Creative idea and messages

Source: thinkneuro.de

This week's trigger was about creative idea and messages. Great brands appeal to all five senses and to the emotions of customers. It can be very important to incorporate different senses into branding techniques.
The group decided to research on the following learning objectives:

• How do people use their five senses to receive advertising messages?
• How to develop a creative message according to the senses?

1. LO How do people use their five senses to receive advertising messages?


The following table provides and overview of the importance of the five senses in different industries. What is interesting to realize is that the fast moving consumer goods and also the services industries appeal to all senses. The other industries also focus on most of the senses except for the taste. Visual elements are the most important, followed by feel and hear.

Source: http://www.markenlexikon.com/texte/transfer_kilian_multisensuales-marketing_4_2010.pdf

Source: http://www.markenlexikon.com/texte/transfer_kilian_multisensuales-marketing_4_2010.pdf

The previous table also decodes the meaning of the value power in the different senses:

• See: Dark colors, distanced imagery, solid forms (e.g. Limousine)
• Hear: Loud, precise rhythms, penetrating (march, lion, fanfare)
• Feel: Plain, cold, hard, heavy, leathery
• Smell: Heavy (e.g. incense)
• Taste: bitter,spicy (whiskey, nutmeg)

Case Study BMW:
Companies should not underestimate the power of the composition of different senses. The German car manufacturer BMW claims "Freude am Fahren" in their slogan, meaning that people should enjoy their ride with the BMW. Pleasure of driving is the core element of their brand. However, the old BMW audio logo, called Ambossschlag (anvil hit) that was only introduced in the last 10 years was associated with coldness, technic, power, precision and not with pleasure and joy. Pleasure and joy would sound more warm, major (Dur) and legato, wheareas the old audio-logo of the anvil was linked with coldness and staccato. The following graphic is an acoustical decoding of the pleasure/joy associations (dark grey) and the actual sound of BMW (light grey).

Source: http://www.markenlexikon.com/texte/transfer_kilian_multisensuales-marketing_4_2010.pdf

The following paragraph is taken from an article by Fatima D. Lora (2012) which was published on retailtouchpoins.com.

Understanding Why We Purchase

In a recent sensory study conducted during a Coca-Cola television commercial, scientists noticed when the sensory part of the brain lit up. This reaction indicated consumers’ involvement with the commercial and initial product craving. 
 
Lindstrom noted three powerful senses revealed by the study:

• Sound + Visions = Activates The Reward Senders In Our Brain
• If sound (“eat 29% more”) is slower than heartbeat rate, and the music is played slowly, the more time and money spent at the location.
• Sound + Vision = Attention + Memory
• Activating previous memories in consumers’ minds creates a comfortable feeling that causes consumers to spend more.
• Sound + Visions = Emotional Engagement = ConsumerPreference
• Retailers create consumer preference based on sound.

In an experiment at a wine store with two types of wine, French and German, the retailer used corresponding French and German music to boost the sales of each wine. When the retailer played French music, there was a 77% increase in French wine purchases. By switching to German music, the retailer indicated a 69% sales increase in German wine purchases.
Eighty-three percent of all communications only appeals to one sense, leaving the remaining four available, reported Lindstrom. “Retailers who appeal to three of consumers’ senses double their marketing efforts.”
Regardless of gender, most consumers (80% of men and 90% of women) have a “Proustian experience,” said Lindstrom, which takes them back in time based on the smell of a brand. He refers to Marcel Proust, an early 20^th century novelist who immortalized the relationship between sensory stimulation and recollections of past experiences. Today, some of the most powerful brands in the world are working on nostalgia marketing.


Here are some trends in sensory branding: 

• Senses will play an important role in branding strategies; 
• Storytelling will become more prominent 
• Retailers will understand how to create non-conscious clues 
• Retailers will need to use sensory to understand how consumers influence each other
• and more retailers will focus on becoming more authentic and honest

 2. LO How to develop a creative message according to the senses?

First of all I would like to dicuss some theories about creativity in contemporary branding. Creativity in advertising is regarded as important due to the assumption that creativity is an effective way of getting attendance to an ad. Health et al. (in Fill 2013, 743) believe that creativity in advertising involves various elements, including characters (expressing mild emotion such as love, irritation, excitement, boredom), situations (considered poignant, humorous etc), visuals (elegant, attractive, beautifully shot footage) and ultimately the background music (pleasant, uplifiting or evocative). 

