Listen up guys!! (Vive la difference!)

Any guys reading this may find the next piece of information very useful… (Take note!)

How to impress a woman:
· Compliment her,
· Respect her
· Honour her,
· Cuddle her,
· Kiss her,
· Love her,
· Tease her,
· Comfort her,
· Protect her,
· Spend money on her,
· Wine and dine her,
· Buy things for her,
· Stand by her,
· Support her,
· Hold her,
· Go to the ends of the earth for her!

The list goes on but the above are true. As simple as these things may sound, women are impressed and moved by very different things than men would be impressed by.

How to impress a man:
· Show up naked,
· Bring food.

Yes, it is that simple! We discussed this with the male members of our class and it turns out it doesn’t take very much to impress a man. These lists suggest that women are more ‘in-depth’ than men and as a result, we prefer more detail. This is due to the fact that the male and female brains work very differently and in terms of marketing campaigns, it is vital to understand the difference in the brain process when producing an appropriately targeted advertisement.

When taking a test to discover my brain’s “Sex I.D”, I found out that I have both male and female traits and thus, my brain works in neither a female of male orientated way. When carrying out the first part of the test (which focused on angles) my results stated that I found the test neither hard nor easy. My score was 15 out of 20 with the average score for women being 13.3 out of 20, and the average score for being 15.1 out of 20. This therefore suggests my brain has both male and female traits when it comes to spatial ability. Research into the male and female brain states that males mainly use the left side of their brain; however, women generally use both sides of their brain. Part of the test also involves clasping your hands together and if your left thumb is on top of your right thumb, as mine was, then the right half of your brain is more likely to be dominant. Some studies theorise that as a right brain dominant person, you may excel in visual, spatial and intuitive processes. Part three of the test focused on emotions and systems and my empathy score was 13 out of 20 where as the female average was 10.6 out of 20 and the male average was 7.9 out of 20. It has been suggested that empathisers are better at accurately judging other people’s emotions and responding appropriately. This is important when considering the advertisements as many of these are aimed at our emotions. The “Sex I.D.” test can be found at (http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/mind/. Why not take the test and see how your results compare with mine?

We also carried out another task in class which involved looking at the picture to the right and studying it for 60 seconds. We covered the picture and wrote down what we remembered. Why not try it yourself before reading the results? It turns out that men remembered the big picture on an office like the location of the desk or bookshelf. Women, however, remembered more intimate details like a vase of flowers in the corner, or a picture of a husband and wife on a book case. You may be wondering why this relevant but when we relate it to advertisements and direct mail, it may suggest that women prefer to be presented with intimate detail and fine distinctions, such as, 5 different variations of shampoo for curly hair, straight hair, oily hair, dry hair etc. Which one do we choose? Any wonder it takes us so long when we’re shopping! For men, toiletry advertisements usually focus on a single product. This is because men are likely to pick up on one or two very salient and obvious kinds of cues, for example if a product is free and they also think in a more macro way and need to be shown the big picture. As well as this, men are less likely to process complex metaphors. (I wonder why that is!) Because there are such vast differences in how male and females perceive things, it is vital for advertising campaigns to choose their target audience (specifically gender) and tailor their advertisements to suit the potential customers.

We then progressed to the targeting of specific genders with charity advertising. Sylke V. Schnepf from Southampton Statistical Sciences Research Institute has outlined that that women are more likely to donate to charitable causes but men are more generous in terms of the amount given. Quantile regression analysis shows that this pattern is robust if we take into account gender differences in individual characteristics such as household structure, education and income. In class, we watched a number of advertisements and wrote down how they made us feel. Advertisements which had a male voice over with a Scottish accent and soft music seemed to make me feel most emotional and this could be due to the fact that we associate different accents with different things. Direct mail is also an important part of charity advertising and just like a television ad, the charity needs to decide its target audience. In direct mail, women tend to respons to an ‘emotional’ style therefore charities have tended to use a ‘female/emotional’ style of writing in their fund-raising mail-shots. If direct mail is aimed at the male population then it tends to be a ‘factual’ style of writing. A re-written “factual” letter for men generated a response 85 percent better than the original ‘female/emotional’ pack. When the ‘male/factual’ version was sent to women, the response rate was 15 percent lower than the original. Women also like a ‘collaborative’ and conversational stule along with strong colours and evocative images. Men on the other hand found ‘chatty’ style annoying and preferred hard data and concise language, which they could scan before making a quick and informed decision. Men generally felt neutral about colours, and images seemed irrelevant.

