What Doesn't Get Measured...
... doesn't get managed.
This was too good to not share. Credit goes out to Tom Fishburne from the Marketoonist.
When it comes to the marketing field, I've always found it quite interesting that to many people, the term "marketing" is synonymous with "advertising". In other words, these folks think marketing is all about coming up with a well-designed ad and spreading to the word about a business or brand.
Yes, advertising is an aspect of marketing communications. Yes, it's important to communicate your value proposition to drive short-term sales and build long-term brand equity, but if you're not measuring your marketing campaigns, how do you know if your marketing dollars are being utilized in an optimal way?
Unless you're living in a world where money grows on tress, there's normally a limit to your marketing budget. With that being the case, resources have to be used in the most effective manner possible. In order to increase the return of investment (ROI) of the marketing campaigns, marketers and marketing researchers utilize a variety of methodologies, from marketing mix modeling to brand equity trackers, to evaluate marketing effectiveness.
As useful as some of the above-mentioned methodologies are to help maximize your marketing ROI, you need to established what your current ROI is. To those aren't familiar with the concept of ROI, the essential ROI formula equals to net profit (from a certain marketing campaign) divided by investment amount (for said marketing campaign) multiplied by 100 (ROI's expressed as a percentage). An ROI of 0% is your break-even point and an ROI of 100% means that you doubled your money. I would suggest using Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets for the calculation and easily creating a chart to visualize the data.
While the idea of ROI starts to become a little fuzzy around branding, you want to keep your pre-established key performing indicators (KPIs) for the business in mind and work towards meeting the goals for these KPIs.
The moral of the story - marketing isn't just about creating pretty ads and promoting them.
Marketing's both a science and an art, requiring creativity in producing out-of-the-box strategies, but also analytical rigor to measure what works and what doesn't. Don't let your marketing dollars go to waste.
Tags marketing, branding, roi
Why I'm Bullish on Bitcoin and Blockchain
We've all been swarmed by the bitcoin media craze over the last year or so.
As much hype that's gone into the cryptocurrency, I'm holding onto my bullish outlook on the cryptoasset and, more importantly, on its underlying technology.
Within a regularly rebalanced investment portfolio, a small amount of cryptoassets (about 1% to 5% of your allocation) can improve your risk-adjusted returns. According to Matt Hougan of Bitwise Asset Management, "crypto has combined high returns with low correlations to other asset classes, which is a pretty good combo for portfolio construction."
In order to address several issues with Bitcoin investing and trading, several asset management companies are racing to launch a regulated exchange-traded fund (ETF) for the cryptocurrency. Business Insider reported that on February 9, 2018, JPMorgan informed its clients of the benefits that Bitcoin ETFs would bring, underlining the following:
Easier access: "Investors need wallets to trade the physical Bitcoins today, making it hard to access. ETFs are frequently traded and highly accessible via investors' brokerage accounts."
Liquid market: "ETFs are actively traded and highly transparent."
High integrity: "ETFs are traded through brokerage accounts that carry with them insurance via SIPC. Bitcoin exchanges have no such insurance and expose holders to potential fraud and theft."
A bitcoin ETF would change the bitcoin investing game.
... and so would the implementation of blockchain technology within certain industries. Take the digital advertising industry, for example, and a rampant problem within that industry - ad fraud.
How big of a problem is ad fraud? A report from Juniper Research estimates that the cost of digital advertising fraud will hit $19bn in 2018, representing 9% of the global spend on digital advertising.
How are digital advertising platforms like Google, Facebook, and Amazon, are currently utilizing blockchain to combat fraud?
Click here to read an in-depth article describing how some of the worlds biggest ad spenders, like Nestlé, AT&T, and Bayer, are investigating the use of blockchain to try and weed out advertising fraud once and for all.
As more ad dollars shift from traditional advertising channels to the digital ad platforms, the industry will continue to thrive meaning more opportunities for blockchain-related ad-fraud companies. And this is just one example of an industry being disrupted by blockchain technology. The Coin Central blog features insightful articles on other examples of blockchain disruption.
