What customer experiences will your customers seek out in 2023? Richard talks to Elisa Adams, CEO of Sprout Strategy, about her experiences helping companies with messaging for brands and products coming into 2023. Elisa talks about the impact of the pandemic, global supply chain, and economic issues as significant impactors on customer perception in 2023. The conversation dives into the current generation of consumer neuroscience tools that help drive an understanding of customer needs today. What customers want is shifting, and without careful evaluation, it's easy to send the wrong message!
Brandon Wehn (00:07):
Welcome to the show. This is Brandon Wehn and you are listening to the Understanding Consumer Neuroscience Podcast, brought to you by the folks at Cloud Army. In this episode, Richard talks to Elisa Adams, CEO of Sprout Strategy about her latest research into consumer experience expectations for 2023 and how marketers need to evaluate their brand and product messages to fit their customers' needs today.
Richard Campbell (00:41):
Hi, this is Richard Campbell. Thanks for listening to Understanding Consumer Neuroscience. And today my guest is Elisa Adams, who is the founder and CEO of Sprout Strategy, a human story, a tech led research, customer experience and strategy consultancy that is underpinned by behavioral science. Welcome to the show.
Elisa Adams (00:56):
Thanks for having me.
Richard Campbell (00:57):
So excited to have you on. I know we've had some scheduling challenge. You're down in the Brisbane area?
Elisa Adams (01:02):
I'm in Brisbane, Australia, yes.
Richard Campbell (01:04):
And here I am in Vancouver. So opposite corners of the Pacific Ocean.
Elisa Adams (01:08):
We absolutely are at opposite ends of the world. Pretty much.
Richard Campbell (01:11):
Yeah, pretty much. So talk to me about Sprout. I love the name, but it seems like a great organization.
Elisa Adams (01:18):
Thank you, Richard. Look, it started really when you look at what the definition of Sprout is from the dictionary, it basically means to see new growth. And that was always the intention of the organization, of the agency, was to really think about how we can help clients and how we can help brands come about and understand how to grow and how to build new growth. So yes, we're founded, and our deep roots and our craft is in research and developing really great insights. But then really where the strategy part of it is how do we apply that to brands and businesses so that they can achieve real and sustainable growth? And the foundation of all of that, of course is understanding human beings, understanding people deeply and well and connecting with them in meaningful ways.
Richard Campbell (02:06):
Do you find that many of your customers don't have a good understanding of why their customers buy their product? That they really understand where their customers come from, what motivates them?
Elisa Adams (02:16):
Well, if you were to ask our customers, they probably would say they have some understanding, but I do think that more and more brand management or brand leaders and business leaders are starting to understand that you can't just understand why people buy from you from asking very rational questions. As human beings, we're just not built that way. If we're optimizing and making rational decisions all the time, the decisions we'd be making would be very, very different. So I think that they're coming and they're starting to understand that why people buy different things and why they don't or why they behave in a certain way. It requires an understanding of both the rational reasons but also what's going on that people can't or won't say. And that's where we like to spend a lot of our time because we know, and I can tell you as a market researcher, having listened to people tell me why they buy things and then they pop up in the real world and do something very different that what people say and what they do, they can be a huge gap.
Richard Campbell (03:18):
Don't necessarily line up.
Elisa Adams (03:19):
They don't line up. And it's not because people aren't telling us the truth, it's not because they're lying or it's not because they don't know. It's just that they don't have the ability to articulate some of these reasons why. And this is why these tools that we talk about in neuroscience really help us provide words and verbal understanding of what is actually going on to drive decision making. And once you have both sides of the coin, I'd say from a rational perspective, a lot of our clients would understand where decision making is coming from. But from the whole human being understanding the basis of a lot of that decision making, which is emotional and driven by motivations, they probably don't have as good a handle on that as they need to be. Apologies to my clients who are listening because some of them do understand that.
Richard Campbell (04:09):
Sure. But I always appreciate the sentiment of you are not your customer, that it is useful to go and study that as dispassionately as possible and sort of see the different pieces of it. What are the tools that you like to use at Sprout for being able to get those kinds of measurements?
Elisa Adams (04:29):
We have a whole suite in our toolbox, and we choose on the basis of what we're trying to understand, we use different tools for different applications. We like to be pretty agnostic I guess. And we're not saying throw the baby out with the bath water and not ask the questions and have really good conversations with people because that's really important. But the key tools that we would lean into to really unpack the rest of the reasons why people are making decisions probably fall into two different baskets. One is how we do the research. So, observation and ethnography is a really powerful way by trained moderators to observe what people are doing as opposed to just what they're saying. To watch behavior and observe, looking for things like all the things we talk about in behavioral economics. Not just the things that people are actually doing, but the shortcuts they are not even aware they're making.
