Sidewalk Anthropologist

So here's a thought.

People are buying more and more online.

Delivery businesses like Connect+ are partnering with local services such as corner shops and service stations to provide local pick ups.

Lots of old people live on their own and don't get any interaction.

So could that 'final mile' problem be dealt with by an agency that organises local pensioner collection? 

You pick up your parcel.

Someone lonely gets a chance to chat, to be part of something and a chance to make some cash.

Leave it with Doris. 

Oh, sure it's riddled with reasons why not, but message me if you can see reasons to pursue it.

The truck's slogan read, 'No whoppers stored in this vehicle overnight'.

A few week's previously I'd been into Burger King. I've no idea why. It was late on a Friday night. I wasn't even slightly drunk.

But the trouble with fast food is - if you find yourself waiting - especially in the presence of 3 very large... what you might call, women - the desire can very quickly drain.

As it did with me. A few minutes passed and my mind won out in the battle with my stomach. 

I went to a Sainsbury's Local and got something revolting from them instead. 

But as I overtook the Burger King truck on the motorway, the copy did the trick. The sense of humour tells me more than some claim of being focused on UK farming, or how green the truck is. I hope that they are, and it is. But fast food is frivolous - and ridiculous... Better to know thyself.

There will undoubtedly be a next time when my stomach press-gangs me into an error on the food front. And when it does - it looks like, despite the likelihood of getting crushed to death by a beered-up hen do, Burger King will be back on the menu.

Recently a friend went to see Dennis Potter’s “Blue Remembered Hills” – in which adult actors portray a group of wartime kids.

  She was impressed at the characterisations of the young children. The production had spent time in primary schools, observing behaviour.

  Naturally, we expect actors to be adept at mimicry and great empathy; it is the actor’s challenge to make the fictional real, and have us believe those lines of texts are spontaneous thoughts. Lack sincerity and they won’t go far.

  Advertisers too must learn to behave like actors. It’s not just the brand; its audience must fascinate us. If they do not, how can we hope to gain understanding, let alone talk to them? This excitement with human behaviour should permeate the agency, yet often we’re more in tune with the hippest trends.

How might an actor approach it? By considering the hopes and fears, the vulnerabilities, not just the aspirations and the 'I want'. The actor might consider the wider social context, the history - in fact all the nuances that make up someone in the target group. From there we are likely to find overlaps and commonalities - uniting themes that strike a chord.

  In the production notes to the play, the assistant director writes on research, ‘the more we researched, the more we found to research’. Of course - there is always something new to find, by which I don't mean: 'we could get them to upload a Vine'.

Because many of us are guilty of inwardly looking to the worlds of art and design, to what's trending - at what's cool on youtube and hot in the digital space we forget to look outside of ourselves.

We should all be encouraged to do so - into places that are unusual, overlooked or uncomfortable.

It’s another ironic summer here in Britain, somehow even with the 14 degree temperatures and chill northerly winds – it’s hay fever season again.

And with it comes what seems to me to be an untapped marketing opportunity for Kimberly Clark and Kleenex.

The approaches to the seasonal allergies are from big pharma – with the remedy offering. In ad-land hay fever doesn’t equate to sniffing for hours on end. It’s all itchy eyes and bouts of sneezing.

There’s seems to be a squeamishness about addressing the biology of why we’d need a tissue in the first place. In tissue ads – they’re used in plentiful supply, often because we’re a bit weepy; tears score obvious visual appeal over snot.

Or is it because breathily marshalling mucus up your hooter isn’t deemed unpleasant or annoying anymore?

The professionally attired, the young and attractive, sniffers are everywhere – all undermining the effort they put into their appearance with an unappealing habit.

By tapping into the result (rather than the causes) of hay fever  (or equally the coughs and colds season) – and seeking to reboot our norms to encourage tissue carrying habits (tissues as shorthand for manners and an extension of style, if you like), marketers could examine implementation, brand partnerships and no doubt find profitable territory.

The trends of Gatsby or Madman led fashions, for example, provide a fertile opportunity to grab a lift on stylish nostalgia.