The last couple weeks have been a whirlwind.
Not only was I inundated with final exams, group presentations, and my capstone project to wrap up my Masters program, but having also recently landed a position with Universal Music Group in Miami, I had to find a place to live & coordinate my move from Madrid to the Sunshine State which had to happen before my graduation ceremony!
The first thing on the agenda was the capstone project. The Market Research and Consumer Behavior Masters program at IE requires a final 8-week project, which allows students to integrate all the knowledge and skills that were mastered during the program, to develop a unique solution to a real-world challenge provided by the client. My six-person consulting team was assigned the task of validating current business drivers and gauge new opportunities within the eSports industry in the Peruvian market.
I had heard of the term "eSports" here and there before the project, but I can honestly say that didn't know much.
I knew of PewDiePie, who's currently the most subscribed-to YouTube personality (for the sake of comparison, he currently has a whopping 64 million subscribers while Beyoncé has 17 million), and his rise to fame on the platform from video content in which he would document the playthrough of video games while including commentaries and reactions as he played through them.
I also knew of Twitch, the Amazon-owned video game live streaming video platform, but I couldn't come to grasp the interest in the platform. I couldn't understand why someone would want to spend time watching someone else play a video game. Then I thought back to my younger days (when I was a bit more into video games). I remember having just a good of a time watching my friends play Super Smash Bros. instead of playing. I didn't need to be playing to have a fun experience with the game itself.
As I came to find out, eSports is considered competitive gaming at a professional level and in an organized format (a tournament or league) with a specific goal (i.e., winning a champion title or prize money) and a clear distinction between players and teams that are competing against each other. The eSports industry is also rapidly growing. In the coming year, the global eSports economy will ballon to $905.6 million, up 38% YoY and, according to market research firm Newzoo, the industry is currently estimated to reach $1.4 billion by 2020.
Overall, this was a fascinating project to work on. The industry growth figures were pretty impressive, so I'll be keeping a close eye on eSports moving on. Being that our presentation to the Telefónica team took place on July 5th and was hired to start my new position with UMG on July 10th, I had to fly out Miami the day after our presentation. Not much time to celebrate, but there was plenty of time down the road for that.
After setting up shop and getting settled in Miami for about two weeks, I had to fly back to Madrid for graduation.
The jet lag was awful, but there were no regrets in my decision to fly back out for graduation. Being that I graduated early from high school and that I had to travel during my Bachelors graduation ceremony from LMU, I hadn't graduated on stage since kindergarten. That being the case, my family really appreciated seeing me formally receive my diploma in the traditional graduation get-up and what not.
It was a quick four days back in Madrid, but I now officially have my Masters in Market Research and Consumer Behavior. Feels good to write.
Madrid - it's been great, but onto the next chapter...
I'm now back in Miami.
I swear, every time I hear "Miami", I think - palm trees, cuban food, and Will Smith (yes, I'm an 80's baby and very clearly remember the chart-topping single from The Fresh Prince). A friend had also recommended that I check out the HBO series, Ballers, which is set in Miami. I'm not a huge Dwayne Johnson fan, but the trailer looks pretty good.
I can't say I would have imagined relocating here prior to my position with UMG, but I've lived by the ocean for the majority of my life (with the exception of Outat El Haj and Madrid) so I thought "why not?".
My first non-consecutive three weeks at Universal Music have been wonderful. I have a good grasp of the business side of things and I'm now learning the proprietary insights tools I'll be using for work. I also went to my first concert (Pusha-T at Story) and my first work-related show last night (Nacho at The Fillmore). All in all, everything's been great and Miami's starting to feel like home. More updates to come.
Overture, Curtains, Lights
Satoshi Nakamoto invented blockchain to serve as the technical foundation of Bitcoin. Blockchain provides an immutable record of truth in a decentralized environment, and blockchain gives the ability for users to transact business without either side needing to trust the other. Cryptocurrencies also provide smart contract capabilities. Smart contracts exist as units of code that administer transactions based on the rules programmed into the code. Not issued by a nation, cryptocurrencies work across borders without having to exchange one nation’s currency for another.
