The Singapore Marketer (Jul-Sep 2017)

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USING NEUROMARKETING to Influence Customers

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08 Five Clever Ways Companies Are Using Neuromarketing To Influence Customers 12 Test Examples of Neuromarketing and how they can work for you The Official Publication of the Marketing Institute of Singapore, the National Body for Sales and Marketing

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Editor’s Note Dear Readers I am certain on many occasions, you might have been entertained with a soothing, yet compelling piece of music on a website or in a showroom and unknowingly spent more time than you had originally planned? Passed by a store with specially emitted scent, perhaps banana bread and have the impulse of buying a loaf? Visited websites making abundant use of the colour red? If you have had encountered any of these, you are exposed to Neuromarketing.

THE SINGAPORE MARKETER

July - September 2017

Editor Mickey Hee Contributing Writers Daniel Heerkens, Jacky Tan, Veronica Lind, Nugroho Nurarifin, Scott Garrison & Ajay Chourasia, Raymond Lo, Jereme Wong and Jonathon Lee MIS EXECUTIVE COUNCIL President Roger Wang 1st Vice President Bhavik Bhatt 2nd Vice President Dr Roger Low Honorary Secretary Mark Laudi Asst Honorary Secretary Dylan Tan Honorary Treasurer Gerry Seah Asst Honorary Treasurer Freddy Tan Council Members Edmund Lau Lee Kwok Weng Co-opted Council Members Angie Low Genevieve Chua Design & Layout Kelvin Wang Production, Advertising & Circulation Joreen Yee joreen.yee@mis.org.sg Publisher Marketing Institute of Singapore 51 Anson Centre #03-53 Singapore 079904 Tel: (65) 6327 7580 Fax: (65) 6327 9741 Email: singaporemarketer@mis.org.sg Website: www.mis.org.sg

The measurement metrics that most of today’s marketers rely on are now so complex that good skills in figures and analysis are, in fact, all but essential for anyone holding the senior position in the marketing department. However, for all the details that modern digital metrics can provide, there is a sense in which their interpretation is still just a reading of the runes.

After all, the best metrics available can only tell us how many people looked at an advertisement, but not what they have thought of it. We all know that emotional response is as important as raw viewer figures, but measuring it has historically been tricky. Neuromarketing is becoming a common tool today as it more accurately determines not just the consumers’ conscious mind, but subconscious mind as well. Neuromarketing wants to actually influence the subconscious to compel customers to perceive and act in the ways that marketers want.

In Daniel Heerkins’ article on ‘Five Clever Ways Companies Are Using Neuromarketing To Influence Customers’, he has shared a number of examples of which company uses Neuromarketing to entice consumers on making purchases. Some of the methods used are tips that attempt to lead consumers into buy the product, or be captivated to read further about the headline. There is also another article that provided step-by step guide to help you to write convincing and magnetic marketing messages using Neuromarketing.

We are surrounded by Neuromarketing on a daily basis, be it on a product label or advertisement. Reading this issue may help you save some bucks in your wallet as a consumer too! If you are a marketer, absorb these useful tips to draw your customers in now!

Happy reading.

Mickey Hee

Editor

The Singapore Marketer is a quarterly magazine published by Marketing Institute of Singapore.

The views expressed in The Singapore Marketer do not necessarily represent those of the Marketing Institute of Singapore. No responsibility is accepted by the Institute or its staff for the accuracy of any statement, opinion, or advice contained in the text or advertisements, and readers are advised to rely on their judgment or enquiries, and to consult their own advisers in making any decisions which would affect their interest. All materials appearing in The Singapore Marketer is copyright. No part of the publication may be reproduced without prior written permission of the Marketing Institute of Singapore. The Marketing Institute of Singapore welcomes contributions and letters. These might be edited for clarity or length. Articles, letters and requests to reproduce articles appearing in The Singapore Marketer should be sent to the Editor, Marketing Institute of Singapore, 51 Anson Road, #03-53 Anson Centre, Singapore 079904 or write to singaporemarketer@mis.org.sg or joreen.yee@mis.org.sg.

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Content Page

04 COVER STORY Five Clever Ways Companies Are Using Neuromarketing To Influence Customers

FOCUS

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3 Steps to Convince Consumers With Neuro-Magnetic Marketing Messages!

FEATURE

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Test Examples of Neuromarketing and how they can work for you

BUSINESS SCHOOL

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Four tips on marketing a negative

DIGITAL DIGEST

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AI disruption is bleeding into white-collar jobs

LEARNING SITE

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One-Page Marketing Plan for SMEs: stop wasting time and start making money

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Mastering the one skill you can’t do without in today’s Global economy – Cultural Intelligence

GURU TALK

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Neuro-Narrative Brain-Computer Interface and the Future of Advertising

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Cover Story

Five Clever Ways

Companies Are Using Neuromarketing To Influence Customers » Daniel Heerkins Neuromarketing is a term that has been gaining a lot of traction in recent years. But somehow, the exact definition of neuromarketing seems unclear. For me, the best way to define neuromarketing is that it scientifically studies the brain to benefit marketing. For example, medical technologies like brain scanning and brain activity measurements are used to gauge a person’s response to different marketing elements like packaging, videos, ads, billboards, etc.

Sounds like utter science fiction right? But here is some food for thought – large companies like Ford Motors and Coca-Cola have been investing heavily on neuromarketing since the 1990s, according to piktochart.com. Today, a lot of other companies have already followed suit. There are many good reasons why you should start thinking about using the consumer brain when it comes to your marketing. Let’s discuss the most notable ones.

Five Clever Ways Companies Are Using Neuromarketing Great packaging Have you ever gone through an entire aisle of potato chips in the supermarket and had to choose one among the multitudes of bright coloured packaging? It turns out, the brand you pick might be the work of your brain’s preference.

Companies have figured out through Electroencephalogram (EEG) what elements consumer prefer on their packaging and subsequently, what they do not like.

As reported in businessinsider.com. au, when Chips Ahoy decided to use neuromarketing in their packaging, they discovered that people had a negative emotional reaction to the “resealable” words on their packaging. This is because people found it a bit hard to read.

Surprisingly, the photo of the chocolate chip cookie on their packaging failed to garner great reactions amongst the test subjects.

As a result, Chips Ahoy redesigned their packaging with a “resealable” tab that was more clear and a cookie visual that is more exciting (with flying chocolate chips).