Charlie Mawer, exec CD of Red Bee Media, recently blogged about the misrepresentation of movies in trailers.

  As a company well versed in the art of bringing audiences to channel brands, Red Bee are all to aware of the pitfalls of failing to deliver on the promise of a story.

But misleading your public with a whizzy trail isn't limited to show business.

Arriving at NY’s Newark airport recently the ‘trailers’ from the US Immigration Service were plump with smiling faces, engaging staff, happy to help-ness and a ‘Welcome to America’ glow.

Taken against the reality of stressed staff marshalling their customers (sorry, would be terrorists, drug mules and asylum seekers) on a 2-hour shuffle to the nirvana of passport control, the delivery took a comical edge; who says Americans don’t get irony?

  The tension racked up as we neared the booths, inching towards brand USA, inching towards show time.

  Men, I guessed, from a Full Metal Jacket tribute act marched their buzz-cuts down the lines. Their intensity peppered the happy-meal voice over of the immigration ‘how-to’.

  It looped on whilst an agent shouted at a line of Swedes, ‘Step away. Move there, or there – or get back on the plane, I don’t care’.

  Into this reception walked another jar-head, tensing his frame and inviting a colleague to muscle up, ‘Hoo-ah… GUNS, Makowski… Hoo! GUUUUNS!!!’

  A Korean family looked on, their expressions suggesting the command to return to the plane seemed not such a bad idea.

  So it’s an extreme example – but there’s no point researching a well thought out strategy (touchy feely Obama accessibility, perhaps?) when you’ve forgotten to tell the people communicating the experience (or recruiting marine corps rejects to do so).

There’s a great IPA effectiveness presentation on thinkbox.tv about Orange. Robin Wright, president of WCRS tells the rebrand story of the once catchy named ‘Hutchison Microtel’.

Part of the story goes that research showed people were more interested in product price than network quality. Probably seems crazy now – after all a cheap handset is no use if you can’t hear the call in 90% of places.

But Hans Snook, the founder, stuck a finger up at the research and went ahead raising cash and making improvements. Lo and behold, subsequent research showed that consumers rated network quality as the most important factor.

Snook had the guts – or conviction and instinct, as Robin Wright tells it – to leap ahead of what the market was saying.

This resonates nicely with the work of psychologist James Pennebaker. His research demonstrates writing about emotions helps people heal. Amazing. Pennebaker reasoned that a trauma kept secret negatively effects health; disclosure provides relief.

Pennebaker gathered data by using an electronically activated recorder (EAR) – a device which subjects wear – and cycles on and off at periods over several days.

There was a significant change in subjects’ behaviour after the therapy (which involved writing about their problems for four days).

But when subjects were asked to rate the change on questionnaires – they didn’t see it. The power of change, says Pennebaker, is not always in the eye of the perceiver. He touts the use of the EAR as one way of getting away from questionnaire led psychology.

It’s a piece of kit that would be invaluable in really understanding consumer behaviour.

Following up from posting the other day about listening in... last night I passed two tooled up coppers at Victoria Station. What do police with semi-automatic weapons chat about? Their love of Tony Robinson's 'Time-Team'. 

  Apparently credit-crisis fallout has caused a shift away from the competitive and self-serving to the mend and make-do fare of The Great British Bake Off etc  (yes, somehow competitive nature is way more tolerable without the endless shitting-on-your-co-contender aspect).

  Audience decline (or format fatigue) for the Apprentice was highlighted. So it’s interesting to see how the BBC have approached the advertising of it this year.

  Beautifully crafted rendering aside - the chuckle vision of ‘The Finger of Fear’ (which sounds a little like a Two Ronnies sketch) is played to the extent that the piece would sit as a comfortable crown on the proceedings of Comic Relief.

  Did the beeb tune into this apparent shift in viewer sentiment – briefing in the requirement to tonally fluff Big Al’s cuddly side and neatly eschew any mention of the Machiavellian tactics that the programme personifies?