At the simplest level, cryptocurrency provides a new way for the entertainment industry to sell products or to sell tickets. If you plan a vacation trip from California to England and want to take in a show at a London theater, you buy your ticket in advance with cryptocurrency and don’t have to worry about exchange rates and other issues.
This Is It, You’ll Hit the Heights
But for digital electronic entertainment, the possibilities expand enormously for the entertainment industry. Streaming of music and video comprise a significant portion of modern entertainment. And, several aspects of blockchain impact it.
Tags Blockchain, Bitcoin, Entertainment, Music, Cryptocurrency, Crypto, Live Music, Tech, Technology, Innovation
Adventures in Taste Testing for New Product Success
You know how people say the devil is in the details? Well, that couldn't be truer than with taste testing.
During college I participated in my fair share of paid food research studies (which was a great way to make a quick buck as a college student btw). While I took part in these taste testings, I never really gave much thought to the complexity of the research until years down the line when I decided to conduct taste tests for a food product I was considering bringing to the market.
As with most consumer usability testing, consumer taste research design is pretty complex. Some of the considerations include testing location, in addition to whether you want to reveal the product brand, conduct the research with a group of people verses one person at a time, and who exactly you're going to be recruiting for the study. Mike Burkenbine and Kathryn Korostoff do a great job at breaking down some of the research details below.
Some of the key take-aways from the video include:
In-facility testing is vital. In-store/in-restaurant should be conducted as a second part to the research.
"People eat with their eyes" - be weary of variables, whether it be the color of the packaging or serving utensil, that might affect gustation via vision, audition, olfaction, and somatosensation.
Ethnographic research might be best for packaged products that are made to be used at home (e.g. frozen meals).
Conduct blind testing first to check if the target market likes the product, then conduct further branded testing to check brand association.
Beware of regional differences in taste preferences.
If you've ever wondered how CPG companies and restaurant chains what food and beverage products to sell (and mitigate some of the business risk of launching a potential flop), consumer taste testing is the way to go.
Tags market research, food, focus groups, qualitative, idi, CPG, FMCG, Positioning, marketing
UMG & Marketing in the Music Industry
I've been completely infatuated by the business of entertainment for some years now. As I reflect on my interest in this industry, I can boil it down to a couple points:
Monetizing intellectual properties as a form of passive income
The growth of media streaming platforms & their business models
New technologies causing a shift in consumer behavior as it pertains to media consumption (I'm looking at you, Alexa
The entertainment industry is undergoing major changes and it's all pretty exciting.
In the back of my mind, I knew I was going to end up working in the industry soon or later. Guess it looks like it'll be sooner than later.
I'm proud to announce that I'll be working as an Artist Brand & Insights Strategist at Universal Music Group starting next month.
As I wrap up my grad program and gear up for my new role, I've been studying up on the industry. In doing so, I came across Bobby Owsinski's Inner Circle music podcast - a highly recommended podcast series for anyone interested in the music industry. In the episode below, industry veteran & Music Executive Ted Joseph talks about radio promotion, retail store co-op advertising, and more during his time as Head of Marketing at Warner Music.
Tags music, umg, marketing, consumer behavior, smart speakers, ai, alexa
"The treachery of images (This is not a pipe)" by Belgian surrealist painter René Magritte
Semiotics & Cultural Artifacts in Marketing
If the painting above isn't a pipe, what is it?
I can recall first being introduced to the idea of semiotics in my art history class during undergrad. Semiotics can be described as "the study of signs and symbols and their use or interpretation."
So if the title and text within the image is telling me that it's not a pipe, then the artist is implying that it's a painting right?
According to Swiss Linguist, Ferdinand de Saussure, a sign is the whole that results from the association of the signified with the signifier. Imagine a bicycle. The concept of the bicycle would be the signified, while the signifier would be the image of the bicycle.
