CCMC Task 9: How to transform an idea into a message?

CCMC - Task 9:

"HOW TO TRANSFORM AN IDEA INTO A MESSAGE?"


Find answers to:

LO1: "How to influence the minds of consumers?"
LO2: "What is the process of transforming an idea into a message?"
LO3: "What are insights and how to get them?"



... Coming soon ...

Sorry, due to a little reindeer-brake (Lapland) this blog will be finished after my return.

To continue... :)

1.       “How to influence the minds of consumers?”

 

I discovered in Slideshare a collection of a few slides, in which it is explained that manipulation and influencing goes along with association. There are for example words, with which we associate certain things, as they are more common, familiar or go often together, as the example will show.

 

















 

 

 So what is subliminal persuasion and how to use it?

It is the ability to persuade a target audience or customers with messages which are not obviously but received subliminal. So the person does not really know, that he or she is being persuaded.

According to an article in ‘The New York Times’ subliminal persuasion can not only persuade customers to change their buying behaviour, but even enforce the effectiveness of therapy and to stimulate learning.

 

The Persuasion Slide consists of conscious and non-conscious parts.

It has 4 parts:

1.       Gravity

2.       Nudge

3.       Angle

4.       Friction

Gravity

The model represents the needs, wants and desires of the customer, the gravity is, what the customer brings, it’s a force companies have to reckon with. Gravity can be created by the company – it’s the dealing with the changing needs and want of customers and adopting the selling strategy.

Nudge

When you are at the top of a slide, you are on a little horizontal ledge. It is not impossible to go forwards (downwards, unless somebody gives you a shove from behind. It is what a company does to do get the customer moving. This can be an e-mail, a sign, button, … Whatever it takes to attract the customer.

Angle

The angle, or slope, of a slide is critical. Without a steep enough angle, slides don’t work. The angle is the motivation a company can provide to their customers. If this motivation isn’t strong enough, the customer will begin to slide and then stop. I break this into two types of motivation:

-          Conscious and

-          Non-conscious.

Conscious motivators are what many marketers focus on: features, benefits, price, discounts and sales, and so on. These appeal to the rational decision-making part of your customer’s brain.

Non-conscious motivators are the many elements of your offer that appeal to the customer’s emotions or how his brain works.

Cialdini’s six big persuasion factors (liking, reciprocity, authority, etc.), appeals to our “mating” instinct as described by Geoffrey Miller, BJ Fogg’s behavior model and grid, all fall in this category. Many other factors, like our brain’s aversion to loss and avoidance of things that require hard thought, also fit into the non-conscious motivator area.

A good slide uses both conscious and non-conscious motivators to create a steep angle.

Friction

Friction is the enemy of an effective slide. We’ve all seen a child get stuck halfway down a slide because it was rusty or poorly maintained. When a physicist looks at a slide (or an “inclined plane,” if you want to get technical), friction is a force that directly opposes motion down the slide. In our model, friction represents difficulty, both real and imagined.

Real difficulty includes many expected categories of barrier: long forms, confusing user interface, awkward payment procedures, and so on. Imagined difficulty is much more insidious: a step to completing the process may be easy enough, but it may seem more difficult in our mind due to disfluent design. (See, for example, Convince with Simple Fonts”.)

Building Your Slide

Here’s a highly simplified set of steps to build your slide:

    Align your offer with gravity, i.e., the customer’s interests, not yours.

    Get the customer’s attention with a nudge: send an email, display a visible call to action, etc. This nudge should begin the motivation process to get the customer moving down the slide.

    Create a steeper slide with conscious motivators – features and benefits, sales and discounts, free gifts, etc., are just a few commonly used approaches.

    Further increase the slide’s angle with select non-conscious motivators – emotional appeals, mating triggers, Cialdini’s six principles, and a host of other techniques. One or two may be enough.

    Minimize friction by eliminating difficulty in every part of the process. Making forms short and ordering simple increases conversion. Ensure there is no customer confusion at any point. Finally, eliminate things that look difficult to our brains, too – hard to read text, long instructions.

The Cost-Effective Slide

All of the above steps are important, but some are more costly. Offering a customer a discount or a free gift will almost always make your slide steeper and increase conversion, but these enticements always come with a price tag. Non-conscious motivators, on the other hand, are almost always far cheaper since they may require simple changes to your advertising or website.