The advert I have inserted below, from the NSPCC has been reported to have gained most of its donations from a female audience. This relates back to the theory that women respond to empathy.

Enterprise week

At present, business, especially in the UK is facing a recession. This topic seemed to form the basis or all our informative talks and discussions at Enterprise week. Alan Rich stated that a well run business will come through a recession very well and marketing campaigns will reduce and concentrate effort on main competitors but will decrease budget. This relates back to marketing communications in the 21st century as segmentation will have a significant effect at this point. If marketing campaigns are to focus effort on only main competitors then how are new brands to break into the business? At this time it seems this is a question which cannot be answered but we are to see a growth in larger brands. In terms of the consumer, we generally stick with brands we know when times are tough and this is therefore the reason why marketing agencies such as JDA will stand by well known brands and popular products during this recession.(http://www.jda.co.uk/)

Alan Rich’s view was opposed by others such as Ivor Peters who claimed “There is no solution because there is no problem.” This is another interesting view and it seems to depend on what business you are in as to how you view this credit crunch.

Although marketing is evolving through digital and online, the older and traditional channels are adapting to new times. Tom Vick thought traditional agencies should respond to the new times by:

• Forget above and below the line as concepts
  
• Bring back a dictionary definition of advertising


• Restructure business around brands and their communication needs


• Invest in re-training and re-orientating agency colleagues. This would give a more general business experience


• Learn from the youth. I.e. agencies can use younger staff to train older employees.
  

I took from Enterprise week that in five years time there won’t be agencies who focus solely on one particular aspect of marketing but they will have to incorporate Public relations, advertising and digital marketing to be successful. There are currently 12,500 agencies in the UK and it is most definitely a case where by only the fittest will survive.

Advertising for the sex's

Previous research suggests males and females exhibit different beliefs and attitudes toward traditional media advertising along with different advertising stimulated consumer behaviors. This formed the discussion of our Understanding the Customer class this week. Our lesson began with looking at a number of advertisements and attempting to remember as many as possible. This proved highly interesting as there was a vast difference between what the majority of the class (females) remembered and what the minority (males) remembered.
The spider diagrams below are a short summary of the type of things which males and females remembered. (Note the differences!)

At a semiotic level there is disparity in the portrayal of men and women in popular advertising. When men and women appear in advertisements together, the women are often depicted as weaker than the male, either through composition of the advertisement or particular situations in the scene. When females appear in advertisements alone we again note the stereotype of the female as sexual, unintelligent and fragile. Males, conversely, appear as strong and cultured. Particular roles and gender constructs are also evident in male adverts. Males are told to act tough, hide their emotions, and compete at all costs (Thompson 1993:146-7).

Take a look below, the advertisements present stereotypical images of masculinity which are highly unlikely to appeal to females.

In addition to this, Charity advertisements were used in class to provoke a response and discover the different emotional responses from both males and females.

How do you feel after watching that?

If you are female then there is a good chance you feel like I did. I found this video extremely powerful, making me feel emotional and overwhelmed. After discussing our feelings with other class members, it was evident that the majority of females were experiencing feelings like mine; however the males were not feeling quite the same. Despite the fact that the advert was quite short, they claimed that they lost interest quite quickly which may suggest that males are influenced by other factors rather than emotion. A study carried out by ‘All Academic Research’ stated that “Males were more inclined to take notice of, and interact with sexual images and humour in advertising, while females were not particularly interested in sexual or sports images.” They also stated that “although the effects of visual images in advertising did not directly influence personal involvement with the advertised products, visual images may indirectly encourage higher product involvement by exerting significant influences on individual preference to advertising”. (All Academic) The fact that the males in the class lost interest in the charity event relatively quickly could therefore be due to the fact that it is an advert serious in nature and did not initially capture their full attention by either sexual images or humour.

Guys, you may find the Ad below a little more entertaining!

Women control more than 80% of all consumer purchases and represent more than 50% of corporate buyers. When marketing to females, triggers, language, visuals and messages which will make women sit up and take notice need to be identified. This in turn will increase the effectiveness of their advertising and marketing initiatives.
It is for this reason that there are generally more advertisements aimed at females rather than males. (Mad4Marketing)

When taking a test to discover my brain’s “Sex I.D”, I found out that I have both male and female traits and thus, my brain works in neither a female of male orientated way. This has been discussed in depth in my “Gender Differences” blog, however in relation to this task, these results would suggest that I should be remotely engaged in Charity advertisement. Technically I shouldn’t experience high involvement emotions when watching it like females but I should experience more interest than males. So why did I feel overwhelmed by emotion? Could it be because I know numerous people who have been affected by cancer? Will an individual be less involved if they have not been personally affected by cancer?