How des this relate to marketing? The idea of semiotics can seem a bit abstract, but Semiotic Analysis Specialist, Jeff Hecker, does a great job in breaking it down in his "An Introduction to Marketing Semiotics" video. Other than being used as a market research approach, the usage of semiotic theory can help brands:
Understand symbols around a category
Support message alignment
Identify emergent trends that can be leveraged in creative/positioning
Mitigate risk
Understand communications performance
Triangulate with other research approaches
A must-watch video for an introductory run-down of semiotics!
Why StartUps Suck At Marketing
If you're at least somewhat familiar with digital marketing or SEO, I'm sure you've come across one of Moz's Whiteboard Friday tutorial videos at some point. From strategic online consumer behavior videos to more technical keyword targeting tutorials, Moz's weekly video series has been providing undeniable value to the beginner-to-intermediate digital marketing practitioner that's looking for easy-to-understand information on just about any SEO-related topic.
In front of the camera during his tenure at Moz has been Rand Fishkin. Co-Founder and previous CEO of Moz, Founder of SparkToro, Author of the recently published "Lost And Founder", speaker, & blogger - the man has achieved monumental success in the SEO business and is today one of the leading authorities in digital marketing.
Last week, the IE Marketing Club had the pleasure of hosting the SEO Wizard himself, who gave an enlightening presentation on "Why Startups Suck at Marketing". The event at IE was a couple months in the planning, so we were pretty excited for the day to come and have Rand share his wealth of experience and knowledge with us.
According to Rand, the 8 ways startups suck at marketing are:
Terrible names
Overvaluing 1st exposure
Chasing growth hacks
Saving marketing until launch
Relying on paid ads
Not prioritizing an easy-to-reach audience
Failing at funnel fundamentals
Ignoring brand
I'm sure the presentation served as a precursor to what I'm going to find in his book (just ordered my copy a few days ago). Being a Marketer and having previously launched a few businesses of my own, I'm certain I'll find Rand's book just as valuable as his Whiteboard Friday videos. For some marketing wisdom (and a sneak peak at Rand's book), swing by Moz's blog post in which Rand shares his best advice from a decade and a half of marketing Moz or listen to the audio version below.
Tags Marketing, digital marketing, seo, startups, Rand Fishkin, Entrepreneurship
Social Noise: Cacophony or Symphony?
Imagine the powerful business insights you could gain from an organic form of market research where the focus group was made up entirely of people already engaging with your brand or your industry...
Is social listening the answer?
Tags social media, insights, data, market research, consumer behavior
"Satisficers"
It's quite fascinating to reflect on how irrational people can be.
And it's perfectly normal to be irrational. We can't be completely rational all the time right?
This irrationality is part of our bounded rationality. According to Herbert Simon, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1975, people have cognitive limitations and because of that, we go about making sub-optimal decisions in our everyday lives. Through this lens, people unconsciously act as "satisficers" in their decision-making, seeking to make a satisfactory decision instead than an optimal one. In order to facilitate the decision-making process, we act on instincts, habits, heuristics, cognitive illusions, and biases - leading us to "satisficing" decisions.
This is innate within all people. During this unconscious part of the decision-making process, we formulate stories - stories that support our beliefs.
Thomas Gilovich, Author and Professor of Psychology at Cornell University who has contributed to the behavioral economics field, describes these stories as a result of "Patternicity", the tendency to create meaning from events. While this evolved trait (think hunter-gatherers hearing rustling in the grass and believing it might be a predator) greatly served our ancestors, "patternicity" leads to irrationality, poor decision-making & bias.
While the topic of ethics relating to behavioral economics makes for another blog post, marketers have been using the underlying biases in "satisficers" to create effective marketing campaigns advantages for decades. From loss aversion to anchoring, there are plenty of biases for marketers to utilize. With that being said, potential consumers can offset this targeting by being "intuitive scientists" - a nice little secret from Thomas in the video above.