Most important, in my opinion, is eliminating as much friction as possible. Making things easy for your customers is almost always far less expensive than offering them incentives to act.

(Neuromarketing)

2.        "What is the process of transforming an idea into a message?"

Idea Generation: Brainstorm etc.

Discussing the idea in the team: what does costumer need

Selecting good ones from bad ones

Probably brainstorm again (if all are not usable)

Make message concept (never forget about the customer)

Message should correspond to the product (!!)

There are 6 Steps how to build a message map:

Step 1: Identify the stages in a purchase

Step 2: Define the stakeholders

Step 3: Identify the motivations and objections

Step 4: Overcome objections

Step 5: Reinforce motivations

Step 6: create the right collateral for each stage

(Step 7:) combine all steps

(Solve for Interest)

(Migration for Development)

Six creative ways to brainstorm ideas:

YOUTUBE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAidvTKX6xM

1.       Mind mapping = related things visualized, terms and ideas

2.       Right Braining = release creative thoughts through incomplete images, combining them in different ways to create a new idea

3.       Provocative actions = changing physical surrounding, or way of communication, unusual situations

4.       Break and build = breaking down and building up idea – break up in details, build up in bigger surrounding

5.       Pessimist vs. optimist = building up on each’s responses

6.       Rendomness = general idea + random object (+ associated words)

Idea Generation Techniques

YOUTUBE VIDEO

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grez_u6srRY

Brainstorm – too many ideas à “Big grid” = different categories

	Evolutionary	Revolutionary
Simple
Complex

Put ideas in appropriate quarter

Focus on: revolutionary ideas and which are simple to implement à few ideas that make sense to work on

3.       "What are insights and how to get them?"

Consumer Insight

Consumer insight is a big part of what we do. To help our clients reach their business goals, we identify potential consumers and try to understand them: their likes and dislikes, their beliefs and attitudes, what inspires and motivates them.

Our consumer insight helps us target audiences more effectively and promote changes in behaviour.

Importantly, we need to be able to distinguish between what consumer say they do, and what they actually do.

We achieve this by spending more time listening to consumers than any other media agency. Qualitative research and quantitive research are two of the tools at our disposal, delving into the data that can reveal opportunities. But we challenge our people to delve beyond the superficial, to take an immersive approach to understanding the consumer, and how they interact with brands and communications in the real world.

(Mediacom)

SOURCES:

Text:

The New York Times. Is subliminal persuasion a menace? Evidently not. URL:  http://www.nytimes.com/1982/08/17/science/is-subliminal-persuasion-a-menace-evidently-not.html, last accessed 27 November 2014

Neuromarketing. The persuasion slide. URL: http://www.neurosciencemarketing.com/blog/articles/persuasion-slide.htm, last accessed 27 November 2014

Migration for Development. From project idea to project proposal. URL: http://www.migration4development.org/content/project-idea-project-proposal, last accessed 27 November 2014

Mediacom. Consumer Insights. URL: http://www.mediacom.com/en/what-we-do/consumer-insight.aspx, last accessed 27 November 2014

Pictures:

Slideshare. 3 Brain secrets. URL: http://de.slideshare.net/HeinrichMahr/3-brain-secrets-for-manipulating-humans-minds, last accessed 27 November 2014

Mimi and Eunice. Persuasion. URL: http://mimiandeunice.com/2010/07/28/persuasion/, last accessed 27 November 2014

Neuromarketing. The persuasion slide. URL: http://www.neurosciencemarketing.com/blog/articles/persuasion-slide.htm, last accessed 27 November 2014

The Ideative process. The anybody’s Approach to Creative Thinking. URL: ttp://theideativeprocess.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/Your-Ideative-Foundation.jpg, last accessed 27 November 2014

Solve for interesting. Building a Message Map. URL: http://solveforinteresting.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/msgflow-5.png, last accessed 27 November 2014

Thinking portfolio. Value Management. URL: http://www.thinkingportfolio.com/products/idea-market/, last accessed 27 November 2014

Migration for Development. URL: http://www.migration4development.org/docs/logframe.jpg, last accessed 27 November 2014