Ged Carroll

Category: consumer behaviour | 消費者行為 | 소비자 행동

Consumer behaviour is central to my role as an account planner and about how I look at the world.

Being from an Irish household growing up in the North West of England, everything was alien. I felt that I was interloping observer who was eternally curious.

The same traits stand today, I just get paid for them. Consumer behaviour and its interactions with the environment and societal structures are fascinating to me.

The hive mind of Wikipedia defines it as

‘the study of individuals, groups, or organizations and all the activities associated with the purchase, use and disposal of goods and services.’

It is considered to consist of how the consumer’s emotions, attitudes and preferences affect buying behaviour. Consumer behaviour emerged in the 1940–1950s as a distinct sub-discipline of marketing, but has become an interdisciplinary social science that blends elements from psychology, sociology, social anthropology, anthropology, ethnography, marketing and economics (especially behavioural economics or nudge theory as its often known).

I tend to store a mix of third party insights and links to research papers here. If you were to read one thing on this blog about consumer behaviour, I would recommend this post I wrote on generations. This points out different ways that consumer behaviour can be misattributed, missed or misinterpreted.

Often the devil is in the context, which goes back to the wide ranging nature of this blog hinted at by the ‘renaissance’ in renaissance chambara. Back then I knew that I needed to have wide interests but hadn’t worked on defining the ‘why’ of having spread such a wide net in terms of subject matter.

  • Influencer marketing – what does the future hold

    What does the future hold for influencer marketing was an event organised by PR Week that I got to attend last week.  Below are some of the thoughts and key points that came out of the event.

    The Competition and Markets Authority

    They are responsible for enforcing The Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Act (2008) (paywall) which governs transparency and claims across all marketing including social media influence campaigns.

    In terms of jurisdiction they have a reciprocal relationship with the FTC to enforce the law on campaigns that are being run out of the US that would affect the UK and vice versa. Geography can no longer be considered a defence.

    In terms of compliance, there is an emphasis on brands needing to monitor influencer campaigns and enforce disclosure. The legal responsibility falls equally across brands, agencies and influencers. All three are obliged to go through content and retroactively apply the act if the content is likely to be resurfaced in the future. So you are less like to have to alter tweets and Facebook posts than say YouTube videos and blog posts.

    In general they felt that brands (and their agencies) were too naive and trusting with regards influencers.

    False and misleading claims at the corporate brand level (a hypothetical example would be gold mine claiming its a green sustainable company) aren’t something that they would deal with, but they acknowledged that this kind of incident would likely breach the law.

    At the moment the Competition and Markets Authority is considering the role of platforms as agents of influence, but isn’t looking at items like Amazon’s recent algorithmic change.

    Unsurprisingly the Competitions and Markets Authority have no desire to get involved in regulating political campaigns on social. The whole area is radioactive. Whilst there would be societal benefit, it would call into question the independence of the civil service and a host legal / constitutional issues.

    Judging by the reaction of the audience, more of them were up to speed and complying with GDPR than The Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Act – not for profits seemed shocked to find out that they weren’t exempt

    Content crowdsourcing platform Tribe

    Tribe talked about how Logitech used Instagramers to create photos for their paid media campaign to drive direct sales.

    Ad creative was lasting a week and a half on Facebook (Facebook & Instagram) before ‘ad fatigue’ set in. From my own personal experience, traditional creative lasted appreciably longer. Tribe didn’t indicate whether they had an opinion on the cause of this premature ad fatigue. Factors that might be responsible include context collapse (lower usage, with less time per session on the platform by consumers) that has been afflicted the Facebook platform for a few years

    Logitech internal division of labour on social influencer marketing campaigns

    One of the perennial questions that is asked is where does PR stop and (digital) marketing teams start with regards social media influencers. Logitech’s approach was a common sense approach to this question. High follower number influencers were dealt with by the PR team just like members of the press or celebrities. Micro and nano influencers were co-opted by marketers as part of the process to drive sales. It makes sense, but it was the first time I had heard it broken down explicitly by a brand in public.

    MSL research on the future of influencer marketing

    They had wanted to explore both consumer and influencer attitudes to extrapolate insights; given the codependent nature of influencers on agencies and brands.

    The research involved surveying 1,000 consumers and 100 influencers. So take the insights with a pinch of salt. The slides weren’t shared but I’ve reconstructed the data from photos I took at the event.