Image Credit: Behavioral Scientist
Tags consumer behavior, psychology, behavioral science, behavioral economics, nudge, Tom Gilovich
Debating Brand Valuation
Being a religious Marketing Week subscriber, I've come across Mark Ritson's contrarian, but logically sound opinions before. While Mark make a valid points with the three sins addressed in his initial argument, Michael Rocha from Interbrand, Doreen Wang from BrandZ, and David Haigh from Brand Finance make solid rebuttals. A few things I took away from this were that:
Valuations are subjective and can differ just like other parts of the industry, e.g. equity firms.
As long as you can explain your valuation methodology, variations between different valuation assessments are understandable.
Brand valuation is what brings branding and marketing to the boardroom.
Marketing is the most important investment to ensure long-term and sustainable financial growth for companies.
Brand valuation is not just about the number. What's more important are the reasons behind a companies growth or decline - the reasons behind the change when sticking to one valuation system.
I understand where Mark's coming from, but I would have casted a vote for brilliant.
Snapchat & A Mid-Term Surprise
It goes without saying - time has a tendency to fly by.
We wrapped up our second term in the Masters program last week, which felt surprisingly shorter than the first term. Both terms were both the same length of time, but I think there was a handful of reasons why this term felt so much shorter. Beside the fact that I've been keeping a bit busy with juggling school, my work with Inside ETFs, being an IE Marketing Club Officer, in addition to keeping a social life and sustaining a steady weekend workout regimen, I felt better prepared for this term than the first. Time management has always been a personal forté, but this time around I felt like I had a better grasp of how the program courses were going to be run, the potential workload, and my classmates (which whom I was going to be working with in our assigned team for the classes for the duration of the term).
Nevertheless, it was still a demanding couple of months.
One class in particular - Managing the Customer, taught by stock market investor, entrepreneur & activist, Pedro David Sañudo - was a bit brutal to get through (it was an intense. week-long crash course), but enlightening. Our team project consisted of implementing a Customer Management Framework to a company of our choosing. Being that Snapchat was undergoing a backlash from users because of its latest app redesign, we thought it'd be the perfect chance to work on a current customer-related issue.
Funny enough, I had coincidently opened up my Snapchat app at a concert a few days prior to our selection of the company for the project, and had absolutely no idea what was going on. You could say that, along with the 1.25 million users that petitioned for Snapchat to revert back to its old design, I wasn't intially very enthusiastic about the new app design. Our team used the CMF to dive into all customer phases: development, creation, growth and retention. With a focus on retention, we provided suggestions for Snapchat to retain their core users. Being that I had previously worked on the initial stages of an entrepreneurial project based the Snapchat advertising platform, this was an enjoyable project.
All in all, it was an extremely insightful term.
A plus - my first term group and I received a little surprise from the Kantar Business Challenge we won last December. Receiving the plaque was quite an honor. It's a nice to receive a little recognition for hard work.
Now that I'm on spring break, I've been looking over syllabi for the upcoming third term and I gotta say, I'm pretty excited. We're going to be covering Behavioral Economics (big Dan Ariely fanboy here), Neuromarketing, Anthropology, and Customer Experience to name a couple of topics. The third term is also going to consist of the term-long Telefonica Integration Challenge, the capstone project for the Master in Market Research & Consumer Behavior where we'll be examining business needs, translate them into desired research methodologies, conduct research, analyze research results, and propose effective/viable business solutions for Telefonica. Couldn't feel more ready to tackle this!
Anyway, I'm off to Morocco to enjoy some home-cooked couscous in a few days.
Here's to crushing the next term.
Tags IE Madrid, market research, snapchat, social media, Kantar, Design, App, UX
Spotify: One of the handful of monthly subscriptions I don't mind dishing out a few bucks for. While most on-demand video-streaming services rely on new content to draw viewership, the consumption of music on the Spotify platform relies on its back catalog, hence its significant marginal costs - the royalties it pays the music industry.
