2. Ron Park VP, Advanced Methods and Research, Merkle Inc.
Leads a team focused on utilizing data, analytics and technology to develop and execute
on marketing strategies that aid marketing organizations in understanding their
customers and monetizing relationships through personalized experiences. He has led
180 dedicated analytic professionals who serve over 50 world-class clients
2
Jennifer Perry, Associate Director, Advanced Methods and Research, Merkle Inc.
Leads the development of customer strategy deliverables for some of the world's leading
brands across a number of industries including CPG, High Tech, Non-Profit, Financial
Services, Insurance and Pharma. Jen is also a specialized research moderator with
continual practice in means-end and laddering approaches.
39. If you are challenger
brand how do you
compete?
We must understand the
‘winnable’ positioning
opportunities to influence
Millennials.
13%Other
28%Samsung 59%Apple
Smart Watch - Brand Market Share
46. The subject line enforces the product
benefit (look better) while insinuating social
status.
Imagery used alludes to millennials desire for
social recognition.
Reinforces positioning by presenting the
“Top Focus-Enhancing Features,” that tie to
sought after product attributes.
Prioritized product attributes reinforces the
desired benefits stated above.
Our findings will reveal three key insights that will help you connect with and market to millennials more effectively in any industry.
We want to do a quick poll – we will spend a lot of time talking about millennials but what generation do the individuals on the phone fall into?
and $10 trillion in their lifetime
Ad Age (2012)
So what do we know about them? They have grow up in the digital world – they are the most engaged generation in social media, spend the most time online and value community and family above all else. They’ve been called the Selfie Generation, the ME Generation, the generation of entitlement, of self-involvement, of individualism.
They don’t care what you think of them, they value authenticity above content, and they’ve replaced “rules were made to be broken” with “there are no rules.”
Note:
4. They value authenticity as more important than content. 43% of millennials rank authenticity over content when consuming news.
Millennials are known as the most individualistic generation to ever walk on this planet. Every millennial feels unique, special, and aspires to be their own person.
NOTE (Forbes). They aren’t influenced at all by advertising. Only 1% of millennials surveyed said that a compelling advertisement would make them trust a brand more. Millennials believe that advertising is all spin and not authentic. That’s why they use Tivo to skip commercials regularly and avoid banner advertisements on Facebook and various news websites.
Today’s data-obsessed marketers are at risk of cultivating only half a brain. We’re neglecting an entire field of data. .
We know what millennials do, but we’ve only guessed at why they do those things.
Knowing that they love travel, tweeting, and tech only gets us so far – we need to tap into the psychological motivations that are driving their priorities and purchase decisions. We need to understand latent motivations, not just self-reported behavior and attitudes.
We’ve seen the big data revolution with analytical data. We’ve seen that evolve into people-based marketing, applying behavioral data to advertising. Neuroanalytics enables us to apply motivational insight – the why behind the buy – to our data-driven marketing world.
Neuroanalytics is a proprietary process that combines cognitive neuroscience with advanced analytics to understand the subconscious motivations that people activate to make decisions.
As we began our quest to find out what makes millenials tick it was a natural choice to pick wearable tech as a category to study purchase decisioning.
We know millennials are the first generation to grow up in the digital world and have a UNIQUE perspective on technology – we sought out to see if their purchase motivations were truly DIFFERENT from their generational counterparts.
The research sample consisted…
The Research sample consisted of individuals who purchased wearable tech on the wrist (a smart watch or fitness tracking device) within the last 18 months. The population will split in half – 50% mil and 50% non-mill.
We took a 2 pronged approach to identify consumer motivations -
We conducted 30 laddering interviews to understand sought after product benefits and how they tied to personal needs. We were able to identify the primary values that influence decision making.
Quantitative research was used to validate the decision chains that emerged from Qual by determine the importance of nodes (associations in the mind of the consumer), strength of decision chains as well as measure brand associations to sought after needs.
We couple this insight to carve out a unique and resonate positioning strategy to better influence millennial decision making.
Know that we understand how we generated this insight… lets move on to some of the findings
So what is on the wrist? It didn’t take us long to see that the wearable tech category was really a battle between 3 brands. As we step back and look at the competitive landscape, where 3 brands own the majority of the share. The question is… how do you best compete and positioning your brand to acquire more share.
