"Buy the Way…" Insights on Integrated Marketing Communication

Maybe it’s not quite at the level of the middle school bully forcing you to give him your lunch money, but a recent study by Anders Gustafsson et al., a research professor of marketing at Sweden’s Karlstad Business School, seems to come close.

Gustafsson, whose research focuses on making retail environments more conducive for shoppers to spend money, was looking at what effect greeters stationed at the
front of the store have on consumers’ spending habits. He and his associates changed stores, days and times, switched the genders and physical attractiveness of the greeters, and found that the greeters didn’t make much difference with one
glaring exception: having a physically dominant-looking male greeting customers resulted in male customers spending 131 percent more than when a non-dominant male or a female were the greeters.

This seems to contradict common thinking – at least in regards to heterosexual thinking – that males and females would be more likely to spend money if greeted by an attractive member of the opposite sex (Conick, 2018). The data demonstrated that it just wasn’t so. Female shoppers in the study spent about the same amount of money no matter who was greeting them. Males who were greeted by a female or a less-imposing male would spend about the same amount of money as the female shoppers. Only when the Alpha male (as Conick calls it) was the greeter would males’ spending spike.

Gustafsson and his associates looked to evolutionary psychology to explain this difference. Evolutionary psychology, which is sometimes referred to as “social Darwinsim,” a reference to the biologist Charles Darwin and his theory of natural selection, can be controversial because it proposes that much of our behavioral is instinctual because the traits that have stayed with us through the years are the traits our ancestors needed for survival (Nicholson, 1998).

While that may be a simplistic explanation of evolutionary psychology and human behavior, Gustafsson relied on evolutionary psychology to suggest that competition
between the males was driving spending – even if that competition was taking place at a subconscious level. The implication being that males were acting out that even
though they couldn’t compete physically with the dominant male greeting them, they could outspend him.

I confess that it really sounds silly to me when it is explained like this, but I have no other explanation for the behavior that the researchers found in this study. Perhaps, the most telling quote in Conick’s article comes from Gustafsson, when he is replying to the ethical concerns with manipulating customers to increase sales: “We are all manipulated.” Kind of depressing to think about, huh?

References
Conick, H. (2018) Alpha Males and Subconscious Sales. American Marketing Association, Retrieved from
https://www.ama.org/publications/MarketingNews/Pages/alpha-males-and-subconscious-sales.aspx

Nicholson, N. (1998). How hardwired is human behavior? Harvard Business Review, (July/August). Retrieved from https://hbr.org/1998/07/how-hardwired-is-human-behavior

Otterbring, Tobias; Ringler, Christine, Sirianni, Nancy J. & Gustafsson, Anders (2018) The Abercrombie & Fitch Effect: The Impact of Employees’ Physical Dominance
on Male Customers’ Status-Signaling Journal of Marketing Research, 55(1), s. 69- 79. Doi: 10.1509/jmr.15.0247

I don’t know about you, but I’ve never been much of a prankster. Don’t get me wrong; I’m like really funny (you can ask my mom), but I don’t do practical jokes. I’m not like Winston from New Girl:

Maybe it’s because I know I’d probably botch the execution, but I’ve never really understood the point of a prank. But I’ve noticed an interesting trend lately. People have been pranking brands and the brands are responding in a really positive way.

Example 1: McDonald’s

Two teens in Texas recently put up a poster of themselves in their local McDonalds and no one noticed… for more than a month!

The two boys noticed that the fast food restaurant didn’t have any posters that featured Asians, so they decided to make one and make themselves the stars of it. Their tweet about the prank went viral and, soon enough, they hit the peak level of viral: they went on The Ellen Show. But Ellen had her own surprise: McDonald’s gave each teen $25,000 because they are going to be featured in an upcoming (official) marketing campaign.

Example 2: Self Lender

One Twitter user recently decided to make a  spoof of an ad by a credit-building app. (Warning: some language may not be appropriate for all blog readers. Discretion is advised).

But the joke was on him, because other social media users thought it was a real ad! This too went viral and made its way back to the company, Self Lender. Rather than getting upset, they loved it. In fact, they loved it so much that they offered the guy a job in their marketing department!

These brands are pretty different in terms of industry and size, but both had similarly generous reactions to silly situations. This is a terrific example of how brand marketing isn’t always campaign-based. Opportunities present themselves and the right reaction can mean some seriously positive brand awareness. People on social media clearly loved the original viral pieces of content, but also loved the brand’s actions in response.

