Excellent piece about the nonsense of asking people how and why they do things

read it here

Rory Sutherland in an interview about

the sense and nonsense of research.

To change or not to change?

found here

Behavioral, not Attitudinal

Don't look at the date - there's no hot new stuff on this blog. Rather think how they might have gotten to that idea. What kind of talks they might have had with the management... Why Fun? Why legal driving? Why behavior change?

Strategy Quotations - Behavioral Creativity & Brands as Platforms

"They start thinking 'What kind of behavior do we want to own?'. And by 'owning' I mean 'What sort of behavior do we want to make better? What kind of behavior do we want to transform?"

                        - from a presentation given by Ana Andjelic, planning director at HUGE  -

McKinsey's Alternative to the Purchase Funnel

Though McKinsey's "new" consumer decision journey model is out since a couple of months, I still have to read it over and over again. And now I even have to post it here - just in case anyone has not seen it, yet. The model has absolutely striking implications when you think about all the existing measurement and management tools in use right now.
Here is the link to the article and educational videos on McKinsey's website. Just register, it's for free.   http://bit.ly/mW8nQF

A simplistic insight paradigm that rocks: "jobs to be done"

The "jobs to be done" or "products hired to do the job"
 paradigm seems very old. But something strange
 happens when you rather use the question "what job
 does the product do for them?" instead of "what do
 they want?" or "what is their benefit?".

 Soon I will post something about how this paradigm
 leads to different results compared to benefit-thinking or
 consumer-expectations-thinking. Listening to this talk
 helps to get a first understanding for this very simple
 but effective way of thinking.

Here is a link to a short article in HBR: article

An here is a link to Professor Christensen's book on how innovation becomes successful when jobs-to-be-done-thinking is applied:
The Innovator's Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth

Digital vs Analog Creative Brief - Different Key Questions

This is a slide shown at an APG conference in Germany. It features different approaches to planning of Digital and Analog disciplines. Basically, there is nothing new, but a lot of symptomatic stuff to say about it. But first of all, let me translate briefly into English. This scheme juxtaposes Key Questions to be answered: 

Analog: What is the consumer's motive (to buy/use)?, What is the message of the brand/ad? Why should she believe us? How do we stay recognizable? How do we gain attention?  

vs.  

Digital: What is the user's behavior (in the digital space)? What is our offer/experience? Why should she take part? How do we make space for sharing & for new stuff to be created? What do we offer to make them spread our story?

While this really is a helpful introduction into basic differences between digital planning (experience planning) & analog planning (brand planning), there's a gap that always strikes me. And I mean not the one between digital & analog but the one between digital & purchase. The digital planner - at least according to the scheme above - does not explicitly ask herself how the digital experience connects to purchase or usage motivation for the PRODUCT to be sold. It starts off with the question about user behavior in the digital media space rather than in the product usage space. Of course, some digital experiences are directly related to purchase or usage like it is the case of e-retailers, airlines, etc., but clients like e.g. detergents, burgers, canned soups, etc. are not used or even bought online. So how would this kind of planning actually plan for purchase?

The major challenge for digital planning is to show how this non-message- & non-motive-approach is connected to purchase. Classical brand planning or account planning connects to purchase via a model of consumer motivation which the communication tries to evoke or to alter. What is the purchase influence model used by digital planners? I'm sure there is one - but has not been formulated clearly, yet. Up to now it seems that the mere fact of brand exposure & experience as such is supposed to drive propensity to buy. This well may be the case but on the other hand it would mean that it makes almost no difference what exactly the experience elicits in the minds of the users as long as the familiarity with the brand increases. In other words: "As long as people are engaged in any kind of experience - it sells". Is this true? Has this been researched properly? This is a big opportunity for academic studies to come.