Unwanted Christmas presents + consumer psychology = fascinating insights about poster creative. By ZenithOptimedia’s Richard Shotton.
When it comes to gifts people say it’s the thought that counts.
However, what people say and what they do are different things. As David Ogilvy pithily put it: “Consumers don’t think how they feel, say what they think or do what they say.”
Compelling evidence about the level of dissatisfaction with Christmas gifts has recently been published in the US. Shorr Packaging estimated $19.4 billion of goods will be returned after Christmas – nearly a quarter of the value of all e-commerce sales. It seems that many consumers are underwhelmed by their presents.
But why? Evidence from Frank Flynn and Francesca Gino, psychologists at Stanford and Harvard respectively, sheds light on the matter.
The academic evidence
The researchers recruited 160 consumers and asked half to reflect on gifts they had received while the rest thought about those they had given. They found that the recipients tended to be most appreciative of gifts they had specified and, surprisingly, they also perceived those gifts as more thoughtful and considerate than presents they hadn’t requested.
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In contrast, givers assumed that it was gifts that weren’t bought from a list that would be most appreciated.
This discrepancy in feelings is interesting as it happens despite most people regularly moving from one group to another. Sometimes we give presents, and sometimes we receive them. The experiment therefore suggests that we struggle to accurately remember our feelings from previous experience. We can’t help but get caught up in the moment.
And it’s this inability to empathise with others that is so interesting for marketers.
The marketing application
Consider posters. Many posters are approved after poring over mock-ups in a meeting room, a scenario far removed from that of the distracted passer-by. Ivan Batey, a researcher at ZenithOptimedia, conducted a small, albeit unscientific, experiment to quantify the problem.
He walked around the West End and categorised the legibility of posters from the other side of the street. He found that 4% were illegible and for more than a third, only the headline could be easily read. This represents a significant waste of money.
The solution is to change the context of evaluation, either by pre-testing copy on an actual billboard or monitoring consumers’ response using excellent mock-up tools like Posterscope and JCDecaux’s ‘Virtuocity’.
Illegible copy is just one example of a broader problem. Marketers’ experiences are unrepresentative because they spend far more time thinking about the brand than their customers. It’s crucial, therefore, that they don’t assume that consumer reactions to their messaging can be predicted just through reflection.
Instead, the main lesson from Flynn and Gino’s research is that we need to spend more time bringing a consumer perspective to bear on the message and media at the start of the planning process.
And that next time you need to buy a present, choose from the list.
Richard Shotton is head of insight at ZenithOptimedia
Twitter: @rshotton
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