Session 2: Consumer understanding & Insight – Part 1

1. OPENING CASE STUDY: RHYTHM 0 EXPERIMENT - BY MARINA ABRAMOVIC

(1974)

The work involved Abramović standing still while the audience was invited to do to her

whatever they wished, using one of 72 objects she had placed on a table included a rose,

feather, perfume, honey, bread, grapes, wine, scissors, a scalpel, nails, a metal bar, and

a gun. At first, the visitors were gentle to begin with, offering her a rose or a kiss.

And then, things came out of control, it became worse. In the third hour, her clothes were

cut. Various minor sexual assaults were carried out on her body. After exactly 6 hours,

she started walking toward the audience. Everyone ran away, to escape an actual

confrontation

Why people treated her like that?

• Crowd effect: make people feel they are a part of the community (and doing

something beyond individual benefits but A GROUP PURPOSE). Therefore, they

think what they were doing is a COMMONALITY, and the COMMONALITY normally

right.

• Why even people don’t come to hurt the lady, but sitting still to watch the others do

it. The attention, the resistance, the engagement, the addiction, the varied emotion range

varying tell a lot about humans.

Why people ran away when the work over?

• The Dark sides: People tend to avoid confronting their dark sides. No one wants to

admit that they are doing something bad or not good. In this case, the darkest sides of

people was revealed is “instinctive violence”

Some take-away thoughts:

• Humans are difficult to understand but everyone has their hidden sides. Desires.

Instincts. Tendencies. Fears. Obsessions. The underneath needs, wants are much

more true and powerful.

• The importance and impacts of crowd effects.

• People tend to follow what the crowd are doing and perceive it as an COMMONALITY

and it will have some “positive perceived” purpose.. So marketer can create common

ritual/behavior by :

• Create the belief for consumers: by giving consumers the purpose that normally is set

by a group of people sharing that belief/purpose/ visions.

• As of the crowd effects: by finding the pain poins of the crowd/group of people, help

them to overcome this by engaging with our brand.

• Urgency: The fear of missing something is more powerful and triggering to people than

achieving it, embracing people to take action to do it.

Example: Campaign OMO Tet - “Chang Can Hoan Hao, Cung Tron Ven Tet Vui”

• If the campaign only communicate to one individual, the campaign will come to nowhere,

even they have a very powerful insight of Mom. The reason is no women wanting to be

judged as being lazy/heartless/incompetent to make a perfect Tet, which goes against

the social norm/expectations.

Open to Discuss Question: Human is hard to understand, but human nature is good or

bad? The answer of marketer for this question will define a lot the way they do marketing

and deep dive human understanding and brand building.

2. CONSUMERS INSIGHT, OR CLOSER LOOK INTO HUMAN FEARS

Marketing is all about understanding the consumers, clearly shown through the consumer

insight.

Some suggested factors for Marketers to understand consumer:

Treat consumer as a human, not a target audience. Always try to sympathize with

consumers’ lives, empathize with their dreams and tensions and compassionate with

them.

Sympathize: understand their life based mostly on what we have learned.

Empathize: try to put yourself into someone’s shoes to deeply understand the

feelings/issues that the person is going through, mostly coming from relevant

experiences.

(The difference between the most commonly used meanings of these two terms is:

sympathy is feeling compassion, sorrow, or pity for the hardships that another person

encounters. empathy is putting yourself in the shoes of another)

Compassionate: love, forgive with consumer, deeply understand them and want to do

things which make them better. But we cannot have compassion with consumer if we

don't have our self-compassion.

(define: compassion is a feeling of deep sympathy and sorrow for another who is stricken

by misfortune, accompanied by a strong desire to alleviate the suffering)

Find the suitable group of consumers that our brand can fit in (belief, a geography, a

demographic, a lifestyle driven or, more likely, a psychographic) and give a

competitive/unique service to them. You cannot serve all humans, instead, segmenting

to find your potential consumers, who will be seeking for your brand unique offerings or

in other words, your brand can serve best and sustainably that segment.

Basically, Insight is categorized as enemies/tension or dreams/desires or both of

humans, but deep within these two is all rooted in fear, and all humans have fear.

Example:

• Starbucks - The Third Place: a place for office hectic people escape their fear of taking

responsibility at home and office. In Starbucks, people can freely enjoy, relax, comfortable

without any fear. Coffee, ambience, aroma contribute to making such an experience to

serve their consumer "emotional escape".

• Nike - Just do it: embrace human (especially kids and young people) possibilities, help

people to overcome their fear of social norm/old or pre-perception of their limits or

allowance to do something - with their brand belief: everyone can be a better athlete,

everyone’s ability or the competency to make possibilities is beyond their perception. Just

do it! Overcome the fear of failure to get out the better you!

• Axe - Gives men the edge in the mating game: serve for unconfident persons (their fear)

– who are ordinary boys, not the handsome, good looking, athletic guys (stereotyped

men) – Axe consumers are very normal or even under-norm - to easier attract girls with

its special fragrance (actually his own elevated sexual seduction).

• Tinder App: help experience-seeking people easy overcome the fear of love rejection

by simplifying the way people matching with each other (just swipe right), and connecting
people of the dating need together ang get away fears due to high chance of success

(right people, right time) and the feeling of normalities as both are seeking for

relationships!

3. CONSUMER NEEDS AND WANTS AT A GLANCE

Consumer choose a product/brand base on their basic needs. Marketers are the ones

who diversify and elevate the need to make products evolve into specific brands,

proposing consumers a RELEVANT AND INSPIRING choice. Brand is founded when it

stands for a distinctive value BEYOND the product and functional features, speaking to a

specific consumer segment they choose to serve.

Example:

• Omo: based on the need of removing stains, the brand gives inspiration for discerning

progressive Moms to let their kids play and learn without worrying about getting dirts,

communicated and activated under the brand platform “Dirt is Good" and later moved to

“Dirt for Good”. The “unleash human potential” the value that Omo stands for.

• The Body Shop: successfully built up their brand as nature-lover through no product-

testing on animals, not only about their product features (made from nature), turning the

brand stand for a lifestyle/belief their supporting consumers want to stay with and

advocate for the brand itself.

Want: is the specific personal desire that is elevated from consumer need and also the

starting point to build brand. It can make the brand relevant with consumer (personal),

specific (able to own), and have aspiration/appealing (desire). And further is

PURPOSE/BELIEF -> able to build great brands versus the norm brands.
*Great brand: the the brand that can go beyond social norms and long established

acceptance, leading to culture and oriented social movements or creating new beliefs/

perceptions.

Consumer Insight in short: is the combination of NEED AND

INSPIRATION/ASPIRATION.

5 basic levels of need Maslow’s Hierarchy: From the bottom of the hierarchy upwards,

the needs are: physiological, safety, love and belonging, esteem, and self-actualization

follow:

• Needs lower down must be satisfied before human can attend to needs higher up.

• 4 bottom levels: help people to survive and to prove themself. The highest level (self-

actualization): help people to search for meaning of the life.

• The higher the need can be satisfied, the more willingness of customers to pay higher

money, more loyalty with our brand. And at the same time, the lower the need, the bigger

(size) and essential-ity it is.

Example: BMW brand stands for 'Sheer pleasure of driving' can work upon 4 level of

needs (varying on the market maturity and consumer segmentation) and can be reflected

into a wide product portfolio with different levels of inspirations and pricing/premiums:

(1) I enjoy driving

(2) Driving is my passion

(3) Driving with speed/ high performance is my lifestyle

(4) Conquering the road is my philosophy/ signature