Dancing with Duality: Achieving Brand Growth in a Mindful and Mindless World

How people make brand choices is complex and nuanced, it is not simply about responding either automatically or deliberatively. Rather, we are adaptive in the way we process information, based on what is going on around and within ourselves. Our decisions arise along a continuum, where multiple cognitive processes ranging from more mindful to more mindless are operating at the same time.

 

 

Whether we pay a little or a lot of attention when making a choice, our decision-making is regulated by an adaptive control process in the brain, that can dial up more deliberative processing as required. All of this is deeply influenced by the context in which we are making decisions, as well as by goals, prior associations, and experiences stored in our memory.

Armed with this information, marketers can drive brand growth by designing brand interventions in order to influence this process.

 

The Mindful to Mindless Continuum

While brand choice is often more mindless and makes use of shortcuts, this doesn’t paint a full picture. In many cases, more mindful choices take over – triggered by context, motivations, emotions, values, or past experiences. When this happens, we engage cognitive resources. We might, for example, turn to the Internet or social media to find out more about brands, see what others think about them, or ensure they align with our values.

 

Brand Interventions

If we imagine people scrolling mindlessly through brand information as if quickly scrolling through a social media feed, it becomes clear that it is in the brand’s interest to stop the mind scrolling – particularly in the moments that matter. They can do this by triggering ‘conflicts’ that challenge more automatic, mindless choices, or through interventions that disrupt someone’s automatic impulse, cause them to pay attention, and encourage a more mindful and possibly different choice.

 

There are three types of interventions:

1. When you are a market leader, many people typically already intuitively choose your brand. In this case, your marketing activity should focus on reinforcing automated decision making.
2. When a lot of people are intuitively choosing a competitor, the key challenge is to disrupt this process and make people stop and reflect on their decision in order to ultimately persuade them to choose your brand.
3. When people deliberate their choice, the brand needs to justify a choice for them by giving access to strong arguments that support a more deliberative choice.

Brand owners should be conscious of the fact that the socio-cultural context in which people make decisions is dynamic. People’s beliefs, values, and goals are influenced by these changing socio-cultural contexts. This means that the relevant associations consumers have with a brand can be different in these different contexts, and they can change over time. Brand owners who continuously identify how relevance is evolving are likely to stay ahead of the curve.

 

Perception, Experience, and Identity: Instruments to Influence Brand Choice

Brand owners can activate these different interventions through three intertwined marketing instruments:

• Perception: Influencing how the brand is perceived and how it contextually lives in the mind
• Experience: Delivering on the brand promise to support a strong memory structure
• Identity: Building distinctive brand assets

 

 

When, how, and in which combination we put these strategies to work is determined by an understanding of brand relationships and choices and, importantly, how people act upon their brand associations in different contexts. When a brand offers a timely and unique balance of functional and emotional benefits – further enhanced by complementary, multi-sensory assets – that brand comes to mind more readily in key moments.

 

Perception: Contextual Association Management

Managing brand associations is critical to growth, so we need to understand the interaction of perceptions and experiences in the competitive context. Moreover, we need to recognize that people bring their perceptions with them into different contexts:

• They may use them mindlessly, as mental shortcuts to make quick, intuitive decisions;
• But sometimes (perhaps triggered by brand communication or by a change in their knowledge, goals, or experiences), people will slow and shift to more mindful processing.

Research professionals must avoid assessing brands in a contextual vacuum or within a trade-defined category that may not reflect the true choice context or alternatives.

 

Experience: Delivering on Brand Promises

The signals a brand sends and the experience it produces are inextricably linked. If there is a gap between what the brand says and what the brand does, expectations are violated, and attitudinal and behavioural adjustments can follow. When the experience consistently reinforces the brand promise, perception becomes more grounded, customers grow closer, and they use the brand more frequently.

 

Identity: Standing Out through Distinctiveness

We need to make a brand easy to choose in the moments that matter. Often, a brand stands out when it has unique and authentic tangible features such as the shape of a bottle, a color, a sonic cue, or a celebrity. These pieces of brand information are like rare gems found in a unique place that make the brand shine more brightly and distinctly in the mind, particularly in established, mature categories. Well-managed brand assets contribute to a person’s mental network of brand associations while enabling in-the-moment selection shortcuts.

 

Summing Up

To connect with consumers in a meaningful way and grow strong brand relationships, we need to understand people, how they process information, and how and when to intervene to help them achieve their goals. We have learned that people are adaptive and contextual decision-makers, often looking to take mental shortcuts to fulfill their goals without much effort. But when triggered, they can also shift to more mindful processes. Opportunistic brands find ways to challenge and disrupt mindless choice, then consistently deliver an experience to match the brand promise. By understanding how to influence brand relationships and contextual choice, marketers can ensure their brand shows up in the right places and at the right moments – in this way achieving sustainable brand growth.

 

Authors:

Jean-Francois Damais, Global Chief Research Officer, Customer Experience, Ipsos

Gillian Drewett, Global Head of Offer, Brand Health Tracking, Ipsos

Hazel Freeman, Director, Global Offer and Design, Brand Health Tracking, Ipsos

Chris Murphy, President, Market Strategy and Understanding, Ipsos

Steven Naert, Global Solution Leader, Market Strategy and Understanding, Ipsos

Adam Sheridan, Global Head of Products and Innovation, Creative Excellence, Ipsos

 

 

Photo by Craig Adderley from Pexels