Consumer Behaviour

I don’t like Kindle (or Apple’s iBooks).

I like books.  I love books, in fact.  The real ones with pages that you hold and read and put on shelves.  They’re reassuring, they’re easy to reference and they’re a constant reminder of the wisdom and entertainment that’s within your grasp on a daily basis.

Don’t get me wrong.  I don’t treat them with any kind of reverence.  Recently a fellow author and I swapped books (I gave Cathrine Jansson-Boyd Consumer.ology, she gave me Consumer Psychology).  When I warned her that I was a committed book defacer – I will write notes all over a book – she was quick to recommend Post-it notes as an alternative: sorry Cathrine, I’ve written all over your book too (if it’s any consolation, the more I write the better the book). 

I know that you can make notes on Kindle and iBook books.  But it breaks the flow.  It means typing and clicking and dabbing.  For now that just doesn’t come naturally to me (or else the interface on an iPhone – how I access eBooks – needs improving). 

But that still wouldn’t solve the fact that there are no books around the place if everything is ‘e’.

However.

On Wednesday night I found myself in WHSmith’s at Kings Cross station, with an interminable wait for what I knew would be a painfully slow train.  I was all set to buy Task Force Black: The Explosive True Story of the SAS and the Secret War in Iraq when my deep-seated resentment of psychologically influencing pricing strategies cut in: no, I didn’t want to buy a second book half price (I would have had to carry a bag then, and I was travelling light), I just wanted one book at a sensible price.

For the first time I thought ‘Kindle’. I’d downloaded the app for my iPhone when I’d downloaded a free trial of a book.  I clicked on the App and then wandered round the station concourse like a clumsy prospector, looking for a 3G signal.

Thanks to all my payment details being linked to the account the title was no sooner located than it was purchased (and at a fraction of the price WHSmith wanted).  Within moments the book was downloaded and I was reading all about the Secret War in Iraq.

None of that opportunistic use of Kindle matters.  It’s irrelevant.

But what happened today isn’t.

I was reading a twitter post by @kimwanten and she recommended a book.  It sounded very interesting.  So I went to Amazon to read more about it.  It turned out to be a new title.

Although I had gone to the “real book” page at Amazon, I now found myself drawn towards the Kindle link.  I occupy a somewhat bizarre world between my conscious and unconscious mind: I spend so much time studying the way the unconscious mind works that I occasionally catch my own out and am able to observe it in action.

I suspect it was thinking “fast” and “easy” – I know it likes that.  I don’t think it was thinking “cheap” anymore, although I can’t be certain “cheaper” wasn’t in the mix as a confirmed eBook heuristic (rule of thumb).  I say that because, typing this a matter of minutes later, I have absolutely no clue what I paid for the book: I know the proper book was £9.00, but the Kindle could have been £1000.00 for all I know (I hope it wasn’t!).

I also know that I immediately downloaded the book to my iPhone, even though I will not begin to read it for some time.  So having it quickly was almost certainly part of the appeal, although irrationally so, given that I don’t intend to look at it yet!

So, I suspect, that I will now be buying a lot more eBooks.  Ironically, having briefly looked at both Amazon and Apple’s e-readers, iBooks seems much better.  But I’ve now bought twice from Amazon because it’s so easy to do so and because Amazon is where my unconscious mind takes me for books.  I may need to work on that.

Kindle eBooks – seems I’m destined to love/hate it.

Philip Graves

Philip Graves Uncategorized

Developing a logo is an interesting experience.  Recently several organisations have found that the internet provides a platform for dissenting voices to grow into active movements to oppose designs that they don’t like.

Gap, who some have suggested were really undertaking a publicity stunt, Starbucks and the Portland Timbers have all experienced an adverse reaction when plans of their changes came to light.

Recently, the Iranian Olympic Committee has said that they think the London 2012 logo is racist, spelling out the word Zion.  There are a number of reasons not to pay too much attention to this complaint:

1. It doesn’t spell out Zion, it says 2012.
2. If it did spell out anything in English it would be “Zo in”, since we read left to right and, with no hyphen, the second line should be taken as a new word.  Perhaps animal welfare groups should be boycotting the Olympics instead!
3. If you want to say that a 2 looks like Z, is it reasonable to also claim it looks like an N?  So that would mean it spells out Zoin.

Choosing a new logo is hard.  I should know, I’ve just been through the process for my website (it should be appearing there in the near future).  It’s tempting to outsource responsibility for deciding what design to choose to other people; I could have asked my friends or conducted a poll with people who have signed up at my website.

