Connect with the insight

Jim Taylor Admap June 2011

Title: Author(s): Source: Issue:

Connect with the insight Jim Taylor Admap June 2011

Connect with the insight

Jim Taylor G2 Using the right touchpoints in the right way can be aided through Connection Point Insight that tracks key opportunities to influence consumer behaviour For most people, integrated channel planning is not so much communications planning (which is message merged with media, through-the-line), as it is about what the right communication channels to use are (the media side) through-the-line. Is this a noble objective? Is this useful? My view is, yes and no. On its own, a dry and somewhat technical view of when and where to reach a consumer and shopper target, through-the-line, should not define a communications plan. It should be one of several inputs, alongside the idea, the objectives, tasks and category trends. In any case, there is no such thing as the right connection point or touchpoints to use. It's a myth. Effective results will come from how an idea interplays with touchpoints, and the way the touchpoints are used. A connection point or touchpoint can be used in multiple ways. How is the operative word. So it should be seen for what it is. It is valuable insight, but it is not planning. And integrated channel planningshould be renamed and reframed as connection point insight. I'll discuss how communications planners might use this insight a little later on. For now, I'd like to look at how we get at connection point insight in the first place. Fragmentation, ad avoidance, filtering and decoding of brand messagesthe implication of all of this is that the yawning chasm of opportunity-to-see(OTS) versus actually saw, read, absorbed and caredbecomes wider every day. Reach and frequency figures might give us some indication of weight of potential exposure, but let's not kid ourselves that these figures are real exposure. As an industry, we need to give far more credence to understanding receptivity. We need to understand the windows, aperturesor points of influencewhen a consumer is most open to a category or brand; or most easily switched or retained within this category; or when they are thinking about tangential things linked to category growth, that we might tap into. This is the nub of Connection Point Insight. Truly understanding the context when and where we can most influence and affect the consumer in the category, through the line, across consumer, shopper and influencer dimensions. As we go forward, this will become increasingly important. The internet will be all around us. Mobile broadband will mean we
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are always connected to the web. The idea of being offlineor being onlinewill not make sense. It will be an extension of ourselves. And context will be the key dimension, not communication channel. Given the pace of technological change going on around us, by now this connection point insight should be a core form of insight used in all go-to-market planning(media, CRM, shopper and communications planning) all the time. It should be a matter of course. But it isn't, and that's because it is pretty hard to get at in a scalable and replicable way. One approach or tool that has been used over the past ten years is Market Contact Audit (MCA), which is owned by marketing accountability firm Integration. MCA seeks to understand based on consumer research what the most influential connection points are in a category, and then looks at how much each brand in the category is associated with these connection points. In my view, Integration has designed MCA so it is scalable and replicable, and such that is does look at connection points through-the-line, which is great. But I do feel there is a limit to how much a consumer can really tell you about how much certain connection points or touchpoints influence them when they are asked directly about them. Many different agencies are looking to build their own approaches and tools as we speak. I won't try to second guess any of them. Rather, I'll put forward one approach that I believe in. The first thing to mention here is that connection influence is to be had, in four basic areas of life: living; planning; shopping; and consuming. The importance of each of these areas, for different categories and how a consumer interacts with the category, vary enormously. For the oft-quoted car category, when a consumer is considering a new purchase, the planningstage of purchase is time-consuming, complex and critical. But compare that to a much lower-involvement can of soup. For soup, planning to buy it, and the act of shopping for it, are uninvolved and relatively simple operations. There's some influence to be had here. But, potentially, there's far more influence to be had when the consumer is back home in the kitchen, thinking about his or her next meal and about how long he or she has got to prepare it. When opening the fridge to see what the alternatives are might be a critical point of influence for soup. So in any category, we need to have a view on how much influence is to be had, in these different areas of life. The depthof each area needs to be able to flex (Figure 1).

PLANNING AND SHOPPING

Within the purchasing process, when a consumer is planning to buy a product and then metamorphoses into a shopper in the act of actually buying the product, the best way, in my opinion, to get at the windows, aperturesor points of influencefor a
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category and brand is to understand the triggers that start the process in the first place, then the decisions that a consumer is trying to make along the way, and the resultant steps and actions that they take. In research, consumers can understand and meaningfully talk about this. For example, if I ask you when's the last time you bought a new shirt?, you could probably tell me. You could talk to me about the trigger: you might say it was functional in nature (because there was a sale on in Gant or your old ones were falling to bits); it may have been emotional (you wanted something smart for a party); or impulsive (you saw it and liked it). Depending on the trigger, you could probably tell me about the steps you took along the way. You might even be able to tell me, if I asked you to recount this particular event a couple of times, what steps you think were most important in determining what you eventually bought.

