How do you start buying neuroscience research for your marketing efforts? Richard talks to Emma Woodley of Truth be Gold about her experiences getting neuroscience into the mix of marketing research at various organizations. Emma talks about starting small on initiatives specific to your organization's marketing needs, engaging professionals to help create the proper neuroscience testing for your needs, and developing good post-mortem results to understand the benefit of neuroscience in marketing - and how to do more!
Brandon Wehn (00:08):
Welcome to the show. This is Brandon Wehn, and you're listening to the Understanding Consumer Neuroscience Podcast, brought to you by the folks at CloudArmy.
(00:17):
In this episode, Richard talks with Emma Woodley of Truth be Gold, about her experiences bringing neuroscience into a marketing team and sharing the results.
Richard Campbell (00:30):
Hi, this is Richard Campbell and thanks for listening to Understanding Consumer Neuroscience. Today, my guest is Emma Woodley, who is the founder of Truth Be Gold, a behavioral insight consultancy based just outside of London in the UK.
(00:41):
But previously to that, she led the international insight function for Yum Brands based in Dallas, Texas, in the United States.
(00:48):
Welcome, Emma. Thanks so much for coming on.
Emma Woodley (00:50):
Thank you so much for inviting me.
Richard Campbell (00:52):
I love the term Truth Be Gold, because truth's taken a beating the past few years.
Emma Woodley (00:57):
Yeah, absolutely. But it's something we're all searching for, isn't it? To some extent. So it just felt fitting.
Richard Campbell (01:06):
Yeah. I think, very fitting, especially to be in the marketing with neuroscience. Because I feel like so much of marketing is done with intuition, and then often we do these sort of traditional surveys where we set people up to tell us what we want to hear.
Emma Woodley (01:25):
Yes, I think a lot of us has done that.
Richard Campbell (01:28):
It's very challenging. And is there anything worse than we go to all this trouble to get people to tell us what they want, what we want to hear, and then act on that and don't get great results? That, to me, is the most frustrating part of marketing is that, what was that old line? It's like 50% of marketing works really well, we just don't know which 50%.
Emma Woodley (01:47):
Absolutely. That's why I got so excited about this space and neuroscience and what it can give us, because it does seem to give us that something extra and that real depth. I'd spent years in market research and getting very frustrated with traditional research, knowing there was something else that we were missing.
(02:07):
And that's why I ended up in this space and then wanted to set a company up in this space, because I felt like it gets closer to the truth than anything else that we could possibly use.
Richard Campbell (02:18):
And I mean, you were doing marketing for Yum Brands, so that's like Taco Bell, Kentucky Fried Chicken. These are world-class, convenient foods companies, extraordinarily big companies. They battle the same problem, that they're sending out ineffective messages, it's hard to even imagine.
Emma Woodley (02:40):
Well, they're super successful and they were wonderful brands to work on. It was a real privilege. But I think they always wanted to be better.
Richard Campbell (02:50):
Right.
Emma Woodley (02:50):
And I think that's what made them so successful as a company. They were always searching for new ways to do things. They never felt like they knew everything.
Richard Campbell (02:57):
Right.
Emma Woodley (02:58):
It always felt like there was something new to learn, that we were always learning and they really promoted learning within the business. So it felt a natural thing for me to move into this space, and I had many senior people that really supported my journey on that.
(03:13):
Many of them didn't want to come with me, they didn't have the time to go and start learning about all this new stuff.
Richard Campbell (03:17):
Interesting.
Emma Woodley (03:17):
But I certainly had the support and space to be able to go and do it, and a little bit of budget to play with as well. So that was nice.
Richard Campbell (03:24):
So when you ran into neuroscience as a traditional marketer, I'm sure there's plenty of traditional marketers who are like, "Hey, what we've been doing is working just fine. Don't worry about it." How do you even present that idea to leadership to even get an opportunity to experiment with it?
Emma Woodley (03:40):
Well, I did have a few false starts, I have to say. And that happened at my previous company prior to going to Yum. I'd found it a while back, but I sort of hit a brick wall a lot of the time, because trying to spread the word and to demonstrate how good it is can be difficult at times.
Richard Campbell (03:55):
Sure.