(05:17):
So some of those [inaudible 00:05:19] you hear about. So that technique is really important and we design a lot of our research, our focus groups, our in-depth interviews, we design it around both asking questions but also observing and looking for those different things that people are doing to make decisions they're not aware of, the shortcuts they're using. The second thing is a whole set of tools that really are neuro-led tools. So we use things like fast implicit for example is a big one that we use at Sprout because there's a big difference I guess, and everybody who's listening probably understands fast implicit. But we think the application for it is far beyond how it's currently being used. I mean when you think about understanding, for example, a brand perception, you might ask traditionally on a 10 point scale, how much do you trust this brand? And you get 80% of people going, "Yes, I trust the brand."
Richard Campbell (06:11):
Sure, that's a very focused group way of getting that data.
Elisa Adams (06:13):
Yeah. Or even at a big questionnaire, you ask a thousand people and you get 80% say this, but underneath that it's a very blunt tool, if you like. Whereas if you ask that using a fast implicit type question where you ask people to time the response to whether they agree or disagree, that's a brand new trust. Those people who are saying yes, there's a big difference between somebody who goes, "Yep, I trust that brand," versus "Yeah, I trust that brand." You can almost see the thinking process kick in with that second response. So we use fast implicit to understand, I guess those people who are truly, strongly either committed to that perception or we would say implicitly or emotionally committed to that perception because their response is quite fast.
Richard Campbell (07:03):
They almost like have a better resolution on yes, I trust that there's an array there.
Elisa Adams (07:08):
Exactly right. And it's sort of focusing the lens and all of a sudden you have an understanding of that whole 80%. There might be 20% who really are very fast at responding to that and feel very intuitively implicitly that is correct. And then you might have 60% who are a bit slower and you know that's probably more a rationalized response to that particular question.
(07:33):
That sort of technique is also really valuable when you're trying to understand success of new products too. Because we all know from behavioral science, we're terrible predictors of the future. "Will you buy this product?" "Of course I'm going to buy this product, you put this fantastic thing up in front of me, it looks great, of course I'm going to buy it." And then you get into the real world and you go, hold on, what's going on? So when you're asking people about their future intentions, we have a lot of tools, the way we ask the question, the way we frame the question, the way we prime the question, then the type of tool we use like a fast implicit to really get much, much better of what their real intentions are.
(08:09):
So there's fast implicit, back to your original question. There's also, we do a lot of work around motivations and we've just done a huge study and we do it every year across a thousand people. And that also uses fast response, but it really works on understanding motivations. And we have a motivation matrix. Think about Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Ours actually combines about 106 different theories. And we understand motivations, what motivates people, because the basis of all behavior is motivation. So that's another tool we use in both qualitative and quantitative research.
(08:44):
And the final thing we do from a tools perspective is we write our questionnaires very, very differently from a quant perspective. We don't ask people... On the basis of understanding people are terrible predictors of the future, so we don't ask them what they think they will do in the future. We're very, very careful about how we frame questions because we know that framing can make a big difference to responses. So they're the different types of things that we would do in our work that help us really give a full picture of that human story and a full picture of what people are doing and why they're doing it. It's why are you behaving in that way?
Richard Campbell (09:20):
I wonder if it's important to construct a test so you're not telegraphing the brand you're interested in measuring. Does that actually affect the results when the person being tested is like, "Oh, this is about X, Y, Z brand."
Elisa Adams (09:31):
Yeah. Again, it depends on context. With everything it's context and definitely we don't want to bias something. We would go in blind or we would make sure that we're representing the category and then we might as normal research, sort of funnel down into more specific. But removing bias, being careful with priming, and I think with market research, and I have been in this industry, and I love it, for a very long time, but we just lean into these old ways and old tools that no longer are necessarily the best. There's been huge developments in technology and understanding the brain, understanding how we operate and we need to use tools that we now have available that do a much, much better job.
(10:15):
And can I say for the marketers and for the brand managers and the brand leaders, they all of a sudden have an amazing amount of insight that they didn't have before. That's the real benefit, is there's a lot more depth. If you understand that 20% really trust the brand and 60% are sort of thinking about it, you can understand that 60%, you can profile them, you can talk to them, you can build more reasons to believe or build a better value proposition around that particular thing rather than just working with this big group of 80%, whereas 20% you don't need to speak to.
