1. technology and computing

E S S AY
The
Match Game
R
emember Veruca Salt, the nasty rich girl
in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory?
She owned the catchphrase of a generation,
“I want it and I want it now!” Veruca met
her early demise when she fell down the
rejected golden goose chute. Willy Wonka explained:
“She was a bad egg.”
Veruca Salt was an early case study that proved
making demands impatiently was socially unacceptable
and that those who behaved badly would be punished.
But times have changed. And so have our brains.
Literally. Retailers are now faced with the very real
expectation of I want what I want when I want it
(IWWIWWIWI) from their customers. The phrase
was coined by Kit Yarrow, consumer psychologist and
author of Decoding the New Consumer Mind, and is
mushrooming among a retail community desperately
trying to ‘surprise and delight’ a target for whom the
standard for basic satisfaction is impossibly high.
Brand messages must
be a match for the
newly wired brain.
Since our brains are malleable, they evolve to
respond to experience. As a result of technological
behavior, our brains are neurologically different
than they once were. Areas used frequently become
more efficient, faster, and more powerful. Conversely,
areas we don’t use don’t work as well as they once
did. The result is that our sense of time, our ability
to focus, and our capacity to pay attention changed
dramatically in just over a decade.
Social critics continue to debate the trade-offs of
these changes — is all this technology really good for
us? However, as marketers, we might be best served
to avoid judgment and simply acknowledge the new
normal: Our customers just don’t process information
the same way they once did. The implications of
technology on how the brain filters and processes
information are critical as we mine for insights.
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Insights
for the
Ne w Wo r l d
We won’t succeed in the new world by trying
to change how customers process the messages
we present to them. To win, we need to present
information that better matches their new ways of
thinking. To help illustrate the evolving new normal,
the following are some realities of our customers’
rewired brains and examples of business-building
insights that address each.
Capacity for information retention is low … and
that’s okay. We are experiencing extreme overload
because the amount of information we are bombarded
with so far exceeds the capacity of our working
memories. Productivity expert Tony Schwartz
describes water poured into a glass all day long. The
glass can only contain a certain amount of water
at any one time, so the excess spills out. We can’t
retain all of the information we encounter. Much of it,
consciously or unconsciously, must be filtered out.
Limiting the quantity of information communicated
is always a challenge, but now it’s a matter of life
or death. If we can’t synthesize our brand message
into something highly scannable, we risk being
completely ignored. If you think your proposition is
too complicated to pass the scan test, think of the
iPod launch. Apple introduced a new MP3 player with
literally thousands of technical features without a
single word of copy, instead focusing on the insight of
linking people to their passion for music.
Few brands can expect to achieve iPod’s meteoric
success, but synthesizing the brand essence into a
singular image can access audiences on the devices
where they now spend significant time. Ikea created
100 emoticons, including a plate of Swedish meatballs
topped with a flag. Instead of trying to compete
against smartphones for attention, having a meaningful
brand message that can be conveyed through a
smartphone can instantly provide opportunity for
interaction with two billion people across the globe.
With so many choices, even old favorites need
news to get attention. Our new brains tire of even
our favorite things in short order. Even iconic brands
are not immune to the firing of neurons that create
boredom. Ben & Jerry’s understands that its fans
aren’t just looking for sweet treats — they want
entertainment in the form of a variety of names,
flavors, ingredients, textures, and stories.
Staples like Cherry Garcia and Chocolate Chip
Cookie Dough have remained in distribution over
the years, but there’s a consistent stream of specialty
flavors with in-and-out distribution. Flavors celebrating
the 40th anniversary of Saturday Night Live, including
Wayne’Swirled and Two Wild & Crazy Pies give Ben &
Jerry’s consumers reasons to think of this established
brand as relevant and always evolving.
Purchase cycles are getting shorter because new
products are better. With so much stimulation, our
brains have learned to process more information
faster and to see more things simultaneously, further
increasing our level of distraction. Ironically, we don’t
miss the focus; we crave the stimulation. A constant
stream of innovation is required to satisfy that need
for stimulation. The new brain expects product news
at a faster rate than ever before.
Technology itself is the best example of this. New
technology is expected to be better than its previous
iteration so that it’s coveted. For digital natives, the
desire for devices like iPads accelerates because
these young, new brains want more, faster — both
physiologically and emotionally — and crave enhanced
features. Make it thinner, lighter, and more powerful.
Give me a display with more vivid colors and better
contrast. Longer battery life? Yes, please. Faster
wireless? Fingerprint security? But of course.
Smart retailers leverage this insight by accelerating
their offerings. Fast-fashion retailers H&M and Zara
increased the new-fashion cycle threefold over the
traditional model, to as short as once every four
weeks. Its shoppers learn that an item is likely not
to be in stock on a return visit, so they need to
buy immediately if they want it, reinforcing their
proclivity to make impulse purchase decisions.
Distraction emanating from multi-tasking is
not going away … so work with it. A recent study by
Kleiner Perkins found that, on average, users check
their phone nearly 150 times per day. In urban stores,
research tells us that 7-Eleven shoppers tend to look
down at smartphones as they enter the store, missing the
impact of the storefront displays.
To make shopper entrances more powerful,
7-Eleven used dynamic digital signage that incorporated
most-searched information — like local weather,
sports, and news — with 7-Eleven’s promotions,
such as fountain and single-serve beverage specials
or sandwiches. This is an example of the kind of
evolution necessary to match customers’ current
behavior to effectively convey revelant messages.
The IWWIWWIWI mentality is growing more
pervasive. Consumers are becoming increasingly
sensitive to perceived wastes of their time: waiting
in line, waiting for delivery, waiting on the phone,
product out-of-stocks. IWWIWWIWI permeates every
possible aspect of the brand experience. Retailers will
be held to an increasingly high standard of performance.
While IWWIWWIWI can present retailers with high
hurdles to overcome, it also offers great opportunities.
The inverse of impatience is the excitement and
attendant impulsivity of spontaneity and news, so
brilliantly tapped by the flash-sale phenomenon.
Deal-of-the-day businesses typically feature products
and services like apparel, restaurants, travel, special
events, and wellness packages. Participants receive
notifications of special, time-sensitive offerings.
Sometimes supplies are limited — so first come, first
served. These parameters precisely match the cravings
of our newly wired brains. We get excitement. We get
the opportunity to satisfy our impulses by buying
things we didn’t plan on and don’t need.
A personal favorite is WTSO (Wines Til Sold Out),
the largest wine flash-website, which sells a single
wine at a time at 30-70 percent off retail price, with
free shipping. Only when the featured wine is sold
out does a new wine appear. This continues 24/7 with
as many as five different wines a day. Because rare
wines are included, it’s in my interest to pay attention
to the always-changing offering, since the best wines
have the shortest buying windows.
• • •
If you’re scanning this article based on the
physiology of your new and improved brain structure,
here’s what you really need to know: Consumers have
no tolerance for wading through anything extraneous
to get what they need from us. That means marketers
need to be more disciplined than ever to mine the
canyons of metadata to get to the single diamond of
insight that really matters.
IWWIWWIWI consumers are going to bring out
the very best thinking in all of us. They won’t have
the patience to give us a second chance. n
SHARON LOVE is chief executive
officer of TPN, a brand-centric
retail marketing agency with clients
including 7-Eleven, Bank of America,
The Clorox Company, PepsiCo and The
Hershey Company. She can be reached
at [email protected].
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