Emma Woodley (03:56):
I think we're maybe beyond that tipping point now. I'm talking 25 years ago. But when I was at Yum Brands, we really were in a position where we were stuck, and every piece of traditional research was not giving us what we needed.
(04:10):
And so, it was almost like the CEO of the company came to me and said, "Emma, can you think of anything that might give us some new insight?" And I said, "Well, there are these tools out there and I would love to be able to go into this space." And he fully supported me, and it was a fantastic thing to happen. And I was so excited that I could now actually go out and really explore this.
Richard Campbell (04:33):
And funny to me is that I think about, when we think about fast food restaurants in general, I think often people talk oddly about it. Because it is something, it's a little embarrassing that I went through the drive-through today rather than cook a meal, that sort of... And am I eating, you know, we've got a culture of eating well. But, boy, a gordita's good too. That schism, to do any traditional surveying on that, you've almost got a built-in distortion field around that.
Emma Woodley (05:06):
Yeah. And there's a lot of guilt. And especially in the time that I've been in the industry, certainly there's been a lot of issues with people thinking about their health and worrying about their health. So the industry has got a bit of a battering, but there's also still a lot of people that love it. They don't have it every day of the week.
Richard Campbell (05:25):
No.
Emma Woodley (05:26):
But they love it. And there's lots of passionate people that have their pet brands that they will always go to.
Richard Campbell (05:32):
Sure.
Emma Woodley (05:33):
So, there is a good balance within the industry of people that go as a guilty pleasure, literally on their own, and they try and hide it from their other half.
Richard Campbell (05:41):
Mm-hmm.
Emma Woodley (05:42):
And there's others who just go there and just enjoy it.
Richard Campbell (05:45):
Yeah.
Emma Woodley (05:45):
And love every-
Richard Campbell (05:46):
This is part of your childhood. It has those kinds of associations too.
Emma Woodley (05:50):
Yeah. Completely.
Richard Campbell (05:51):
But it also begs the question, what would you measure differently using neuroscience around that, a product like that? What can you learn?
Emma Woodley (06:00):
I think the big thing that we were missing was that emotional elements, how people truly felt. Because as you say, there's a lot of guilt around these kinds of products and it's almost like the stereotype of what you should say when you're in a traditional focus group.
Richard Campbell (06:16):
Right.
Emma Woodley (06:16):
Or whatever it may be. Or in a survey, you're always going to pick, oh yes, well, I definitely want healthy options.
Richard Campbell (06:21):
Yes.
Emma Woodley (06:21):
And I would like it a little bit cheaper as well.
Richard Campbell (06:24):
And then you make a line of salads that nobody buys.
Emma Woodley (06:27):
Precisely. At least McDonald's did that first.
Richard Campbell (06:35):
Yes. Yeah. But I also remember McDonald's doing super-size, gets hit with the movie Super Size Me, and then nobody will super-size anymore. So they banished the term, but then if you let the customer actually enter their order on these new kiosk screens, they will order the super-size option.
Emma Woodley (06:51):
Yeah.
Richard Campbell (06:51):
So it's like, not having to say the words became the actual thing, not what people really wanted. It's an interesting piece around that.
(06:59):
But you mentioned the emotional connection to the brands. And to me, the previous shows we've done, we've talked about neuroscience. This seems to be what neuroscience is good at, is getting at emotional connections to products, brands, ideas, all of those sorts of things, that you can reveal the truth on that. And then, hopefully from that, get creative. Once you know this is the association, how do we target it? How do we actually communicate that?
Emma Woodley (07:26):
Absolutely. And I think also with the emergence of new targets, so Gen Z being really important, who are very different to the previous Millennials, we found real differences emotionally about how people approach brands. Or when you become a parent and you have children, how do you then emotionally connect with these brands?
(07:44):
So it was super, super valuable for us to be able to start using these tools. We started using ZMET in the qual space to begin with, and then I was desperate for something to come through that was quant. And then when we saw the implicit response testing coming through, I felt like I now had the full suite of tools that I could use to help me understand all of that emotional stuff that was going on with our brands.
Richard Campbell (08:09):
Okay. You've just dropped out a couple of terms there. I don't know that everybody's going to know. So when you said ZMET, you're not talking about Zima, the alcoholic drink?
