Sunday, October 24, 2010

A Consumer is a Temporary State of Being

How do you define a Consumer? Is she a person who buys your products? Who consumes your products?

The person whom we consider to be our consumer, also does one million and one other things throughout the day. She is not our consumer 24/7. If we look at the person from the inside, we can clearly see that this person is not the same person in different contexts. She adorns different avatars when surrounded by different discourses. These avatars, or "Moments of Identity" as Virginia Valentine from Semiotics coins it, are contextual and volatile in nature. They are temporary states of being. Similarly, only when the person is in the context of our brand, and she consciously immerses herself in the context, does she adorn the avatar of our consumer.

So, the lessons brands can learn from this perspective of looking at consumers is to make the brand discourse culturally immersive for the person to transform into a consumer. It is more important for the person to see herself as our consumer instead of we falsely assuming her to be one.

Inspired from 21st Century Consumer by Wendy Gordon & Virginia Valentine

Sir Ken Robinson - Animated!

Excellent piece of work by RSA Animate. Must watch.

Thursday, October 14, 2010

Choiceville - Conjoint Analysis in a new Avatar

Click on the image to enlarge

Market Research enters the world of gaming. The respondent creates his own “desired” avatar by choosing from the available options similar to the choices available in conjoint analysis - but in the form of an interactive game. She can pick up products from the shelf after looking at their price tag and attributes using her aforesaid budget. The Avatar created by a person symbolizes her "Ideal Self", driven by her needs and wants.The options available will be real brands and real products. This idea is applicable especially in identifying extrinsic motivation factors and self congruity with brands. What brands do consumers want on themselves? What brands do consumers want others to see on them?

Maybe, this can be the next idea to measure consumers' needs and wants...

This poster is my entry for the NewMR Virtual Festival and it can also be viewed here.

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

GeneticMR - Could it be a possibility?



We all have witnessed how MR has used Neuro science as a tool to gauge what is happening inside the consumer's head. But the consumer is not just made of his head. She has a lot of processes happening all over her body that plays a role in her moods, emotions, behavior, feelings, needs and desires. Could it be possible to study the holistic DNA structure of the human genome to find alleles that influence needs? Maybe we can identify universal patterns and also individual differences. One major advantage is that there will be zero respondent fatigue because we would just need a strand of her hair!

Friday, October 1, 2010

ShweePea - A new brand I cooked up

We had a course on 'Visual Literacy' recently at MICA where we worked on an interesting assignment of creating a new brand for any product or service category. So, we thought of launching a new chain of playschools across the country and name it "ShweePea".
The underlying idea that guides our brand purpose emerges from Sir Ken Robinson's TED talk below:



Each kid has tremendous talent. Kids are not frightened to make mistakes; they are ready to try everything. But the world teaches them to be scared to make mistakes. Creativity, which is the process of having original ideas of some value, comes from seeing things differently and that’s what ShweePea would help kids do.
Based on the Montessori school of thought, we nurture innocent naughtiness in your child and ensure that he doesn’t lose the capacity to think creatively. The brand elements are colorful and safe with smooth rounded edges. We have made all elements including the fonts, shapes and colors reflect innocent naughtiness. :)