Linguistic Gymnastics
A new tool that can help marketers reduce the uncertainty surrounding consumer research.
Why rely simply on someone's word when you can rely on their actions?
Expanding consumer choice, proliferating media channels and tighter margins have heightened the need for marketers to pinpoint real product and brand differentiators, and devise new ways to communicate them.
Progressive brand owners and agencies are now challenging the accepted wisdom and conventional methodologies. They are exploring alternative techniques to inspire and drive their communication strategy.
Up to now most have focused on consumers' opinions, voiced at traditional research groups. These rely heavily on what people say they will do in the future and their reactions to advertising, product samples and creative concepts. However, the opinions are often gathered in a relatively false setting - typically a stranger's front room in suburbia - and encouraged by a few drinks and a £20 attendance fee. The weaknesses in this approach are obvious, and they are prompting marketers to explore new options.
An emerging discipline, Language and Behaviour Profiling (LAB), might offer a way forward in consumer research, personnel training, product and communications development. Based on the broad field of Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP), LAB is a technique for discovering what happens at the unconscious level in consumers' minds. It tells us how they relate to brands; what 'turns them on' and what makes them feel good about purchasing or using a service.
The big difference, compared with current research methods, is that LAB focuses on what has happened to consumers in the past and what their main drivers were for behaving in a particular way. People use certain language to describe their experiences, which have been filtered by their unconscious into a 'manageable' form that can be related to others. This only accounts for about 10% of what actually happened. LAB techniques, using a simple set of questions surrounding events in the customers' experience, allow us to access the remaining 90% of 'what happened' to motivate purchase and provide the key to influencing future behaviours.
Working closely with Lisa Mills and Fiona Richardson of Talking Solutions, we recognised the power of this opportunity, and have successfully applied the technique to an ongoing strategic training, communications and incentive project for BSkyB.
Consolidation in the cable industry had made it increasingly difficult for Sky to educate call centre staff who sell its TV channels, and there was no cohesive way to measure the effectiveness of any training activity. The profiling process involved analysis of linguistic patterns identified in one-to-one interviews with employees from three target job functions. We then built a motivational 'profile' for each group in a Work context. They were seen to have different needs and the exercise showed us how to adopt the appropriate types of language, and develop variable training activities, that would 'naturally' motivate them to absorb more Sky channel 'learns' without 'stopping to think'. It also helped us focus our written communication to make it work far more effectively.
From a copy perspective, the project added an interesting new dimension to the work we do and for our writers it proved to be a pretty steep learning curve. If we had any reservations about LAB profiling, it was that science would stifle creativity. Not so. Once the ground rules are understood, it becomes much easier to build the right linguistic triggers into the copy. This process is interesting in itself because, as individuals, we have traits that are evident in our natural speech patterns. These undoubtedly seep into our creative writing and may be inappropriate in certain situations. Being aware of this has helped us to become more focused on words, phrases and activities that certain groups of people will respond to. We have also been able to dig a little deeper and identify the 'hot buttons' of a particular audience and then address specific elements of their motivations.
It has been an eye-opening experience, but one that has led me to believe that the broader field of NLP, and LAB in particular, has great potential for the marketing industry - not just for print work, but across all of the media channels we use.
Andy Sylvester is joint creative director of Birmingham marcoms agency KLM
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