Emma Woodley (08:17):
No. ZMET. So it's the Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique.
Richard Campbell (08:22):
Okay.
Emma Woodley (08:24):
I started out life with that 25 years ago, when it first came to the UK. I got super excited about what it can produce. I got very excited about metaphors and how we think in metaphors.
Richard Campbell (08:35):
Mm-hmm.
Emma Woodley (08:36):
And then I was looking for, well, where's the quant? I need some quant as well. I can't just have qual techniques.
Richard Campbell (08:43):
Right.
Emma Woodley (08:44):
And then I discovered the implicit response technique, and implicit association and fast choice and all of that quant.
Richard Campbell (08:51):
Right.
Emma Woodley (08:52):
Loveliness. Then I got super excited because it felt like we had everything that could help us.
Richard Campbell (08:58):
And quant, because it's quantifiable, because these are very literal measurements. I mean, this is what we do at CloudArmy with implicit testing, is that you have these very literal measurements of change in behavior based on emotional response.
Emma Woodley (09:11):
Yeah, absolutely. And to have that was really important for us. And also, the thing we found about that technique is it's so versatile. You can use it so many different ways. You can use it from assessing your brand. You can use it in ways to assess maybe new concepts for innovation. And that was really important for our business at Yum because we were constantly innovating, constantly having limited time offers and new products coming to market.
(09:38):
It really can help you throughout everything that you could possibly do with your brand. So I've been very excited about using it over the last few years, and it's been really valuable to us and our clients as well.
Richard Campbell (09:52):
You had lots of different applications there. I guess, it's what problems are you wanting to address.
Emma Woodley (09:57):
Yeah.
Richard Campbell (09:58):
So, how did you go about it in Yum Brands? You've talked about having maybe a tiger team or initial starting group, where you're testing some of the things. Can you talk anything about that? I know that you get into trade secrets pretty quickly here.
Emma Woodley (10:08):
Yeah. I'd have to be careful what I said.
Richard Campbell (10:09):
Sure.
Emma Woodley (10:10):
But yeah, I think what we did there was we started small. We didn't do huge tests with these kinds of technologies to begin with, because we didn't know, A, how to use them very well.
Richard Campbell (10:24):
Right.
Emma Woodley (10:24):
B, whether they would work. So we kept all the traditional stuff. I'm not one for throwing the baby out with the bathwater. There was still a lot of traditional research that we kept in place.
Richard Campbell (10:34):
Mm-hmm.
Emma Woodley (10:35):
But when the objectives sort of required us to, we would move into these technologies, and either test them a little bit or we knew that there was certain things it could do. So therefore, we made sure that it was the central piece of research we'd used to make that decision.
(10:51):
We were obviously a global company.
Richard Campbell (10:52):
Sure.
Emma Woodley (10:53):
So we certain markets that we would test this type of research in, and we had one particular market that we tested it all in. And-
Richard Campbell (11:03):
Did you do side by sides? So you were doing traditional beside your neuroscience testing, to see if the results were similar?
Emma Woodley (11:09):
Occasionally.
Richard Campbell (11:09):
Yeah.
Emma Woodley (11:11):
Occasionally. Depended on the risk, how much risk there was if you were to just rely on one methodology.
Richard Campbell (11:17):
Right.
Emma Woodley (11:18):
So if we were trying to mitigate risk, then yes, we would do a side by side. But most of the time, we knew that it just worked and it was way better than traditional research.
Richard Campbell (11:28):
Right.
Emma Woodley (11:28):
As soon as we started using it, we knew that intuitively.
Richard Campbell (11:31):
Did you start with low risk markets, like markets where you didn't have a huge commitment then, that it didn't really matter, wasn't as concerning to take a chance on?
Emma Woodley (11:40):
To an extent, they were still decent markets, but they weren't the big ones that were driving the most profit, put it that way.
Richard Campbell (11:47):
Right, right.
Emma Woodley (11:48):
The word got around pretty quickly of what we were doing in that particular market, and other markets wanted to come and join the party, which was really fascinating.
Richard Campbell (11:56):
Interesting. So did your marketing materials change because of the thing you learned and people reacted to the change in materials?
