Examples such as the Volkswagen “The Force” SuperBowl ad, which saw a young boy believing in the power of the force as his Dad uses the remote-start function, and the John Lewis Christmas ad showing the young boy so excited about giving his presents to his family, make us laugh and smile.

This is the key to viral success – the ability to elicit an emotional response from your target audience. It is this connection on an emotional level, not necessarily a cognitive level, that makes people share content.

But this lesson may be the key that unlocks success for brands throughout their marketing.

Focus groups can be paid to sit in a room and look at a marketing campaign, rate it on numerical scales, discuss, etc. But just because you get the thumbs up from your market research tests does not guarantee the success of your campaign. And indeed the opposite proved true for the VW Superbowl ad: it received terrible ratings in the standard market research tests, but “received the highest “neuro-engagement score” in the annual Sands Research Super Bowl Ad Neuro Ranking, which measures not what people say but how they feel through electrophysiological activity in the brain. As Dr. Stephen Sands, chair and chief science officer at Sands Research, announced, “This year [Deutsch LA’s] Darth Vader advertisement elicited such a strong emotional response, it ranks as the highest we have ever tested.”” (http://www.fastcocreate.com/1682625/the-myth-of-marketing-how-research-reaches-for-the-heart-but-only-connects-with-the-head) As a result of these tests the SuperBowl ad went forward – with fantastic results for the brand. The unprecedented Neuro Ranking achieved in the research phase translated directly to a viral campaign for Volkswagen.

So is the answer to scrap market research and simply use forms of Neuro-testing? Possibly not – if nothing else it would be likely to prove prohibitively expensive. What might be valuable is to start to bring psychologists into market research: to use their knowledge of what makes people tick emotionally to create great communications campaigns. While psychology is not an exact science, it has a better chance of allowing marketers to understand why their campaign created an emotional engagement with their target market: something that electrophysiological brain scans cannot do.

This might make it feasible for brand personality to be a real effective part of the brand identity, rather than an entry in a marketing strategy; that can be felt consistently throughout the brand’s communications, helping consumers to feel an emotional engagement to the brand. Thus allowing consumers to feel what makes your brand different, rather than being told, leading to instant potential for engagement and greater memorability.

The post Is Neuroscience the future of Market Research? appeared first on Purple Frog.

Point of Sale is a concept that we’re all familiar with for communicating promotions: stickers, posters, tent cards, ceiling hangers, and so the list goes on. But interactive point of sale offers a far greater range of opportunities to enhance the in-store shopping experience.

It has been possible to add a screen to your Point of Sale display for some time, but these have to be placed at some remove from the product (especially if displayed on shelves) and are often ignored. Electronic paper displays are smaller, lighter and less expensive than TV screens, and have the added advantage of interactive functionality, which has been shown to be more effective in attracting the customer’s attention (http://www.cre.co.uk/solutions/point-of-sale).

The possibilities for interactive point of sale are endless, you can still use them to highlight specific products with active promotions, but you can also offer:

• Touch-screen web kiosks or tablets (with security wiring) allow customers to look at your eCommerce website to find out more information about products and even order them online whilst in store (for example if you’re out of stock or you only stock a limited selection of the product range). Providing software that allows customers to compare products side-by-side is a valuable use of these systems,
  • Restaurants are also starting to use tablets as remote ordering systems
• If you have a loyalty card scheme, you can use an interactive kiosk to offer customers additional on-the-day promotions and to bring new products to their attention (based on recorded buying behaviour and your current stock levels)
  • Boots were one of the first stores to use these kiosks – you’ll find at least one, and usually more, in every store. Customers insert their card, browse your selected offers and choose whether or not to print a voucher for each offer (rather than automatically printing them all), the kiosk also tells them the point balance on their card
• Self-service kiosks to order products from a catalogue
  • These have been used by Argos for the last few years as order points: in this scenario only very basic product information is shown (enough to identify the product) because paper catalogues are still used to identify the product required and this is where all the product information is housed
• Small interactive units can be used on the shelf to give on the spot incentives and product information

Interactive Point of Sale solutions also have the advantage of being reusable across multiple promotions, so although your initial outlay is greater, over time the ROI should be greater. So next time you’re thinking about Point of Sale, it’s worth investigating the interactive options as well as the traditional printed options, as they may just give your store or promotion the boost it needs.