Richard Campbell (10:47):
And if you just tell me 80%, it's like, "Well I don't have to spend any time on trust. I've won that one, let's go work on the other thing." As opposed to this subtler, you've won 20 and you've got 60 that are falling in your favor but only just so maybe it is worthwhile to cultivate more trust language and to demonstrate that trust in a way that can increase that 20%.
Elisa Adams (11:09):
Correct. And you think about it, these things erode over time. You're looking at it going, "Oh, it's been 80%, it's 79, it's 76, it's this, it's that." And there's not a lot you can do with that. What do you do with 80%? Great. Tick. How do we compare everybody else? Tick. But if that is really important to the brand, if it's part of the DNA, there's a group who are very at risk, obviously the slower, the slower, the slower, these are really at risk. What can we do? Who are they? How can we talk to them? All of a sudden you have really practical ways to understand your consumer and where they're at in relationship to your brand. And then of course, how do I do something about that group? The blunt sort of 80% is not very useful, it's-
Richard Campbell (11:58):
Just not very actionable. Yeah.
Elisa Adams (11:59):
It's not very actionable. It's great for a KPR or a scorecard. I often feel for our brand leaders and our business leaders because they're required to move these metrics, right? That's their job. So just giving them the metric is not enough. And I don't think people understand there are now tools that can help really be very strategic and targeted in moving those metrics beyond what we've had in the past. And really help those sort of leaders, I guess, prioritize and decide what they need to do.
Richard Campbell (12:39):
I'm also getting the sense that people are a little surveyed out too that. The availability of technology and so forth, it's so easy to survey, there's many more of them. If you go searching online for the opportunity to fill in surveys, you'll get plenty of opportunities. But to me it seems more and more like folks aren't that keen to fill in surveys and aren't that diligent about them in the first place. So it's challenging to get quality data.
Elisa Adams (13:06):
Look, this is an industry-wide problem and something we spend a lot of time because they're our source of truth. The bottom line is human beings want to give their opinion, they want to be heard.
Richard Campbell (13:19):
Sure.
Elisa Adams (13:21):
And we find this all of the time. You give people the right opportunity and the right tools that fits with their life and they will talk to us and they all share with us. I do think we have a bit of an industry wide problem around survey fatigue and this is where we've got to be really careful with length of survey. I think there's massive amounts and we're working on some really interesting... the way a survey's laid out and engagement how we get the most out of surveys. But yeah, panel and understanding and access to people is something as an industry we need to continue to work on something that we've certainly have got top of mind.
Richard Campbell (14:00):
And when you're doing these more sophisticated neuroscience tests like implicit testing and so forth, are you doing it always in conjunction with the survey or would you do implicit testing on its own?
Elisa Adams (14:11):
Most of it is embedded into our surveys. The piece I was talking to you about earlier... And we can do it in brand tracking pieces, we can do it in new product development. We really use it as an integrated tool. One of the things I think that... We all know there's massive fatigue in the world with people and that's no different to clients and businesses. So we are not sort of saying it has to be all new. We're saying we need to integrate these new tools into what we're doing and replace the things that are a little bit blunt with things that are a little bit sharper. And as I said, what we've been doing for a long period of time, there's a lot of merit in it, but this is about just starting to integrate different ways. So we integrate into survey, we integrate into qual and we have all of a sudden a whole new set of insights and a whole new set of data that we can discuss with our clients.
Richard Campbell (15:04):
And it does feel like those kinds of implicit tests embedded in a survey correlate between the data. You're catching the person at the same time in the same mental state doing a slightly different activity that might even press against the questions they've just answered in some form.
Elisa Adams (15:19):
Correct. And you also find out all about them. So in the survey you're asking a lot of questions about... And whether it's a client segmentation algorithm you're using or whether it's a particular set of demographics or psychographic questions, all of a sudden you can start to profile out those group. We've done another really lovely and big important study around conscious consumerism and understanding where people are at. Because this is one of these topics where the say do gap is significant. Do you recycle? Yes, I recycle. Yes, of course you're going to say that sure. There's a social norm. So we've actually used fast implicit built into a very big survey to understand where people are at from a behavioral perspective, not just an attitude perspective, but we've spent a lot of time around behavior. So I recycle, yes or no and looking at the speed and response.