    • 1,000 consumers were asked about their thoughts on the influencer landscape
    • 100 influencers were asked on their views on brand partnerships

    Slide4

    Slide5

    Slide6

    Slide7

    Influencers don’t like to be pigeonholed as influencers, according to consumers the title has become a dirty word

    This conclusion is counter intuitive. The common wisdom is that:

    • Gen-y and gen-z are happy to ‘sell out’
    • Professional v-logger (YouTube, Twitch, TikTok etc) are desired professions in the same way that DJ, rock musician or celebrity were previously

    Yet the influencers surveyed think that they are changing the world for the better. For instance some of them are dealing with fans who share their suicidal thoughts. But the label of ‘influencer’ was considered to have lost its currency.

    Influencers that other influencers respect. People who have demonstrated resilience; they have gone through trials and tribulations and triumphed. Zoella and Lilly Singh were among the most popular cited.

    Influencers feel that they are being treated like a channel and the process has got too transactional. Yet one of their key motivations to stay in their career as influencers is to pay the bills.

    Panel discussion

    If you’d have ran this event ten years ago. The panel discussion would still have been very similar. Measurement was considered very immature, but then the panel bifurcated. Measurement is much easier when you are using advertising and tracking through to a purchase. The discussion got muddled as paid and non-paid measurement strategies were discussed side-by-side without differentiation or explanation.

    Social agency Goat made an interesting disclosure. They’ve worked with about 100,000 influencers and found that the vast majority did not work in delivering sales. But there are no data or heuristics about which influencer is likely to work, or the reasons why?

    What was missing in influencer marketing discussion?

    The main item that I felt the discussion missed was the role of social platform algorithms in creating social bubbles and reducing campaign reach. OgilvyOne’s paper on considering life after the demise of organic reach doesn’t seem to have factored into PR agencies (publicly expressed) thinking some five years after it has been published.

    Secondly, I was surprised at the lack of progress. Whilst the platforms have changed over the past ten years. The issues don’t seem to have altered at all for communications agencies. Whilst some agencies like Edelman (and 90TEN where I am currently working) realise that a blended PESO* media mix is required – there was a large faction of earned media only practitioners in attendance. Ten years later, advertising and creative agencies have learned many of the techniques that PR agencies considered to be their domain in order to improve ‘talkability’.

    This is out of step with clients requirements for two reasons:

    • Clients want to effectively measure their success and the tools available to paid media are more complete
    • As OgilvyOne proved in their research a number of years ago, we’re heading to a demise in organic reach

    Brand marketing is in a resurgence after marketers had fetishised technology-based performance marketing for at least the last decade and a half. Influencer marketing may now be too important to be left to the the PR team…

    *PESO (paid, earned, shared, owned) – different media types.

  • Nostalgia + more things

    If Nostalgia Isn’t What It Used to Be, Why Are We Living in the Past? | Newsweek – Our past keeps growing, and as it does, it continues to crowd out our present, shortening the already narrow nostalgia gap. If Tom Vanderbilt thought treating last month’s music as classic was silly, think about various #TBT (“Throwback Thursday”) posts online, which celebrate historical events that happened a mere seven days ago. 

    We could shrink this gap even further. Like many kids her age, my 20-year-old sister is obsessed with the 1990s. When Netflix announced that it was remaking the ABC television show Full House , she and her friends took to Facebook to share their delight that a show from “their childhood” was coming back. 

    This reaction struck me as odd because my sister was born in 1996: a year after the original series ended. She does the same thing with other ’90s phenomena, taking to social media to share images and songs and neon colors from a decade that she describes not as her favorite , but as her own.– more on consumer behaviour here.

    Why Zero-Emission Hydrogen Is the Best Way to Power the Cars of Future | Robb Report – great article by the Robb Report which highlights my skepticism around Tesla et al

    Why Estée Lauder are spending 75% of their marketing spend on influencer marketing | The Drum – what’s the job to be done that their spend is that skewed?

    Costco grand-opening hoopla gives way to disappointment in Shanghai | News | Campaign Asia – this didn’t look like it was going to end well

    As Hong Kong Churns, Beijing Bankrolls Shenzhen | EE Times – interesting that they are trying to ‘overcook’ Shenzhen

    Sources say China used iPhone hacks to target Uyghur Muslims | TechCrunch – the thing that puzzled me is why China would want to take off data from Chinese SNS that the government has a pipeline into anyway?

  • Carry nothing + more things

    Men Know It’s Better to Carry Nothing – The Cut – Medium – women clean up because fashion allows it. She pointed to the size of women’s bags, which allow us — like sherpas or packhorses — to lug around the tool kits of servitude. A woman is expected to be prepared for every eventuality, and culture has formalized that expectation. Online, lists of necessities proliferate: 12, 14, 17, 19, 30 things a woman should keep in her purse. Almost all include tissues, breath mints, hand sanitizer, and tampons — but also “a condom, because this is her responsibility, too.” (A woman’s responsibility for everyone else’s spills extends to the most primal level.) – I don’t think that this ‘carry nothing’ mentality of men is true any more. One only has to look at the backpacks carried around. Or the whole EDC culture of over-engineered products to optimise the carry experience, making a lie of carry nothing as a concept. For a lot of men, the car is the handbag, but that’s a whole other discussion around the idea of carry nothing. More consumer behaviour related content here

    Gender ad bans set ‘concerning’ precedent, say advertisers | FT – the publishing ban only applies to direct marketing: members of the public, media outlets and sites like YouTube can continue to share banned materials.