Simply put, making sure that people will like your packaging is one great way to steal their hearts.

Limited Editions Have you ever heard of the story about limited edition Nike sneakers causing mayhem among “sneakerheads” on opening day?

Well, there is a reason for that and that has something to do about Neuromarketing.

The effect of consumers love for limited editions and limited-time offers is called marketing with scarcity. Marketers put limitations

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...we are going to see a lot of marketing elements that utilise the other senses – smell and touch.

on a product like timed offers and dwindling supplies to pressure them into buying fast. Creating a sense of urgency for the customer has been a technique that has been used countless times and has proven to be so effective. Think midnight sales, limited edition items, and McDonald’s McRib. According to performancemarketer .com, a report by Experian has noted that emails with words of urgency have a 14% higher open rates and a whopping 59% higher transaction rates. Marketing scarcity rushes the consumer mind and is a great tool to turn up the sales.

A good example is the video game, South Park: The Fractured but Whole. In order to promote the game, the developers invited journalists and bloggers to try their latest gadget, the Nosulus rift. This gadget is supposed to be an accompanying peripheral for their game that emits an ungodly odour for various scenes. This blends perfectly well with South Park’s crass humour. This was reported in adweek.com.

Suffice to say, the journalists love it and the story went viral.

This just goes to show how various companies are turning their attention beyond visual marketing.

Multisensory stimulations

Striking Headlines

Companies are taking their marketing efforts to another level nowadays. This includes giving their customers an experience that goes beyond sight and sound. As marketers keep learning more and more about how the consumer mind works, we are going to see a lot of marketing elements that utilise the other senses – smell and touch.

Headlines are one of the most important elements in advertising and its impact has not waned to this day. Often, headlines are what grabs the attention of people in an ad. So making sure that your headlines are attention grabbing and exciting is paramount to surprise the human brain.

Cover Story

Here is a great tip: Try a technique called “Hippocampal Headlines.”

This means that you can use familiar everyday phrases and tweak them a bit. This type of headline activates the brain making your headline more eye-catching and memorable.

For example, Silver Patron tequila used the slogan “Practice Makes Patron” as a twist on the familiar phrase, “practice makes perfect”.

Effective web layout Neuromarketing in web layout aims to improve your visitor engagement and conversion rate.

This is based on the cognitive preferences utilised within your website’s content and design. Little things such as the font, colour schemes, and layout has an effect on the visitors.

You’ve probably recently encountered websites that utilised modern horizontal design. This is often done by designers to keep up with the current trends. However, neuromarketers found out that the traditional vertical design engaged visitors more than the newer horizontal design, as reported in neurosciencemarketing.com.

Neuromarketing is here to stay

The study revealed that people are more inclined to explore websites that are designed vertically.

Neuromarketers explained that the vertical design sends a signal to the reader’s brain that there are more contents below, as opposed to the horizontal design.

The consumer’s mind is still continuously evolving and companies have turned to science to keep up. There are still so many opportunities to explore and a lot of research to be conducted. With that, it definitely looks like that neuromarketing is here to stay and is definitely worth a look at.

Neuromarketing is a relatively new player in the realm of business.

However, the effects and results of neuromarketing have been impressive, to say the least.

Marketers should be on the look-out for future neuromarketing trends such as eye-tracking and biometric engagement.

ABOUT THE WRITER

Daniel Heerkins is a Dutch entrepreneur and marketer who has been featured on the BBC. He has always been interested in Sustainable Products and Digital Innovation. With previous experience working for FMCG Multinationals (Danone & Royal FrieslandCampina) in The Netherlands, Malaysia and Singapore, he is now the Digital Marketing Strategy Expert at 2Stallions.

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Focus

3 Steps to Convince Consumers With

Neuro-Magnetic Marketing Messages! » By Jacky Tan The topic for this issue is about “Neuromarketing”. If you search on Google, you can see medical terms on how the brain responds to marketing messages. It is about how we craft our marketing messages in a way that it will ‘guide’ the consumers to look, think, feel and respond to your marketing messages in a positive manner. (i.e., to buy your products!). Cool?

Three Factors That Determine Effectiveness of Neuromarketing The medical or technical jargon in neuromarketing may be very complicated for some. Hence to make things simpler for you, neuromarketing is just simply about creating compelling marketing messages that will make people buy.

As simple as that. For us to see the effectiveness of neuromarketing, there are three principal factors that need to be fulfilled first.

1. Be Logical The first factor is we need to know that consumers, like you and me, are smart people who think. They will do a proper research about a brand’s product, before making the decision to buy. Hence, an ad poster with ‘powerful words’ will not magically turn a lead into a buying customer because neuromarketing has to be logical.

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The key is not to target your ads to various demographics of consumers at the same time.

This is a case in Singapore, when we begin to see that the constant use of the term Great Singapore Sale (GSS) no longer helps attract the customers to the brand. Many consumers today will see sales and discounts as marketing tactics used by companies to entice them to buy.

In terms of making neuromarketing logical, the way you craft your marketing messages must be relevant to your customers’ needs, and it has to make sense that your consumers are able to see an unique difference in your product compared to your competitors’.

The more logical and simpler you explain in your marketing messages, the better for you to adopt neuromarketing effectively.

2. Your Targeted Consumers The second factor is your targeted consumers. Do your prospects have similar demographics or their demographics are highly scattered?

If the demographics are close, then it

will be better for you to create more effective neuro-magnetic marketing messages.

The key is not to target your ads to various demographics of consumers at the same time. For example, if brand A has 10,000 targeted consumers out of 12,000 fans on their social media and brand B has also 10,000 targeted consumers out of 100,000 fans on social media.

Brand A can still command better neuromarketing effects compared to Brand B. This is because Brand A has 83% targeted consumers on social media while Brand B has only 10% targeted consumers on social media even though it has more fans on social media than Brand A. Furthermore, the neuromarketing strategies that Brand A use will be more focused than Brand B such that you will often see that Brand A will always send the right marketing messages to the right audience.

Hence, to carry out neuromarketing effectively, you need to build your targeted consumer audience well using social media, email marketing or other marketing platforms.

3. Repetition The third factor is repetition. In every type of marketing, repetition of your core marketing message into a consumer’s mind is key to converting a prospect into a buying customer.