Fill (2013, 758) states that creativity has two main characteristics which are divergence and relevance. He also discusses the attention-getting strategies of forcing and subversion. Forcing strategies involve the use of surprising, irrelevant or shocking content. Subversion strategies require and ad to seduce and audience, to slip by them unnoticed.  

The following clip is about sensory branding as applied in practice (Discussion by Lindstrom and Harrop, 2010): 

Here are the key findings of the video:

• 83% of information is received visually, but what about the remaining 17%?
• it is unconscious and sets a bookmark to your brain
• With the majority (85%) of decisions taking place in the brain’s non-conscious segments and only 15% occurring in the conscious, most consumers buy irrationally
• effects of branding on digital media vs. printed paper: far more engagement on piece of paper than on visual screen, because more senses are involved with the piece of paper (not only sight, but also touch, smell and sound), meaning that you get some additional emotional attention due to more senses involved
• multiplying effect - synergies
• many companies are wondering about investing in this area of sensory branding since it requires high spends, but eventually they can increase their return on investment drastically by adding an additional sense (e.g. adding an additional sense such as sound email may increase the marketing costs by 15-20% but double the number of customer retention)
• KPI can be justified by sensory branding
• not only 2 dimensional but experienced with all senses

 The creative idea generation process:

The following slideshare http://de.slideshare.net/marketeach/creative-message-strategies provides techniques for creative messages generations starting with a creative brief. A creative brief should include the following steps/questions (according to AdCracker 2015):

1. Background/ Overview: What's the big picture? What's going on in the market? Anything happening on the client side that the creative team should know about? Any opportunities or problems in the market?This is where you introduce the project to the creative team. You'll go over this again in the briefing session, but write it down as well.
2. Objective: what is the goal of the ad or campaign? Write a concise statement of the effect the ad should have on consumers. Typically expressed as an action. And frequently focused on what the ad should make the audience think, feel, or do.
3. Target audience: who are we talking to? An audience profile is more about how real people think, feel and behave than it is about numbers and percentages. The aim here is to paint a portrait of the audience - a verbal picture that the creative team can talk to and visualize. 
4. Focus: what's the most important thing to say or show? Here you want to identify the single most persuasive statement, or compelling visual, you can present to achieve the objective. Keep it simple. Avoid generalities. 
5. Reasons why: what are the most compelling reasons to believe, to try, to buy? List the rational and emotional reasons for consumers to believe what you say, to try the product, to buy the service. Include all major copy points and visual evidence listed in order of relative importance to the consumer. 
6. Also: what else might help the creative team? Here's where you can include consumer insights, memorable quotes, a description of the brand personality, positioning tag lines, creative thought starters, terms of the direct response offer, result expectations, and mandatory elements such as the logo and website address.
7. Schedule: What do we need from the creative team, and when do we need it? Here you can provide details on media, sizes, client presentation requirements even production specs - all depending on the project.  

According to Edoardo Moruzzi's graphic, the creative process in advertising starts by the client creative brief. The expected content as well as the company's identity should be communicated. The following problem statement should be aligned with the strategy but also be creative. Ideas should be generated based on research on books, internet and people and be visualized and designed in a next step. Based on various feedback, the process should be finalized.

Source: http://www.edoardomoruzzi.com/project/the-creative-process/

I also found this infographic by brandingbygarden very helpful to understand the creative idea generation process in alignment with a company. There are 8 steps in this process, starting with the brief, followed by analysis and research, brainstroming and a strategy. These steps can be summarized under scope&learn and discover&define. Again, the creative ideas are visualized and presented twice to the customer before the final presentation and the roll out of the project.

Source: http://brandingbygarden.com/methodology/creative-process/

Of course, the creative ideas also need to be applicable to practice. The principle of building a border around an idea or story followed by a presentation of a contained and managed view of an issue is know as framing. According to Entman (as cited in Fill, 750), framing is to: select some aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient in a communicating context, in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation and treatment recommendation.

Case Study:
The following video is one example of how a supermarket/retailer used sensory branding and achieved a 400% increase in sales using multisensory marketing and social influences:

Sources:

• AdCracker 2015. http://www.adcracker.com/brief/Sample_Creative_Brief.htm Accessed: 16.11.2015
• Fill C. 2013. Marketing Communications. 
• Kilian K. 2010. URL: http://www.markenlexikon.com/texte/transfer_kilian_multisensuales-marketing_4_2010.pdf  Accessed: 16.11.2015
• Lora F. 2012. URL http://www.retailtouchpoints.com/shopper-engagement/1693-how-brands-use-multi-sensory-techniques-to-pique-consumers-interest- Accessed: 16.11.2015