The music-streaming company filed to go public last week. With competition like Amazon Music and Apple that have an overwhelming amount of financial backing, in addition to the cost of revenue that Spotify has to pay to record labels, it's going to be interesting how Spotify navigates the music-streaming seas. At the same time, there's potential to leverage the data acquired from their platform (I recently saw a tweet that mentioned that Metallica was adjusting their concert playlist in particular cities based on local Spotify listening data) and for the company to launch its own record label. Whatever the case, Spotify's expected to make a big splash when its shares begin trading.
In light of the upcoming IPO, I thought it was worthwhile to share a bit about the business.
I haven't been able to write on here since our second term started, but thought I'd post this video I came across lately.
Skittles & The Solution To Cognitive Overload
Firstly, happy holidays! I'm visiting family here in Stockholm, and I'm sitting here early xmas morning, reflecting on the last couple of months. As mentioned previously, I'm currently working towards getting my Masters in Market Research and Consumer Behavior and I just wrapped up my first term last Friday.
The program has a heavy focus on group projects, one of those being the Millward Brown Business Challenge this last term. The case, which involved the evaluation of a Skittles advertisement, was given to us, along with the case prompt & real supplemental primary and secondary research from Kantar Millward Brown, on a Friday. We had to present our conclusions and next steps to a panel of market research experts the following Monday. Saying that it was an intense weekend would be an understatement. Anywho, looks like christmas came a bit early (we found out that we won the challenge last week).
One of the supplemental research documents given to us for the challenge was an eye-tracker analysis for the advertisement. The technology's quite fascinating. According to Jaime Veiga, marketing professor at IE, we come across 4,000 to 10,000 brand impressions a day. At a supermarket, we have 30,000 to 50,000 products to choose from. Due to the cognitive overload we come across in our everyday lives, brands are failing to connect with potential customers. How are brands supposed to connect with their customers when it seems like every brand is trying to yell over the other in a crowded room? The solution - optimization via biometrics.
During the term, I had the chance to sit in on a talk led by Thomas Ramsoy, Founder and CEO of Neurons Inc, a Neuroscience consultancy company, where I first saw the eye-tracking technology in action.
Purchasing decisions happen in fractions of a second. To capture the attention of customers, brands have to understand how consumers think. Although traditional market research methods help gather consumer information to provide insights, new technologies like EEG scanners or eye-tracking devices provide measurements to how the brain and/or the body reacts to marketing stimuli. According to Thomas, these technologies can predict an accuracy of about 80%. With that being said, I can't wait for my neuromarketing class in the third term.
Overall, it was a great first term. Lots of ups and downs, but a learning experience nonetheless. In 2 weeks, I'll be starting up my second term. Some of the classes include:
Managing The Customer
Marketing Products & Brands
Observational Methods
Product Launch Simulation
Understanding Consumer Behavior II
I'm going to take the next two weeks to get some much needed R&R to get ready to crush this next term. See you guys in 2018!
Tags skittles, advertising, market research, neuromarketing, IE Madrid
Driving Innovation and Brand Through Design
It's been super hectic since landing in Madrid (with having to set up a bank account, getting a Spanish cellphone, and what not before the school semester started), but I was lucky enough to catch an event put on by the IE Marketing Club on last Wednesday.
The PepsiCo: Driving Innovation and Brand Through Design event featured Mauro Porcini, SVP and Chief Design Officer at PepsiCo. During the event, Mauro explained how design creates relevant brand experience and drives innovation in today's crowded digital business environment.
People don't buy products anymore... They search holistic solutions, meaningful experiences and authentic stories.
Coming from a visual arts background, I have a pretty good grasp of how impactful design can be. In his presentation, Mauro made the point that when designing a product, brands should not only produce something aesthetically "pretty", but the brand should also stand for something. We might be inclined to choose a well-designed product over another one, but as we form deeper relationships with frequently purchased brands, we tend to purchase products that complement our self-identity, whether consciously or not. This relationship between consumer and product is referred to as a self-concept attachment, in which the product helps to establish the user’s identity.