We can see that millennials are purchasing more than gen x and baby boomers. This data point reinforces the economic momentum this group will continue to drive - representing $200 billion in buying power annually. For brands moving forward, it will be to a top priority to engage and influence these individuals to protect or acquire market share.
We found three primary motivations emerge ACROSS GENERATIONS – Connection, Social Status, Individualism;
The interesting thing is how it makes you look vs how you make you feel. If these are the 3 dominant factors – do they differ by generation?
Four latent needs emerged during the decision making process.
as we dig deeper into these mindsets we will see that their intersection creates a very intriguing paradox.
Click to stat and come back
What is fascinating is that millennials grew up with technology connecting them to others and it has become an innate value. They’ve been raised on a steady stream of like and re-tweet-induced endorphins and depend upon that connection to those they care about for their happiness. But it isn’t just about being “connected” – it’s about the people they’re connected to. They want instant access to share their hearts and minds with their family and friends and get that specific positive feedback.
The benefit of strong connections becomes a salient motivator to purchase 33% more than for non-millennials. As the most avid users of new technology and social media, millennials value wearable technology for its ability to enhance these connections.
What is fascinating is that millennials grew up with technology connecting them to others and it has become an innate value. They’ve been raised on a steady stream of like and re-tweet-induced endorphins and depend upon that connection to those they care about for their happiness. But it isn’t just about being “connected” – it’s about the people they’re connected to. They want instant access to share their hearts and minds with their family and friends and get that specific positive feedback.
The marketing opportunity is to elevate the promise of enabling stronger connections in messaging and creative treatment
Another significant motivation is social status – maybe not surprising since that’s mattered to every young generation in history. What’s fascinating is that in millennials, the desire to live healthier is ultimately driven by social status not health, and they want to look better because it gets them recognized.
Part of social status is, of course, looking cool. Millennials are motivated to purchase ‘cool and current’ products 17% more than older generations. With Fitbit owning 79% of the fitness wearable market and Apple owning 59% of the smart watch market, we begin to see that wearable purchases aren’t made in a vacuum – what your friends are wearing matters. In fact, the benefit of social recognition drives purchase motivations 48% more in millennials than non-millennials.
Females are motivated by social status 20% more than males.
The benefit of strong connections becomes a salient motivator to purchase 33% more than for non-millennials. As the most avid users of new technology and social media, millennials value wearable technology for its ability to enhance these connections.
Elevate the promise of social recognition in brand positioning (creative, messaging, treatment)
Put the why (value) in your VO.
As we dug into the deeper further – we identified that millennial females are more influenced to purchase when the product ignites social status 20% more than males.
There is an apparent opportunity to identify and prioritize engagement of a core audience.
We know that millennials don’t want to feel like they’re being sold to so as marketers we need to integrate ways to connect millennials with groups that they care about.
As we think about an experience decision for this group – we should introduce ways to enable millennials to easily seek out and receive validation from 3rd party reviews and social network during consideration.
Wearable tech is also a means to fulfill the desire for freedom to shape one’s life however they wish. They are self-directed and not influenced by others.
Guess what – that motivation is primarily for non-millennials.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, true individualism exists more strongly in the older generations. Millennials emphasis on “shaping your life the way you desire” is a roughly 30% lower than non-millennials. Perhaps non-millennials have lived long enough to stop caring what others think. Perhaps they’ve taken the concept of YOLO a little more literally than their younger counterparts and are driven to prolong that life as long as possible. Or perhaps growing up in a world where they were their own person and not connected to others at all times actually fostered a stronger sense of self-reliance, independence, and individuality than we realize.
Highlight the promise of ‘reaching goals’ and ‘living life as your desire’ in messaging and creative treatment.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, true individualism exists more strongly in the older generations. Emphasis on “shaping your life the way you desire” is a roughly 30% higher for non-millennials.
We can draw the conclusion that for most non-millennials, they have lived long enough to stop caring what others think. Perhaps they’ve taken the concept of YOLO a little more literally than their younger counterparts and are driven to prolong that life as long as possible. Or perhaps growing up in a world where they were their own person and not connected to others at all times actually fostered a stronger sense of self-reliance, independence, and individuality than we realize.
Highlight the promise of ‘reaching goals’ and ‘living life as your desire’ in messaging and creative treatment.