But if I don’t know what conveys my brand, what perspective are other people expected to respond from?  They might tell me what they think looks nice, aesthetic taste is understood to be intrinsically personal.  They might tell what they think my brand is about and what conveys this to them. 

But this is my chance to communicate a little bit more about me.  If I already convey everything I want to, if the status quo is so important, why would I be creating a new logo at all?

One comment famously suggested the London 2012 Olympic logo looked like Lisa Simpson performing a sex act; lots of people agreed.  But they only agreed when one person said it and that comment was picked up by the media (at which point its humour and astute observation caused it to spread as only a meme can).  I don’t doubt that, had the designers had this pointed out to them, this design would never have seen the light of day.

However, just because, once it’s pointed out, you can see it, doesn’t mean it would ever occur to you to think along those lines independently.  Consequently, you could ask one million people for their views on the logo, but if you don’t ask the person who makes that specific association your research will be irrelevant (assuming the media find and propagate the comment subsequently).

It’s one thing to run a logo design past a fresh set of eyes, to check that you haven’t inadvertently conveyed something directly that is offensive to people who will see it, but it’s reckless to let a consensus market research opinion drive the representation of your brand.

I often think researching a logo is a little akin to asking someone to dress and behave a certain way when they go on a date with you: in theory it should make for a perfect evening, but the fact that someone is just playing back what you want isn’t a substitute for the genuine experience of two people being themselves and enjoying each other’s company.

So by all means run a design past a few pairs of eyes, and ideally have people from different cultures check you aren’t offending them inadvertently, but don’t suppose that other people can tell you how you should be.

For the record, I have always liked the 2012 logo, I never liked the Gap logo, I like the new Starbucks logo and the new Portland Timbers logo appears to me a substantial improvement.  But my view on these doesn’t matter.  And whilst I hope you like my new logo when it appears at my website, if you don’t, well, perhaps it was just never meant to be between us!

Philip Graves

Philip Graves market research 2012, design, logo, market research, Olympics

The Olympic Park Legacy Committee board will soon be making a final decision on exactly what should happen to the stadium after the 2012 London Olympics.  At the heart of the debate is the question of whether a football club should be allowed to take over the stadium and what provision will exist for athletics if they do.

As is so often the case, someone (in this case the BBC), decided that it would be a good idea to find out the opinions of the public.  The results have subsequently been reported in a way that would appear to anyone reading them as facts.  Unfortunately they are nothing of the sort.

The questionnaire was very short, but nevertheless made several critical mistakes that introduced bias to the results (none of which were presented alongside the results in the media).

Firstly, despite my best efforts, I have been unable to find out exactly what questions one and two were.  These are of particular importance, since each question can serve as a prime for subsequent ones.

Personally I see no value in opinion polls.  They are implicitly artificial in focusing an issue in a simplistic way.  Secondly, they are ENORMOUSLY sensitive to the broader context in which they are conducted.  This poll, conducted between 21st and 23rd January 2011, coincided with extensive media coverage about what we, as a country, had promised would happen after the games.  The reporting of this promise made the bid of West Ham United seem immediately more palatable than that from Tottenham.

However, despite what appeared to be an obvious solution for the stadium, namely letting West Ham have it, the Olympic Park Legacy Committee making a recommendation on the decision, felt they needed more time than originally intended: either it was a committee of monumental dimwits, or else this decision was more complex than was being portrayed in the media.

Perhaps part of their thinking was the thought that athletics is in decline as a spectator sport.  It’s hardly the case that stadiums up and down the country are routinely filled with tens of thousands of excited athletics fans: a large empty stadium may not be such a great asset for the sport.

The first question in the data supplied by the pollsters (Com Res) is Q3.  It makes the classic error of not allowing people the option of not having an opinion.  Granted, even with this option I still wouldn’t like the poll, but not including it has been shown to transform poll results (I recommend reading David W. Moore’s book “The Opinion Makers” if you want to learn more about this). 

Curiously, since this is a finding that was not reported in the articles I read, only 4% of respondents, that’s right FOUR PERCENT, said they wanted what is actually being proposed by the probable winner, West Ham – to use the stadium for a mixture of football, athletics and concerts.   So if we’re going to take note of opinion polls (not that we should) shouldn’t we take note of this finding?

