Category Archives: Cognition

Picking and Choosing What We Pay Attention To

First published October 9, 2008 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

In a single day, you will be assaulted by hundreds of thousands of discrete bits of information. I’m writing this from a hotel room on the corner of 43rd and 8th in New York. Just a simple three-block walk down 8th Avenue will present me with hundreds bits of information: signs, posters, flyers, labels, brochures. By the time I go to sleep this evening, I will be exposed to over 3,000 advertising messages. Every second of our lives, we are immersed in a world of detail and distraction, all vying for our attention. Even the metaphors we use, such as “paying attention,” show that we consider attention a valuable commodity to be allocated wisely.

 

Lining Up for the Prefrontal Cortex

Couple this with the single-mindedness of the prefrontal cortex, home of our working memory. There, we work on one task at a time. We are creatures driven by a constant stack of goals and objectives. We pull our big goals out, one and a time, often break it into sub goals and tasks, and then pursue these with the selective engagement of the prefrontal cortex. The more demanding the task, the more we have to shut out the deluge of detail screaming for our attention.

Our minds have an amazingly effective filter that continually scans our environment, subconsciously monitoring all this detail, and then moving it into our attentive focus if our sub cortical alarm system determines we should give it conscious attention. So, as we daydream our way through our lives, we don’t unconsciously plow through pedestrians as they step in front of us. We’re jolted into conscious awareness until the crisis is dealt with, working memory is called into emergency duty, and then, post crisis, we have to try to pick up the thread of what we were doing before. This example shows that working memory is not a multi-tasker. It’s impossible to continue to mentally balance your check book while you’re trying to avoid smashing into the skateboarding teen who just careened off the side walk. Only one task at a time, thank you.

You Looked, but Did You See?

The power of our ability to focus and filter out extraneous detail is a constant source of amazement for me. We’ve done several engagement studies where we have captured physical interactions with an ad (tracked through an eye tracker) on a web page of several seconds in duration, then have participants swear there was no ad there. They looked at the ad, but their mind was somewhere else, quite literally. The extreme example of this can be found in an amusing experiment done by University of Illinois  cognitive psychologist  Daniel J. Simons and now enjoying viral fame through YouTube. Go ahead and check it out  before you read any further if you haven’t already seen it. (Count the number of times the white team passes the ball)

This selective perception is the door through which we choose to let the world into our conscious (did you see the Gorilla in the video? If not, go back and try again). And its door that advertisers have been trying to pry through for the past 200 years at least. We are almost never focused on advertising, so, in order for it to be effective, it has to convince us to divert our attention from what we’re currently doing. The strategies behind this diversion have become increasingly sophisticated. Advertising can play to our primal cues. A sexy woman is almost always guaranteed to divert a man’s attention. Advertising can throw a road block in front of our conscious objectives, forcing us to pass through them. TV ads work this way, literally bringing our stream of thought to a screeching halt and promising to pick it up again “right after these messages”. The hope is that there is enough engagement momentum for us to keep focused on the 30 second blurb for some product guaranteed to get our floors/teeth/shirts whiter.

Advertising’s Attempted Break-In

The point is, almost all advertising never enjoys the advantage of having working memory actively engaged in trying to understand its message. Every variation has to use subterfuge, emotion or sheer force to try to hammer its way into our consciousness. This need has led to the industry searching for a metric that attempts to measure the degree to which our working memory is on the job. In the industry, we call it engagement. The ARF defined engagement as “turning on a prospect to a brand idea enhanced by the surrounding media context.” Really, engagement is better described as smashing through the selective perception filter.

In a recent study, ARF acknowledged the importance of emotion as a powerful way to sneak past the guardhouse and into working memory. Perhaps more importantly, the study shows the power of emotion to ensure memories make it from short term to long term memory: “Emotion underlies engagement which affects memory of experience, thinking about the experience, and subsequent behavior.  Emotion is not a peripheral phenomenon but involves people completely.  Emotions have motivational properties, to the extent that people seek to maximize the experience of positive emotions and to minimize the experience of negative emotions.  Emotion is fundamental to engagement.  Emotion directs attention to the causally significant aspects of the experience, serves to encode and classify the ‘unusual’ (unexpected or novel) in memory, and promotes persisting rehearsal of the event-memory. In this way, thinking/feeling/memory articulates the experience to guide future behaviors.”

With this insight into the marketing mindset, honed by decades of hammering away at our prefrontal cortex, it’s little wonder why the marketing community has struggled with where search fits in the mix. Search plays by totally different neural rules. And that means its value as a branding tool also has to play by those same rules.  I’ll look at that next week.