We are living in an era where information is fast and limitless.

Consumers today are fed with tonnes of information and choices each day. When you already have a targeted group of consumers, it is important to consistently send them your logical marketing messages such that they will be familiarised with your brand and feel that your products can serve their needs.

Don’t let consumers forget about you. Constantly remind them about the benefits of using your products.

Focus 3 Essential Steps to Make Your Marketing Message Sell Now you are clear of the three factors that makes neuromarketing effective. Now, I am going to reveal to you the three important steps in crafting a marketing message that will make people buy your brand.

1. Identify the Common ‘Pain’ Our world is imperfect, there is always something that needs to be changed to make this world a better place. There is always a new product that can make the things around us better.

Look at your products and services and ask yourself these questions, “Does my products and services help to solve a problem in this world?”

“If so, what is the problem and how can my product solve it?”

As long as you can identify in your marketing messages, this common ‘pain’ or problem that your targeted consumers may experience, as well as that solution your products and services can offer, it will be fantastic!

2. Connect the Emotion

3. Add a Call to Action

A successful advertisement always connects the emotion.

Describe the feelings that your consumers will feel when they use your products or services.

Neuromarketing, or any type of marketing will not work, if there is no call to action at the end of your marketing messages. What each marketer will want to achieve at the end of the day is for the potential customers to buy their products and services. As simple as that.

Take for example, in some new condominiums TV commercials, we will often see how the advertisers create many scenarios such as potential customers and their family members feeling refreshed while swimming at the condominium’s pool; how they feel great about owning an unit in that condominium; or how the parents feel superb when their kids are able to study at the prestigious school nearby.

The keyword here is ‘feel’.

Neuromarketing is simply about creating a positive feeling towards the products and services.

Hence, the most powerful type of neuromarketing is the ability to make customers feel great owning your products and services, by constantly portraying a positive scenario to them.

So, remember to always ask for the order in your marketing messages. If you ask for the order, two things will happen, either the consumer will buy or will not buy.

If you did not ask for the order, one thing for sure will happen is that there will be no sale since you did not add that ‘little push’ in your marketing messages.

Hence, don’t be afraid to put a call to action in your marketing messages.

With the three simple steps of crafting a good marketing message such as identifying the common ‘pain’, connecting the emotion and adding a good call to action, your brand will surely reap tonnes of benefits from your neuromarketing strategies!

ABOUT THE WRITER

Jacky Tan, is a renowned marketing author, speaker and writer in the Asia Pacific marketing industry. His book, Social ‘M’ is an easy-to-follow strategy guide for entrepreneurs and marketing professionals around the world. Jacky is currently the principal brand strategist of a boutique marketing agency, Jack And Chaz Pte Ltd.

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Feature

Test Examples of

Neuromarketing and how they can work for you

» By Veronica Lind

Neuromarketing made simple Neuromarketing refers to the commercial application of neuroscience technologies and insights to drive business further. Such technologies include functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and electroencephalography (EEG) to access the “pleasure centre” of the brain and let marketers know how people are really responding to their work. Here are some simple neuromarketing tactics that have worked: Encourage action with simple fonts If you want a customer to perform some task, then describe it in a simple, easy to read font. That also includes all website related content. Instructions should also be simple. Content headings should be short, attractive and SEO friendly (see Fig 1).

If it’s hard to read, it’s hard to do.

Fig 1

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A complex font on your copy will not only be more memorable, but grab more attention visually...

Boost memory recall with complex fonts

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This is good only for your copy, whether the web, email or even a restaurant menu. A complex font on your copy will not only be more memorable, but grab more attention visually but use it sparingly for a specific purpose only. As proven by Hyunjin Song and Norbert Schwarz of the University of Michigan, describing a costly product using a hard to read font will suggest to the viewer that more effort went into creating that product.

Try this with certain dishes on a restaurant menu. Those dishes will be hot favourites!

Remember, complex font is not recommended for use with your logo, your tagline and contact details.

Direct attention with gaze

Fig 2 (Image taken from: Usability Specialist James Breeze eye tracking study)

Whether you are using images of people or animals, set their eyes to gaze where you want the viewer to look. Fig 2 from Usability Specialist James Breeze, indicated that a face in ads will attract attention, but be sure the face is looking at what you want the viewer to see!

Feature

Use mood boosting image and colours Use images that show your brand personality and the human side of your brand. A picture says a thousand words, so I use images that seemed obvious (Fig 3).

You may opt for a smiling photo over a serious businessman as studies have shown that a “mood boosting� image can affect a customer’s willingness to spend.

Fig 3 (Image taken from Camden Haven Home Page)

Colours can help differentiate your products from competitors but also to influence positive or negative moods and feelings towards certain products.

Nike used pink below to target women (Fig 4).

Fig 4 (Image taken from: Nike Facebook Page)

The other interesting trend is animated logos. Brasel & Hagtvedt conducted a study in 2016 that indicated agent animation elicits more positive attitudes.

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Using sound and colour to sell more

“Loving” is a powerful word

A powerful bass makes people subconsciously attend to dark objects, whereas music leaning more towards the high frequencies shifts attention to light objects. A large supermarket conducted an experiment and placed bananas on both white and black shelves with the same supermarket music mixed with either prominent high or low-pitched frequencies. Twice more bananas were sold from the white shelf with high pitched music. The reverse effect was found with low frequency music and black shelves.

Previous studies show that the slogan “Loving=Helping” increased donations. McDonalds use ‘I’m loving it!’ in their slogan to trigger more compliant behaviour. If you have a survey on your website; try to use an image on the background which states “Loving”. More people will behave compliant and fill in the survey. Here’s Vermilion Pinstripes loving message (Fig 5).

Gain trust by showing trust

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Trust - the basic element to building a credible business and getting referrals. First, focus on reducing pain. Customers’ emotions gear more towards pain avoidance rather than thrills. For example, use a sentence like: “Trello helps unorganised teams collaborate productively” rather than “Trello is more effective”. Secondly,

Fig 5

Fear of missing out When things are scarce, people are more eager to buy them because they fear the item might sell out. It feels like a chance that we don’t want to miss.

People with a high need for uniqueness prefer to hear what they will miss when they don’t buy the product, while people with low need for uniqueness need to hear what there is to gain from buying it. So frame your messages right.