The post Interactive Point of Sale appeared first on Purple Frog.

Go and See for Yourself
The Japanese phrase genchi genbutsu means “go out and see for yourself” and is a central pillar of The Toyota Way and of Lean management. It is a principal that says “if there is a problem, don’t try to theorise from your box. Go to where the problem is, see it, then solve it”. In many ways, this represents one of the major differences between management culture between East and West. Western managers often dismiss this part of the problem solving process as unnecessary and as a waste of their time. They have a report of the problem in front of them, doesn’t that contain all of the information they need? On the other hand, managers who follow the principal of genchi genbutsu take the view that to have a full understanding of the problem, to ask the questions that others may have missed, and to be able to see the problem’s root cause, they need to see it for themselves.

A good example was written about by Eric Reiss in his book The Lean Startup. Yuji Yokoya was the chief engineer on Toyota’s 2004 Sierra. The model had never sold well in the United States, and Toyota wanted to know why this was. Yokoya went over to the US, hired a current-model Sierra and took it for a test drive. For 53,000 miles.

Yokoya drove through Mississippi, where while crossing a gorge he realised that the high crosswinds experienced on long bridges made the Sierra unstable. He drove through Canada, where he found that the high camber on Canadian roads made more ground clearance a priority. He drove to Anchorage, Alaska and observed steering drifts on gravel roads and to Santa Fe, California where he found the Sierra’s turning circle too large for crowded cities. He spoke to American owners of Toyotas – and of their rivals -  and found that there were not enough cup holders in the Sierra when families went to drive-throughs. He also realised that although adults rule the front of an MPV, kids rule the back. And they get bored, cramped, and carsick, especially on long journeys.

Japan is much, much smaller than the US, so people don’t make long journeys in Japan in the same way that they do in America. The Americans also eat in their cars, something that the Japanese almost never do. Geography over North America is also much more extreme than in Japan. If he had stayed in his office, Yokoya would never have found out about the huge gulf in user experiences between the two markets and Sierra sales would probably have stayed flat. Instead, for the cost of a couple of weeks worth of hotels and petrol bills Toyota took Yokoya’s learnings, applied them, and increased sales of the Sierra by 30% in their target market.

How Can This Apply to the NHS?
In his report into the Mid Staffordshire NHS Trust, Robert Francis QC said that a big part of the problem was that there was a disconnect between officials and the front-line. It has been difficult for civil servants to observe the cause-and-effect process of the changes they make to procedures, and have little feedback about whether those changes have been implemented successfully – which it seems was the big problem at Mid Staffordshire. This policy is an attempt to rectify that.

The big issue could be that civil servants do not take it seriously; that they take the western, rather than the Japanese, view on this decree. It could, in the words of Civil Service Commissioner Jonathan Baume become “a gimmick”. But if the civil servants involved are willing to become part of the system then genchi genbutsu could help them to reconnect with staff, find out about what the real – not perceived – problems and inefficiencies are, and identify then solve the root causes of those problems.

Successive governments have decried the NHS, attempting to solve its problems, reorganise it, streamline it, inflate it, reduce manager numbers, increase consultant numbers, reduce consultant numbers, and myriad other ways of getting to the root causes of inefficiencies small and large. Genchi genbutsu should help them to move away from guessing.

What About My Business?
If you work in an environment where the managers rarely come down to the shop floor, then all of those benefits the NHS are hoping to get from implementing this procedure could be seen by your company as well. By getting the managers down and onto the shop floor, they will be able to see the inefficiencies and impediments that you experience every day. It doesn’t matter whether the shop floor is really a shop floor or whether it is a warehouse, an assembly line, or a creative studio like the one we work in, managers getting out there and seeing a problem for themselves should help to reduce niggling issues and solve bigger ones fast. Ultimately, as Jeremy Hunt hopes genchi genbetsu could help you to save money and, as Yuji Yokoya found, it could help you improve your products .

The post The NHS Go Genbutsu: How the Civil Service is Thinking Lean appeared first on Purple Frog.

And after they clamped it down they hit it repeatedly with a hammer until we were left with a broken mess that helped no-one.

Then they hit it some more.

Why did this come about?

Their main concern was about business websites installing cookies (and other code snippets) on visitor’s computers to perform data scraping. But more specifically the practice of this being done without the visitor knowing.