Emma Woodley (12:04):
Some of it was our communication with the world. We were very lucky. We used to have a central meeting every year, where we all used to come together and everyone would showcase all the new stuff they were doing. And then we all had regular meetings where we would show stuff.
(12:17):
I was sitting at the center in Dallas and I was there to sort of share best practice. So whenever I spoke to other markets about what we were doing in this particular market, they would get to learn about it.
Richard Campbell (12:27):
So this is just internal to the company?
Emma Woodley (12:29):
Yeah.
Richard Campbell (12:29):
You're talking to one of the marketing team from one of the other brands then says, "Well, we approach it this way and got these kinds of results." They're like, "Those are huge numbers."
Emma Woodley (12:37):
Yeah.
Richard Campbell (12:38):
I have found, when a good study is put together and you get interesting results, and then act on them well, the numbers are massive.
Emma Woodley (12:49):
They were huge. And there were things that we probably would never have got through traditional research.
Richard Campbell (12:53):
Right.
Emma Woodley (12:53):
We were testing for things like a voiceover on an advert.
Richard Campbell (12:57):
Hm.
Emma Woodley (12:58):
Really, what you end up with that, the only way you can normally choose that, you sit there with a consumer, you'd play a few tapes and then get them to respond to it. But can they really answer that question truthfully?
Richard Campbell (13:09):
They're not even qualified. I don't know that anybody's qualified. And I think most voiceovers are picked by whatever agency voice they had available, is the one they use.
Emma Woodley (13:18):
Yeah.
Richard Campbell (13:18):
But were you getting into things like a male versus a female? Empathetic versus energetic, those kinds of things?
Emma Woodley (13:25):
Absolutely. We're getting really good-
Richard Campbell (13:27):
Interesting.
Emma Woodley (13:28):
... on that, so we were looking at visual imagery and how we look at the food and how it's portrayed. We were looking at accents and how that made people feel.
Richard Campbell (13:41):
In different markets?
Emma Woodley (13:42):
Yes. Yeah, absolutely.
Richard Campbell (13:44):
Interesting. And found substantial differences, is really what this comes down to?
Emma Woodley (13:50):
Yeah. And it was really, really directional rather than just, it felt like people were picking between three options, say.
Richard Campbell (13:58):
Right.
Emma Woodley (13:59):
We truly had measures that could tell us whether a voice was for me or not for me, or it evoked a certain emotion, or it made you feel a certain way about the brand. It was super exciting for us because it opened up a whole new world.
Richard Campbell (14:14):
And the numbers popped up enough. You're talking like 60% cases, where it's like, this is clearly the correct choice. It's so substantial.
Emma Woodley (14:21):
Absolutely.
Richard Campbell (14:22):
Wow.
Emma Woodley (14:22):
Well, I can't go into numbers, but yeah.
Richard Campbell (14:24):
No, no. I totally appreciate that. But it's got to be enough, that the moment you say this, you're kind of like, well, how would we have ever figured that out otherwise?
Emma Woodley (14:32):
Absolutely.
Richard Campbell (14:32):
Yeah.
Emma Woodley (14:34):
And that's why you ended up with a little fan base. And that's what I used to call it. It was almost like the neuro-marketing fan base would grow each time we did something. Each time we shared, this is what we've learned, this is how you do it. You create a fan base and they're asking for more and more information.
Richard Campbell (14:50):
Right.
Emma Woodley (14:50):
How they did it, so.
Richard Campbell (14:53):
And it clearly transformed your job because now you are in the business of helping others do exactly that. Was that part of what encouraged you to leave being a marketer, and just help other marketers?
Emma Woodley (15:05):
Yeah. Because I just felt there was a gap, because I'd spent a lot of time learning about this area. I'd read so many books and I'd watch, listen to podcasts like this one. I'd watch YouTube videos. I used to try and consume as much as I could about the industry, how it worked, the key people in it, all that kind of stuff.
(15:25):
But then, trying to translate a lot of the theory into a commercial outcome was really hard.
Richard Campbell (15:30):
Right.
Emma Woodley (15:30):
There was some great theory out there and some brilliant books, but you'd put them down and think, but what do I do with that?
Richard Campbell (15:36):
Yeah.
Emma Woodley (15:37):
How do I practically process that and use it for a commercial advantage? So when I left Yum, my primary reason for setting up Truth Be Gold was I want to help other people enter this world.