• Giveaway templates, cheat sheets, eBooks in exchange for email information

• Gain message: “get the new edition now”

• Offer a limited time trial with little restrictions.

Offering a discount for a favour

• Make buying easy. Forget about lengthy forms and screening process.

• Provide confidential information without signing a non-disclosure agreement.

• Loss message: “be sure not to miss the new edition”.

This is an interesting study done by Blanchard, Clarson and Hyodo. A straight 10% discount normally yield a 25% sales rate. By combining a discount of NO MORE than 30% plus a small favour like “Post an online review” or “Refer a friend”, seemed to triple sales by 68%. The effect is negative when discount offered was above 50% with a favour.

Feature

Do you know?

Google rewards websites with coveted page 1 placement when they have strong visual appeal (including video), unique content that solves customers’ pains and emotional engagement that retains users longer.

To summarise, Neuromarketing is effective when 1. It’s not about you. Appeal to the customers’ pains.

2. Keep it simple. Use short impactful statements and focus on quick ways to sum up your product and services.

3. Seeing is better than reading.

Make your points visual.

4. Have a strong start and a big finish. Use attention grabbing open and close with a compelling action.

5. Employ emotion. Make it memorable.

The new marketing and communications techniques are about leveraging Maths + Science + Creativity + Psychology to trigger positive buying actions. The more you understand your customers’ buying behaviour, the smarter your marketing actions will be.

My recommendation is not to use Neuromarketing as just tactics of persuasion but as insights to power your sales, marketing and communications strategy.

ABOUT THE WRITER

Veronica Lind is the creative business technologist behind thriving businesses. She gets what small businesses and large corporations want, helping them attract their most profitable customers while demonstrating RoI.

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Guru Talk

NEURO-NARRATIVE Brain-Computer Interface and the Future of Advertising

» By Nugroho Nurarifin Neuroscience have provided us with bigger understanding of how our brain works. In the advertising discipline, lately we have witnessed the deployment of brainwaves or even emotion as creative vehicle.

In 2013, Smirnoff worked with Queen Elizabeth Foundation for Disabled to produce a song entirely created using human brainwaves. The vodka brand teamed up with British electronic music producer DJ Fresh and three disabled musicians along with brainwave technology expert Dr. Julian Castet. Brainwaves of the three disabled musicians were linked to synthesizers to produce a complete piece. The result is a song called Mindtunes and it is now available on iTunes.

Fast forward a few years later, McCann Melbourne condensed emotions from movies and transmit them to the face of the audience to create ‘emotional trailer’ for Melbourne International Film Festival. And in 2017, Grey Group created a logo using the brainwaves of its staffs to promote its 100th anniversary.

And this might be just the beginning.

All the Possibilities of Today During TedGlobal 2010 in Oxford, Tan Le, demonstrated her neuroheadset that reads its user’s brainwaves, making it possible to control virtual objects and even physical electronics with mere thoughts. A year later, she officially founded Emotiv, a technology company that manufactures wearable wireless EEG

(electroencephalography) headset you could use to control varieties of things only with your mind. The entry level product starts at just 299 USD and you can order it on their website. Mindtunes, the track DJ Fresh created with three disabled musicians, was produced using wireless EEG headset.

It is too premature to think that wireless EEG headset or –as Emotiv officially calls it- brainware will achieve as much scale as, let’s say, smartphone as a piece of consumer technology. But at least –as in the case of Smirnoff’s Mindtunes- it has proven its potential in opening a new way for brands to tell a story.

Back in 2013, Rajesh Rao, a neuro-engineer from the University of Washington developed a pilot study that enables direct brain-tobrain communication in humans.

In his experiment, a person brain

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...emotion has always been an integral part of any storytelling effort...

activity is recorded using EEG cap.

The data then was transferred to a computer that was linked to the internet. Another computer took the data off the internet and using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) passed it on to the brain of person number two. Using this method, a person could control the hand movement of another person.

Greg Gage of a company named Backyard Brains aimed to make this whole process cheaper and more accessible to the masses. A human-human interface kit can be bought on www.backyardbrains. com for just 259 USD. Using a device called Muscle Spikershield –that can also be ordered for 149 USD on the website- the kit connects an arm of a person to an arm of another person. When the controller moves his arm, the computer reads the signals and

activate a stimulation device that is connected to the hand of the controlled. When you move your arm, that other person’s arm will also be moving.

From a creative perspective, this opens so much possibilities for an experiential storytelling. In the past, we could only watch that story of someone losing control over his body in Fat Boy Slim’s music video Push the Tempo. What if we could experience it?

Going back to Rajesh Rao, he developed a system that made it possible for someone to answer questions on a computer screen through a combination of lights, eye movements, and brainwaves detected through EEG cap.

Without uttering a single word, we could send an answer to a yes or no questions that appear on a computer screen.

What if we could apply this method to create a higher audience involvement in a video?

It would create a very powerful experience. It will take interactivity to a whole new level where the audience could interact using brainwaves with the video and even alter the plot of a film using only thoughts.

And because emotion has always been an integral part of any storytelling effort, even only with what we could do today, things can get very interesting. One of the traditional storytelling techniques is to create a contrast between audio and visual. The result is usually something very arresting.

Remember that scene from A Clockwork Orange in which Alex and his gang attack the writer and his wife brutally while singing Gene Kelly’s Singin’ in the Rain? What

Guru Talk

if we could create a contradiction between what the video is showing and what the audience is feeling.

Imagine a scene of a birthday party shot from a first person point of view. But instead of joy, an emotional script put sadness on our face. An experiential film for an anti-depression campaign.

And in the future, with the possibility of the computer to send an emotional script direct to our brain, emotions could be sent right through the audience’s neurons. Or even any message for that matter.

Opening a whole new territory in media planning and buying as well ethical debate.

Where Does the Future Lie? The next chapter of this interplay might lies in Elon Musk’s latest venture, Neuralink.

Currently in recruitment stage, the company is looking to integrate human intelligence with artificial intelligence through a technology called neural lace: a mesh that is woven into human brains. This will open the possibility of braincomputer direct communication as well as wireless brain-brain direct interaction or what we can describe of as telepathy. And with internet connection, an issue of distance will not be relevant. Just imagine, the application of a seamless and totally wireless e-telepathy could really push the boundaries of CRM.