The wildly ambitious candidates are reduced to a humbly nude gold figurine. Everyone else is just a victim of – their own misperception, apparently. 

As a piece of entertainment it’s great. As a piece of targeted communication, I’m not so sure. Perhaps it doesn’t really matter; BBC One is all about generalist entertainment so whatever the weighting - it reflects positive brand value…

There’s all sorts of ways to discover what makes people tick.

Unfortunately for clients, many of them involve some dubious assessment methods. 

But one of the simplest, and cost effective ways to research is to simply open your ears.

When all around you are plugging in to music, a movie, or a book – don’t. Deploy the Green Cross Code of old. Stop, look and listen.

  Sure, you might miss out on some gem from the latest industry rag, or fall woefully behind on your Madmen agenda – but there really is no substitute for the fine art of eavesdropping.

Of course, detractors will cry – you can't just hope to stumble upon something insightful. But you can orientate your stumbling towards the target. You can break your regime. Rather than inviting targets into the agency and bombarding them with questions... slink out and tune in.

You also never know when the overheard will stick in your mind and inform your point of view – or create unexpected connections.

Generalist market research often lacks a creative approach. If you really must have a focus group – infiltrate it with eavesdroppers. Almost certainly the most insightful things will get said before and after the assessment.

With my ears on, I recently learnt of the joys of working with touchscreen tills, "touchpad tills – I love ‘em - yeah, I know – sad ain’t I", from a high-energy pair of B&Q girls on a day trip to London.

Or about the ‘ah yes, the old long the Nikkei, short the Yen – hedge Sterling’ trade – from a couple of unlikely looking financial lads over their breakfast.

Or an enquiry about orange juice – ‘made from oranges’ – from… well, a nutter presumably (or did I ask that?). 

It was saddening to hear of the recent death of Richard Briers, one of the UK’s most well loved comic actors. In reporting his passing, the BBC noted that he had observed, ‘The Good Life’, the show that gave him national fame, would be unlikely to be commissioned now.

However, listening to Dan Cook, director of planning and research at ITV, speak at a meeting of the Account Planning Group  – the chances of a national broadcaster airing what we might lovingly call, ‘Slow-TV’, could be higher than Richard might have thought.

Dan discussed how the trends in viewer habits were sliding away from fame and fortune shows such as the BBC’s ‘Apprentice’, and the ‘manufactured conflict’ of Channel 4’s output such as ‘Wife Swap’ (interestingly he didn’t refer to any of ITV’s content).

He went on to note that there was a keen interest in ‘make-do-and-mend’ programming, substantiated by the high figures gained by BBC Two’s, ‘The Great British Bake Off’ – its final outperforming the channel’s audience monster, ‘Top Gear’.

However, are figures dwindling for ‘The Apprentice’ because society’s lost interest in the themes of these programmes, or is it that after 7 years of it being aired, we’ve got format-fatigue? Especially when you factor in exposure from youth and celebrity versions.

Correlation doesn’t equal causation, and there’s no way to prove if life is imitating art or vice versa. If ‘The Apprentice’, 'Wife Swap' etc. had never aired would they be popular if launched now? It’s untestable. However, mass media has a good history of efficiently creating an appetite, given the right tools.

Which leads to the question, should broadcasters follow trends, or endeavour to set them? As advertising legend Bill Bernbach said, ‘we’re so busy measuring public opinion, we forget that we can mold it’. The figures should give us a map. Broadcasters must still be prepared to take bold journeys on it.

After all, ITV still airs ‘X-Factor’; many millions of viewers demonstrate that we maintain an appetite for sniggering at individuals who should have never been allowed near the cameras.  Wrapped up in the joy of unexpected wow-performances are the painful judging critiques. We’re human after all. Car-crash TV and fortune hunting seem healthy fare for this audience.

When issuing a parking or bus lane fine the authority involved tell the alleged offender that they have 14 or 28 days to pay at the ‘reduced fee’.

 If the recipient wants to contest the matter they appeal and if proved unsuccessful the reduced payment may still be made. Or they may continue to tribunal. If the tribunal adjudicator rules against them, they then pay the full fee. For example, the reduced fee is £65 and the full fee £130.

