Marketing in Real Life

Here is the first of the takeaways from presentations at the Shopper Insights in Action Conference earlier this month in Chicago. This presentation was from Chris Gray, Vice President of Shopper Psychology (cool title!) at Saatchi & Saatchi. Winning Her Wallet By Meeting Her Mind. 33 percent of brand loyal customers in 2007 abandoned those brands in 2008 Shopper marketing has 3 secomds to make an impression, which is long enough for people to decide Shoppers are consumers on a mission... they become task oriented, make choices beyond their normal considersation set (when not shopping), are pressured and bombarded while choosing, and are decision makers. Deselection (being automatically ruled out) is the worst case scenario for brands Ratonal claims work because they speak to consumers' emotonal goals. Make your teeth 30% whiter = i want to feel more confident and attractive Positive emotions drive positive behaviors and the converse is true. Narrowed focus, smaller budget, fast...

Seth Godin had a great post on the use of graphs in the business world that I thought was particularly useful after being at the Shopper Insights in Action conference last week. It is fascinating, but not shocking watching people perk up for images and stories and videos and slump into their chairs at the sight of charts on a screen. It's not that the data isn't important, it is just that the data should be used to support a story, not to tell the story. Over the next week or so I'll be posting notes from select sessions at what was an excellent conference. Stay tuned!