While brain-computer based advertising still pretty much sounds like a thing from distant future, but future always proved itself to arrive earlier than we thought. It seems only yesterday when we saw 3D printing technology for the first time. And as we are discussing this today, a skyscraper entirely built using 3D printer is about to be constructed in Dubai. But one thing is clear, purely from a creative perspective, through neuroscience, the canvas we actually have to play with is much wider than ever.

ABOUT THE WRITER

As Executive Creative Director for Grey Group Indonesia, Nugroho Nurarifin is responsible for the creative vision as well as executions of every single work coming out of the Indonesia’s office. He is also known as a novelist, short story writer, and contributor for various publications in Asia in the field of creativity, technology and popular culture.

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Business School

Four tips

on marketing a negative Âť By Scott Garrison & Ajay Chourasia Consumers always want to feel good about the choices they make; they want to find products or services that will improve their lives in some way. To address this need, marketers often frame communications in a positive light that creates good feelings about overcoming a negative issue. A focus on positive benefits and the avoidance of negative associations characterise most marketing campaigns. However, there are times when a brand or product must communicate about how it is overcoming a negative, such as obesity, acne, dark spots and aging, to generate interest and appeal.

As reported by asianscientist. com, one of the most challenging categories for creating positive messaging is the personal care category in Asia, estimated to exceed US$150 billion in 2017.

The fairness cream market alone is expected to reach US$39.7 billion by 2019 while the anti-aging cream market is expected to reach US$30.9 billion by 2019.

Peer pressure and rise of social media has meant the need to look great is crucial in todays times.

Consumers across Asia aspire for radiant, young and glowing skin to achieve the perfect look. It is critical for brands to be clear on their message and ensure that they hit the sweet spot consistently, else risk losing ground to competition.

The rapidly-growing Asian markets present its share of challenges. Sensitive topics such as reversing signs of acne, skin brightening, ageing and wrinkles are top of mind as consumers aspire to look better and younger.

However, simply telling people they need these products because they have skin issues or are getting older is no recipe for success. So in a situation such as this, what can a marketer do?

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Consumers instinctively gravitate towards products that make them feel optimistic and away from those that remind them of a negative experience.

A meta-analysis conducted by SKIM examined more than 850 marketing messages across 16 categories – ranging from personal care to food products – to identify the key drivers of success. Perhaps not surprisingly, one of the main principles uncovered by the metaanalysis was to stay positive, even if the core benefit offered by the product is addressing a negative such as acne, dark spots or signs of ageing. Consumers instinctively gravitate towards products that make them feel optimistic and away from those that remind them of a negative experience.

Nevertheless, there are instances when addressing a negative is the most effective option, as long as it is executed properly.

Address aspirations Research reveals that the most successful marketing communications provide a value proposition that addresses a need or desire. For example, it is important that anti-ageing messages focus on the ability to maintain younger and healthier looking skin. However, this simple positive message may be too generic to establish differentiation in a crowded category when used on its own. SKIM’s research revealed several strategies for making positive messages resonate more strongly when addressing a negative issue.

Be specific To be effective, messages need to be specific about the value being promised. In many cases, specific benefits can be positively framed, such as the moisturizing quality of

lotions or the vitamins included in a food. But when the products are designed to overcome negative traits, such as anti-aging creams preventing wrinkles or anti-virus software protecting a computer, the negatives must be acknowledged.

If the message of overcoming a negative is too general, it runs the risk of creating far-reaching adverse associations, something that marketers aim to avoid. By clearly describing the tangible benefit(s) of a product, relevance is established and thereby a connection with consumers is created. We also observed in our meta-analysis that talking about a range of benefits works best for claims/messaging as multiple benefits are likely to appeal to a wider range of consumers. For instance, a fairness cream could also talk about a range of other benefits that augment consumers to achieve their desired perfect skin.

Business School Stay neutral When possible, the negative element of a message should be addressed in a neutral fashion.

Saying, “Banish your cracked and saggy skin,” will almost certainly alienate potential consumers who do not want to be reminded so explicitly about the symptoms they are hoping to prevent.

Addressing the symptoms in as neutral of a way as possible, by saying something along the lines of, “Reduce signs of ageing,” ensures the marketing message is respectful and avoids offending the consumer.

Be aspirational Lastly, the negative association should be linked with a positive benefit that represents the

aspirations of the consumer when possible. In the anti-ageing example, the aspiration is to maintain young and healthy looking skin. An effective way of connecting to a positive, therefore, could be “Effectively combats wrinkles for young and healthy looking skin.” This positive statement is appealing because it creates the link to a positive outcome: healthy looking skin.

It is important to note that there may not be space to address both the negative concern and the positive aspiration in one message.

In such cases, the positive aspiration can be included as a secondary message or brought to life through creative copy or imagery.

Especially in today’s competitive market, creating a meaningful connection with consumers is critical. As shoppers today become more highly involved in each personal care purchase, with increasing number of brands to choose from, it is key to create and maintain a connection with consumers. There are times when a brand simply must address negative signs/symptoms. By doing so in a neutral fashion while linking it to a positive aspiration, powerful and lasting connections can be fostered while minimising potential negative associations.

This way, a brand does not offend consumers while communicating about benefits that are relevant to them, therefore ensuring they deliver on the core promise, make consumers feel better and aspire for the perfect looking skin.

ABOUT THE WRITERS

Ajay Chourasia

Ajay Chourasia has 10 years’ experience of market research experience, most of these years he has worked with clients in India/ SEA region and across industries ranging from FMCG/ CPG, Automotive and Telecom. He specializes in studies related to brand health, advertising and communication testing. Prior to joining SKIM he was associated with Nielsen, TNS and Genpact (GE services) where he handled business in US, Europe and Asia.

After spending the past 2.5 years working in London, Scott Garrison has recently relocated back to Hoboken, NJ to lead the Consumer research team.

Scott specializes in brand and product communications in the CPG and technology industries. He oversees SKIM’s marketing message development methods including message generation workshops and evaluation, screening and selection methods. He holds a degree in Sociology, as well as a MBA from the Smeal College of Business at Pennsylvania State University.

Scott Garrison

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Digital Digest

AI disruption

is bleeding into white-collar jobs » By Raymond Lo “Automation is blind to the colour of your collar”- Jerry Kaplan A recent McKinsey study put a different slant on the impact of automation on jobs. It detailed a wide spectrum of jobs and identified the level of activities within each job that can be partially automated.