However, appeal decisions are made by authority staff – and unless absolutely clear-cut are unlikely to be accepted; many appeal decisions are subsequently overturned at tribunal with an independent adjudicator. But the tribunal carries the risk of doubling your loss.

We should question why the ‘reduced fee’ choice was ever created. Surely, if you’ve committed an offence, you must pay. Why would the authority allow an allegedly guilty person to pay a discount? It is of no benefit to the authority, and makes a mockery of the Law.

It seems to exist because the authority knows there is a substantial margin of error when issuing fines – but once a choice is introduced many take the option of making a perceived saving, and the authority never need prove wrongdoing.

Therefore the issuing authority creates a choice architecture that subtly pushes alleged offenders towards paying the £65 fine (or ‘reduced’ fine) without contesting it. Psychology demonstrates that we feel our losses more acutely than our gains; this process plays to both loss, and risk aversion.

If, however, the authority did not create a choice and the fine carried one value, alleged offenders would be more likely to pursue their appeal to tribunal, as there would be no perceived loss. The way the authority frames the choice can dramatically affect outcomes – i.e. ‘pay up now and save, or wait and be penalised again’.

The authority is not trying to help the alleged offender by offering a reduced rate (indeed, why should they help a guilty person?) – they are simply guaranteeing a cleverly proven method of encouraging people not to contest the fine and in so doing, generate revenue.

The issuing authorities demand you make choices that tend to affect behaviour and bias the outcome in their favour. If a commercial business generated revenue in such a way it’s likely we’d deem it morally corrupt. So why does the system lack clarity and why are subtle manipulation tactics appropriate for local councils?

Ah HMV. What’s to be done? Surely, cheap is cheap – the High St suffers from cripplingly high tax bands whilst digital soars. But could strong experiences be its saviour?

There’s no sense of occasion to e-commerce. It lacks a narrative. Shopping becomes youtube becomes bank balance becomes facebook becomes… oh, is it lunchtime? I’m still in my pyjamas.

We’re unlikely to hear, “Wow, I saw that guy from the gig the other night when I was looking for the Rihanna CD – and he asked me out! ” or, “I went in to pick up some headphones for Pete’s birthday – I bumped into Clare. Was great to catch up…”

The high street offers a chance of something that’s absent online; a real human connection. But if you have to trek in, shell out for transport and end up stressed in an unpleasant shop– why bother? There’s no reward.

What’s misleading about this?

 ‘62 per cent of consumers think the internet and social media has made decision-making easier than five years ago, with radio and television now considered to be five times less influential than online sources for large purchases.’

It’s a report in The Telegraph from a recent IBM survey.

As many in the comments section noted, the article did nothing to illuminate the details of the survey’s sample breakdown or interpretation of results.

But beyond this – and taking the liberty of suggesting the data may have been gathered from a strongly agree-strongly disagree 5 point scale then we should be very wary about drawing any conclusions at all.

Beware the word, ‘think’.

Psychology shows us repeatedly that we are terrible at understanding ourselves. So we may think that TV isn’t very influential when someone poses a question to us about it – but it’s quite possible, if our behaviour is then observed, we’ll contradict ourselves.

We also need to consider the immediate context. After all – we’re bombarded by media stories, so if a respondent is provided with the true meaning of a survey, they’ll immediately pull a lot of potentially biasing contextual noise to the fore.

Aside from critically examining the outcome, we need to consider how the survey was designed. Was it observational? Did it ask the question directly, or obliquely? Did respondents know the true nature of what was being investigated? For instance, if it was a 5-point scale, were the real questions buried amongst fakes – scrambling what the survey was really trying to measure?

We’re better off studying the responses of people who don’t know what they’re being asked. As the work of Daniel Kahneman shows us – as soon as we consider the problem our rational brain starts constructing reasoning for our emotional actions. Phillip Graves also writes fantastically on this and the myth of market research in, ‘Consumerology’.