Kudos to McDonald’s and Self Lender for not being afraid to embrace the viral humor!

After reading the book Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook, from Gary Vaynerchuk (2013), I’ve giving a lot of thought on how Social media’s been changing the world in many aspects. Coincidentally, I came across an article published by The Economist last week, where an thorough analysis was made on Facebook’s current challenges and future outlook.

With the advance of technology, and the rise of new companies, as well as channels, social media outlets must constantly reinvent themselves in order to stay relevant and on top. Unplanned incidents, however, can hugely affect certain outcomes, as we have been observing with Facebook over the past few years. Data breach scandals, security issues, amongst others (O’Flaherty, 2018), appear to have severely impacted the company’s path.

Also, recent trend reports have shown that users spend less time on Facebook, and consume less content on public social networks in general (Domonoske, 2018). Adults over the age of 18 are spending 31% less time on Facebook’s core social network compared with two years ago, while the keep transitioning away from public consumption of content on social networks to more private interaction.

As stated by Vaynerchuk (2013), brands need to stay consistent and relevant on Social Media, and that wouldn’t be different for the social media channels themselves.

While Facebook is struggling, Instagram remains on the top of the charts, as the fastest growing SM platform – offering really engaging and successful features, like stories.

Besides that, other hot topics are in the works for 2019, as they keep popping up in digital marketing trend reports.

According to DeMers (2018), by 2020, half of all search queries will be voice-based – which means social media outlets will have to find their way into this technology. Other trends include: promoting authenticity through channels, utilizing VR and AR technologies, and finding innovative ways of implementing storytelling into products.

References:

DeMers, J. (January 9, 2018). Why You Need To Prepare For A Voice Search Revolution. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/jaysondemers/2018/01/09/why-you-need-to-prepare-for-a-voice-search-revolution/#224a9e9134af

Domonoske, C. (February 1, 2018). We’re Spending Less Time On Facebook, And Mark Zuckerberg Says That’s Great. Retrieved from https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/02/01/582469706/were-spending-less-time-on-facebook-and-mark-zuckerberg-says-that-s-great

The Economist (November 22, 2018). Facebook should heed the lessons of internet history. Retrieved from https://www.economist.com/business/2018/11/24/facebook-should-heed-the-lessons-of-internet-history

O’Flaherty, K. (September 29, 2018). Facebook Data Breach: What To Do Next. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2018/09/29/facebook-data-breach-what-to-do-next/#16cb7fb72de3

We are all familiar with social media influencers. We follow them, know them, and brands love them. It’s easy to decipher their promoted posts. They usually highlight a product or brand, complete with the hashtag, #ad, letting us know for sure that this is something they were asked to do. A new set of Instagram influencers are gaining traction and to see them highlighting products is rather surprising.

I’m talking about the med student social influencer. Seriously, go check it out.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand that med school is expensive, and if you can earn extra money, by all means do your thing.

However, it seems that this could border on unethical territory. What happens when a soon-to-be medical professional is promoting products simply because they are getting paid to do it? I’m not entirely naïve, I understand that doctors today largely prescribe medicine based on relationships with drug companies so perhaps this is just an introductory step on the way to what their lives will be like once they are M.D.’s.

But if it starts as early as med school what does that mean for them as they grow in their careers. Perhaps this is just the future we have set for ourselves with the influx of social media and power that comes with being an influencer with a large following.

I can’t help but think of a famous NYC doctor whose face adorned subway cars for years. Maybe Dr. Zizmor had it right all this time. Building yourself as a brand is just as important as the reputation you create as a doctor.

Athletes get paid for sponsorships. One could argue that this fits into that same category. It will be interesting to see how this transforms in the next few years. For now it’s safe to say, the doctor will promote you now.

I think most of us envision that the way we make important decisions about our lives is based on thoughtful consideration and research. For example, the candidate we choose for President is something we think carefully about, and we are issue-driven and engaged in the election process. The truth, however, is far more nuanced. Most communication theory explains that the way humans make decisions is much more emotionally-driven, based on more basic and primal responses such as fear (Cialdini, 2008).

Like much of America (and the world), I was surprised by the election results of Tuesday, November 8, 2016. I stared at my TV in bewilderment, as then-candidate Donald Trump received more and more electoral college votes. Like many others, I assumed that it was a small number of people that connected to his populist message, and the media I consumed, and those I spoke with, created a vacuum of confirmation bias that didn’t allow me to see a more comprehensive picture of our country.