(16:10):
And now part of that is also we've asked some direct questions and we can correlate those people and we can see the differences between what people say and what they actually are doing. But then we can also understand the different groups of people. Who are those people who are saying yes? There's a huge group who say no. Who are those groups who say no and what are their attitudes to life and what are their attitudes to the planet and those sorts of things? So we could work on on different strategies for that group compared to the group who we call them the gap dwellers, the people who get caught in the gap who have great intention and say, "Yes, yes, I'm going to do this," but actually when you can see the speed of their response, they're probably not following through on that behavior.
Richard Campbell (16:52):
So you are seeing in time responses, that's probably not true. They mean to recycle, but they're not actually.
Elisa Adams (17:01):
Absolutely. We're saying there's a big gap. In Australia, we've got about 90% of people say that they recycle. When you break that down to the speed of response, there's 20 to 30% who you can see actually are very, yes, I recycle. And there's a few, the rest of the people we call them as I said, the gap dwellers. Those people who fall in the middle who say yes, but they're obviously taking a moment to think about that yes. So they're probably less likely to be actually following through on that behavior. Not saying they're not, but they're not as committed to the behavior as somebody who is very quickly responding. And we've done quite a bit of work actually with a number of our partners around the world about one, how exciting it is that we have such positive intention. The message is here, we have to do something and people want to be doing it. But what do we need to do to support those people who we've called the gap dwellers who probably not as committed to the behavior?
(17:57):
What are the things we need to do? And we have a whole study and some very specific things for brand managers to understand because the messages for those... It's sort of like the adoption curve. The first 20%, they're early adopters, they're very committed, they're quite driven and motivated by something very, very different and they've got the message. Then you've got this group in the middle and you can really quickly see by spending time with them. We have done it qualitatively. The motivation is very, very different. And so the messaging and the way we engage them, the way we get them on board with this behavior and helping them, helping facilitate the behavior that we're looking to change is very different to the early adopter. It's a classic of the adoption curve. You tell somebody about tech and if they're really love tech and they're interested in it, they'll listen to all the tech and the details, blah blah blah blah. They will adopt. That next mainstream group of consumer needs a very different message to adopt.
Richard Campbell (18:53):
They need a very different value proposition there.
Elisa Adams (18:54):
A different value proposition completely. So you need to change the comms, you need to change the messaging and they need more things like social proof. They need to see people doing it. And use cases. They need to know what's in it for them. Their motivations are very different to the early adopter group. So we think that there's a real key in that and a real opportunity in that around conscious sustainability and to have the numbers and the segments understand that.
Richard Campbell (19:18):
Do your customers ask you to discriminate? Can we prove these folks know something about recycling or not? Can you structure questions to say, do they understand the sorting rules of their area for recycling? And that's a way to measure these people don't actually know anything about recycling versus they know all the details. I could see someone who answers very quickly because they're confident that they do, but then ask for the sorting categories in their neighborhood, they don't know them.
Elisa Adams (19:42):
Yeah, a hundred percent. And this is where if you embed this type of question into a larger questionnaire, you can actually then go, okay, we've got this group of people who we've said are a fast yes and look like they're more committed to the behavior and actually intuitively behaving in that way. Let's profile them by all these other things that we've asked them about. And again, can you see by doing that we've got that group and then we've got the next group who are different again and probably not as committed to the behavior. Let's profile them to give that to an organization. Now we can start to go, "Okay, this group, we need to talk like this and this is what's important and here's the messaging and here's who they are and here's what they're doing. Here's this other group and this is who they are, what they're doing." We have this guidance in terms of what we should do next to drive and to make change. Very different to just knowing that 90% of Australians-
Richard Campbell (20:40):
Recycle.
Elisa Adams (20:41):
Recycle.
Richard Campbell (20:41):
So we have nothing to do.
Elisa Adams (20:44):
Everything's great.
Richard Campbell (20:45):
Everything's good, we're fine, everything's fine.
Elisa Adams (20:46):
Everything's fine. Don't worry about the planet.
Richard Campbell (20:49):
The campaign here in Vancouver at the moment is an anthropomorphic tetra pack saying he doesn't even recycle his tetra packs because actually the story is, it turns out you can recycle tetra packs but you have to do it this particular way.
Elisa Adams (21:05):
Right. And I think it's really interesting around the world. I spent some time in Germany last year and very different in Europe in terms of their sophistication, their infrastructure around it. Completely different to what we see here in Australia. So I think it's a global problem and it's one of the things in our business briefing that we're talking about a lot in Australia. But it's very different around the world, and I think it's a problem that we need to attack different.