The fridge is potentially a crucial point of consumer influence Why might all this be useful? Understanding the triggers, the purchasing decisions, steps and their importance across consumer, shopper and influencer dimensions tells a client where to concentrate marketing efforts in the planning and shopping areas of life. The key triggers and steps are the windows, apertures or points of influence around which we can most influence and affect the consumer in planning and shopping for the category. The best connection points fall out from this. If a key step for example, for a newly-pregnant woman looking for analgesics is determined to be seeking reassurance of suitability for pregnancy at the point of sale, then we can determine the best connection points thereafter. One connection point might be a joint retailer-manufacturer free-standing display unit, for
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example, at the entrance to the analgesic aisle in a pharmacy. The lesson is that in the purchasing process, the key points of influence are triggers and steps. We can meaningfully research and talk to consumers about these. Connection points and touchpoints are the secondary concern that fall out from the former.

LIVING AND CONSUMING

For most low-involvement categories, these are the critical areas to think about. What constitutes a windowof receptivity or a point of influence? In my opinion, here we are looking at momentsor situations. These are often when a consumer is making a decision that relates to the use of the product. So in the soup example, it was: Thinking about what I can cook for the kids in 15 minutes by opening the fridge to see what's there.Again, connection points and touchpoints are the secondary concern that fall out from the former. In this example, a touchpoint could be a sticker on an associative product in the fridge, for example. Let's look at another example this time for a beer, targeting a relaxation moment when a hard-working dad has come home in the evening. What could be a windowof receptivity or a point of influence here? If we assume dad feels he is somewhat at the bottom of the home hierarchy and that the kids rule the roost, a point of influence could be around who owns the TV remote control when he sits down to watch TV (and drink a beer). This is another moment or situation, connected to a decision around the consumption occasion, for a particular consumer target. But the moments or situations we are looking for do not always have to be based around decisions being made that relate to a consumption occasion. They can also come from understanding a target consumer's influencers in the category, and moments or situations that are connected to category growth drivers. For a toothbrush, with a growth driver around third brush at lunchtime, an important moment might be in the lift going back upstairs into the office after lunch

RESEARCH
At this point, you might be thinking how do I research these, in a scalable, replicable way?It is possible to do this using qual and quant techniques with online respondents. When it comes to triggers and steps, in the Planning & Shopping areas, and moments and situations, in Living & Consuming, you can use qualitative techniques as a start point. You can start the ball rolling by asking individual respondents for their initial naveand private view, with diaries, uploaded photos and so on, and then open it up between multiple respondents to a rich forum discussion. From this, you can ascertain key triggers and steps (in Planning & Shopping areas), and moments and situations (in Living & Consuming areas). Thereafter, you can bring in the quant heavy guns. At G2, we have developed our own online platform to do this, called G2 Engage. We have found that to quantify things, it helps to go further than providing respondents with a questionnaire. We have developed different pieces of software that allow respondents to individualise how they define the sequencing and importance of the points of influence.

USING THE INSIGHT

Finally, let's consider what a planner should do with this Connection Point Insight when it is delivered to their desk. One key task will be to consider how the windows, aperturesor points of influence that are defined by the insight could be transformed into bigger brand properties. This is where the art of the planner truly comes in.

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If, for example, a key point of influence is reading a book at the weekend, then doubleclickingon this point of influence, a planner on a brand might transform it by proposing the creation of a book club between the brand and a leading book retailer, manifesting itself in ongoing CRM activity, a mobile app, a co-branded top 10display with sampling in the retailer, and a cobranded book of the weekTV sponsored programme slot. Another key task will be to target the consumer digitally around these points of influence by knowing when and where they are, particularly using a mobile platform. This is becoming increasingly possible in many countries The planner also needs to consider how to express the overall Brand Idea through these key windows, aperturesand points of influence, as well as, how to use them to meet the brand objectives and tasks. At the same time, they need to build a communication strategy that is choiceful as opposed to an exercise in managing complexity and that seeks to simplify, create focus and consider the building of longer-term relationships between brand and consumer.

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