Questioning the Power of the Influencer

First published October 2, 2008 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

Word of mouth is powerful in marketing. In the last two weeks, we’ve seen how the opinions of others can cause us to change our own beliefs to match. We’ve also seen how the speed at which the word spreads is a function not only of the structure of the network itself, but also the value of the message and its impact on the people in the network, as well as how much they stand to gain (or lose) by spreading the word.

Influencers: Our Connection to Opinion?

In the world of marketing, one of the most cherished concepts has been the idea of an influencer or opinion leader, the super-connected individual who acts as a hub in an information cascade, rapidly disseminating the idea to many. According to this theory, most of us (90%) play relatively passive roles in information cascades, meekly accepting the opinions of these influencers and following the herd. Katz and Lazarsfeld introduced the two-step influencer model in the middle of the last century, showing how media first influences these influencers, or opinion leaders, who then act as a conduit and “infection agent” for the greater population.

It’s Not the Influencer, It’s Our Willingness to be Influenced

For the past 6 decades, marketers have allocated a lot of effort in reaching these influencers, assuming that once you capture the influencers, you capture the entire market. The assumption was that information cascades depended on these influential hubs. Malcolm Gladwell’s “TheTipping Point” brought this phenomenon to popular attention.

In the past few years, a number of researchers, including Duncan Watts from Columbia University, have questioned the impact of influencers on information cascades. They’ve created several network models which have shown that in most cases, ordinary individuals are all that’s required to trigger a word-of-mouth cascade. We are not merely sheep following the herd. We are all influencers in our own right, but only when we feel strongly about something. The necessary ingredient is not a hyper-connected influencer or super trend-setter, but rather a group of people willing to be influenced.

Passion by Word of Mouth

Which brings us to Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ.” When promoting the film, Gibson knew the most receptive audience would be church-goers. So he arranged for private screenings and the distribution of free tickets in churches throughout North America. We had Watts’ ideal model, a low variance network (similar levels of influence) that shared a vulnerability to influence, given the nature of the message. Word spread quickly before the launch of the movie (which also resulted in a firestorm of controversy), making “The Passion of the Christ” one of the most successful movies of 2004.

This example also leads us to a possible error in analysis of information cascades that has perpetuated the “influencer” theory. It’s relatively easy, when looking in hindsight, to make the assumption that if a cascade happened, the individuals at the beginning of the cascade had to be unique in their ability to influence others. A proponent of the Influentials Theory could look at the example of “The Passion of the Christ” and say that it was the pastors and ministers of the selected screening churches that acted as the influencers, spreading the word to their congregations.

But Watts’ theory offers an alternate explanation. The everyday, commonly connected members of the audience were willing to be influenced, and once captured by the message, went and spread it within their other social groups. It was the willingness to be influenced that was the critical factor. To use the analogy provided by Watts in his paper, assuming some unique level of influence by the catalysts of a cascade is like assuming that the first trees to burn in a forest fire are somehow able to spread flames farther than other trees. Often, the fact that the tree was combustible in the first place is overlooked.

Starting a Brand Fire

So, when we talk about brand, what makes a tree ready to catch on fire? Here we have another important insight from Watts’ work. Too many marketers make the assumption that influencers are the critical component of success. Proctor and Gamble has made influencer marketing a cornerstone of its strategy. But the fact is, if “The Passion of the Christ” was an unremarkable movie that audiences couldn’t connect with, all the influencers in the world wouldn’t have caused the word to spread. It was a powerful message connecting with an audience primed to accept it.

Watts’ models show that the success of a cascade depends on the vulnerability to influence. If that is present, ordinary individuals can cause the word to spread as far and just as quickly as hyper-connected influencers. And the vulnerability to be influenced, the “combustibility” of the audience, depends on many factors, perhaps the most important of which is the back story of the brand.

The Combustible iPhone

Look at what has been one of the most successful cascades of recent times: the Apple iPhone. The iPhone is a tremendously combustible product. It’s not technology mavens causing the word to spread (although they do have influence. Watts is quick to point out that they have impact, but it may not as disproportionally large as everyone believes), it’s the person sitting next to you on the plane who says she loves it. And we’re receptive to that message because we have that magic connection of brand (Apple makes cool products) and a remarkable product. We’re ready to be set on fire.

I’ve spent the last few columns detailing the aspects of word of mouth because they have a tremendous impact on brand and how we create our own brand beliefs. And it’s these brand beliefs that are triggered when we interact with search results. Next week, we return to more familiar territory and see how this interaction plays out.

Branding by Word of Mouth

First published September 18, 2008 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

In the past few weeks, I’ve looked at where our feelings towards brands come from and how they get stored in our brains for future recall. I’ve looked at how powerful brand beliefs can be, even to the point of altering our physical sensations (the Coke blind taste test), how advertising can mix with our own personal experiences to create false memories, how emotions can build a powerful subconscious reaction to a brand and how we label complex concepts, including brands, with a summary label that reduces all we know about a brand to an easily accessible impression. Today, I’ll round out the building of brand belief with perhaps the most powerful influence of all: the opinion of others.