Richard Campbell (15:51):
Sure.
Emma Woodley (15:52):
Even if they don't know anything about research and they're just starting from scratch, I can help them with this knowledge, and help put the projects together and create that commercial advantage for them.
Richard Campbell (16:05):
I mean, how do you test the right things? What are the right things to test? Saying that you worked on voiceovers kind of stuns me, because that's not the thing I would think about first on an ad like that.
Emma Woodley (16:16):
Yeah. Well, it was all sorts of different things. We obviously had done hundreds of studies through the years and there was a way of doing, say, advertising. We had a certain construct to the way that we would do an advert, but there were bits and pieces that we just couldn't ever get to the sort of bottom of.
(16:34):
So things like voices, or if you had any form of sonic branding, there was no way really of researching that through traditional research.
Richard Campbell (16:42):
Right.
Emma Woodley (16:42):
So we spent a lot of time tinkering with those sorts of things. But then we were also using these techniques for really big brand studies to understand maybe the persona of the brand, and what the brand really deeply meant at an emotional level to consumers in each country. Because, again, they all had, even KFC, it lives and breathes very differently in each country.
Richard Campbell (17:04):
Sure. I find that extraordinary. I've traveled extensively, and there are places where KFC is almost a religion. It's extraordinary.
Emma Woodley (17:10):
Yeah. So we wanted to understand that. And we use these techniques both at the very strategic level, but also for very, very tactical things.
Richard Campbell (17:19):
Yeah. And I mean, it's harder to think of the strategic pieces, that sort of overview, or more importantly, to do that study and then say, well, how is this actionable?
Emma Woodley (17:29):
Hm.
Richard Campbell (17:30):
Where I think, when you get into we want to make a set of ads, what's the right imagery, what's the right color, what's the right sonic brand? What's the right voiceover? Being able to test each one of those pieces. And I presume they're all separate tests.
Emma Woodley (17:43):
Yeah, they are. And you can't use, you know, you've got to just take the priority pieces, and it's almost like a journey, isn't it? You go on a journey and these are the things that are priority and we really think make a difference, and we're going to learn about these and then we're going to go on and we're going to learn about the other parts to an ad.
Richard Campbell (18:01):
Mm-hmm.
Emma Woodley (18:01):
I don't think you could ever know everything about advertising through one test.
Richard Campbell (18:06):
No.
Emma Woodley (18:06):
There's no sense to it, unfortunately. But it was a journey that we went on, to learn about all the different aspects to it. And the same with things like menu boards or the in-store experience. We would chunk it up into different projects, and learn more and more.
Richard Campbell (18:24):
All these places we could improve. But it sounds like you did have winds pretty early. What happens when things go wrong too? Because you said this, don't throw the baby with the bathwater thing. Folks are always a little uncomfortable with neuroscience the best of times. And if you have a problem, it's easy to say, "Well, this is a waste of time."
Emma Woodley (18:43):
I think we had enough winds. The odd thing that went wrong, people would just accept. And let's face it, we've all done traditional research that sometimes has a research effect that skewed it or something that's gone wrong somewhere.
Richard Campbell (18:58):
No, no. The observer effect is a problem, right?
Emma Woodley (19:01):
Yeah.
Richard Campbell (19:01):
The fact that I am asking these questions affects the outcome of these questions.
Emma Woodley (19:04):
Yeah, absolutely. So, I think I was lucky to work in an environment where people were open to try new things. We always had this thing about let's fail early rather than fail late.
Richard Campbell (19:18):
Yeah.
Emma Woodley (19:18):
So if we do in research, that's a good thing. Whatever we do, if we are learning about something new and we fail early, it's fine.
Richard Campbell (19:25):
Yeah.
Emma Woodley (19:26):
Just don't do it when you are spending 30 million pounds on it. So-
Richard Campbell (19:30):
It sounds to me, just hearing your story, that you did the little project, got good results and immediately people wanted you to do bigger projects. Can you now address this other market? Can you study these other pieces? The money came once you showed some exceptional results.