The study says 30 percent of the activities in 60 percent of jobs can be automated, and even highly skilled white collar jobs have a set of activities that can be automated.

The study also revealed that jobs in Japan, India and China have the highest automation potential, as a result of these countries’ skew towards manufacturing, accommodation and food service industries. So rather than a black or white classification of which job can be completely automated, the study puts each job on a “continuum of automation”.

The more valued human roles are those that require non-routine cognitive work, where human interaction, problem-solving and creativity are (at least not for now)

are not readily replicable by a machine. These roles have fewer tasks that can be automated (think chief executives, statisticians, psychiatrists) but I want to explore cases where even their more “intelligent” tasks, the non-routine cognitive ones, might be absorbed

by Artificial Intelligence (AI) so that these workers can free up their time for higher level work. At some point, the percentage of automation even among these professions will become significant.

An everyday example Imagine a scenario where a product manager at a telco wants to build a business case for a price change or to launch a new concept.

Typically they would weave together this business case based on various inputs: current and past business performance, competitive environment, econometric forecasting and customer insight.

You can envision the amount of work required to collate this and the

level of (human) expertise needed to synthesise the information.

Now this scenario re-imagined would mean a marketer or product manager simply needs to brief a bot (a form of AI) on their objectives and all the relevant information required for their decision is developed within minutes. So for those of us working in these non-routine cognitive jobs, can AI inform business decision making more generally via intelligent insight and recommendations?

The intelligent bots We are at the stage where some of these tasks can be achieved by AI, even if they are performed at the more elementary level. There are already some bots that have the capability to write news, analyse data and provide a simple report (note the user here need not be versed in statistical thinking), and conduct preference testing for market research purposes. There are even some in development that will be able to review web and

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print sources, pull out only relevant articles, summarise them and then produce a daily report.

And there are bots like X.ai, Clara and Evie who act as personal assistants, work more efficiently and accurately but come at a fraction of the cost. All this is quite alarming for the junior project managers, analysts, external consultants and market researchers who usually form this network of advisors.

I want to talk more about two of these bots and how they may revolutionise the way a business manager or marketer may work.

Ask Sora

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looking to test new ads, concepts and price points quickly, with consumers, but can be stalled by long turnaround times from traditional research firms.

Now marketer can open up Ask Sora on their desktop, upload various concepts or price points, and go to a specific audience for their “votes”. Within an hour a response will come back telling the marketer which concept was the winning one. And I’m sure they could look at the results by specific segments if they wanted to.

The purists out there will say that in its current form the level of insights is shallow, there is no depth or other insights around the “why”, and that this is just a simple A/B test. These are all valid points but this chatbot is only in its nascent stages, and as a vehicle to garner insights it potentially poses a threat to the research industry. In any case through machine learning and further improvements the chatbot could move closer to a product that can deliver insights with more substance (but more on this later).

I recently voted on a pair of promotions which definitely had a commercial bend to them. The promotions were offered by Uber and a Grab- mirroring a real life scenario. Below shows the output from the chatbot which reveals that the Grab promotion was more popular!

The first is an “Ask Sora”, a chatbot that sits on the Facebook messenger platform. The bot performs other activities that engage the user, but I want to focus on its ability to capture preferences - collecting customer insight at the drop of a hat.

Its primary role is to help people or businesses make decisions through online polling. In response to questions like “Grab Offer or Uber Offer”, respondents vote on what they prefer. This simple, intuitive tool can help businesses and marketers who are often looking to test new ads, concepts, and price points quickly, with consumers. Long turnaround times from traditional research firms can be shaved down to a matter of hours or minutes.

I believe this simple, intuitive bot will have commercial benefits once they reach a critical mass.

Businesses and marketers are often

(Screenshots of Grab promotions)

Wordsmith The second piece of AI I want to mention is Wordsmith, an artificial writer developed by the North Carolina-based company Automated Insights which can pull out the key elements from a dataset and generate narratives that “sound like a person crafted each one”.

The programme can churn out articles faster than any human and is more arguably more accurate in terms of the relevant data points that it focuses on for each article. For example, a human writing data-based reports may miss out on some relationships between key data points as they are prone to subjectivity and other cognitive biases - something which a cleverly written algorithm is not.

Digital Digest Automated Insights has already gained some strong traction in the market - in 2015 they produced more than 1.5 billion pieces of content, up from 300 million in 2013. And they have several high profile clients, including USA Today and Yahoo news.

Below is an extract from the website which demonstrates how it converts data into a human sounding story.

(Image taken from ap.org)

The application for a marketer or business executive is immense. All relevant data points about a specific business issue can be summarised, including past data points so that trends can be ascertained.

However there is a limitation to this AI. Currently it is not able to provide the “so-what” behind the story, as it is limited in its ability to contextualise and infer, so ultimately what it means for the marketer in terms of the key business decision is unknown. At this stage it can indicate what is happening but it cannot steer you in one particular direction or another - this missing piece of the puzzle still requires human judgement and decision making.

A trusted advisor According to chatbotslife.com, the notion of machine learning would mean that over time any bot would learn more about the requests and become better at delivering “optimal” solutions. In the Ask Sora case, through a combination of machine learning and improvements from the developers, we would be able to compare results with past iterations, go back to voters for more insight, and even incorporate external data points. In the case of Wordsmith, the AI could improve on its ability to contextualize and infer and even make some recommendations on the back of the data. In other words, these bots could work up to be a fully fledged consultant.

If this is the trend, then the next generation of executives might have a series of bots on their screens, and by merely asking them a series of questions (a “brief”), they would get their insights, data points, reports or recommendations “on tap”. But the burning question will be – as AI becomes smarter and smarter, when will even these executives be at risk?

And might this introduce a different type of job? This is a topic for another day.

ABOUT THE WRITER

Raymond Lo is a researcher and psychologist, who has a passion for capturing insights by fusing together behavioural and attitudinal data via the use of technology tools. Ray’s experience spans across the APAC region where he has consulted a range of MNC’s in the areas of customer experience, positioning and product management.

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Learning Site

One-Page Marketing Plan for SMEs: stop wasting time and start making money

» By Jereme Wong

Mark runs a gym.

and SEM only to realise it’s not what their business needs!

To promote his gym, he manually gives out flyers to people working nearby.