Let's take a Tesla Model 3 as an example. When we see someone driving a Tesla, we might associate certain words with the person. Neophile. Innovative. Bright. The person who purchased the Tesla was more than likely aware of the brand association and chose to purchase the car to be associated with those same words.
Another point that I also took away from the presentation is that Mauro stated that without consumer insights, companies can't innovate. Being that getting my Master's in Market Research and Consumer Behavior, this sentence put me at ease knowing that I'm in an area of study crucial to product innovation.
After doing a bit of research on the web, I managed to find the same presentation that was given at event. Whether you're a UX designer, a brand strategist, or CPG marketer (and have about 40 minutes to spare), I'd suggest checking it out.
Uber, No Gracias
I flew to Madrid a couple days ago, and it gave me a great chance to start listening to Small Data by Martin Lindstrom as per a friend's recommendation. It's been a great audiobook so far and I noticed that it's made me a little more hyper-aware of behavioral nuances and my surrounding environment.
Once I arrived to Madrid, I had to figure out how to get to apartment. It was to my surprise that I saw a slew of taxis but not one car with an Uber logo. I caught a taxi and chatted with the driver about Uber's presence in Madrid. As it turns out, that the city council in Madrid reported Uber to the Spain's national antitrust watchdog, the CNMC, for unfair pricing earlier this year. With potential plans to set up an office in Madrid, it doesn't look like this is going to stop Uber from encroaching into Madrid territory.
Biometrics Don't Lie
Reading Blink for my freshman year psychology class in college was an eye-opening experience (no pun intended). I became fascinated with psychology and the factors in decision-making. This interest has stayed with me throughout the years.
From my previously pursued career path in the visual arts, I became increasingly aware of the effects of visual aesthetic elements on emotional perceptivity. From color selection to other product design characteristics, the relationship between my design intuition and marketing elements I came across during my daily routine became increasingly evident. This interest/awareness ultimately to my newfound obsession with neuromarketing.
For those who might not know what neuromarketing is, according to Wikipedia, "neuromarketing is a field that applies the principles of neuroscience to marketing research, studying consumers' sensorimotor, cognitive, and affective response to marketing stimuli". In order to measure these responses, researchers use technologies to assess how your brain and body reacts to the color of a logo or the sound the car door makes when shut, for example.
A great example of neuromarketing at work is a recent study put on by eye-tracking firm, Tobii Pro, for Toyota where they had 92 participants wear proprietary wearable eye-tracker glasses and they measured what the users paid attention to, how long they focused on something and what they ignored. The business implications were to use the results to improve the showroom car tour, an important part in the potential car customers decision-making process.
What I've learned in my experience with market research (and pretty much life in general) is that people sometimes don't/can't say what they want. This might be for various reasons (which is why running a research study with acquaintances might not be the best idea). In some cases, people can't really articulate what they want. Or perhaps, what people say isn't what they want. People are fascinating in this way and what neuroscience does is tell it how it really is. It provides a look at why people do what they do, regardless of what they say.
I recently discovered Roger Dooley's podcast and I have to admit that I'm a pretty avid fan. At one point in the recent episode, Brand Marketer Jonathan Gabay, mentions that although big data provides helpful insight in consumer behavior for marketing purposes, from a psychological point of view, neuromarketing differs from big data in that it's not how or where people click, but why they click. To quote him, "Neuromarketing is the way forward."
Cryptocurrency 101
I'll be writing a longer post on blockchain soon.
Tags bitcoin, blockchain, investing, cryptocurrency
Saucin'
I recently came across an article on the importance of market research and felt obliged to write my personal experience with it (since I'm going to be getting my Masters in Market Research & Consumer Behavior 'n all).