    Amazon offered vendors ‘Amazon’s Choice’ labels in return for ad spending and lower prices – Digiday – shit meet fan….

    REON POCKET | First Flight – personal cooling device using Peltier effect to cool behind the neck

    Silicon Valley’s China Paradox | East West Center – the period from 2014 to 2017 as a time of “segmentation and synergy,” two words that on their face are opposites of each other. Their juxtaposition forms the core of what Sheehan labels “Silicon Valley’s China paradox.” While at a corporate level US and Chinese companies were entirely separate, the flow of money, people, and ideas reached an all-time high during this period. “This is when you saw a lot of investors from China showing up in Silicon Valley, some prominent US researchers and engineers joining Chinese companies in positions of leadership, and ideas flowing in two directions,” said Sheehan. He noted that the concept of shared bicycles, now popular in US cities, started in China, and both Chinese and US companies have been active in the development of autonomous vehicles. Even while the relationship between the two national governments was in many ways going sour, “the relationship at the grassroots level, the technology relationship, was still very free-flowing,” he noted. Sheehan suggested that the relationship has now entered a new and uncharted phase, which he termed the new “technology cold war,” with the US government asserting national policies in what was previously considered a private arena. This new phase has three dimensions, he said. The first is an effort to disentangle the interconnected technology com- munities that bind the two countries together. In 2018, the US Congress passed the Foreign Investment Risk Review and Modernization Act (FIRRMA). This new legislation increases US government oversight and supervision of Chinese investment in Silicon Valley, Sheehan pointed out. The US State Department also began restricting visas for Chinese graduate students working in sensitive fields of science and technology. The second dimension is height- ened competition between US and Chinese companies in other countries. In general, “American companies know they can’t win in China, and Chinese companies know they can’t make a dent in the US market,” according to Sheehan. So US and Chinese companies are competing in markets such as India, Brazil, and Southeast Asia. (PDF)

    Why Consumers Aren’t Buying Electric Cars | naked capitalism – no great surprise

    US smart speaker update – (PDF)

    Fake news and cyberwarfare from China in Hong Kong protests | Slate – really good analysis of some of the online events happening in Hong Kong

    The big scoop: what a day with an ice-cream man taught me about modern Britain | Food | The Guardian – “Since Brexit, people have less money, and less confidence in spending money. They haven’t got the money in their pockets they had a few years ago.”

    Apple and Samsung phone sales are down, and $1,000+ prices are one reason why – BGR – less convinced by this explanation – BlackBerry could have fitted into this format as well in its decline

    In-house marketing ‘costing firms lost productivity and creativity’ | Netimperative – but is the pay-off worth it should be the question

    US and China investors battle over Indian digital payments boom | Financial Times – so I think that Payments in India will turn out to be a White Elephant but the FT thinks that its a growth market

    Revealed: Johnson ally’s firm secretly ran Facebook propaganda network | Lynton Crosby | The Guardian – a lot positive advocacy campaigns can learn from this

    Are Companies About to Have a Gen X Retention Problem? HBR – or why are gen-y self entitled snowflakes part 43

    Taiwan primaries highlight fears over China’s political influence | Financial Times – Want Want China Times and Cti TV deny they take instructions from China’s Taiwan Affairs Office like good little United Front puppets. Who would you trust them or the FT?

    TikTok creator ByteDance to enter smartphone market, following deal with Smartisan | SCMP – not convinced by this move

    Boris Johnson to unveil biggest ad campaign since Second World War to prepare for ‘no deal’  – 100 million that realistically would need to be spent in 9 or so weeks. That’s a lot of gaslighting….

    Filling hospitals with art reduces patient stress, anxiety and pain – imagine seeing those tiles whilst well medicated

    Websites are (probably) making less money because of GDPR – MIT Technology Review – the caveats read so wide its hard to conclude anything from this really

  • A fierce head cold & other aspects of my week

    My week had been truncated somewhat by a fierce head cold and am cranking this post out with less deliberation than normal due to a backlog of household chores that aren’t going to take care of themselves. Add to that a Lemsip induced haze to try and combat the fierce head cold and you see how the rest of this post will go

    Paul Armstrong shared this AR/VR example with me: Swedish creative agency Warpin posted a video of a H&M-commissioned experience for Magic Leap glasses. The concept looks like everything my cyberpunk fan brain would want; like being inside Max Headroom’s mind. I’d also imagine that it would be hellish for any length of time. More related content here.