Now this seems far more nefarious than it really is so don’t be too alarmed. Not all websites use cookies and the vast majority that do use them to either deliver a better experience or to track the visitor journeys through the site.

The problem was that the few troublemakers employing less ethical systems were using the same method of deployment as the businesses who genuinely had your best interests at heart. But legislation decided to ignore the shades of grey and impose a blanket policy.

“If you install cookies on a visitor’s computer without gaining their express permission you are breaking European law (this is important because you can meet your native countries legal requirements but be in breach elsewhere in the EU and still be liable) and can face a fine of £250,000. You have 12 months to comply.”

Pretty scary stuff. It brings to mind Gandalf bringing down his staff and telling the Balrog “You shall not pass!”. Gandalf said it in four words though. The European government said it in a very confusing 28 pages that left everyone with more concerns and more problems. And just to help things along most of Europe remained oblivious because business owners weren’t told this was coming into effect. Cue last minute panic.

How was this news taken?

Joe Public is largely aware of cookies and for the most part is unconcerned by them. Surveys have shown that 2/3 of people would rather not know that the problem exists and would rather have any security decisions made for them without them having to get involved.

Business owners fell into three camps:

“Let’s do exactly what they say” (result: more expense, stilted user journeys, and loss of valuable data)

“Let’s nod our head at the ruling, make people aware we are using cookies, but not really give them a choice about it” (result: some expense, a slightly stilted user journey and they get to retain their important analytical data)

“Let’s do nothing and wait to see if the law changes again” (result: so far, nothing bad has happened)

Most businesses use Google Analytics on their websites. This is an invaluable marketing tool that let’s site owners know if their site is working as hoped. This data allows them to deliver the very best possible experience to their customers and ultimately everyone wins.

With this stripped away it’s like trying to fly a plane without your instruments. You will probably manage it but God alone knows where you will end up.

We wrote to all our clients and advised them of the impending law change and we saw a good cross sections of routes take. Clients with Government contracts or positioned in such a way that meant they had to keep their noses clean went for full compliance. Clients wanting to show willing went for implied compliance. And the remaining majority did nothing.

To this date there hasn’t been a single test case brought before the courts as a result of anyone being in breach of the ruling. The UK’s IPO was as confused by what was required and what was enforceable as were the rest of us. They even went so far as to state they believed that analytics was essential (and thus exempt) despite what Europe said. They had no power to change the law but they made it clear they didn’t really plan to enforce it.

The waters were muddied further by repeated revisions of the ruling and particularly in the UK by a further softening of the stance. Technically this was good news but the companies that had already paid out or had taken an analytics hit weren’t quite so impressed.

Purple Frog saw its visitor statistics drop by 90%. The visitors were still coming to our site but we had very little clue what they were doing. For us its an inconvenience but for an online retailer or service provider its a nightmare.

Where are we at now?

The first time you visited our site you may or may not have noticed a grey bar appear at the top of the page. It told you that if you carried on using the site you were cool with us tracking your movements and if you wanted to know more about why it was a good thing there was a handy link too.

After you moved on that was it. You don’t get to see it again. You haven’t been inconvenienced. Our data is intact. And UK interpretation of the law has been satisfied. This is implied consent at work. It might seem a little underhanded but it’s actually a massive step towards addressing privacy concerns without alarming the public. Basically its business as usual while demonstrating an ethical code of conduct and it actually strengthens the bond between you and your clients “we care about your privacy, but we aren’t going to get in the way of you enjoying the web”.

Ironically across the whole of Europe the two countries who have done the least to implement this (with close to 0% take-up) are Germany and France…

Our advice

We cant advise you do nothing. Our lawyers would have an absolute fit at us.

Implied consent is a good way forward. It keeps you on the right side of the law and sends positive messages to your clients. Especially if you trade across Europe.

But if you dont want the expense just yet then you will probably be safe for a while. If you are found to be in breach you will receive a warning from the IPO. At which point we advise you act quickly and decisively. Its not as big an undertaking as you might think and is certainly cheaper than a court case.

So. Would you like a cookie?

Perhaps the question should be “would your customers like a cookie?”.
Most likely (they just don’t want to know about it).

If you have any questions or concerns or would simply like to talk to us about online compliance and standards then give us a call on 01844 295170. And you never know, if you decide to implement a consent system we might even send you a whole packet of cookies!