In reality,President Trump did lose the popular vote, by over 2.8 million, but that’s another conversation for another day. Having lived through his presidency for the last two years I have often found myself wondering what exactly he is excelling at, and how do those who voted for him chalk up his successes? His administration is in chaos, his leadership style is highly controversial, and it is easy to fact-check his lies, which are numerous, public and often nonsensical.

My argument today, however, is that President Trump excels at the preferred communication methods of his constituents: social media, and in particular, twitter. He was elected in large part because of his unparalleled skill at connecting directly to his base and speaking to them in a way that demanded loyalty and engagement.

We often assume that a president’s job is more about governing, working with Congress to draft legislation, and to make real and meaningful change for our Country. However, something that I think we often forget is that perception is reality, and your administrative accomplishments don’t mean anything unless people who care know about them. President Trump is to twitter what President Roosevelt was to the radio. 

Our great political leaders are formed in the conclave of our communication trends, and they are only as successful as the medium allows.

Take, for example, the first televised debate between Nixon and JFK in 1960. When this debate took place, Vice President Nixon was the favored candidate to win. However, Senator Kennedy strode out on stage, tall, handsome and self-assured, and America fell in love. I think most historians would agree that President Kennedy didn’t stand a chance until the medium of television entered the political landscape and forever changed how politicians campaigned.

President Roosevelt commanded the medium of radio through his fireside chats in the 1930’s and led our country through two of our greatest moments of crisis: World War II and the Great Depression. He was elected to a historic four terms in office, and he was able to connect directly with the American people, since 90% of American households owned a radio before the advent of television. FDR adopted an informal and conversational tone, and reassured the American public at a time of great uncertainty.

It’s not that previous presidents or presidential candidates didn’t understand the value of communication, because they obviously did. But in the instance of the presidential election in 2016, we underestimated the power of direct communication through an evolving social media landscape, and over-emphasized the value of facts and truth. In reality, we’ve never been big on truth, and we much prefer easily consumable pieces of information that align with our existing beliefs.

So how, as communication professionals (and even those who aren’t involved in politics), can we learn from this historic moment?

• Know your target audience and your primary stakeholder group, and address how they want to be communicated with and adapt as they adapt. 
• Be flexible and fluid in your communication style since the public wants to feel a connection to the person with whom they are engaging.

And with the right communication strategy, maybe you could help launch the career of the next President of the United States.

Source:

Cialdini, R.B., (2008). Influence: Science and practice (5th). Allyn and Bacon.

In late 2017, Moj Mahdara, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Beautycon Media, introduced a new annual publication called, FOMO. The goal of FOMO is to report on beauty trends to provide insight into meaning and value for a newly defined influential demographic called “Pivotals.”

Pivotals are a generation of consumers aged 13-34 with diverse and niche identities not easily defined by traditional categories. In 2017, Beautycon Media used its unique advantage to study this demographic through the company’s popular two-city fashion, beauty, and lifestyle convention, Beautycon Festival. The festival is a gathering of pivotals, brands, and influencers in celebration of what is notable and on trend in popular culture. The festival creates an atmosphere for a meaningful exchange of ideas between consumers and brands eager to know what buyers want and why. According to CEO Mahdara, “It’s a really sweet spot for a very hyper-engaged consumer.”

Beautycon Media gathered valuable qualitative and quantitative research for brands to understand and create strategies to effectively communicate with Pivotals. Some of the key findings included:

• 81% say beauty is a cultural expression
• 73% are more influenced by those they follow on social media than celebrities
• Music-focused influencers are the most popular.
• Most do not describe themselves with a label and when they do they prefer niche labels of cultural (such as extremist), sexual (such as asexual), racial (such as mixed), and gender identity (such as tomboy).

The FOMO report is a worthwhile exploration for brands interested in understanding the culture of beauty from the mindset of a newly defined generation, Pivotals.

By Reena Patton

It was only Monday and the promotional emails started trickling in.  Black Friday is now a whole week dedicated to consuming.  Don’t get me wrong, I love consuming.  I do it all the time *sets down overpriced coffee*.  What I wonder is: if we can set aside a whole week for shopping, why can’t we set aside a whole week to be thankful for what we’ve got?  I’m sure there are similar stories every year, but as I browse the news and see headlines about refugees being detained at the border and fires destroying communities, it strikes me how lucky I am to be sitting in a comfortable coffee shop (there is a fire place!) writing a blog entry.