I wrapped up my Peace Corps service in Morocco in April 2015. I loved my service (a topic for a future blog post), but as I got closer to the date when I was going to be back in the states, all I could think about was eating foods I wasn't able to have for over 2 years. When I came back, all the foods I had craved seemed to taste exponentially better because of my heightened attention in my consumption. Absence makes the heart grow fonder.
One afternoon, my mom prepared a traditional Peruvian dish, Papa a la Huancaína. I had always been a huge fan of the lightly spicy Huancaína cheese sauce served over the potatoes and then the thought hit me: "Why isn't the sauce available for purchase as a ready-to-serve, packaged product in stores? Heck, I mean, I'd totally buy it (at the time being a single 29 year old self-proclaimed foodie/convenience-seeker)."
That idea sent me on a bit of an entrepreneurial journey to bring my mom's Huancaína sauce to market.
I had an inkling that our target demographic would be affluent foodies if the product was marketed as an organic, gluten-free product and stocked in local "healthy" grocery stores. This involved tinkering around with the recipe. And we did. But in order to see how this sauce compared to the original, I decided to learn as much as I could about market research to find out what people thought.
I came to find out that there are 2 types of data collection: quantitative (online, mail and telephone surveys) and qualitative (i.e. phone interviews, face-to-face interviews, focus groups). With the data from quantitative research being highly structured, one could use the data to recognize patterns and draw broad conclusions. Qualitative, on the other hand, is less about the volume of data you'd collect from surveying and more about capturing in-depth options and experience about your business, product, or what have you.
My first step was to test my theory about the initial demographic I had in mind for the potential sauce product. I decided to pass out samples of the sauce, along with surveys, at farmer's markets and pretty much any place where you'd find foodie's congregate.I also just happened to be taking a Consumer Behavior and Advertising class at the San Francisco City College (CCSF) during this time, so I decided to approach my teachers with the idea of handing out samples and running surveys with their class. They agreed. The results were interesting (folks kept comparing it to Velveeta, which was a thought that had never crossed my mind), but the data was not as statistically significant as I would have liked it to be.
Next, I decided to approach the culinary department at CCSF to see if they'd be able to let me run a few focus groups with the students in the culinary program. Since they had a bit more of a refined taste palette, I thought it'd be great to get their opinions on our original sauce and the organic version. Some insights included that the organic version tasted earthy, perhaps a little too spicy, and the texture wasn't as pleasing as the original version.
Now, mind you, this was my first foray into market research. In retrospect, there were several biases in the implementation of my experimentation. But, overall, it was a fascinating learning experience. I learned how difficult it is to select the right, unbiased candidates for focus groups, how tricky it can be to create good surveys (from which you'd be able to pull valid insight from), and how powerful marketing research could be a tool for business growth. Some important reasons for a business to conduct market research include:
Discover who you really compete against in the marketplace (you will be surprised, I promise)
Uncover your differentiators
Find your competitive advantage
Learn what services your clients appreciate most, and why
See emerging opportunities in the marketplace
Adjust your marketing messages to reflect what customers really want to hear
Find out what your customers think about you
Discover which weaknesses you need to fix right away
Get your Net Promoter Score and find out whether your customers are likely to recommend your company to others
Learn how well known your business is in the marketplace
Explore why some customers chose to buy from another company, instead
Find out how your pricing compares to the competition
Find out how important price is to your buyers
Discover whether there is demand for your new product or service
Recognize emerging trends in the marketplace
Demonstrate that you care about your customers — the act of doing research shows that you are interested in them and their opinions
Discover the one thing your customers would change about your business
Find out if you are well positioned to enter a new market
Determine what issues you should be writing and speaking about to engage your audience and build your visibility
Find out whether internal perceptions about your company match external perceptions
Learn how your customers find you
Find out why your customers chose you over a competitor
See if your customers are aware of all of your key products or services
Find out what you are known for in the marketplace
Benchmark your business against competitors in your industry
After a couple months of research, we decided on shifting the business model from sauce production company to an import & distribution company. I had to dissolve the business because of my move to Madrid for my masters program, but lots more market research posts coming up in the near future.