James Olney

The post Would you like a cookie? appeared first on Purple Frog.

After all, their ideal product might be one they haven’t seen yet. Well, there is a bit of a problem with this idea. If you give too much customer choice they can get stuck trying to decide between options, an idea known as the paradox of choice.

Paralysis through choice

The idea behind giving people choice is that they want the best they can get. They have a problem they want solved: they need a pair of shoes to go with a particular dress, a coffee table to go in a newly decorated lounge, or a mothers’ day present for next week. They want a product that solves their problem perfectly and are happy to spend time searching for that solution. Or are they?

Can you remember the last time you were in a similar situation? Did you enjoy spending an evening frantically searching around various sites to find that pair of shoes, that TV, or that present? Or did you find that having such a wide range of options made it difficult to chose between them?

If you did find it difficult to choose between such a wide range of options then your customers feel that same kind of paralysis when they’re on your website. This means that they might not be making that all important change from visitors into paying customers.

Striking the balance

The way to get around this is to give enough customer choice so that they are likely to find an adequate solution to their problem, but not so much that they are paralysed by choice.

Did we just say adequate, not perfect? Yep. Although the majority of people may think they want to find the perfect solution, in may cases they will go with a solution that is adequate but easy to find rather than persevere in finding that perfect solution. How many times have you thought “that’s good enough” and then bought the product? Your customers think in exactly the same way.

Give people what they might want – and nothing else

One easy way of stopping people having too much choice is… well, to reduce the amount of choice they have. In 2010, Proctor and Gamble reduced their Head & Shoulders range from 26 products down to 15 and saw a 10% rise in sales. When the Golden Cat company stopped making their 10 worst-selling types of cat litter (you can buy ten types of cat litter?) their profits rose by 87%. Offer 10 types of cat litter or 26 types of shampoo and the result is the same: choice paralysis.

49 types of hair product in one aisle. Guess which one the writer of this article bought?
That’s right, none of them.

Ben Prober started his chain of women’s shoe shops in the US in the 1950s. He was successful not because he stocked the biggest brands or had the greatest range, but because he asked a question. When women had tried on two pairs of shoes and wanted to try on another, Ben would ask “Of course madam. And which pair would you like me to take away?” He had learned that when people are asked to choose between two pairs of shoes, it was easy. But when they had to choose between three different types of shoe they had much more trouble making a decision and often ended up leaving with nothing.

So how can we reduce the number of products people are seeing? Make sure you don’t clutter your product page up with accessory products, related products, products on the same offer, and “people also bought…” products. Choose one, maybe two of these options – whichever will be most likely to increase your returns. Don’t display ten different products for each set of options. Show three or four, and make the images bigger. Make your product pages online versions of Ben Prober.

Categorisation

You can also help people by making sure your categories work hard. If you have 600 products in 10 categories and your competitor had 400 products in 20 categories who is most likely to make more money? You may have the choice that makes it easier to find their perfect solution, but your competitor makes it easy for their customers to tell products apart and therefore have a better choosing experience. This is because your competitor is presenting them with a larger range at the category level, where customers know what category the product they want is in, so that part isn’t really a choice for them.

To make sure your customers don’t get choice paralysis, make your categories work hard for you. Have as many as seems sensible, so that people have smaller numbers of products to choose from in each category. You should also make sure each products are in all categories that make sense, not just one. This doesn’t help with choice paralysis, but it does make finding that product easier for people.

Provide context

Context is important because it is the environment that people make decisions in, so providing the right kind of context can help people to make a decision instead of experiencing choice paralysis.

If you use your suppliers’ standard copy and images you’re only giving your visitors as much context as they would find anywhere else on the web. But if you give them extra images, describe the benefits of buying a particular product or the situation it can help you out in, maybe even make a short video about it, then you are providing context.

A good example is All Star Converse, one of the most famous shoes around. Everyone who stocks them talks about the features and history, so talking about their history isn’t going to make you stand out from the crowd or make visitors’ decisions easier. Very provide similar information, but they go a few steps further. They talk about how versatile Converse are, what to wear them with, and the different colours they come in. This gives visitors much more context around whether Converse will go with their wardrobe, making their buying decision easier.