By digging deeper into consume phsycology and not just focusing on surface level behaviors - this insight contradicts what is being published in the industry
This uncovers a fascinating paradox – millennials want to appear strongly individual and unique, but that desire is actually fueled by a need to look cool and be connected. Millennials’ efforts to appear different, or perhaps more often, indifferent, are rooted in a search for social acceptance. They may not care for the admiration of society as a whole, but the connection with and affirmation of their peer group means a great deal to them.
Meanwhile, non-millennials are actually focused on themselves. They have a strong desire to reach personal goals, and wearable technology helps them do so.
Millennials may have the reputation of being individualistic, but it’d be more accurate to say they want to appear to be individuals. Their ultimate motivation is to influence the external social perception, not actually achieve internal aspirations. Appearance trumps reality.
One example of how this plays out in that customization appeared as a vital aspect of sought after attributes in three dominant decision chains among millennials. The caveat is that this idea of customization was tied to personal needs associated with ‘connection’ and ‘social status’. In other words, customization is key because it creates the perception of individuality, which makes them look cool to others.
The idea of customization includes wanting GPS-trackable workouts … an attribute that ladders up to having the respect and admiration of those around you.
Now that we know why people buy – lets review how we formulate the optimal positioning strategy in a gridlocked market
We know that Apple owns market share – If you are challenger brand how do you compete?
Apple had done an extremely good job – they are a formidable force within the smart watch space
Immediately recognize personal benefit by addressing ‘at a glance’ which is supported by ‘you and style’ examples – essentially reinforcing customization.
Whether this ad was created purposefully to activate millennial deicsioning or accidental – they are activating a millennial decision chain and we can see that correlated to their large ownership of market share.
There goal for brands is to begin associating with salient product needs in order to optimally break into the millennial mind share. The issue is that we need to consider associations of these benefits with competitors before we develop optimal positioning and messaging strategies.
Market share directly ties to the strength in which you can associate your brand to sought after needs in the mind of the customer. We can see that apple is doing this well based on their market size.
We quantified that consumer perceptive the following product benefits have a statistically significant correlation to apple.
In order to best compete we have to attack areas of importance that are ‘unclaimed’ in order to break into millennial mindshare.
If you think about the David and Goliath story and apply that thinking to marketing strategy – we don’t want to compete with our competitors on areas we know are their strength, we want to attack their weakness.
There is weaknesss in the armour… here are the cracks…
While Apple has a strong hold on many sought after product needs associated with smart watches - some of the most important product benefits are not strongly correlated with a brand!
There is an opportunity for other competitors in the category to begin associating with salient product needs in order to optimally break into the millennial mind share.
Product Needs in order of importance to Millennials – all strengths of apple EXCEPT nodes red.
When targeting Millennials we need to create Recognition Enablement and in order to do that we need to highlight the following product benefits.
Build communication strategy around being empowered to live healthier and look better.
The optimal positioning reinfororces recognition.
Unowned brand benefits are pillars that support… we are activating a salient decision chain to optimally break into the millennial mind share.
So what does this mean for marketers?
It means that when you’re targeting millennials, you need to activate their non-stated desire to achieve connection and high social currency while ostensibly promoting their access to individuality. The reasona to believe may change but the fact remains that they want to be part of the group that has the coolest products, but also have the ability to personalize the product for themselves.
Now lets discuss activation of this positioning strategy to create a purposeful experience. The goal of marketing is to influence the decision to purchase so lets show you how we do that!
Every decision we make is purposeful and ties back to the decision chain we are activating.
In the simplest terms, individualism is an end for non-millennials. For millennials, it’s a means to social status.
So what does this mean for marketers?
It means that when you’re targeting millennials, you need to activate their non-stated desire to achieve connection and high social currency while ostensibly promoting their access to individuality.
They want to be part of the group that has the coolest products, but also have the ability to personalize the product for themselves.
Products (and many services) targeting millennials should allow them to:
Customize – make it their own, reflecting their unique personality and preferences
Connect – engage in conversation or shared experience with people they care about
Consult – have a pre-purchase conversation with peers about what product they should buy
Show off – gain social recognition for how they’ve customized and used the product
Activate these abilities and you’ll tap into millennials’ desire to connect with those they care about and fulfill the endless desire for social affirmation.
Although they do much to hide it, millennials desire to be unique and appear different as a means to belong to the larger generational macro group
What is the analytics element of neuroanalytics?
How is motivational research targetable?
Does this really work?
What part of the marketing organization uses this insight?