These are all questions which should be considered when advertising a product/company/charity as it is not just gender which affects how we react. Although gender is the most important factor for the majority of products, advertisers can also appeal to our senses and use personal experience as a means of promoting their product (or in the case of the Cancer Research UK advert, to encourage us to donate).

I'm Bart!! (Personality)

Personality can be defined as: "a person’s unique make up, which consistently influences the way the person responds to his or her environment” (Solomon 1999)

Before this class, we took a test to determine what kind of personality we have. As silly as it sounds, the test; “Which Simpson’s character are you aligned with?” proved very interesting. We choose from different descriptions which had a letter assigned to them, making up a code and the code related to a character. My code was ESTP which means I am aligned with Bart Simpson!!


Although my personality type is aligned with Bart, it does not mean I do things like this!! <--

The description states that I love action and always seem to be doing something. I am clear headed when it comes to dealing with emergencies; I enjoy lavishing loved ones with big gifts (I’m not sure how true that is now that I’m a student!!) and apparently I’m also good to have on your side. According to the Simpsons personality test my weaknesses include getting bored easily and lavishing loved ones with big gifts!

My personality type can be defined as “ESTP- The Persuader” and according to http://www.mypersonality.info/personality-types/estp/ ESTPs are action-loving, "here and now" realists with excellent people skills. Informal, risk-taking, fast-paced and adaptable, they are not always in agreeance with rules and regulations. They are tactical problem solvers that desire quick results. ESTPs, who present a friendly and enthusiastic face, are straight shooters that are able to handle criticism. Out of the numerous personality tests I have taken I think the results of this one are most true of me- I really am a Simpson!

Why not take this personality test and compare your results to mine? http://www.scribd.com/doc/2286999/Simpsons-personality-types

This class also focused on Self Concept which can be defined as “the complex mental picture that people have of themselves” (Kotler 2008). In order to understand consumer behaviour, the marketer must first understand the relationship between consumer self-concept and possessions. To understand this further, here is an example provided from ‘Principles of Marketing, Fifth European Edition, Kotler et.al)

Apple applies this concept in a recent set of ads that characterise two people as two computers – one person plays the part of an Apple Mac and the other plays a PC. “Hello, I’m a Mac’, says the person on the right, who’s a youngster and dressed in jeans. ‘And I’m a PC’, says the nerd of the left, who’s wearing dweeby glasses and a jacket and tie. The two men discuss the relative advantages of Macs versus PS’s, with the Mac coming out on top. The ads present the Mac brand personality as young, modern and relaxed. The PC is portrayed as buttoned down, corporate and a bit dorky. The message? If you see yourself as young and with it, you need a Mac.

Inserted below is a youtube video of 15 short Apple ads similar to that outlined above! Enjoy!!

What do you want!? (segmentation)

Before today, I didn’t know the meaning of Segmentation, however after this class I was very aware of what it is and how important it is in all aspects of retail.

Market segmentation which is most relevant to us is basically the practice of dividing a customer base into categories or markets such as income level, geographic location or subscription type. The population of the UK on census day 29th April 2001 was 58,789,194 and as I’m sure you can imagine, not all thee people want the same thing which is why it is so important to for us use ‘profilers’ to gather information about the population and this information forms the basis of segmentation. Profiler questions may include age, gender, social class, personality and even hair colour and type!

Below is a diagram which outlines what factors influence behaviour, which in turn will influence the segmentation of the population you fall into.






Over the years, population segmentation has changed, along with the products we want. For example, In Victorian days, carbolic soap, bright red in colour and with a very interesting fragrance, was used to clean just about everything, ranging from floors to even washing hair! How would you react if your Mum told you to wash your hair with Detol floor cleaner!? I don’t think it would go down very well!

Nowadays we have hundreds of shampoo and conditioner brands with shampoos for greasy hair, dry hair, blonde hair, red hair, brown hair, died hair, thin hair, curly hair, damaged hair, dandruff… the list goes on!

This brings me on to STP marketing which stands for Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning. Smith (1957) claims: “Segmentation is based on the observation of evolution of demand and represents a more precise and rational adaptation of the product and the marketing effort to meet customer or user demands.”

