6 blades... really!?!  Read on...

When I was in college Gillette came out with the innovative Trac II- two blades on one razor. The logic made sense to me- the first blade does most of the work and the second blade gets what the first blade missed. That was 30+ years ago.

Today's razors have not two, but up to six blades! The value proposition just isn't there. There's incremental improvement, and there's improvementless improvement. Here's a scathing commentary (rated R for language kids!) from the Onion, written a year before the five bladers hit the market. And check out this video contrasting the Trac II with Gillette's new (as of 2010) ProGlide razor.

I understand the need for continuous innovation and improvement. And the need to to create a "felt need."Every marketer does. I get Gillete's oft-cited mantra of giving away the razor and making money on razor blades. And generating a perpetual revenue stream at $10 for a handful of razor blades every few weeks. 

But six blades?! Maybe it sells and is a money-maker. From a customer point of view, it appears manipulative and disingenuous. As a proponent of honest marketing and customer intimacy, I think Gillete, Schick, or a new entrant in the market would garner far more trust, competitive advantage, and market share by going back to a two-blader and telling customers exactly why. Who wil take the risk and reap the rewards?

Me? I just bought an old-fashioned double-edged safety razor. Classic design, far more economical, and closer shaves. Yeah.

We do a lot of work with companies that make products for the healthcare industry. One of the recurring challenges we take on is helping companies figure out how to connect emotionally with their customers - often doctors, nurses, and healthcare executives. One useful conceptual framework is Emotional Design, pioneered by Don Norman in a book by the same name (Don was a psych. professor and mentor of mine at UCSD a few decades ago, and is one of those very smart and practical guys). His framework can help achieve connection when designing medical devices, developing public health programs, or shaping healthcare services. Don's Linked In profile summarizes the framework this way:

 "The three kinds of design, the better to ensure enjoyable, pleasurable results. Visceral Design emphasizes appearance. Behavioral design emphasizes function, understandability, and the sheer joy of handling, touching, hearing, and using a well-designed product. Reflective design is about pride of ownership, about image, and the role of brands."

Here's an old TED video in which Don explains his thinking that led to the book.

More and more, I think marketing is all about connecting on an emotional level. Call it heart connection. So how do you know if your design is on the right emotional track?

Apply our think/feel/do test. For every feature of your product, program, or service, force your team to articulate what it should make the user think, and feel, and do. Then do the research to see if the features achieve the intended objectives, especially the feeling or emotional objective. If yes, you're on the right track. If not, back to the drawing board. For when design connects on an emotional level, it is astounding.

P.S. For the theorists among us: Given that the Emotional Design framework grew out of the classic ABC model  (affect, behavior, and cognition) to understand how attitudes are formed, our simple think/feel/do test is well-aligned with its principles. 

Image source: http://cpaprotectplus.com/blog/2011/03/warning-signs-of-an-unhealthy-heart-th...

Imagine you have a bunch people in a room talking about buying or using a certain product or service. Like in a focus group. And you happen to know that emotion drives behavior more than logic. So how do you get these folks to reveal not just their thoughts but their underlying feelings too?

Let's set aside the assumption (and it's a significant one!) that the people are aware of and able to talk about their feelings. 

One standard query, borrowed from psychotherapy, is asking "How do you feel about that?" In my opinion, this is bad in therapy and it's bad in marketing research. As soon as we ask "How..." we are inviting people to become analytical, which frequently moves them away from feelings, not towards them. That's why responses are usually not expressions of emotion, but rather thoughts like "I feel that it's a good product" or simply "OK." When we get more directive, and say "How does that make you feel?" we still hear back thoughts, but often coupled with defensiveness triggered by the implied causality.

What works better is to ask what questions like "When you use the product, what do you feel?" perhaps supplemented with a range of examples. However, I think it's most effective to probe about feelings in real time when we observe them. For example, if you see people become passionate in a discussion, acknowledge it and get more by saying, "You seem to have strong feelings about that. Tell me about it." And when doing so, be sure you echo back the intensity of the feelings they expressed.

Getting people to talk honestly about their feelings is an art. And it's not easy. A lot of moderators are more comfortable facilitating discussions about thoughts and ideas, rather than feelings and emotion. But bottom line, nothing makes for open hearts and deeper connections more than the respectful and honest sharing of emotion. Which makes the outcomes of marketing research far more effective.