So when, in Q5, people say they think that the West Ham bid should win, how is this contradiction with Q3 to be reconciled?  The answer, I suspect, is people don’t really know that much about the subject.  That’s fine.  That is, after all, why we appoint teams of people to consider and scrutinise such issues and make decisions.  What role such superficial, contextually-media-influenced opinion polling has to play in the process, I have no idea.

Disturbingly, statistics are beguiling things.  Numbers are, in themselves, concrete and tangible.  Statistics benefit from their representation as numbers, albeit proportions; but when they are derived from surveys, frequently have no such validity.  But now the media are representing this survey’s results as justification for the West Ham bid winning over Tottehnam’s; it is, they say, what people want.

So, at best, all we can say in light of this survey is that somewhere between 4% and 70% of people wanted the West Ham bid to win in the context of the media representation of the subject in and around January 21st.  Good.  That was BBC licence fee money well spent.

I don’t think the world is a better place for the media’s polarisation of complex debates.  In my view, opinion polls contribute considerably to this tendency and, as a result, do far more damage than they ever do good.

Philip Graves is the author of Consumer.ology: The Market Research Myth, the Truth about Consumers and the Psychology of Shopping

Philip Graves market research BBC, Com Res, Olympic 2012 stadium, Olympic Park Legacy Committee, Tottenham, West Ham

People aren’t desperately honest creatures.  Through no fault of our own we’re victims of the way our brains have evolved; it’s wise not to take the things people claim at face value.

Among the many issues affecting market research the quality of respondent recruitment is reasonably frequently debated.  It’s not something I got into in Consumer.ology mostly because even when you recruit the “right” people, asking them questions throws up a whole world of other issues.  

However, over the last couple of days I’ve had a fascinating insight into the recruitment process and can, at no charge to the market research industry, offer them a high quality recruitment tool. 

I was contacted by a television network who wanted to interview me about a story that has been in the news regularly over the past few weeks; the cost of filling your car with petrol (or diesel).  Prices have risen substantially over the past few weeks and since January 2009 the cost of filling your car has increased by almost 50%.

The television network wanted to talk to me about consumer behaviour, they also wanted to interview someone who had changed their driving behaviour as a result of the soaring prices.

Having heard lots of people complaining and discussing the issue, not to mention talking about what they were going to do differently - let’s face it, it hurts to refuel your car these days – I thought it would be easy to find someone who would talk to a journalist about the changes they were making.

So I sent out an email to a hundred or so people locally; people encompassing a wide socio-economic spectrum.  The researcher working on the programme contacted various other people and organisations to find someone.

The response?  Not one person was willing to stand in front of a camera and explain how their behaviour had changed.

Now, of course, not everyone likes the idea of being on television, but given the concern in the media about this issue it would be easy to presume that people are doing something differently.  Then again, the story “Petrol prices are skyrocketing, but people are still buying it like usual” wouldn’t be much of an attention-grabber, would it?

Talk, as they say, is cheap.  Airing your anxieties, thoughts and feelings is pretty much an everyday occurence.  But actually accounting for your behaviour, and feeling that you might be held to account for your behaviour, is quite a different matter.  [This is one of the reasons that when I do ask questions I use interview techniques that don't allow people to talk about their thoughts and feelings.]

With the jury of your peers in the pub, who see you on TV talking about the fact that you now “cycle a lot more” or “take the bus instead of the car” or “can’t afford to drive”, there is someone on hand to poke you in the side and laugh at your fanciful exaggerations (or at least you are afraid that there might be).

I suspect that the conscious introspection triggered by realising that they would be accountable for their answers was at least a contributory factor in people’s unwillingness to speak to the press.

So, when it comes to market research recruitment you should probably recruit people on the basis that their responses will be broadcast to the nation, that way you can be more confident there’s some substance behind their claims.

Talk is cheap, research talk is even cheaper, but claiming you’ve done things you haven’t in front of your mates can be expensive.

Philip Graves market research consumer behaviour, market research, petrol prices, research recruitment

With levels of obesity increasing, efforts are being made in several of the countries affected to find a way of getting overweight people to stop cramming high calorie food into their mouths on a regular basis.

Diet is a fascinating area, since it’s one in which many people have first hand experience of what I call “the Mind Gap” – the space that exists between the unconscious and conscious mind.  In this case it’s experienced when people make firm commitments to lose weight, commitments that they have with complete (conscious) conviction at the time, then find that after an initial period of success their weight returns to its previous level. 