You might be asking yourself why we need to use Segmentation?
Well, basically it gives us a better understanding of customer needs which would therefore increase the chances of a product gaining brand loyalty. It also allows prices in some premium sectors to be raised and a clearer message can therefore be sent out to customers about their brand.

Segmentation allows us to produce advertisements to suit a particular audience for example, a holiday resort such as Ibiza which is well known for its night life is likely to attract people aged 18-30 and therefore elderly people would not be used in advertisements!

‘The law of prägnanz!’ (Perception: Gestalt)

The fundamental principle of gestalt perception is the law of prägnanz (German for conciseness) which says that we tend to order our experience in a manner that is regular, orderly, symmetric, and simple. Gestalt theory states that many stimuli acquire a pattern quality which is more than the sum of its parks and that the ‘figure’ is the central element which captures our attention. It also states that background is largely undifferentiated which explains why contrast is widely used in advertising.

There are three key principles of Gestalt:

1. Grouping (proximity and similarity)
We tend to group objects together that share similar physical characteristics, for example health and beauty brands tend to stick to certain colours and bottle shapes.

2. Closure
We tend to see an incomplete picture as complete, i.e. If we need to fill in the gaps we do it automatically. When individual elements are arranged in groups that define an object, we tend to see the object and not the element.
Take a look below... Do you see eighteen individual circles? Or do you see the word ‘HI’?





3. Stimulus Ambiguity
A stimulus is said to be ambiguous when it does not correspond to an immediately recognisable shape or form, i.e. we need to find a context in order to interpret it. This is used widely in 21st century advertising. For advertisers ambiguity can serve multiple purposes. For one, the viewer of the ad may be more inclined to buy a product because of the "postmodern" coolness associated by the ad.

The controversies over Bennetton's advertising campaigns illustrate that this strategy can sometimes backfire. It is a common practice of advertiser's to appeal to the emotions of consumers in order to sell a product. Over decades, advertisements have evolved to a greater focus on social institutions rather than the product itself. Nonetheless, the Benetton retailer distinguishes itself by its utilization of attention grabbing and often times shocking imagery. When flipping through the Benetton catalogue, I was hard pressed to find the prices of sweaters or khaki pants. Instead, I found images of a priest and nun kissing, a black woman feeding a white baby, and shockingly, death row inmates.

Here are a few of the Benetton advertisements, take a look and see what you interpret from them.

Smell, See, Touch, Taste, Hear! (Perception; 5 senses)

Our five senses play a key role in customer perception, therefore, advertisers are now aware that they need to utilize more than just sight in order create a deeper connection with their product, i.e. They need to appeal to our 5 senses. Appealing to our five senses can also include making use of a discipline known as ‘semiotics’. The Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure defined semiotics as the study of ‘the life signs within society’. He noted that people communicate and understand one and other by many different methods other than through the use of language. This may involve the use of various signals, signs and symbols communicated through the use of noises, pictures, images, shapes and colours as well as through facial and body language. These methods are all used by advertisers to appeal to our five senses both as a complement to and a substitute for language.

So the Marlboro cowboy becomes a symbol for an adventurous, vicarious, ‘real-man’ lifestyle; a white ‘tick’ comes to represent Nike; mountain streams represent freshness; a white coat a scientific background and spectacles represent intelligence. (Even Sallie thinks I look intelligent and ‘studious’ with my glasses on!!)

The Andrex puppy has also become a sign for caring and motherhood. Below is a video with out-takes from Andrex advertisements which is a good representation of how an advert, with no speaking in it, can still appeal to our senses and influence us to purchase a product.

How many legs do you see!? (Perception)

This week’s class was in keeping with last weeks- Exciting, interesting and a lot of fun! Who thought you could enjoy University life this much? On a more serious note, the experiments we undertook today provided us with very interesting findings.

Basically, the experiments we were advised to complete had to show how individuals perceive things differently. Out experiments ranged form chocolate and Pepsi taste tests to aftershave and perfume smell tests to visual interpretation of pictures, some of which I have included below.

Surprisingly enough, the two tests I found most interesting didn’t involve chocolate! The diet Pepsi/diet Coca-Cola test was first shock us all! Twenty cups were laid out, labelled A and B with diet Pepsi in one and diet Coca-Cola in the other. Ten people from our class were chosen to take the test and we were given a cup of each. Being oblivious to which drink was in each cup, we had to write out favourite. After some serious thought I was sure A was Diet Coke and B was Diet Pepsi, I also preferred A along with the other 9 people who took the test. Believe it or not, it was in fact Diet Pepsi in cup A.