Helping your customers make choices

The best way to help your customers to not experience choice paralysis is to help them. Make their lives easier, guide them well, and they will reward you by spending their money. For help structuring your online store and ensuring categories are set-up correctly for your products, call Purple Frog on 01844 295170.

Ben Morel

The post Customer choice – how offering more can get you less appeared first on Purple Frog.

We all have a brand personality that we hope consumers will find resonances with, relate to, and therefore find an emotional connection with the brand. Does it work? Not often. It needs to go a lot deeper.

Brand personality is only skin-deep for most brands. For consumers to develop an emotional connection with your brand, they need to see, on every level of your brand (including the corporate actions behind it) that the brand acts in a way that they believe in.  But more than that, the brand recognises the consumers who are passionate about the brand and opens the brand to them: allowing the brand to grow and change with the needs of those who love it, rather than being straitjacketed by old-style top-down closed brand management.

So that means: if you want to become a passion brand, you’ve got to be prepared to try brand democratisation.  However much the passionate few of your consumers love what your product is, and what your brand stands for, passion brand status is not going to come your way if your keep your consumers shut out of your brand.

So let’s take a look at how Red Bull got to where it is today?

1)    They sought out brand representatives amongst students and young people, to introduce the brand to their friends at Red Bull parties. These young people shared the party mentality with the brand and enjoyed the position they were given.

2)    They projected a brand mentality all about seeking extreme experiences. And they followed this up by creating their own extreme sport events – some more serious than others.

In other words, they made it clear what they stood for and followed it up. They created engagement online and engagement opportunities offline. They added something to consumer’s lives in a completely new way for a brand. And they created a new category of soft drink into the bargain.

Which are the passion brands? It depends on whom you ask, but Apple, Nike, Google and Starbucks usually come top of the list. They’ve all approached it in different ways, they all pull the passion-strings for different reasons, but they have all created a group of consumers who absolutely want that brand in their lives over all other competitors.

If you’re interested in reading more about Passion Brands, two good books on the subject are:

“Passion Brands: Why Some Brands Are Just Gotta Have, Drive All Night For, and Tell All Your Friends about“. Author: Kate Newlin. Published: Prometheus Books, 2009. ISBN-13: 978-1591026877.

“Creating Passion Brands: How to Build Emotional Brand Connection with Customers”. Author: Helen Edwards and Derek Day. Published: Kogan Page, 2007. ISBN-13: 978-0749447625.

The post Passion Brands: What are they really? appeared first on Purple Frog.

While AdWords generates most of the company’s profits, the wide range of products, services, acquisitions and partnerships often result in Google being in the news every day.  So let’s take a look at some of the headlines from the last few days.

• Google is suing BT over claims four of its patents have been infringed.  This follows a case in 2011 where BT launched patent claims against Google. Google has yet to respond to concerns raised by European privacy regulators regarding providing users with adequate information about how their data is being used.  Google has denied that it is not cooperating with EU regulations.

• Google Glass has been in the news as Google held Project Glass events in San Fransisco and New York.  The events, for developers only, have been shrouded in secrecy with reports of attendees having to agree to strict confidentiality terms.  Today however Google has released more information in a YouTube video and are asking people in the US to use the hashtag #ifihadaglass to suggest ways they would use of Glass headset.

• There have been rumors that Google will be opening its first retail stores by the end of the year.  Joining the likes of Apple and Microsoft, the stores are expected to showcase their Chromebooks, Chrome browser and suite of Nexus devices.  Will we also see Google Glass in the stores in time for Christmas?

• Google Now is updated to include film ratings and the ability to receive film tickets on the device.  Now, running on the Jelly Bean OS, presents timely information such as news, weather, flight information and traffic, plus your calendar events and Gmail.

To see how Google Business Solutions can help your business visit https://www.google.co.uk/services/ or contact Purple Frog to discuss your requirements.

The post A week in the world of Google appeared first on Purple Frog.

Source: Dilbert.com

Big Data became one of the biggest buzz words of 2012, and it looks like 2013 isn’t going to be any different.  Data is being created at such a rate that each day we create 2.5 quintillion bytes of new data (IBM). 

It’s no surprise that the rise and popularity of social networks contributes to the data increase.  Other data sources include web logs, search indexing, photo archives, video archives, e-commerce and scientific research.

