The Best of IIEX EU 2022: Loyal to Bacon, Pasta, and the NPS Score?

Many of us have been looking forward to our first in-person conference in more than two years and IIEX EU 2022 did not disappoint! There were many excellent presentations. But in this article, I’ll share a couple of my favourites, as well as my key takeaway. (This was not the 2020 event!)

Favourite brand story: Philippe Coquelle from Barilla Group

The relevance of brand purpose has been debated in recent years as being performative and without real-life relevance. But Philippe’s story is compelling.

As a company that genuinely cares about sustainability (read about their company purpose here), Barilla wanted to switch from all plastic packaging for its pasta to mostly paper packaging with a small plastic window. However, after conducting consumer research, it determined that changing the packaging would have a detrimental effect on the brand.

Consumers had always purchased a 100% plastic bag that let them see every single piece of pasta and they liked it that way. Consumers may say they want sustainable options but, in this case, their actions spoke louder than words. People were loyal to the packaging, less so to the brand.

In spite of the disappointing data, Barilla stuck to its brand purpose and decided to move forward with a more sustainable package that would decrease its market share. It purposefully acted in opposition to the research results to do what was right for its company and the environment.

This is a fantastic example of brands working to understand people, society, and data rather than letting the data dictate actions without thought. Well done to the Barilla team!

Favourite presentation: Nyssa Packard at Skyscanner

By far, my favourite presentation came from Nyssa. After polling the audience to find that many people used NPS, we also discovered that almost no one liked using it. Loyalty for the NPS score is pretty dismal.

We regularly hear complaints about NPS, but Nyssa went one step further and enlightened us with a detailed list of reasons to reject it and use more meaningful measures instead. Though many of the points were compelling on their own, the most effective one for me was the demonstration that two extremely different scenarios can generate identical scores. For example, a score of 20 could come from 60% promoters and 40% detractors or 20% promoters and 0% detractors.

So what does a score of 20 really mean? That you have lots of haters or no haters? It’s impossible to know. That doesn’t make for an effective KPI, now does it?

Why do we do research?

As Steve Phillips from Zappi shared, the role of traditional market research has changed. Where it once was highly relevant and necessary across every stage of the product lifecycle, the breadth of insights that transactional data facilitates has bumped questionnaires and groups down the ladder.

Of course, transactional data is only available post-launch which means that traditional market research must still fill the gap during the pre-launch phases. Traditional methods are also essential when we need to understand the why behind the buy. This is the only way we can create experiences that will spur people to notice and try products and services that will enable them to live happier, healthier, and safer lives.

Rainier van Rietschoten and Clark Jenkinson from Veylinx spoke about the importance of measuring ad effectiveness via unconscious methods. To create effective ads that people will notice and remember, ads need to account for the ‘zombie’ mode. It’s not that ads are particularly difficult to comprehend, but rather that when people sit in front of a TV or browse through pages either physically or virtually, they aren’t in a state of mind to untangle subtlety-crafted messages. Brands that want to change lives must understand and reach the human mind during zombie mode.

But getting people to notice something isn’t enough. Edwin Taborda and Anna Martynova from Electrolux discussed the difficulties of helping people behave more sustainably. Even when people know what the preferred behavior is, e.g., putting something in a recycle bin, most of the solution comes from day-to-day habits. This means that brands need to create situations where consumers can behave better. For example, brands need to make sure consumers can recycle their products and packaging easily at home, not by driving to an out-of-the-way recycling factory.

Even when people are careful with their actions, they aren’t always privy to the actions of people around them. Alice Rayner and Helen Heard from the Food Standards Agency shared how food safety can be an issue when people in the same household aren’t aware of each other actions. They can easily negate each other’s attempts at food safety simply by using the ‘wrong’ kitchen towel. Fortunately, in-home ethnography proved to be an effective way to uncover unknown unsafe practices.

Finally, for all you bacon lovers out there, the irrational mind continues to be very irrational. Anne-Lise Flaction from Cereal Partners Worldwide and Joris de Bruyne from eyesee discussed the levels of loyalty people have for a variety of products. Logically, consumers have less brand loyalty for household products, and more brand loyalty for products that are applied to the skin or ingested. But the champion of loyalty is bacon. No matter the price, people aren’t prepared to take the risk of trying a different brand of their beloved bacon. Your goal – be the bacon!

In closing, thank you to all the speakers who took to the stage to share their stories and inspire everyone to be creative, innovative, and find solutions to build a better world for everyone. See you next year!