I was going to give you all a list of some things I’m personally thankful for, but we all can take a second and think of at least one thing (just a few examples in case you’re struggling: good health, full head of hair, comfortable bed, kick ass new pair of sneakers, you get the idea).  We all have something whether it’s big or small.  What I’m going to share with you instead are a few places where you can make a difference for people really struggling for something to be thankful for.  If you spend half the time looking at what these groups are doing as you did browsing Cyber Monday sales, it’s a win.

Action Against Hunger

Amnesty International

California Volunteers

National Alliance to End Homelessness

One Acre Fund    

How many of us have made a purchase on our phones in the last 24 hours? * raises both hands* And let’s be honest, Cyber Monday had nothing to do with it. Every day for me can feel like a cyber Monday. Google a “promo code” and that instant satisfaction for free shipping gets me to complete my cart and hit “checkout.” Target at my fingertips without having to get in my car? What is this convenience?!  And then, here comes Apple with that Apple Pay face recognition which doesn’t require me to get up from my cozy bed to go and get my purse, open my wallet, and type in my credit card numbers?! Just take all my money! There is no coming back from this… online shopping is here to stay. So on that note, let’s talk about today’s big event: Cyber Monday.

With a projection of $7.8 billion in online sales, and a potential of being the highest-selling day of the holiday season this year, who wouldn’t capitalize on the opportunity to market their brand on this online “holiday”? What is most interesting is that $2 billion of those sales will be done via smartphones (59% of shoppers will be using their phones to make purchases, 35% on desktops, and 6% on tablets). According to Lunden (2018), that is a huge spike in growth (32%) from the last year.  If done right, this is marketing GOLD for many companies.  But the secret sauce is going to be in building the momentum and engagement online, especially with social content and intuitive websites. Creating incentives that drive the customer base to stay on your page, and actually go through with the check out. According to the Baymard Institute, 70% of shopping carts are abandoned. To combat that, set up effective measures in place like a personalized pop up to engage with the consumer (i.e. don’t miss out! Last of these items left, etc) which builds the enticement to buy.  By creating incentives, deals, and targeted promotions successfully, marketers and companies can truly reap the benefits of a record breaking online shopping season. Now the question is, did you contribute to today’s record $7.8 billion in sales? I sure did. All done while in the comfort of my bed, in pjs, on my mobile device. We are living the future, folks. It’s called: convenience at your fingertips. =)

https://www.bigcommerce.com/blog/cyber-monday-marketing/#prepare-yourself-for-cyber-monday

https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/26/cyber-monday-2018/

Psychometric artificial intelligence has begun to revolutionize some of the world’s most competitive ad campaigns. Psychometrics, also known as Quantitative Psychology, is the science of reliably measuring, validating, and standardizing individual psychological differences, including: personality and values, cognitive biases, intelligence, mental health, life satisfaction, addiction, sexual orientation and political orientation among others. Companies are using personality based marketing as a form of persuasion. By appealing to the consumer by predicting their behavior based on their personality or psychometrics. There are a few companies out there that offer privacy-safe commercial applications to market, providing data-driven audiences that are cost efficient and deliver superior results to agencies or clients. An AI engine transforms surface-level behaviors into individual-level models of dozens of psychometric traits that are strongly rooted in the human constitution. These are among the most predictive data known to science on consumer interests and actions. The audiences can easily be activated on almost all social media and demand side platforms (DSPs), making psychometric targeting and analytics readily available to brands and their agencies. The benefits of psychometric targeting over conventional targeting are the following:

• Enhanced Conversion: Optimized audiences can outperform lookalike audiences by up to 320%. Why? Because ad targeting is a psychological prediction, and how you think is more predictive of what you do than what you look like and lift key performance indiccators (KPIs).
• Expansion of Total Addressable Market: The only targeting method that allows you to identify the Total Addressable Market of your ad campaign. Percentile-based audiences reveal the probability of engagement of users across the entire targeting universe. On average, 90% of users in a psychometric audience are missed by an equivalent lookalike audience.
• Personalization: Psychometric audiences optimize around each campaign based on who’s most psychometrically similar to engaged users. Audiences can optimize around hashed emails, web page visitors, mobile ad IDs, and ad engagement.
• Psychological Insights: For the first time, dozens of granular psychometric and demographic insights will be available and pinpoint who’s actually engaging with the brand – and why – allowing teams to take personalization to the next level.