Sometimes they ascribe their return to greater mass to mystic forces or an underlying medical condition, but more often they realise that they’ve not been sticking to the good intentions they made and, in a distracted moment, have taken it upon themselves to feast on cream cakes and pies in the way that, now they think about it, they pretty much always have.

Nevertheless, this greater opportunity for awareness of “the mind gap”, and the fact that it is frequently the unconscious mind that decides what we push into our mouths, doesn’t always stop regulators and legislators from implementing optimistic appeals to the conscious mind.

Just over a year ago new legislation was passed in a Washington county, that required fast food outlets to display calorie information for their products at the point of purchase. 

The result? Nothing changed.  Comparing the average calorie intake in a store that was forced to display the information with others in different regions that were not showed that the total number of sales and average calories per transaction were exactly the same.  Displaying the infomration made no difference to what people ate.

I imagine that the people behind the legislation will be disappointed, but they shouldn’t be.  Provided that the opportunity is taken to learn and understand why people were unaffected by the additional information, future policy has the chance to be much more effective.

The challenge for legislators, marketing people and everyone else, is to recognise how widespread this phenomenon is: we can appeal to people’s conscious minds all we like.  In the end what matters is what’s happening on the other side of “the mind gap”.

Philip Graves

Source: Mandatory Menu Labelling in One Fast-Food Chain in King County, Washington; Finkelstein et al, American Journal of Preventative Medicine, Vol 40, Issue 2, February 2011

Philip Graves behavioural insight, consumer behaviour diet

In the run up to December 25th I received several requests from broadcasters to talk about Christmas, how much we spend and whether the “true meaning” gets lost in this consumer age of ours.

I was happy to contribute to the debate and add my point of view.

But the best time to analyse Christmas and its meaning is now, a few days after the event – or depending on how you look at it – still in the middle of it.  Rather than muddle matters with our self-perceptions and idealisations, look back at our Christmas behaviour and see what happened.

I believe that, here in the UK, the following generalisations will apply to most people – I could be wrong, this is a blog after all, not a piece of formal research:

• People get together with family and friends far more frequently and for longer than at other times of the year.
• People exchange gifts.
• People massively over-indulge (on food, drink and sometimes gifts).

And I suspect that you would also find with reasonable frequency…

• Some people get together with family members and argue.
• Some people get into debt.
• Some people go to church (and sometimes for the only time in the year).

These, it appears to me, are the things we do.  But what does it all mean and what’s the “true meaning?”

I think the whole “nativity” business can be put to one side.  In terms of human history, it’s a relatively recent traditional take on a winter feast that has been going on for much, much longer (under various religious or quasi-religious brands).  Arguably more recent debates about what is or isn’t associated with the occasion, such as the Peep Show’s “Cauliflower is NOT a Christmas tradition” are no less justifiable: each of us has our own sense of what makes the moment what it is.

It is interesting to me that some people, fortunately not me, accept family squabbling as an inevitable consequence of Christmas: they know it’s going to happen but still they forge ahead and accept it as though it is no less inevitable than hearing Slade’s Merry Christmas whilst shopping in early October.

It would appear that, for thousands of years, we have felt a need to get together in the midst of winter and indulge.  In modern-day consumer society, when going shopping can be a recreational pursuit and food is in plentiful supply all year round, it’s perhaps not surprising that consumerism reaches a frenzy.  This is the indulgence we appear to crave and we will tolerate the arguments and cantankerous relatives to get it.

The middle of Winter can be a gloomy time (in the Northern hemisphere beyond a certain latitude) and, it strikes me, that big festive occasion we currently call Christmas is a shining beacon that drags us past the shortest dark days and towards Spring. 

Therein rests, for me, the true meaning of Christmas; it’s a psychological pick me up that keeps us going.  A legacy of an age when it was needed far more than it is now (for most), but that still plays an important role in our relationship with the seasons.

All of which makes me wonder just what those people in the Southern hemisphere or closer to the equator are getting caught up in?  The answer, I suspect, can be found in this song by the incalculably brilliant Tim Minchin…

I’m not against consumerism.  Aside from providing a basis for my work, I see it as a natural phenomenon rather than something has been created maliciously.  But I do wonder if our mid-Winter celebration might transition into something else?  If so, I suspect that, given the nature of communication these days, it will be fragmentation rather than total revision to one new expression. 

My vote goes for Tim’s notion (without the sun, obviously), but so long as we all respect everyone’s right to do what they feel works for them we should all be fine.