Since the first blind taste test was set up between Coca-Cola and Pepsi in 1975, the majority of people have picked Pepsi as the better tasting of the two soft drinks and out experiment further adds to this. So, if Pepsi tastes better, why does Coca- Cola have 44.3% of US soft drinks market share and why does Pepsi only have 31.4%? Is it due to a negative perception we have of Pepsi? Or is it because we believe Coca-Cola is a ‘better’ brand? Personally, I would always choose Coca-Cola over Pepsi but I have no particular reason for this. Maybe it is down to marketing? Who knows?! What do you prefer? and more importantly, why?

Our second perception test was a visual one. We printed pictures from the internet which could easily be interpreted in different ways. They were passed around the class and out individual findings were recorded. This test was very strange in that, some people were set on focusing on one thing and were not able to adapt to see the other possibility. This is a perfect example of perceptual set, where by people get “set in their ways”. For example, in picture one (below) do you see a young girl or an old lady? 18 people in our class saw a young girl in the picture however 2 people saw an old lady. Interestingly, these 2 ‘odd’ people were male! In the elephant picture (picture two), how many legs does it have? This caused a lot of debate between our group but there is no right or wrong answer, it is how YOU perceive something. What your friend sees and what you see could easily be different. I found this test was also a good demonstration of our individuality. Have a look at the other pictures below and see what you can make of them!

Thrown in at the deep end! (Fun and games with consumer psychocogy)

So, today was my first lesson… It was extremely different from what I anticipated as the class was surprisingly small, although, I guess that’s a good aspect. Straight away I felt at ease and found myself chatting away to others around me, although, I probably shouldn’t have been! I found the warm and friendly atmosphere very welcoming considering most people have already bonded and made their friends. First impressions were great!

Our lesson began with ‘Buyer Decision Process’ which, believe it or not, each of us go through each time we make a purchase. Yes girls, every time we buy a pair of gorgeous shoes that we really ‘need’, we go through a complicated decision making process, even though you may not consciously realise it. The buyer decision process is made up of 5 aspects beginning with problem recognition which is when we realise were fed up of wearing the same old black pumps to college every day! During stage two we go on an ‘information search’ where we ask friends/boyfriend etc what they think (although, if we really want those shoes, do we care what our boyfriend thinks?!). Stage three is called ‘Evaluation of alternatives’ and it is only now that we look around ‘Office’ or ‘SCHU’ and compare design, style and price before arriving at stage five and making our product choice. The final stage is the outcome, i.e. do we take the shoes home and enjoy showing them off to our friends or do we return them to the store? Chances are, those pretty pumps are never being returned!
When the buyer decision process is put into context it’s relevant to everyone, and for this reason, I found it extremely interesting.

We went on to discuss perception which Wilkie, 1994 defines as “…the process of sensing and interpreting consumer stimuli in the external world”, however, perception can also be described as “… how we see the world around us” (Schiffman and Kanuk 2003). The perceptual process begins with sensory receptors, for example, our eyes, ears, nose, mouth and fingers; however, actual perception is the process by which these stimuli are selected, organised and interpreted. I have included a diagram or the perceptual process below.

Based on this theory, we had a bit of fun in class with perception. We split into four groups with two groups made up of females only, one group made up of males only and one group with both males and females. We were given a sheet with an age group on it along with a few pictures related to this group and also an a3 sized sheet of paper with colours from a paint chart on it. Each group got a different age group however all the colours were the same, luckily we got the under eight group! The aim of the task was to come up with names for the individual colours to make them attractive to the designated age group. Being in the all female group we found it quite easy, coming up with creative names such as ‘racing car red’ and ‘candyfloss cream’. We then swapped with the all male group who were given middle aged, working class adults with teenagers. We found a vast difference in their names compared to ours, as they were boring and it seemed to us as though no thought or creativity had gone into it what so ever!! Apparently this isn’t the case, and men are just less worried about little details like the names of the colour their going to paint their kitchen (or, get their other halves to paint the kitchen!!). What a disappointment, we thought they were just trying to get away with doing as little work as possible!

This task relates back to buyer decisions and advertising, in that, the detail included in an advertisement aimed at the male population is a lot simpler, basic and probably won’t include as much colour and detail as an advertisement aimed at the female population. Our experiment backs this theory up as it was clear to us that the guys weren’t worried about little details like names of colours and were a lot more ‘to the point’ than us ladies!

I learned a lot from this lesson;

No.1; Boys WILL be boys;
No.2; Being thrown in at the deep end isn’t so bad after all!!