Emma Woodley (19:47):
Absolutely. And then, it's a franchise system as well. So we had franchisees who would jump ahead. We had one franchisee who decided to go and do some neuroscience, and literally put people in FMRI machines for the first time. And that was their foray into this area. Most people would start maybe a little smaller, but they just fall out.
Richard Campbell (20:11):
Did they rent an FMRI machine? Hopefully they went to a university and tied this in with some bigger projects. Actually, that's a great area question, which is, how much help did you get? Did you have service bureaus that were helping you with these projects, or were you learning them yourselves?
Emma Woodley (20:26):
So we were going through agencies, who were experts. We also had industry experts who were helping us, who would come in and help us pick the right supplier. So we were very lucky. We had the resources to be able to pick the right technique for the right objective.
Richard Campbell (20:45):
Right.
Emma Woodley (20:46):
But we did spend an awful lot of time ourselves, learning as much as we could, because there just wasn't any information out there.
Richard Campbell (20:53):
Right.
Emma Woodley (20:54):
A lot of it was academic. There wasn't much information about how people had applied this commercially. And there's a lot more now.
Richard Campbell (21:02):
Yeah.
Emma Woodley (21:02):
But that wasn't the case when I started. So, it was trying to find that.
Richard Campbell (21:07):
And you do have a schism between the academic side of neuroscience, which speaks in certain levels of abstraction, versus the applied marketing strategies using neuroscience. It's tough to get to those two. Figuring out the right test, I mean, it's always been the challenge whether you were using neuroscience or not. What are the correct questions? What does an effective study look like?
(21:33):
Did you tend to develop these tests yourselves or were they done in conjunction with a neuroscience firm, or with a scientist of some kind?
Emma Woodley (21:40):
Yeah, with a neuroscience firm. Yeah. We would always take their advice. And I think the more you do the tests, it's a bit like traditional research. You get to know the measures that are key for your category. And I think some of them are specific to categories. And we used to do, even on our traditional research, we do a lot of statistical work to find out what were the key measures that could predict what was going to happen in the future.
Richard Campbell (22:04):
Mm-hmm.
Emma Woodley (22:04):
That sounds pretty crazy and sometimes it felt that way, because who can predict the future? But we did the same when we got into neuroscience, and it was, okay, so what did we do in that research? Then, what was the outcome when we actually launched that product or that piece of advertising? And we work back and review what we'd done and learned for the next time, and then just tweak it and create protocols out of that work within the category.
Richard Campbell (22:35):
It sounds like the post-mortems are a real important part of pulling all that together in saying, "These are the pieces we did for this particular case, and these seem to influence their results."
Emma Woodley (22:42):
Absolutely. And I think that was really key to when we created this fan base internally.
Richard Campbell (22:47):
Mm-hmm.
Emma Woodley (22:48):
Everyone was collecting lots of different information. So it was up to me to try and bring everybody together to discuss what they've learned, so that we can all learn from each other. And if one person's doing something in one market and we're doing it in another, they can share and they can learn, so that we almost give each other a bit of a leg up.
Richard Campbell (23:05):
Sure. But also make sure you have a common set of measures, so that you can make sure it's comparable. I'm afraid so much of marketing is done anecdotally, that it's, "Oh, that worked for that person. I'm going to try the same thing." Maybe not thinking necessarily about my market.
Emma Woodley (23:20):
Yeah.
Richard Campbell (23:21):
Just don't duplicate, but take away those outcomes and say, what were the important bits on this? Especially when you talk about a multinational brand like Yum, very challenging, different markets having different things. So the same words, the same approach, the same voice, probably not going to be correct.
Emma Woodley (23:39):
No.
Richard Campbell (23:39):
You want to do your separate sets of studies.
Emma Woodley (23:41):
And as we know from neuroscience, context is everything.
Richard Campbell (23:44):
Totally.
Emma Woodley (23:44):
So it's something that is in the forefront of my mind whenever I approach any project now, because the context can affect the outcome of the test. So, absolutely key.
Richard Campbell (23:57):
Yeah. And very challenging. But then you still have to get back to that actionable items. Although, if I test a bunch of voices and I see one that's clearly effective in that market, now I have the actionable item. I have the right voice. But you first had to round these up. How many voices did you test?
Emma Woodley (24:17):
I think we had about six altogether from memory. It's quite a long way back now. I think we went through a heck of a lot when we were just selecting which ones to put into the test.
