Experiential marketing neuromarketing: Get acquainted with the brain

Gordon Pincott Admap July/August 2011

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Experiential marketing neuromarketing: Get acquainted with the brain Gordon Pincott Admap July/August 2011

Experiential marketing neuromarketing: Get acquainted with the brain

Gordon Pincott Millward Brown The brain's mirror neurons trigger the need to experience an action. Understanding of this finding should be applied to all forms of marketing. Strong brands could be forgiven for resting on their laurels. They have the distribution, shelf space, understanding of what works for them in pricing, packaging and communications. But more than this, they have inertia. People use shortcuts, or heuristics, to buy brands, and two of these are very common. Buy the lastdescribes the scenario where you bought a brand and it worked well, so you buy it again. Buy the most populardescribes the situation when you are making a new choice and a safe decision is to buy the same as other people are buying. Perceived popularity is a powerful sustaining force. But what if you are not a dominant brand, but an aspiring brand fighting for shelf and mind space? You have to have a clear and persuasive argument that you are different (and, by implication, better). An analysis of 60,000 brand observations suggests that the most powerful thing you can do to drive future sales is to offer people a different experience articulated by the product or service itself. Growth is driven by framing and presenting the brand experience to consumers in a way that engages them and gives them a reason why they should buy this brand, rather than the one they always bought or the most popular brand in the category. You need to be perceived as different and how this plays out with your price position in the market will have a major bearing on your success (Figure 1).

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A list of the brands in our database that have grown their equity most powerfully include Apple iPhone, Nintendo Wii, Singapore Airlines, Hugo Boss, Paul Smith, Emirates, Ikea, BlackBerry, ING Direct, Red Bull and Subway. For many of us, these will be easy brands to bring to mind, to understand how they are different and the experience they offer without the need to spell it out. This is another key principle of heuristics: make it easy to take a decision that involves the least amount of brainpower. By offering a different experience, you can take advantage of the way people make decisions. This is, of course, not just about emerging brands. Big brands became big because they, too, offered a different experience. Coke may now be differentiated on the basis of its platform of optimism and happiness, but it has always had a unique formula and taste. Think about McDonald's, Pampers, Guinness, Harley Davidson and BMW. They all have competitors, but they are clearly distinguished from the competition. These brands did not get here by accident. Every brand needs to understand objectively both the quality of the experience they offer, and how that stacks up with competitive brands. They then need to articulate clearly the points of difference that can then be the platform for marketing and innovation to reach out to those people who have not directly experienced the offer. New, extrinsic experiences can then be built beyond the product offer which, nevertheless, directly relate to the core of the brand. Experiential marketing is a term used to refer to field marketing, stunts and local activations that distribute or dramatise the brand to very small numbers of people. Sometimes it involves tacking the brand name onto an experience that does not in any way emanate from the brand. Taking a select group of consumers to a Grand Prix where you are the sponsor would count as an experience, but hardly one that is intrinsic to the brand. The strongest brands use marketing to take their intrinsic experience to market, and this is particularly important if the brand is looking to grow in markets where it might not be the dominant player. Take the famous Blendtec YouTube campaign (98 videos at the last count). It was a campaign that thrust a small US company into the global limelight with corresponding increases in its sales. It is much talked about because it all happened through social media channels, but the bottom line is that it is a fantastic product demonstration campaign it effortlessly blends any ingredient you are likely to want to put into a $500 machine (90 of the videos include a do not try this at homewarning). Another visible way in which many brands have brought their experience to market has been to create their own retail spaces. One element of the Apple brand is about the design of the products and the coolness that engenders. The Apple stores embody those aspects of the brand while making it easy for people to physically engage with the products themselves. The stores suitably reflect the brand experience, but their role is still primarily to highlight (and sell) the products. Apple has
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adapted its style to many different retail environments, from new build through to existing listed buildings in London and Paris. Many other brands have followed this route, from AT&T and Nike to Samsung and Levi's.

PROPOSITION AS EXPERIENCE
Red Bull has identified the lift that the brand gives you as the key focus of everything they do. The creative concept of Red Bull gives you wingsis amusingly addressed in the TV ads, but it is more directly translated into its support for hang-gliding and kiteboarding events, as well as its Formula 1 presence. Red Bull has created its own events to bring its proposition to life, such as the FlugTag, where contestants compete to fly, using home-made machines. We know that the richer the experience brands deliver to people, the stronger brand loyalty can be. Brands that are associated with more senses generate more loyalty. These kind of events bring a richer range of sensual iconography to the brand. TV ads might not be considered in the domain of experiential marketing, but some of the more recent findings from neuroscience suggest they should be. The discovery of mirror neurons highlights a facet of the way our brains work that explains some of the power of communications. When we decide we want to take a drink, we fire up parts of our brain to take the necessary actions to achieve that. But a subset of these neurons also fire up when we see someone else taking a drink. They don't all fire because otherwise we would think that we were having a drink, which would be very confusing. This subset is called mirror neurons. The theory is that they evolved as we needed to develop our social skills. In order to relate to others of our species, we need to empathise with what they do, to understand their point of view. The mirror neurons help us to do that. But that also makes consumption imagery in advertising potent if it is done in the right way. If we see someone drinking an icecold can of Coke, there is an extent to which we experience that with the person who is actually drinking (even if that person is in an ad). Consumption scenarios teach us the narrative of the product. Next time we feel the need for a drink, the same Cokeinspired neurons are firing up a narrative that has Coke associated with it. Clearly, this does not mean that every ad needs a product sequence, and it does not mean that a dull product demo ad is going to be effective. The ads still have to engage us and be credible and personally relevant otherwise our conscious brain will tag the narrative negatively, undermining any of the inherent power it might have had. It is no surprise that more and more research money is going into evaluating communications using biometric techniques alongside traditional surveys. There are powerful mechanisms at work that are not always easy for people to articulate.

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When we see someone drinking a can of Coke, mirror neurons mean we partially share the experience Experiential marketing is not some minor byway in the marketing landscape. It should be at the heart of the marketing endeavour. Marketing is critical in making sure that you are experienced meaning that the essential experience you offer is being brought to as many of your audience as possible in the most engaging way. But this also means the brands that are clearest about the differentiated experience they offer will be capable of producing more effective marketing campaigns of all kinds. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Gordon Pincott is chairman, global solutions, Millward Brown. For over 25 years, he has been actively involved in the strategic planning and research evaluation of brands and communications. gordon.pincott@millwardbrown.com

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