Richard Campbell (21:30):
And the recycling message is a really powerful one and obviously it's top of mind. But are you seeing the strategies for all of this have shifted coming into 2023? Obviously the pandemic's had an impact, but we've had so much technological change in the past 10 years and you've done this long enough. I've got to think it's very different today.
Elisa Adams (21:47):
Look, if I was talking to you this time last year, I would have something different to say, but I think we're at a really pivotal point. I think 2023 is going to be a really interesting year. To your point, the changes that we've seen are massive, I guess in terms of tech. The world is completely different to what it was a year ago to what it was 10 years ago. And from the perspective of what is required for our planet, we can see there's real commitment I guess at a global level. And there's some real targets now and you can say what you want about them. But all of that I guess is filtering down to the everyday consumer. And I can talk a little bit about from a data perspective, because we have data around what's happening with people as we move into the new year.
(22:41):
We did a really big study right at the back of 2022 and for the first time... We've been doing this study for 10 years now, for the first time we saw a real shift in the emotional what people... As I was talking to you about earlier, we use a technique, we understand the motivation, what people are seeking for the year ahead.
(23:02):
And interestingly through the pandemic, as we were tracking that, we were finding that people were searching for, and we see this most of the time with human beings, empowerment. I want to feel empowered, which means give me the tools to get what I need to get done, empower me to get on and get through my life. And at the beginning of the pandemic, we were doing some briefings and people thought it was going to be about make me feel safe, but that job was pretty well done. Everybody came out and we were washing hands and we were staying at home. And so safety. But it was like empower me, help me get through. The data at the end of last year has completely changed. And this motivations don't change. We're pretty enduring in terms of what we're looking for. But what we have found is that, from the big dataset that what people want, the emotional need they need to feel coming to 2023, is about safety and security. I want to feel safe.
Richard Campbell (23:54):
The thing we thought in 2020 now is kind of coming true three years later.
Elisa Adams (24:00):
Yeah. And we've sort of unpacked why that is happening. And if there's one word you would use right now to describe what's happening in the world and how humans are feeling, it would be uncertainty. We feel this huge amount of uncertainty, whether we can articulate that or whether it's just inside ourselves, there is definite uncertainty and for valid reason. We've got a whole economy across the world, we've got interest rates, and whether we're impacted by them or not, we're still hearing about them. They're feeling that bank of uncertainty. And we also don't have... People like to know what's coming. We don't know what's coming. I mean in Australia we're waiting. Our reserve bank meets every month and probably in the US we're waiting for a couple more interest rate rises. We don't know when that's going to stop. There's no certainty around that, right?
Richard Campbell (24:51):
But it feels to me, we didn't think the pandemic would go on this long. There was nobody in 2020 saying, "Hey, two, three years from now it's going to subside."
Elisa Adams (25:01):
No.
Richard Campbell (25:01):
And even now we don't know that. You're seeing new waves going on. And yes, the economic instabilities now have created its own energy and the conflicts going on in certain parts of the world. If anything, people have just gotten far more conscious of the fragility of civilization.
Elisa Adams (25:18):
Hundred percent. You said the geopolitical. Cyber attacks, we talked about them before we came on the air. People are nervous, there's a lot more nervousness about it. And the other thing, there's that going on. But the upshot of all of that is there's a lot of exhaustion and tiredness and for all of those reasons we've just talked about. But people are generally when we're talking to them, they're tired, they're exhausted. The pandemic, as you said, has been going on for a very long time and I think the tricky thing about this, it's not one of the things we can just put our finger on and go, "That's it."
Richard Campbell (25:54):
And that's where it ended. It's going to quietly, slowly fade away. It's not going to do a party at the end.
Elisa Adams (26:01):
No, there's no [inaudible 00:26:05] There's no like "Oh, that's what happened. This event happened and now we feel like this." And it's sort of quiet quitting. It's like we're doing this sort of very... We're not conscious of it, we don't have a word for it. We're just feeling a lot more tired and exhausted for all of those reasons that we've talked about. And the one thing that uncertainty 100% breeds, there is no... Things I know for sure is it impacts our behavior.
Richard Campbell (26:32):
Sure. And into this I still have a brand to promote and look good at and products to sell and services to provide, solutions to provide. And how do I do that when people are tired and frightened?
Elisa Adams (26:45):
Tired and they're looking for safety and behavior. I mean there was no better example of behavior change than at the beginning of the pandemic when people were scared before we sort of very quickly got things in place. But even through it there was still this nervousness. And so what everybody do, they went and filled up their shopping baskets and emptied-
Richard Campbell (27:06):
With toilet paper.