Richard Campbell (24:28):
Right.
Emma Woodley (24:30):
And I think the big question for us was, it was about the colonel, and should the colonel have an American accent or a local accent?
Richard Campbell (24:41):
Right. And even when you say an American accent, which American accent? The southern accent is a distinctive thing that I think is almost its own meme, depending on where you are in America. But I appreciate the idea of does he sound better with an American accent than he does with a local accent, what's more approachable? But that sounds like a very testable problem.
Emma Woodley (25:03):
Yes, it was.
Richard Campbell (25:05):
Yeah.
Emma Woodley (25:05):
Has great outcomes.
Richard Campbell (25:07):
Yeah. No, it's fascinating to me to just take all those pieces and put them together. But actioning on more strategic conversations, when you discover an emotional connection to a brand like that, I think it's got to be very challenging to translate that into a set of actions.
Emma Woodley (25:25):
Yeah. I think it is. And that's the challenge that the marketers had, because they were using new inputs then having to develop their strategy.
Richard Campbell (25:38):
Sure.
Emma Woodley (25:39):
But I think they felt more confidence. And also we found a lot more acceptance amongst our partners, our agency partners, especially when it came to ad agencies and the guys like that. So they were more accepting of the neuroscience results than they were from traditional research.
Richard Campbell (25:55):
Right.
Emma Woodley (25:56):
I think they felt more comfortable. It's almost like it spoke their language and it also gave them freedom within a framework. Obviously there were guardrails, but they could go and explore those emotions that people were wanting to feel as a result of coming to the brand, or interact with the brand.
(26:15):
I think it gave them a lot more confidence in what they were doing. And it made for a better relationship between everybody as well.
Richard Campbell (26:25):
Yeah. On one hand you have creatives resisting constraints. On the other hand, constraints can help too, especially when their directional constraints say, "We see value in this area."
(26:35):
Now, after the creative started getting developed based on your strategic research, would you then test that creative again, to say are we hitting these emotional cues?
Emma Woodley (26:45):
Yeah, absolutely. We used to test at every single point in the process.
Richard Campbell (26:50):
Sure.
Emma Woodley (26:50):
But yes, we would.
Richard Campbell (26:51):
That, to me, is also powerful. That it's like, okay, we see this, now make these things. Now, is it hitting those points? And then there's also the ability to test to say, is he getting the results we want?
Emma Woodley (27:03):
Yeah, absolutely. And the cool thing about implicit testing, in particular, was that we could be quite iterative with that. So we could use it along the process of making an ad. You could do it at the very early stages.
Richard Campbell (27:19):
Sort of storyboard?
Emma Woodley (27:20):
Yeah, storyboards and on, really. So I think it gave us, it gave them more freedom in a way. It sounds crazy because that's the last thing they'd want me to say probably. But they were excited because it gave them freedom within a framework, you know?
Richard Campbell (27:41):
Sure.
Emma Woodley (27:41):
Everyone wants freedom, but not too much. You need to know where the guardrails are.
Richard Campbell (27:44):
Right. Well, I also think when you think about the spend across developing creative, the idea that you can validate along the way with this testing, and say, "We are going in the right direction and we're going in the wrong direction," as opposed to other marketing I've seen, where all that spend happens and the only measure is, did it get results at the end?
(28:04):
And if it didn't, it's already too late. You've spent the money. So, I mean, anything I can do to help validate in steps and have more confidence coming into the big spend, which is taking the creative and putting it out in the world, that this has tested well every step of the way and this is the one that's likely to get the best results.
Emma Woodley (28:23):
Absolutely. And I used to work for a big brand that was one of the biggest advertisers in the country and do a lot of testing on ads when literally they were made.
Richard Campbell (28:33):
Right.
Emma Woodley (28:34):
And we'd always say, "Oh, it's okay. We'll do this kind of messaging test and we'll just learn for the next one we make."
Richard Campbell (28:42):
Right.
Emma Woodley (28:42):
And that just feels like that's a massive missed opportunity. Especially, think KFC, we're making a lot of ads, but still you want learn about the ad you're making, not the one that's to come in the future.