Image source: http://cache2.artprintimages.com/p/LRG/7/781/6G8I000Z/art-print/jim-borgman-h...

How do you get people to change their behaviors? 1) You can EDUCATE them. 2) You can ENFORCE consequences. 3) You can change their ENVIRONMENT. These are the "3Es" of behavior change, a simple and powerful model for influence.

The current "cell phone in cars" debate offers a prime illustration of the 3Es. As a starting point, we all know it's a bad problem getting worse, as CDC's Injury Center makes very clear.

What to do? Take EDUCATION. The cell phone and auto industries, together with injury prevention folks, can create campaigns to teach us that driving while texting, talking or surfing the web is dangerous and even deadly. Check out, for example, the Department of Transportation's (DOT) "Distracted Driving" efforts here. These campaigns can make a difference, though research shows that most health campaigns generate only a modest impact. That's in part because most campaigns are based on the misguided premise that if people just know better, they will change. Decades of research, and even a bit of life experience, make clear the often-exercised human ability to not act in accordance with what we "know" is best.

So let's add some teeth with ENFORCEMENT! We're trying that now with police levying heavy fines on people driving while holding and using a cell phone. But it's tough to catch people in the act. And we need to deal with the resource allocation argument of diverting police from "serious" crimes. In a sense, enforcement is a fear tactic, which means that the perceived risk of getting caught coupled with the perceived seriousness of the consequences (fines, loss of license, shame, etc.) needs to be sufficient to motivate behavior change, but without being so scary that it makes people tune out.

Will changing the ENVIRONMENT help? Some call this approach social engineering (a powerful and traditionally unpopular phrase in some political camps). An example would be creating technology in cell phones and cars that make it impossible to use the phones while driving. Note that in the extreme, this approach eliminates choice. Knowledge and motivation no longer matter. That's the power of engineering an environment that makes the desired behavior change happen. 

Engineering the environment is what I think it will take to really impact such prevalent and highly addictive behaviors like cell phone use in cars. Complement it with education so we object less, and with enforcement for those who create workarounds. 

There you have it. The 3Es in action.

Photo source: plg-pllc.com

Set a goal. 

Because as ace marketing consultant The Cheshire Cat advised to his client Alice in Wonderland...  "If You Don't Know Where You're Going, Any Road Will Get You There." 

What you may not know (only because I'm, well, making it up right now) is that The Cheshire Cat then continued... "Only It Might Take You A Very Long Time, And You Might Never Know When You Are There, Which Means You Really Need to Start With A Goal."                           

There are lots of goal-setting tools and heuristics, like S.M.A.R.T. (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound). I just want to add one piece of advice. Make your first 2012 marketing goal an outcome goal, not a process goal. That means it specifies an accomplishment or result, not just an activity.

Think big. Where do you want your business or organization to go? What outcomes do you envision? List them, apply the S.M.A.R.T. test, then choose one. 

Rather than moving forward without a clear direction (more on this via our late friend George Harrison in his poignant song Any Road), or choosing an end point blindly (as Dr. Doolittle did to go to Spidermonkey Island), or "throwing the rock, then moving the target" (as my colleague at AARP Senior Research Advisor Bob Vorek describes many social science research projects), set your goal with purpose and commitment.

It will set you up for a solid and effective start for 2012.

For years, the dairy industry "owned" the category milk. In our minds, milk meant the stuff from cows. As a result, other forms of milk needed a descriptor. For example, nursing a baby wasn't about just "milk," it was about breast milk. 

Marketers know there is nothing better than dominating a category. Like FedEx created and dominated the category of overnite delivery, the dairy industry (a family of brands) dominated the category of milk. 

But, in the words of the great singer/songwriter Bob Dylan, "Times, they are a-changing."

Check out the game on the Got Milk website to find "real" milk. Here's a screen shot of how they show what one can only assume are the "fake" milks.

Then take a look at their "Real Milk comes from cows" TV ad. Seems that the California Milk Processor Board (they're behind the long-running the Got Milk campaign) is getting defensive. That means Silk and other brands of Soy Milk, Almond Milk, Coconut Milk, Rice Milk, and others are taking not just shelf space, but market share from cow milk folks. Hence, the campaign to equate cow milk with real milk. 

