do and what we believe. In this instance, the behaviour drives the belief: “I did that person a favour, so obviously I must like them”.

It’s useful to know in many situations. Who wouldn’t want a new customer, your boss, or a key opinion former feeling positive about you? As a strategy for dealing with people who may be less well disposed to you, asking them to do something for you that may help you solve their issue is particularly powerful.

Why apps that fail to reward ultimately end up failing

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I was in a client meeting the other day when I was asked a very blunt question. We were talking about behaviour change, gamification and apps. His question was simple. “Why do many apps, gamified or not, suck and fail?”

From a fail point of view, probably the main cause of failure is that no one ever sees them. All the money went on dev with nothing left for promotion, the cause of death for many an app.

The second reason is that the usage opportunities are so narrow there’s little point in having an app. Staying at a hotel chain the other day I was invited to download their app “to chat live with a host”. Really? I can’t just ring room service or talk to the concierge? I’m sure that it does other stuff but if this is their lead functionality, unless I am mainlining this chain’s loyalty programme, that download is never going to happen.

These two are pretty obvious, as are their solution. Don’t spend all the cash on dev, have a plan to promote your app. Don’t develop an app that only you need…

Another fail is the experience itself. This is more subtle…

The experience, particularly in health, may well not be all fun but could be challenging, interesting or even plain hard work at times. The key is that it must be rewarding. This too is a concept clearly understood by the mobile gaming industry. Many games contain an element of the “grind”. This is when, at points during the game, you have to carry out repetitive tasks in order to achieve a better level/equipment/skills which allows more interesting stuff to happen.

The way that this is handled should be of enormous interest to anyone wanting to harness gamification techniques to drive behaviour change. It is well documented that our brains release dopamine – a key reward neurotransmitter – both when we get a reward and/or achieve an objective and in anticipation of that reward or achievement.

It’s easy to see how this could work from a health behaviour change perspective. Starting with simple day-to-day objectives and tiny changes which are rewarded, then building harder to complete multiple missions around diet, smoking, activity, health education etc. with each carrying increasing perceived rewards. The piece about perceived rewards is key. The rewards experienced via dopamine can be triggered virtually as effectively as in reality.  This explains why so many millions of hours have been eaten by Candy Crush Saga™…

So the three main answers to my client’s question are as follows:

  1. they’re invisible
  2. they’re not useful
  3. they’re not rewarding

You might just survive getting one wrong (as long as it’s not the first one) but good luck surviving two!

 

The Fall and Rise of Useful Advertising

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Remember when programmatic was going to effortlessly turn DDA (digital display advertising) into a push-button instant revenue generator for clients, agencies and media owners alike? As we all know, this prophecy hasn’t quite turned out as many would have hoped. But fear not. As Joe Hoyle explains, the digital world is well-served by opportunities to fulfil everyone’s and every brand’s qualities and ambitions.

Programmatic tools were widely deemed to be the promised land for digital display advertising (at least that’s what the media industry wanted us to believe).

However, it didn’t count on the power of consumers to deploy their own new set of powerful tools, effectively enabling them to ’cock a snook’ at the advertisers and their agencies who were producing a glut of ubiquitous, lazy creative that followed them around the web like a bad smell.

And it’s a real shame, because brands can most certainly advertise, entertain and sell products and services, whilst still delivering useful customer experience as added value that will engage the audience.

Back in 2008, online display advertising was starting to get really interesting – both technologically and creatively. There was an opportunity to start delivering real, tangible super-rich customer experiences inside new, larger-format display units that could be targeted to specific users and even personalised in terms of their content. In parallel, programmatic media buying was gathering pace.

Things were looking up for advertisers. They were about to be armed with tools that would allow them to buy media on the fly at much better value, target more accurately and progressively re-message to encourage consumers further into the purchase funnel. We were even starting to look at producing commerce-enabled campaigns.

A step back

However, things didn’t go exactly to plan. It quickly became obvious that the new media technologies couldn’t serve or interrogate the more advanced and intelligent creative that was being produced. As a result, the industry ditched creative innovation in favour of simply following the media money until advertisers became disgruntled with the return to basic creative messaging and a meaningless 0.01% CTR.

The stark legacy of this practise is an industry that has clearly become more and more inward-looking over the last few years. Also, it has completely disregarded the audience and, in turn, its clients’ needs. What it also precipitated was a general widening in the gap between the creative and planning departments.

An integrated approach

So what’s the answer to this? First and foremost, we need to adopt a completely new creative approach to digital advertising… one that intelligently combines all tools at the disposal of creatives and planners and encourages them to work more closely to realise digital’s true potential. Hopefully, campaigns will then become much more integrated, using a combination of channels and mobile devices as a enablers rather than standalone channels.

Putting users first for Vodafone McLaren Mercedes

In our experience, the best results come when campaigns put users’ needs at the forefront of the strategic planning phase.

When the Vodafone McLaren Mercedes F1 team approached us a few years ago, they initially wanted us to stream a selection of HD videos inside our proprietary display unit. They wanted to create a distributable channel inside a media unit that could be seeded in paid media and blogs then shared across fledgling social media and earned, free media.

This was all well and good (not to mention also being a media first) but something was missing. We felt that the audience we were targeting would be more engaged with another data set that was available. So, we set about taking the difficult steps to persuade the racing team to provide is with the live telemetry from the two McLaren cars of Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button. And it worked.

Over an extended campaign of four years using essentially the same unit with updated functionality and content – much like an app these days – we delivered 10% interaction rates and astounding 32-minute interaction time during practice, qualifying and race sessions.

Lessons we’d all do well to learn

There are several key take-outs from our work for Vodafone Maclaren Mercedes, and subsequent campaigns that still ring true.