Elisa Adams (27:08):
Yeah. I know. I know. The toilet paper thing still has got me, but people, they wanted to feel safe.
Richard Campbell (27:15):
Sure. And somehow an excess of toilet paper was going to help that. It just speaks to the whole thing you're saying, which is not always rational.
Elisa Adams (27:24):
No.
Richard Campbell (27:24):
There was never actually a toilet paper shortage except the one we created by buying too much toilet paper.
Elisa Adams (27:30):
But you know what, and I think you'll have heard this before, it may not be rational, but it's predictable. Because what was happening, what was the motivation for this? People were scared, they wanted to feel safer. How do I make sure I feel safe? Well, I make sure I've got food, I make sure my pantry is stocked, that my family is going to be okay. So their behavior was absolutely changed because their motivation changed. They wanted this need to feel safe and secure. And the beginning of this year, we're in a similar position to be honest with you. Probably it's not as point in time. It's been a much slower burn. But everybody's sort of feeling this anxiety. And brand managers, I'm being asked all the time, what do we do? What is the role of value in the next 12 months?
(28:20):
What are the key things that we should be leaning into? Where should we lean into with our brands as we move into this really uncertain environment? And not only that, there's that sort of uncertainty, but then there's things like what should be the role of things like the environment on top of that because we've got these other more immediate needs. And so how do we prioritize our messaging? And so what we will do is we keep coming back to the human being. We keep coming back and going, well what is happening with people and what are they feeling and what do they need to feel? And then how does that play out into things like product and pricing and promotion and all the other parts of managing a brand?
Richard Campbell (29:01):
And then obviously constructing tests around that to measure it and help to shape language and materials and...
Elisa Adams (29:07):
Correct. Because there is a big... And I think this is a really big insight for anybody managing a brand is if you understand that people want to feel safe, they want to feel secure. There is something about the way we talk to them or we make them feel and with the empathy we show. The key to a successful brand is relevance, right?
Richard Campbell (29:30):
Right.
Elisa Adams (29:31):
You've got to be relentlessly relevant, relevant, relevant, relevant. For me, any brands that we're involved in partnering, in managing this year, we need to really have our finger on the pulse through those tests of where people are at. We don't want to be out of line with them. And I'll give you an example of that in a minute. And then we need to be smart in the way we interpret that because people aren't telling us they want more empathy, but we know that is a way to connect, that is a way to be relevant.
Richard Campbell (30:01):
And that's testable with this research to show we get good results when we give that sense of relevancy.
Elisa Adams (30:07):
So it's using the research to really... I think there's a couple of roles this year for research. One is to understand where people are at. In the beginning of the pandemic, so many people going out with safety messages and the whole world was covered with them and they became expected. There's nothing new.
Richard Campbell (30:23):
They were table stakes.
Elisa Adams (30:25):
They were table stakes. If you weren't having some sort of policy or looking after your consumers right then... So what marketers had missed was that it moved from that to empowerment really quickly. Give me the tools to get through, make it easy for me in this whole new world to operate. I need to be able to operate. How am I going to do this in this whole new world? Whether that's making the banking app really easy or helping me get takeaway coffee because I can't get it from my coffee shop. So how do I get a drive through? All the different things, they missed that empowerment. And if people were answering, "Help me," in this new world as opposed to "Make me feel safe and secure," they were much more relevant and much more connected. The same thing is happening here. There's no doubt we've got safety and security, but I think this is one of the most unpredictable years since I have been in business in terms of what's going to happen.
(31:12):
So we need to really make sure we get a finger on a pulse of where consumers at, so we're constantly talking to them in a relevant way. Because whether we like it or not, it is going to be a tougher year. I think it is definitely going to be a tougher year. And those who are smarter and understand their customers at this emotional level that we talking about and then delivering in a way that's relevant to that particular how they're feeling and what they're needing at that particular point in time, are certainly going to be much more successful.
Richard Campbell (31:38):
Sure. And it feels like a moving target. The thing that worked for 2020 isn't necessarily going to work for 2021 and probably didn't work for 2022, and now it's something different again in 2023.
Elisa Adams (31:49):
And I think as I said, because again, we weren't certain of what was happening with COVID. We knew we had this thing around. Now the interest rates could finish. And I I don't want to talk about interest rates because-
Richard Campbell (32:04):
But that seems to be the top of the gestalt right now.