Richard Campbell (28:55):
Yeah, yeah. No, we definitely want to work on the piece that you're working on at the time. Not that in traditional testing you wouldn't do routine testing. Just a question of how effective it was. I'd be interested in seeing where you course-corrected partway through creative. To me, that'd be a great moment.
(29:12):
Where we thought that this set of emotions were important strategically, we built an initial set of storyboards that then tested well against that emotion. And then, as we started implementing characters and colors and sounds and so forth, found it was no longer effective. And then corrected it. And did, till it did test well the next step, before we spent more and went further before you actually shot it, you know, finished development.
(29:38):
The idea that you could have a save like that, not that you'd never really know because you never do make the wrong one.
Emma Woodley (29:45):
Exactly.
Richard Campbell (29:45):
Right.
Emma Woodley (29:46):
We did it in store design as well. The store's the embodiment of the brand.
Richard Campbell (29:51):
Right.
Emma Woodley (29:51):
But there were times where we get that wrong because we built something that just didn't work. Not saying the whole store had to be demolished or anything.
Richard Campbell (30:02):
Yeah.
Emma Woodley (30:03):
It was more, there were just things about the colorways or the seating or something around that just didn't quite work, that just wasn't quite communicating what we were trying to embody. And that if we'd only built one store, thank goodness. We could change it before we build out of state.
Richard Campbell (30:22):
Right.
Emma Woodley (30:22):
But it gave us that opportunity. Because before we started using these techniques, the only thing you could do to evaluate a store was to go and do an accompanied visit with somebody.
Richard Campbell (30:33):
Right.
Emma Woodley (30:33):
Where they're sort of primed to sort of, "Oh, do I like that light fitting?" And it's all very how they feel about stuff, but they can't really tell you.
Richard Campbell (30:41):
No.
Emma Woodley (30:42):
Because they process stuff at a subconscious level.
Richard Campbell (30:44):
Yeah.
Emma Woodley (30:45):
But you still ask them the questions.
Richard Campbell (30:48):
Yeah.
Emma Woodley (30:48):
And we were getting terrible feedback and being sent off in all sorts of strange directions, and didn't really have a solution.
Richard Campbell (30:56):
Right.
Emma Woodley (30:56):
And until these things came along to help us.
Richard Campbell (30:59):
And even if you just build two different styles of store somewhere in the market, the different locations are going to affect the numbers too. It's always a question of, do we really know what the difference is between these two, which is one is better than the other?
Emma Woodley (31:09):
Yeah.
Richard Campbell (31:10):
Where I feel like implicit testing tends to be more precise around all of that.
Emma Woodley (31:14):
Absolutely. And it's more. It can capture that feeling that you're trying to evoke as well, which you can't get in traditional research.
Richard Campbell (31:23):
Yeah. I think you've hit on the real powerful thing. When I'm trying to talk inside of an organization around, "Let's try this," it's like we know how valuable these emotional responses are, and this is the kind of testing that measures emotional response effectively.
Emma Woodley (31:36):
Yeah.
Richard Campbell (31:36):
Where very little else does.
Emma Woodley (31:39):
Absolutely. It was the missing piece that I've been looking for all those years. And I almost left the industry because I thought this is-
Richard Campbell (31:46):
And instead you transform your career to focus on it. I mean-
Emma Woodley (31:49):
Yeah, completely.
Richard Campbell (31:51):
You certainly bet your gold on this truth too.
Emma Woodley (31:55):
Yeah, absolutely.
Richard Campbell (31:58):
Emma, I really appreciate your conversation. I feel like, if I'm a marketer, you've given me some ammunition just to really be the advocate for neurosciences out of my organization. And that you're going to reap that reward. I kind of think there was almost a moment where you've transformed your career, where doing that research becomes more important than any given marketing campaign you are working on.
Emma Woodley (32:19):
Absolutely. It was the center of everything I did, and it's the center of everything I do now.
Richard Campbell (32:24):
Yeah.
Emma Woodley (32:24):
So, it's been an amazing journey. Loved it.
Richard Campbell (32:27):
Well, thanks for coming on the show. I really appreciate your insights.
Emma Woodley (32:29):
Thank you so much.
Richard Campbell (32:31):
And this is another episode of Understanding Consumer Neuroscience. Thanks for listening.