However, there has been controversy about the use of this tactic in marketing. Is it ethical? According to an article in the Harvard Review, the basics of collecting and using personality traits ethically should follow the general guidelines of other behavioral science research of consumers (Graves, 2018). Some of these include: transparency of intent and usage; abiding by privacy laws and regulations; and aligning researcher/marketer interests with those of respondents.

What are your thoughts about using psychometric profiling to better reach your target audience?

Resources
https://www.wired.com/story/the-noisy-fallacies-of-psychographic-targeting/
https://ourdataourselves.tacticaltech.org/posts/psychometric-profiling/
https://hbr.org/2018/05/what-marketers-should-know-about-personality-based-marketing

Napa Valley is one of my favorite places to visit in the whole wide world. It is literally an hour and a half out my back door and I often go up for a day or for a weekend getaway. I am obsessed with the wine industry and find myself wishing that I was living the viticulture experience.

The fires in Northern California in 2017 was devastating to local small areas in and around Sonoma County and the general Northern California Coast. There was the fear of acres of vineyards being caught up in the blaze and that Napa Valley one of the most widely acclaimed wine regions in the world would be affected. If you don’t know, the wine industry depends greatly on tourism for its economic growth and stability when it comes to income and employment (Wright, 2018). Small towns like Sonoma and Napa Valley are two of the main areas that produce well-known wines like Robert Mondavi, Sutter Home, Stags Leap, Beringer, and Clos du Val. In addition, there are many famous restaurants in the area such as the French Laundry, Bottega, Bouchon’s and Morimoto’s (Iron Chef Morimoto from the Food Network) which are well worth the drive and culinary experience but suffer when tourist do not visit the region (www.visitnapavalley.com/).

The reality of the fires in the Sonoma and Napa areas is that it burned across seven counties in Northern California in October 2017 where people lost their lives, structures burned in the thousands, and insurance losses totaled well over $3 billion (Romano, 2018). Seventy-five winery-owned structures were lost but 93% of the wineries were unaffected (Romano, 2018).  At this time, there is a great need for the local industries in the wine regions to remain strong and not lose business (Romano, 2018).

What you don’t know is that most of the wineries are dependent on social media. Through their websites, electronic newsletters, and Facebook accounts, they were able to communicate and interact with their customers and suppliers to do business even when people were unable to get into the area. What was really cool was the marketing campaigns and fundraising events that were launched by many of the wineries and restaurants to help fire victims and in the rebuilding of the wine country that was overcome by fire.

The San Jose Mercury News carried an article in their Lifestyle section “Wine Country fire relief: The latest restaurant, winery fundraisers” letting people know how they could help, seeing that many people sent emails to the wineries to express their caring thoughts and reached out to ask how they could help (Zavoral, 2017). I was one of them. The first thing was that the tourism bureaus in Napa and Sonoma asked for customers return business to help in the restoring of the local economies in the area (Zavoral, 2017). The second thing they did was to reach out to the general Bay Area to let everyone know about the restaurants that were scheduling fundraisers to benefit the fire relief (Zavoral, 2017). The part I loved the most was that the vintners collaborated to make it easy for the consumer to buy wines online so that they could donate a percentage of that money to the fire victims (Zavoral, 2017). A website was also set up at www.visitnapavalley.co and www.sonomawine.com for everyone’s convenience.

So, the next time you are visiting Northern California take the time to visit Napa Valley and Sonoma. Your purchases will help the community and the local small businesses.

References

Ramano, A. (2018). Northern California Wine-Country Wildfire Impact Study Shows Signs of Hope. Wine Spectator. Retrieved from https://www.winespectator.com/webfeature/show/id/Northern-California-Wine-Country-Wildfire-Impact-Study

Visit Napa Valley https://www.visitnapavalley.com/

Wright, J.L. (2018). Napa, Sonoma wineries are pouring as California wildfire memories fade. USA Today. Retrieved from https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/experience/food-and-wine/2018/04/19/napa-sonoma-wineries-open-after-california-wildfires/528107002/

Zavoral, L. (2017). Wine Country fire relief: The latest restaurant, winery fundraisers. The Mercury News. Retrieved from https://www.mercurynews.com/2017/10/24/wine-country-fire-relief-the-latest-restaurant-vintner-fundraisers/