First, campaigns don’t just have to advertise, they have to engage and fulfil.

In the campaign for Vodafone Maclaren Mercedes,  the content channel was as critical as the content itself. As someone once said, “if no-one can hear you scream, you may as well whisper for help!”.

Secondly, programmatic and fast-pace retargeting deliver highly-sought efficiencies for clients and their brands – the real challenge is to reignite a passion for innovative and successful advertising that engages within this landscape.

Finally, and possibly most importantly, people – be they customers or marketers – will always find a way around limitations. The best way to make this work is to collaborate, co-create and re-imagine together.

Read the full Vodafone McLaren Mercedes case study

Helping the right brain lead the way in research

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For a creative person, research can be equally invigorating and frustrating.

Once, we would sit (relatively) powerless behind the glass as our target market merrily ripped our ideas to shreds. Or, rightly, praised them to the heavens. Or, worst of all, didn’t care either way.

Now we can watch from the comfort of home or office as the trial-by-focus-group unfolds.

And a trial it frequently is.

 

A clear winner? Or something everyone dislikes the least?

I’ve long-disliked traditional research for the same reasons that I’ve long-discouraged creative teams from relying solely on brainstorming to generate concepts.

Personalities, time constraints, lack of ownership and unnatural surroundings can encourage people to agree on something everyone just dislikes the least. Then they trot back to what they were doing before, pleased with a part well played and a deadline met.

 

Research needn’t be the preserve of the left brain

I understand why interviewees react the way they do in group research. Few people want to be the voice of dissent or look foolish for thinking differently.

Also, research tends to give the left brain, with all its conventions and rational expectations, a clear run-in on goal. This is odd, as it isn’t even this part of the brain that initially reacts to the finished product. But it helps explain why some good ideas bite the dust early.

The left brain, as we know, will over-rationalise information by deploying preconceptions and experiences which are familiar to it. So anything new risks being rejected.

However, there’s a lot that we (creative agencies, researchers and clients) can do to overcome this, and also to make research much more valuable.

 

Three steps to better research pay-back

 

Step 1: Give the right brain a voice in the room

The right side of the brain notices new stuff – such as fresh ideas and communications – then directs the narrow focus of the left brain toward it. So we must promote its involvement in research.

However, research environments tend to discourage ‘newness’. Their taupe walls and pastel prints create a palpable sense of sterility and falseness.

So why not research in different places? Perhaps somewhere that’s relevant to the topic being researched. Or at least create a more motivating and visual environment.

Get people out of their seats. Ask them to physically move between ideas they, personally, align to – not which ones they’re guessing they ought to like – discussing them as they go.

Finally, maximise this valuable time. Pick interviewees’ brains. Explore their hopes, fears and proclivities. Ask their thoughts. Suggest propositions. Talk to them about conceptual territories.

All of this will bring the empathetic, more understanding, right brain into play.

 

Step 2: Don’t expect people to be superheroes

I once attended research for a healthcare campaign where doctors were asked a Columbo-esque one last question: “if you could change the headline, what would you have it say?”. My mouthful of Earl Grey nearly shot out of my ears.

It’s like asking me how I would remove an appendix. Sure, I could have a look on YouTube before sharpening the scalpel but I’m certain it wouldn’t end well. The same applies to doctors and headlines.

It’s one thing to take people out of their comfort zones; it’s quite another to waste clients’ budget by asking them to perform a task they’re ill-equipped for.

 

Step 3: Bring research up in the mix

Let’s stop conducting creative research after the world and its dog has input their inputs and moved the logo a millimetre.

Get people in early. Mine their minds for thoughts. Suggest routes. People are happy to share insights if they believe we’re interested in what they think. As humans we’re all programmed to respond in kind to perceived empathy and understanding.

You’ll find it pays dividends in terms of the ideas we eventually create and the tactics which spin out of them. These can then go back into research for the right reasons – validation.

Oh, and make sure there are plenty biscuits for the creative teams. And a darkened room to lie down in afterwards just in case.

 

Patrick Norrie heads up Creative Direction at wethepeople. He started out as a copywriter, and has lead the creative line at leading agencies on a host of well-known brands.

Applying neuroscience to improve your marketing effectiveness – No.1 Gamification v Gaming

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Gamification: are you making this fundamental error?

Confusing gamification with gaming is a classic marketing error. But recognising the differences between the two, and the neuroscience that underpins them, could be your first step to using gamification to your advantage.

It’s funny how often gamification and games are still mixed up. It happened in one of our client meetings recently. It’s particularly interesting as the definition of gamification is “the application of game principles in a non-game environment”.

It comes from the gaming industry’s expertise in the harnessing of principles that use the reward centres in the brain to make what is, in many cases, an extremely repetitive activity interesting enough that people will actually pay to continue doing it. By any measure, this is a high level of engagement.

This has been necessitated by the move away from highly immersive, high development cost games played by expert gamers on dedicated platforms to more or less repetitive games with limited immersive content played by non experts on mobile devices. Tellingly, many of the masters of the former are not the major players in the latter.
It should already be pretty clear why this should be an exciting area for the healthcare industry. What could be better than substituting immediate rewards for, what are often, repetitive activities whose actual rewards lie in some far off future? The principles are applicable in many situations from rewarding positive adherence behaviour to more interesting medical education approaches.

We’ve seen how these principles have already become well harnessed in many fitness apps. They’re starting to emerge in smoking cessation apps too. However, the truth remains that their adoption has been limited in mainstream pharma as they are often seen not to be serious enough. But that’s a classic example of people confusing games with gamification, which is where we started.

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