    Warpin Media for H&M

    BBH came up with this campaign for Carabao energy drink. The ad is aimed at the Chinese market and asks the question ‘What fuels your fighting spirit?’. In western English – this would be closer to ‘what makes you resilient, or what gets you through?’. It’s pretty much the same question that any ad planner or creative in an agency has asked as they chug their energy drink of choice whilst working on a client pitch, or particularly tough creative brief.

    BBH Shanghai for Carabao

    ‘Dear young people don’t vote’ by Shokasonjuku is a great video highlighting the need for younger Japanese to get involved in the electoral process, if they want issues that they care about to be heard. Shokasonjuku is a production company set up by Nana Takamatsu – a Japanese comedian. Young people in Japan aren’t educated or engaged by the political process, something that Takamatsu wants to change.

    Shokasonjuku

    Martin Lindstrom on how data separates businesses from consumers and how ethnography can bridge the gap. It’s also interesting how he talks about small data; or what you and I would call qualitative data that leads to insight based on a human truth.

    Smart cart guides the visually-impaired around grocery stores | Trendwatching – so a beer brand comes up with a smart shopping cart, but is the marketing benefit to the beer brand anything other than ambient marketing? There’s nothing wrong in that of course, but the linkage that will be made with social purpose looks spurious at best. If you want to help people and you sell alcohol. Stop. Don’t enable drunk drivers, wife beaters and alcoholics.

  • Ultra deep watch + more things

    OMEGA SEAMASTER PLANET OCEAN ULTRA DEEP | Watches News – I love some of the design details in this Planet Ocean Ultra Deep such as the lugs. I was less convinced by the aesthetics of the dial, the hands and the lack of protection given to the crown on the Planet Ocean Ultra Deep. More on design here.

    So, Gutenberg Didn’t Actually Invent the Printing Press | Literary Hub – way before Samsung Korea was innovating the shit out of the world, here’s the story

    The Redirect Method – its rare to get this much of an inside view inside a campaign, well worth reading

    NHS teams up with Amazon to bring Alexa to patients | Society | The Guardian – the push here seems to be accessibility; but a call centre is even more responsive than Alexa is

    Shiseido’s Beauty App Promises Perfect Skin — at $92 a Month – Bloomberg – Shiseido is targeting women facing “the dilemma of valuing skincare but struggling to find the time to find the perfect formula,” Shigekazu Sugiyama, president of Shiseido Japan, said at a news conference in Tokyo. Research by the company shows that the more hectic the lifestyle, the greater the fluctuation seen in complexion, he said. 

    Optune’s cylindrical device mixes and dispenses a personalized formula twice a day, with as many as 80,000 different combinations. The product’s software, available as an iPhone app, takes photos of the user’s face in order to detect skin conditions. The data is analyzed together with sleep rhythms and menstrual cycles, as well as external factors such as weather and air pollution, in order to deliver the right mix of serums.

    Unilever tackles marketing bias with DNA tests | WARC – The exposed group who perused their personal DNA results and participated in the immersive training recorded a 35% decrease in unconscious stereotyping when measured against the control group. 

    Similarly, Santos revealed, the exposed group also logged a 27% increase in original thinking measured against their peers in the control group. 

    Such an insight builds on a growing slate of evidence that the part of the brain associated with stereotyping influences the cognitive activities that are needed for creativity, too.

    Podcast: WARC’s David Tiltman On Marketing Effectiveness – great listening for the lunch hour on advertising effectiveness

    Nomads travel to America’s Walmarts to stock Amazon’s shelves – The Verge – “If somebody likes a certain scent or how something works, they become loyal to that item, even if just the packaging has changed. They can no longer find that item in a store, and Amazon is one place they’ll look for it. It’s people like us who travel around that can find it.”

    Mediatel: Newsline: The scourge of short-termism comes from the top – “The Media sector has several examples of companies that placed short-term earnings growth over long-term investment and saw their earnings and, ironically, share price suffer. RELX (the old Reed Elsevier) suffered a collapse in its share price, which took several years to reverse, after the market realised previous management had underinvested to boost earnings growth to meet LTIP plans. On the other hand, companies that invest see returns to shareholders. Sky, which famously prioritised organic investment over shareholder returns and meeting earnings targets, eventually was bought out at a big premium to its historic share price”.

    How 5G will affect marketing communications | Advertising | Campaign Asia – so adtech will slow up the theoretical speed of 5G, this is all very depressing