A return to the consumer's unconscious
By Stefan Stern
Published: May 22 2008 03:00 | Last updated: May 22 2008 03:00
Five years ago Gerald Zaltman tried to help business leaders out with a book called simply How Customers Think . His broad theme was that purchasing decisions are not as coolly rational as marketing professionals like to think. Instead, they stem mainly from unconscious and emotional thought processes.
But he clearly feels too few business leaders were listening, because now he has returned to this subject, assisted by his son Lindsay, to explore the specific question of the metaphors we all use to frame and to understand the world around us. Tune in better to customers' metaphors, the Zaltmans say, and you are closer to making a sale.
The authors are able to call on a wealth of academic voices to support their approach. Stephen Pinker, an acknowledged authority on how the brain uses language, provides an epigraph for the book: "Metaphor is so widespread in language that it's hard to find expressions for abstract ideas that are not metaphorical."
The subtitle is: "What deep metaphors reveal about the minds of consumers". The Zaltmans explain that "deep metaphors" are "unconscious viewing lenses", that help us to structure what we think, hear, say and do. "Deep metaphors are enduring ways of perceiving things, making sense of what we encounter, and guiding our subsequent actions . . . they are the product of an ever-evolving partnership between brain, body and society."
So what, you might protest - who cares about metaphors? Business is about selling, not poetry. The authors argue - rightly - that there is a direct line from grasping what your customers are really telling you to building a stronger sales performance.
That understanding is known, in the jargon, as "customer insight". And if they are honest, a lot of business leaders admit they and their colleagues often do not have it.
An anonymous chief executive tells the authors: "We do not have deep consumer insights . . . Just because my managers consume the products and watch the focus groups, they think they understand consumers. They do not. When I push them to explain a customer insight that excites them, they often cannot. They have not thought deeply about it. If it did not upset me so much I might feel sorry for them."
Focus groups let you down because consumers are forced to respond to ideas that are not generated by them. Conscious questions are asked about unconscious processes. The answers that emerge may well lead you astray. "Brand battles are waged and won or lost at the deepest level," the authors argue. That means you have to take much more time to listen carefully to what customers, individually instead of in focus groups, tell you and develop greater sensitivity to the language they use.
Consider the language that surrounds the theme of connection, for example. Budweiser, the brewer, has grasped this well. When young men started yelling the word "Whassup!" to each other in Budweiser commercials, the company was making a profound point about connection and what its product could do to help form it. Connection is one of the most powerful themes a consumer goods manufacturer can tap into.
Or consider the metaphor of a journey. To deploy this skilfully can also bind your customers closer to you - if you understand what sort of journey your customers contemplate.
The Zaltmans compare two slightly different statements: "I am fast approaching my retirement date"; and "My retirement date is fast approaching". The first implies agency; the second is more passive. These two customers are different and should be "segmented" differently. One financial services business did just that and developed two different presentations of the same financial product. Sales went up in both customer categories and were achieved quicker as well.
Other important metaphors - balance, transformation, container, resource and control, with journey and connection - feature in about 70 per cent of customer thinking, the authors say. But you can listen out for other, less obvious metaphors too.
Don't let the ambitious scope of Marketing Metaphoria distract you from its central idea. Customers are harder to pin down than we think and they must be listened to more carefully. For that insight alone, this book should be welcomed.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
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