Elisa Adams (32:06):
Yeah, exactly. And we don't know. And even in the US we've heard they could have gone too far. They might pull it back. And a lot of people say to me, "Oh, well how does this compare to the GFC?" And I say, "This is completely different." I mean there might be some behaviors that are the same, but the GFC was-
Richard Campbell (32:23):
You're talking 2008, 2009?
Elisa Adams (32:26):
Yeah, 2008, 2009. And yes, we had a lot of uncertainty and there was a lot of things happening. But I think this time we've got a lot more forces at play. There's a lot more forces and affecting a lot more people. And what we've been saying to our clients is, "Here are some things we know for sure, but what we don't know is how it's going to play out." So scenarios, you need to have as many scenarios. If this happens, what will we do if this happens? And we're working through different scenarios.
Richard Campbell (32:53):
Well, in 2008 we didn't know either. Now it's all hindsight and we feel super smart about it.
Elisa Adams (32:57):
Exactly.
Richard Campbell (32:58):
But here we are in the middle of it and we oddly enough don't know again.
Elisa Adams (33:02):
Yeah. And because like I said, nobody knew that we were going to have this COVID pandemic. Nobody knew we were going to have inflation and supply chain issues and the war and all of those things that sort of feel out there. They're all impacting on humans in this real tangible way in our lives. We're probably aware even of the source, but it's more expensive to buy milk and I'm a bit nervous about what's going to happen in the next 12 months. And we've got hard data around people's concern about their money. And in 2021 we had people who thought they'd be worse off in 12 months sitting about 13%. It's gone to 29% last year. Massive, massive fundamental change. You don't see that. You might see a percent here and there, but as I said-
Richard Campbell (33:50):
To have that number double is extraordinary.
Elisa Adams (33:52):
Extraordinary. People concerned about the next 12 months. And the other thing that's happened is that we are finding not just from that, but from a whole health perspective too, after the pandemic, people are more concerned about their health. Before we were tracking this sort of thing and people thought they'd be healthier and then 12 months ahead, but there's concern they won't be. So I know I'm painting a bit of a doomsday here, but this is coming back to why we need to help people feel safe and secure. And I think it offers a lot of opportunity. I think if people are aware, knowledge is power. And I think if you're aware of where consumers are at and keep a close eye on it and as you said, test the messaging. It's been a fantastic address launched here in Australia actually by McDonald's. And it's worth having a look at and it's being sort of spoken about because there's no product in it and no store.
Richard Campbell (34:45):
Wow.
Elisa Adams (34:45):
But it makes you feel really good. It's nostalgic, it's sort of back to the office. It's sort of nodding into a few of the things that we're seeing going on, but it makes you feel really safe and secure and all the things we've just been talking about. I'm not sure if that was the intention or not, but certainly it's a good feel good for where we're at in the world right now. And it's a classic example of how brands can still be relevant if you really understand the human condition right now where we're at.
Richard Campbell (35:20):
Yeah, no, very powerful set of things and will change over time. This current state that we're in right now is not going to be the same in six months.
Elisa Adams (35:30):
And this is the thing. I think it's one of those years where... I often put a prediction out what's going to happen in the next 12 months. We are going, here's what we know, there's going to be uncertainty. However, what our recommendation is, as I said, is scenario plan. And some of the big things we're suggesting are things like retention's going to be really important. So a lot of uncertainty. People fall back into safety, back into big brands.
Richard Campbell (35:58):
Back to the products they know.
Elisa Adams (36:00):
Back to the products they know. Where's the comfort behavior, where do I feel comfortable and safe? And unfortunately we see some quite negative behaviors excel during these times. But it's because people are tired, exhausted, and they're looking for comfort and they're looking for those sorts of things. But for big companies who've got a big base, it's like retention's important. I know acquisition, but people when they're uncertain probably come a bit more into their hole rather than stick their head up. So really work on retention, loyalty. You've only got so many dollars to spend and you need an outfit or you're buying a coffee or things like that. How do you... Loyalty would be a really critical, I think, tool in the toolbox. And particularly around that value conversation. How do you drive better value for your offer in an environment where there are a group of the population who are going to be looking for that. We never sort of say... The whole group is doing this, but there will be a bigger proportion of our population who are looking for value.
Richard Campbell (36:59):
Not the only thing, but certainly one of the things.
Elisa Adams (37:01):
Exactly. There's also with that fatigue, there's an ease. How do we make it easy for people? How do we make it really simple to get it?
Richard Campbell (37:09):
Low friction.
Elisa Adams (37:10):
Lower friction. How do we make it simple to encourage people to come into our organization? How do we make the process simple to onboard them? How do we really bring ease into everything? Ease and comfort into messages is really important too. So we think that lowering the friction will be really important.