Philip Graves

Philip Graves consumer behaviour meaning of Christmas

Large companies spend a fortune on customer service: implementing it, training people, monitoring it and, yes, even researching it.

And yet all too often when you deal with a company it seems apparent that they just don’t get it.

Take Barclays – one of the largest financial services companies in the UK.  Last week I was in the centre of Cambridge and, for reasons that weren’t immediately obvious, they had a team of blokes dressed as Grenadier Guards (the ones who wear the bearskin headgear) except with corporate blue tunics rather than red and giving out balloons rather than shooting at people.

No doubt this was a bold marketing campaign to draw attention to what a lovely bank Barclays is.  And it must be said that the people in uniform were great; joking with shoppers as they passed by.

Unfortunately, the person I dealt with in their customer service department was a happy little soldier; she was a grumpy proceduralist (if such a word exists).

I rang to pursue a refund that I was owed – ‘bank error in your favour’ kind of thing (except, of course, it actually just means they’ve been looking after my money for a couple of years and are returning it interest free).  They had promised it seven weeks ago.  I should add that I don’t bank with Barclays, this was a separate financial transaction.

It transpired that they had sent the cheque to an address I hadn’t lived at for a number of years, rather than the one that I, as convention dictates, had written in the top right of the letter I sent them requesting it.

Now everyone makes mistakes.  That’s not the issue.  My issue is that when, having made a mistake and acknowledged it, they neither apologise nor seek to do the most basic thing to make amends.

“I’ve just spoken to accounts, they send they’ll send another cheque; can I check your address.”

“What do you mean, another cheque?  What happened to the first one?”

“We sent it to your old address.”

“What, the one I haven’t lived at for three years.  Great.”

“Do you want it sending to the address on your letter?”

“As confusing as that obviously was, yes please.”

“That will be with you in the next 21 days.”

“Hang on; 21 days?  How about asking them to send it out today so that I get it tomorrow; after all they’ve made the mistake.  Please would you ask them to do that?”

“We have to say it will be 21 days.” (This is a bank, remember; they can make an instant payment on your behalf, sometimes for a fee, but they can’t get one to me).

And there, in that last statement from the customer service lady, is the illustration of why some companies just don’t understand customer service.  No flexibility, no real reaction to the issue, just a process. 

No sense of cause and effect, no sense of responsibility, no recognition that the problem they have caused me exists for me in the context of my experience of them as a bank; not their context of dealing with millions of transactions every day.

I am being treated in the way they have decided it is reasonable to treat someone; irrespective of circumstances.

As I said, I don’t bank with Barclays.  And guess what; it doesn’t matter how many balloons the blue soldiers give me or my children, I’m not going to.

Philip Graves Customer Service Barclays, barclays bank, Customer Service

With my book Consumer.ology now published I’m starting to hear back from people who have heard about it, read it or read or heard an article or interview about it.

One of the very positive upsides to this is that more people are starting to share their stories of market research getting it wrong. 

Whilst I managed to unearth a good number of examples for the book, the fact is that it’s not really in anyone’s interests to publicise occasions when money spent on research was wasteful.  Occasionally there’ll be times when someone’s decision was vindicated and they’ll speak about it, but often the people making the final decision are also the ones who have decided to spend several thousand pounds on research, and choosing to ignore it doesn’t reflect particularly well on that decision even if it’s the right thing to do!

One reader contacted me to tell me about the conclusions of a focus group for a beer that was being tested with consumers in the UK, with a view to importing it.

The conclusions from the research were that the beer was “weak”, “watery”, “gassy”, “… like kissing your sister!”.  It certainly wasn’t a real man’s beer.

However, the autocratic head of the business decided to push ahead with launching the beer in the UK.  His name was August A. Busch III; you may have seen the product around here in the UK since then… it’s called Budweiser.

If you have any market research stories you would like to share, please do get in touch (philip(at) philipgraves.net)

Philip Graves

Philip Graves market research Budweiser, consumer.ology, market research

It’s not just the publication of my book Consumer.ology here in the UK that is putting market research under spotlight.

I recently had this article on the BBC website by Michael Blastland forwarded to me:

Beware the Don’t Know Brigade

He has hit on a topic that was covered in part by David Moore’s book “The Opinion Makers”; in it the former Gallup man revealed some of the dramatic differences you get to questions, depending on whether you offer the option “Or don’t you have an opinion.”