Wal-Mart handles more than a million customer transactions each hour*.  OK, so you may not have that quantity of data to collect, connect and analyse!  However, you may already struggle to get your head around the pure quantity of data at your fingertips.  You may also be struggling with the quality of your data.

Research by Experian QAS shows that achieving data accuracy continues to be a challenge for companies, with nine out of 10 companies believing that their customer data may contain inaccuracies **.

But with 89 per cent of respondents reporting that departmental funds have been wasted because of data inaccuracy, can you afford for data strategy to not be on your agenda?

By focusing on data quality we can help drive efficiently, growth, profitability and customer engagement, all of which are undoubtably part of your company’s goals.

Data should be the responsibility of everyone within your organisation – this isn’t a matter simply left for the IT department.  Data quality awareness and staff training are a good place to start your data quality journey.  A project to audit, structure and clean-up your data could see some quick wins.  Followed by implementing processes to introduce a long term fix to the data gathering issues, to ensure the quality of new data remains high.

Don’t think in terms of big or small.  Instead think about your data strategy and how it can support your marketing strategy.  Without a strategy in place to collect and analyse data, big or small, your marketing efforts will be going to waste.

*  Source: Big Data meets big data analytics. SAS
** Source: The data revolution: liberating lost budgets. Experian QAS April 2012.

The post Big Data and your marketing strategy appeared first on Purple Frog.

Typically the advice is very sensible and adheres to good practice.  A couple of articles to look at are a ‘Call to Action Placement Checklist’ and ‘8 step Call to Action Guide’ from HubSpot which are incredibly useful resources.

However, remember that best practice advice may not be the right advice for your sector, you audience or your business.   Therefore make sure you don’t miss the most important step: Testing. 

CTA optimisation should be an ongoing process but it can often be neglected in favour of customer acquisition campaigns or retention marketing.  Therefore before you start a CTA A/B or multivariant testing project, it is vital to get stakeholder buy in.

Some of the question to consider before you start are what is it you want your user to do, and are you making it as easy for them as possible?  To make it easy for your users, are you presenting clear next steps and encouraging them to find out more?

Where budgets allow, testing should be carried out by real users.  This is not an opportunity for your design team or managers to be having their say!   Online usability testing such as  http://whatusersdo.com/ is an affordable starting point (See “Do you really know your customers?”).  Another option is using heat map tools such as http://www.crazyegg.com/ to give you a visual representation of where your users are clicking.  For example, if a user did not click your CTA, what did they do and where did they go instead?

Each element of the CTA can be tested to determine the best design, colour, text, size, imagery, placement etc to achieve your goals.  Also remember to look at white space around the CTA, the overall number of CTA’s on the page and CTA repetition.

If you’ve got stakeholder buy in from the start, you will be able to act upon the findings of the testing and base those decisions on hard facts.  

Once testing and optimisation becomes part of your culture, you can start to generate a measurable return on your investment. 

The post Call to Action optimisation appeared first on Purple Frog.

Website analytics and CRM data are invaluable, but they don’t tell the whole picture.

How about getting feedback directly from your customers?  Asking them what they think and want isn’t as scary as it may sound.

Have you seen your customers using your website?  By carrying out usability testing you can can see what visitors do, and hear what they think as they interact with your website.  By using online tools such as WhatUsersDo (http://whatusersdo.com/) you can perform tests and watch videos of the results within hours.  Compared to traditional testing, this is quick and inexpensive which opens user testing possibilities to the smallest of businesses.

Customer surveys allow you to ask questions about your products/services, feedback on experiences, determine brand awareness and carry out market research.  Tools such as 4QSurvey (http://www.4qsurvey.com) gives businesses of all sizes the ability to survey site visitors, analyse results and gain valuable insight.

Then there are personal interviews and focus groups.  Using a moderator and independent venue you can gather your customers thoughts and attitudes to gain valuable insight into how you can improve your website and brand experiences.

Have you considered inviting your best customers to an event?  If you have the budget to invite key segments to an event or workshop you have the opportunity to really engage with them and create super-fans. Taking this a step further, a crowd sourcing approach could be taken where your customers assist with development, design and marketing for your products and services.

What do your customers see and experience when they interact with your brand?  You don’t need to guess, or assume.  If you think you don’t know your customers as well as you should, why not simply ask them some questions?

The post Do you really know your customers? appeared first on Purple Frog.