Richard Campbell (37:25):
Well, they've had a few years of wild swings in state of being, and so things that are common steady are probably going to be pretty popular. I also think, for better or worse, the marketplace is very sensitized now. That this past few years of sharp changes and uncertainty have just made us more sensitive to the uncertainty in the first place.
Elisa Adams (37:46):
I think you're right because I said... And we've got the data. The data is phenomenal that all of a sudden safety and security have...
Richard Campbell (37:53):
Risen.
Elisa Adams (37:54):
Risen. And as I've said, motivations are pretty standard. We want to feel these things. We know the hierarchy of needs and we know that's one of the base needs. And when you see a big spike in something like this you know that there's something fundamental going on. Even during the pandemic, people still want to be able to get on with their lives, but there's something here that's a little more shaky, a little less solid.
Richard Campbell (38:22):
But it may just be the cumulative effect of everything that's happened in the past few years that's just made people more sensitive to this.
Elisa Adams (38:29):
And as I said, unfortunately, you can't just put your finger on it and say, "Oh, it's this." It's actually a number-
Richard Campbell (38:35):
It's a bunch of things.
Elisa Adams (38:35):
It's a bunch of things. In '08, '09 we could say, "Oh, it's because there was some really bad-,
Richard Campbell (38:40):
Badly behaved bankers.
Elisa Adams (38:42):
Bad bankers, bad mortgages. That's what happened. Very, very different when you talk to people now and what that means.
Richard Campbell (38:50):
Wow. It does feel like a lot of folks are feeling overwhelmed. And so don't be part of overwhelming them.
Elisa Adams (38:56):
Don't be part of overwhelming them. Understand them. And this is where I think, back to our chat about neuro. And you ask people very rational questions about right now. And some may be able to get there because the emotion's so strong. But a lot of people will just go, "Yeah, I'm good, I'm fine."
Richard Campbell (39:13):
I always picture that cartoon of the dog sipping tea in a room on fire saying, "This is fine."
Elisa Adams (39:20):
This is fine. It's all good.
Richard Campbell (39:23):
Not so sure it's fine actually.
Elisa Adams (39:25):
Until it's not. And then we hear about it. But the smart marketers and the smart brand managers are going to make sure that they're highly relevant right now. Highly, highly relevant. So, using the tools and using these, they're not even new ways, but using these smarter and sharper ways of really understanding people so that they can make much, much better decisions. Much, much better advertising. Much, much better calls. Because they're feeling uncertainty too, right?
Richard Campbell (39:55):
Sure.
Elisa Adams (39:56):
I know that brand leaders and marketers, I'm getting calls all the time. What's coming? What's the year ahead? I feel like our job is to keep a finger really tightly on the pulse of where that's at.
Richard Campbell (40:04):
Well, and we're really talking about fiscally responsible spending here that I'm going to carefully measure before I make these big spends so that I don't spend unwisely because there is only so much money to go around.
Elisa Adams (40:15):
And there's more budget pressure.
Richard Campbell (40:17):
For sure.
Elisa Adams (40:17):
There's going to be pressure, there's consumer pressure, but there'll be client budget pressure.
Richard Campbell (40:21):
And there's return on investment pressures. Here's how I've measured this to know we should expect these returns.
Elisa Adams (40:27):
Exactly. And be more confident. And as I said earlier, I think one of the areas that we have not been great in in market research is understanding the future. Because we ask people, expecting them to tell us, and people don't know.
Richard Campbell (40:43):
No, they don't know. And if they think they know, they're making it up, so...
Elisa Adams (40:47):
They're making it up. Right. And what we need to do is we are trying to look forward and we are trying to be able to provide. People, marketers are planning six months out at nine months out, 12 months out. We have to use the right tools to, and I'm not saying it's Nirvana, I'm not saying it's the... but I'm saying it's a hell of a lot better and a hell of a lot more insightful than what we have had access to in the past. So...
Richard Campbell (41:16):
It's a good time to get involved.
Elisa Adams (41:16):
It's a good time to get involved.
Richard Campbell (41:18):
Elisa, thank you so much for coming on. I really appreciate this conversation. It's good thinking for this next year and making our plans accordingly.
Elisa Adams (41:25):
Thanks Richard. It's absolute pleasure and lovely to talk with you. And have a great 2023.
Richard Campbell (41:34):
Thank you. And we'll talk to you next time on Understanding Consumer Neuroscience.