As Blastland points out this is only part of the issue.  The wider context is all important in determining how we react to something, as is the detail of the issue in question.

“Do you want your children to have a wonderful state education?”
“Would you like to end world poverty?”

Many people would say say an unhesitating “Yes” to these in a survey.  But such initiatives come at a price.  The focus of the question, and often the questions before it, may do a great job of sensitising respondents to the social issue concerned (particularly if a self-interested party is behind the research), but such visions are much more difficult to cost (so the fact that 90% of your income will be taken in tax to fund this educational reform isn’t discussed).

Of course, I’m being extreme to make a point.  But the reality is that even if any one question were to be accurately described from a cost perspective for a research study of this kind, it wouldn’t exist in the vacuum it does for the research: respondents don’t know about the separate polls being conducted for other initiatives that will require their tax pounds to fund and, even if they did, it is unlikely they would create an accurate total in their own minds before responding so focused would they be on the issue being deconstructed for the research.

As I point out in Consumer.ology, there are a whole host of reasons why people can’t give accurate responses in opinion polls; the fact that, arguably, a lot more people should be “don’t know’s” is the tip of much, much larger iceberg.

Philip Graves

Philip Graves market research consumer.ology, opinion polls

I once had a conversation with the Marketing Director of a brand that is a household name in which he suggested that no products had updated their brand identities.  We were having the conversation because his main brand was so tired that sales were in decline and customers didn’t see its packs on the shelves of their supermarkets: it looked exactly the same as it had a decade earlier (and it was hardly the most relevant product back then).

When I used Skoda as an example, he moved the goal posts to FMCG products. 

Then when I referenced other FMCG products that had dramatically redesigned their brand without disaster he argued that these weren’t in the same category as his product.

So his point was, that since none of his competitors had successfully updated their brand identity, he shouldn’t be the first one to risk it.

Except, of course, all of his competitors were either so new they hadn’t reached the point of needing a freshen up, or else they had updated their brand, he just hadn’t noticed.

It must be said, this manager was one of the most risk averse people I’ve ever met: it was a surprise that he took a chance of putting his feet in socks each day – who knows what could have been lurking inside them!

One of the best examples of rebranding is the British Royal Family (granted they aren’t a fast moving consumer good).  Before 1917 the royal family was a branch of the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.  However, by that point in World War I associations with Germany weren’t desperately popular.  Matters were hardly improved when the German’s starting dropping bombs from their Gotha G.IV on England.

George V (or his advisers) decided a rebranding and repositioning job was called for.

It was decided, presumably without the need for a million pounds of design consultancy and consumer testing, that the rather more quaintly English ‘Windsor’ would do a better job of endearing the monarchy to the masses.

Crucially, this wasn’t just a case of calling the same snack by a new name and hoping people would accept it.  Yes, pretty much everything remained as it had been before. However, there were some important tweaks that, given that the broad support for the monarchy hadn’t yet been entirely eroded, were sufficient to edge things back in their favour for the next century or so.

He changed the rules about marriage; it was now possible for members of the British royal family to marry British people. 

The King also allied the monarchy to the emerging social forces: the honours system was changed and anyone in the country could receive an OBE (Order of the British Empire) award if it was felt they went beyond the ordinary: this included trades unionists and people who did voluntary work.  Now the monarchy wasn’t the enemy of “the people”.

One less fortunate change came when the Russian Tsar, a cousin of George V, turned to him for help when the Russian revolution took hold.  The King, fearing he would be seen as putting other nation’s interests above those of the British, refused to provide him with a safe haven: the Tsar of course was executed by the revolutionaries.

I think there are good lessons to learn from this event about the nature of rebranding and human (or consumer) psychology:

• If you want people to perceive your brand differently, you need to do more than just change the name – but changing the name gives you a chance both to create new associations and to harness those that already exist (provided you choose wisely).
• Provide a clear benefit that people can positively associate with the change.
• Once you’ve made a stand for something new, you need to act consistently with those values if you want them to be credible.
• Rebranding can’t easily transform ill will.  But it can catch people before they feel alienated and can give people a reason to reappraise how they feel if they are becoming ambivalent.

Back to that marketing director I mentioned.  Eventually he was persuaded to accept a minor updating of his brand.  It wasn’t everything that it could be, but it turned the brand from declining sales to growth for the first time in years.

Philip Graves

Philip Graves consumer behaviour, market research, Marketing consumer psychology, rebranding