It was at this moment that Mark realised why he needs a marketing plan.

It acts as his road map to achieving his business goals. Marketing without a plan will be a waste of time and money.

There was hardly any response. In fact, most of his flyers ended up in the rubbish bin!

The best thing is, creating a marketing plan can be very simple (even if you have no prior marketing knowledge.)

Mark is stumped.

Then Mark discovers the term “online marketing”. Determined to revive his business, he studied it furiously.

He learned about various online marketing tactics he can use to market his gym.

Here’s how. #1 Review your customer persona Every successful marketing strategy starts with customers.

A customer persona helps you understand your customer’s psychology and behaviour, and guide you in reaching out to them.

If you don’t have a customer persona, then you are not ready to create a marketing plan yet. Start envisioning your ideal customer and create an identity for them. A basic customer persona should look something like this:

Feeling confident, he shared his ideas with Jackie, a friend who owns a digital marketing firm over a cup of coffee.

To his surprise, Jackie said this “Mark, you really need a marketing plan!”

Many SME owners tend to jump into digital marketing without much thought, dumping money into SEO

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If you already have a customer persona, review it to make sure that you have covered all relevant preferences or behaviour that will affect your product or service. It is also important that it is up to date. #2 Analyse your competitors Make a list of your top three worst and best competitors.

Beside each competitor, jot points on how your business is/could be better than theirs. This will determine how you should position and market your business. #3 Decide on four marketing goals Must it be four? Yes.

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Four is a good number for most small businesses like Mark’s gym because it is realistic. Too many goals will easily cause burnout, leading to no specific marketing results.

All of your four goals should directly impact your bottom line, i.e. increase your business revenue.

Goals will vary depending on your industry and business life-cycle stage.

Here are some guidelines to follow when creating your marketing goals: 1. Find out where your business stands at now (number of leads, revenue, customer acquisition rate), and set the bar higher.

2. Be specific. Have actual numbers rather than general ideas. E.g.

“55 online leads per week” vs “increase leads generation”.

3. Goals should be measurable. If you can’t determine whether you achieved your goals, what is the point of creating one in the first place?

4. Set a time-limit. Each goal should have a deadline, after which it should already be achieved.

Once again, remember that your four goals should always link back to increasing your business revenue. #4 Identify four key activities that will achieve those goals Once your goals are set, the next question is “how to achieve them?”

If “leads generation” is one of your goals, some marketing activities could be designing a landing page or content marketing.

It is best to keep it to four because again, having too many will lead to burnout and achieve nothing.

Rather than attempt to do everything halfway, focus on a few key activities and go all the way with it.

This is often what differentiates the successful business from the less successful ones. #5 Have three key KPIs List three key performance indicators (KPIs) for your marketing campaign to determine if it is successful at the end of the day.

Here are five common marketing KPIs to help you out. It’s a nonexhaustive list (Remember, just pick three key ones!).

• Sales revenue from online marketing

(Total sales for the year) – (Total revenue from customers acquired through offline marketing) • Online Marketing ROI (Sales Growth – Marketing Investment) / Marketing Investment • Organic traffic Refers to the number of people who searched for your website on their own.

• Social media traffic and conversion rates • Lead conversions generated via each social media channel.

• Customer conversions generated via each social media channel.

• Percentage of traffic associated with social media channels.

Analysing such metrics will help you to focus your efforts on the more effective social media channels.

• Traffic-to-lead ratio (aka new contact rate) If this ratio is low, it means that people are visiting your site but are not filling out the form.

Examples are “contact a rep” forms, “sign up for newsletter” forms or “download my free ebook” forms.

A lead is one who fills up such forms and leaves their contact details.

Choose a suitable software that can help automate your analytics for you. This pinpoints areas in your marketing that are doing well and ones that are not, giving you insights on how to improve.

Learning Site #6 Constantly review and make changes if necessary (Ongoing) Be clear on the fact that your marketing plan is never set in stone, it changes constantly.

Your team changes. Your customer changes. Your competitor changes. Your goal changes‌ When such changes happen, you need to be ready to readjust your marketing plan accordingly.

Review your KPIs and metrics regularly to ensure that your marketing campaign is working. If it is not, look at the metrics again to diagnose where can be improved.

Conclusion Most SMEs tend to stumble at step 4 – identifying key activities. They bite more than they can chew and end up with a half-baked and ineffective marketing method. Do not fall into this trap!

Using these six steps, Mark managed to create a one-page marketing plan for his gym. Check it out!

ABOUT THE WRITER

Jereme Wong is the COO of clickTRUE Pte Ltd. He oversees the daily operations in clickTRUE and is a strong advocate for good user experience design and data-driven marketing. Prior to clickTRUE, Jereme co-founded Hardware Zone.

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Learning Site

Mastering the one skill you can’t do without in today’s Global economy -

Cultural Intelligence

It’s about you and your life in our borderless world. » By Jonathan Lee

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Why does CQ matters for you?

36

The fate and destiny of Globalisation do not lie in the hands of a single country, regardless of size or their economic power.

Globalisation is irreversible, and more evidently, the influence and pivot point is in Asia. With the current initiatives in Asia, the fire of Globalisation just took on a whole new dimension and dynamism.

The establishment of Asian Infrastructures Investment Bank (AIIB) and the ambitious “One Belt One Road” – OBOR programme that provides connectivity for Asia, Europe and Africa are lunging forward with racing speed. Asia and its people had that roaring ambition to shape the global agenda and to lead the movement of Globalisation and undeniably – “Globalisation is Asian”.

The world thus will continue to shrink. Today, we’re connected to people around the globe more than ever before, and the future could only see the interconnectivity to strengthen. Most of us encounter and work with individuals who look, believe, and think in radically different ways from us.

Your success in today’s globalised world and that of the future one, therefore, requires an ability to adapt to a variety of cultural situations.

Conventional wisdom has been telling us this for decades. However,

it’s only in recent years has academics discovered a proven way to quantify and develop this ability appropriately. It’s called Cultural Intelligence, or CQ. It’s defined as: “the capability to function effectively in a variety of cultural contexts – including national, ethnic, organisational and generational.”