As a long-time consumer of the competing non-dairy products (when my "raised on rice milk" kids were little and lactose-intolerant, they heard the refrain cow milk is for baby cows at least a million times), I see this as a prime example of a category (milk) growing beyond its dominant product line (cow milk).

Will we see the day when restaurants say, "Would you like cow's milk, coconut milk, or rice milk with your cereal?" I suspect we will.

My daughter Hana saw these in a store and texted me a photo, being impressed with Jelly Belly's marketing savvy.

They aren't available very often, but when they are...Jelly Belly fans love to snap up our famous Belly Flops. These special beans taste great, but don't quite meet all of our demanding standards for size, color, shape and flavor.    

 - From back of bag, as blogged by Sugar Pressure

 This is another example of the world's greatest marketing axiom (my favorite anyway): If You Can't Fix It, Feature It!

Four marketing lessons from Belly Flops:

1. Instead of trashing the misshapen jellybeans or hiding the irregularities, they feature the "mistake" and the fun it produces:

You may find one that's round, one that's square, or you may even find a bunch stuck together. On very rare occasions, a flavor may not match a color. A red Belly Flop might taste like Blueberry, or a white one might taste like Chocolate Pudding. Crazy!

2. The product name Belly Flops leverages the well-established Jelly Belly brand name, while simultaneously repurposing a kinda funny label that most people know refers to a not very serious, well, flop. Which is all strongly reinforced by the graphics on the bag.

3. They assure customers of the usual great Jelly Belly taste, and at the same time, reinforce that they have "demanding" aesthetic standards that this product doesn't meet.

4. They make us feel like we're getting a deal - half price, in fact.

Good marketing JB!

Micheline, head of our International Desk, recently gave me a Time magazine article about seducing customers. Actually, it was about how supermarkets create "zones of seduction" that get customers to spend more. What the author and consumer fan Martin Lindstrom (check out his buy-ology book pictured below), called "seducing," I used to refer to as "engineering." But seducing sounds well, more seductive (and is actually more customer-centric). Don't you think? 

A key point was changing the environment to trigger our primitive, and often subconscious survival responses, like hoarding for lean times. The approach requires lots of customer field research to know what works and to fine-tune the changes. For example, changing a point of purchase sign in the supermarket aisle from $1.95 to 1.95 increased sales. The dollar sign seemed to trigger a greater awareness of expense, not value. Adding the line "maximum 3 cans per customer," coupled with smaller shopping carts and a bumpy (and noisier) tile floor that led people to slow down increased spending sevenfold. Sevenfold!

Think about slot machines in Vegas, starting with your first steps off the airplane.They are everywhere! You can't even go the bathroom without passing a zillion slots seductively beckoning your credit card.

Are we being constantly manipulated? Yes. Is that bad. Sometimes. Is it an inherent part of a capitalistic society? Yes.

And the real bottom line question: How can YOU more effectively and ethically seduce your customer (or client, patient, partner, investor, etc.) to "buy" from your organization?

As I was watching the Broncos (barely) win yet again, I was struck by a Dodge Journey ad. Positioning the car as "the search engine for the real world," the campaign (Wieden + Kennedy) makes the point that people can't experience life online. The campaign was launched several months ago with the added ploy of hiding three Journeys in different parts of the country and making a contest of finding them. And ironically, you needed to go online to get clues.

Interestingly, there is no mention- zero, zip, nada- of any car-related features or benefits. It's all about experiencing life.

Three powerful marketing lessons:

1) Your competitive advantage may have nothing to do with the features of your product.

2) The campaign is strategically sticking to its theme - Journey, by virtue of the storyline in the ads, the design of the contest, and of course, the name of the car.

3) By highlighting that experiencing something online (aka "like" being there) is not the same as really being there (the copy goes "no one makes list of websites they want to visit" while driving by beautiful sites that people do want to visit in person), the campaign touches a pain point most of us know deep down is true, yet may not articulate. 

And Dodge is providing the solution: Buy the Journey, and really live.

I predict that lots of products and services will join the growing ranks of campaigns that contrast "real life" with what they portray as a much more shallow online or "virtual" life. Again, the message is you buy the product, and you really live!

P.S. Check out AdWeek's story here.