What is CQ? Cultural Intelligence is the capability to function effectively in a variety of cultural contexts – including national, ethnic, organisational and generational. CQ is an overall capability you can take with you anywhere. CQ emphasis is not only on understanding different cultures but also on problem-solving and effective adaptations for various cultural settings. Unlike approaches that place primary emphasis on learning all the dos and don’ts of specific cultures, you can benefit from its insights even if you’re experiencing a culture for the first time.

Your Cultural Intelligence is made up of four different capabilities, and each of which can be assessed in the online CQ Self-assessment.

1. CQ Drive (motivation) is your interest and confidence in functioning effectively in culturally diverse settings. This often gets overlooked. Without the ample drive to take on the challenges that inevitably accompany multicultural situations, there is little evidence you will be successful.

2. CQ Knowledge (cognition) is your knowledge about how cultures are similar and different. The emphasis is to what extent do you understand some core cultural differences and their impact on you and others?

3. CQ Strategy (meta-cognition) is how you make sense of culturally diverse experiences. Can you plan effectively in light of cultural differences?

4. CQ Action (behaviour) is your capability to adapt your behaviour appropriately for different cultures. It involves having a flexible repertoire of responses to suit various situations while still remaining true to yourself.

Together, the four capabilities make up your overall Cultural Intelligence quotient. As you read the four descriptions, which one seems like it’s the strongest for you?

What about the weakest one? The research backed online CQ Selfassessment will help to reveal which of these capabilities is strongest and weakest for you.

Learning Site

“

CQ is a powerful capability that is proven to enhance your effectiveness working in culturally diverse situations.

What are the benefits of increasing your CQ? CQ is a powerful capability that is proven to enhance your effectiveness working in culturally diverse situations. It’s the number one predictor of your success in today’s borderless world. Research conducted over the last decade in more than 30 countries had shown that high CQ people are better able to adjust and adapt to the unpredictable, complex situations of life and work in today’s globalised world. It’s something that anyone can develop and learn. And it’s a whole new way of approaching the age-old topics of cultural sensitivity, racism, and cross-border effectiveness.

Scientific research further reveals that the most predictable results you can expect from increasing your Cultural Intelligence are the following; • Superior cross-cultural adjustment.

• Improved job performance a. Decision Making, b. Negotiation, c. Networking, d. Global Leadership effectiveness •

Enhanced personal well-being.

•

Greater profitability.

During the last couple of years, CQ has started to go mainstream.

Growing numbers of leaders in business, government, and nonprofit organisations are realising the benefits that come from this intelligence-based approach to adapting and working across culturally. Many corporations, government agencies, and universities are tapping into the CQ difference to achieve results.

Ultimately, heightened CQ helps each of us make the world a better place. Nobel Prize-winning author Elie Wiesel identifies cultural hatred as the major source of problems between people, across all times.

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What does high CQ looks like?

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Despite its academic origins, Cultural Intelligence is pretty easy to grasp. CQ help you become more successful as you pursue the things most important to you in our borderless world. Individual with high CQ have an integrated view of the world that appreciates both the similarities and differences among people. They pose a strong sense of their own cultural identity.

They know who they are and what they believe, but they are equally interested to discover that in others.

Rather than being threatened by differences, they look for what they can learn from them.

Here is one way of thinking about the progression from Low (1.0) to High CQ (5.0); 1.0 – You react to external stimuli (What you see and hear etc., in a new cultural CONTEXT) and you judge it based on what it means in your own cultural context.

2.0 – You begin to recognise other cultural norms. You are motivated to learn more about how cultures differ.

3.0 – You start to accommodate other cultural norms into your thinking. You can explain how culture impacts the way people might respond differently to the same circumstances.

4.0 – You adapt and adjust your thinking and behaviour to other cultural norms.

5.0 – You automatically adjust your thinking and behaviour when you get appropriate cues, sometimes subconsciously.

Nobody behaves flawlessly in cross-cultural interactions. Frankly, the mistakes we make are often the best teachers for improving our CQ. As you grow your CQ, you’ll gradually be able to interpret the behaviour of people from unfamiliar cultures as if you were an insider in their cultures.

Individuals with low CQ will dismiss the seismic influence of culture on themselves and others.

They may use overly simplistic approaches to work cross-culturally and make statements such as “People are people, a smile and kind words work anywhere.”

An individual with high CQ has a repertoire of strategies and behaviours and perspectives. When something seemingly bizarre or random happens, they have a mental frame to discern whether culture explains it or it’s something unique to a particular person or organisation.

Learning Site

With enhanced CQ, you have the ability to encounter new cultural situations, think deeply about what’s happening (or not happening). Also, make appropriate adjustments to how you should understand, relate, and behave in these otherwisedisorienting situations. These kinds of adjustments involve a complex set of capabilities that stem from enhanced Cultural Intelligence.

Anyone can grow his or her CQ. It doesn’t happen automatically, but with a little effort, you can experience several benefits by increasing your CQ. As you increase your CQ, you can tap into one of the most important capabilities to thrive in today’s world.

How different are the three quotients: IQ, EQ and CQ? More people are convinced of our global and multi-cultural connectivity and are discovering the possibilities that CQ opens up for them.

Intercultural success has little to do with your IQ (Intelligence Quotient) or EQ (Emotional Intelligence), it’s primarily dependent on your CQ. Multicultural situations are filled with ambiguity. Enhanced CQ provides the motivation, understanding and strategy for dealing with that uncertainty.

However, in light of your academic achievement and abilities, which is largely measured by your Intelligence Quotient – IQ, CQ is more likely to predict your intercultural work and relationships.

On the other hand, EQ – Emotional Intelligence, is a strong predictor of your success when you’re working with people who come from the same culture as you, but your CQ is a much better predictor of how you’ll do working with people from different cultural backgrounds – the inevitable reality for all of us over the next decade.

Everyone has a cultural intelligence quotient (CQ) and we can all improve our CQ. Improving your Cultural Intelligence does require some commitment and intentionality on your part. Rest easy. The rewards are well worth the effort.

ABOUT THE WRITER

Jonathan Lee has a proven track record of leading diverse teams with P&L responsibility and driving strategic, operational and integration initiatives in China, the Philippines and Asia during his 25 years career.

He found Cross-Cultural understanding and training to be the most important factor to be successful in todays’ global business environment.

He was certified by the Cultural Intelligence Center as a CQ Certified Facilitator. Jonathan will be teaching Cultural Intelligence 2-day short course at Marketing Institute of Singapore on 24 & 25 August 2017.

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