Social by Nature

We are social creatures. One of the reasons humans have flourished on earth is because we take advantage of the power of groups. We have built extremely sophisticated heuristic rules to help us know when to trust and when to be wary. In our past, human survival depended on the passing of information from those we trusted and ignoring information from less trustworthy sources. While the survival value of word of mouth might not be as critical to us now (unless knowing a good Chinese restaurant or mechanic is a matter of life and death) those evolutionary mechanisms are still in place, and every piece of information we receive has to be filtered through them.

Remember, heuristic rules, which we know as our gut instincts, tend to form when the same circumstances produce the same results in the majority of cases. Given this stable pattern, we create a subconscious mechanism that allows us to act without thinking. A huge percentage of human behavior falls into this category (I explored one example, habits, previously in this column). The same is true for how we treat word of mouth information. Let me give you two examples.

Whom Can You Trust?

First, the closer someone is to us, the more we tend to trust their opinion. The word of family or close friends tends to carry a lot more weight than that of a stranger. That’s because friends and family have proven their worth in the past and gained our trust. They haven’t steered us wrong before, so why should they now? Secondly, the more enthusiastic the endorsement, the more value we give it. If we get a wishy-washy recommendation, we probably won’t run right out and take action. But if someone close to us is ecstatically recommending a Thai restaurant, the odds are we’ll try it ourselves in the near future. Enthusiastic endorsement shows that the initial impression was strong and memorable because it was emotionally tagged, making it more believable to us. Incidentally, it probably isn’t coincidence that many personal recommendations tend to revolve around eating. Sharing information about promising food patches would have been a key survival strategy for our ancestors.

Gut-Level Judgments

When we get presented with information from others, it’s not as though we pass the information through a number of rational filters. Calculations like the two examples are done below the surface. At a gut level, we instantaneously affix credibility to word of mouth and decide whether to pay attention or not. But if we do pay attention, this becomes a tremendously powerful consumer motivator. It’s no coincidence that word of mouth typically tops the list as the key influencer in every marketing study ever done. Word of mouth fits our inherent survival strategies. We are programmed to prioritize information from trusted others as being important.

Your Word Over Mine

In fact, in many cases the opinion of others may trump even our own experience with brands. Studies have shown that we alter our own memories of a consumer experience depending on the opinion of others. If we’re recalling a less than positive experience but at the time of recall we’re surrounded by others who have more positive opinions, we’ll alter our own opinions to better match the collective one. The same is true in reverse. A great brand experience suddenly loses some of its shine if others are vocal about their bad experiences.

In this altering of our own opinion, one has to remember an interesting principle about memory formation. Memories are not unalterable snapshots. They get reformed every time they get retrieved and then laid down again. So, if we retrieve a personal experience with a brand from our memory, then alter it to fit the opinions of others, it’s the altered memory that gets recoded. We don’t suddenly revert to our previous opinion when others aren’t around anymore. Our perception of the brand has been altered by others from this point forward. This helps explain why others have such a powerful influence on our brand loyalties.

Next week, I’ll look at an interesting study that explored how word of mouth spreads in a network, whether it’s online or in the real world.

False Memories: Was that Bugs Bunny or Just My Imagination?

First published September 11, 2008 inn Mediapost’s Search Insider

I’ve talked about how powerful our mental brand beliefs can be, even to the point of altering the physical taste of Coke. But where do these brand beliefs come from? How do they get embedded in the first place?

A Place for Every Memory, and Every Memory in its Place

Some of the most interesting studies that have been done recently have been done in the area of false memories. It appears that we have different memory “modules,” optimized for certain kinds of memory. We have declarative memory, where we store facts. We can call these memories back under conscious will and discuss them. Then we have implicit memory, or procedural memory, that helps us with our day-to-day tasks without conscious intervention. Remembering how to tie your shoes or which keys to hit on a keyboard are procedural memories

Declarative memory is further divided into semantic and episodic memory. In theory, semantic memory is where we store meaning, understandings and concept-based knowledge. It’s our database of tags and relationships that help us make sense of the real world. Episodic memory is our storehouse of personal experiences. But the division between the two is not always so clear or water-tight.

The Making of a Brand Memory

Let’s look at our building of a brand belief. We have personal experiences with a brand, either good or bad, that should be stored in episodic memory. Then we have our understandings of the brand, based on information provided, that should build a representation of that brand in semantic memory. This is where advertising’s influence should be stored.

But the divisions are not perfect. Some things slip from one bucket to the other. Many of our inherent evolutionary mechanisms were not built to handle some of the complexities of modern life. For instance, the emotional onslaught of modern advertising might slip over from semantic to episodic memory. There will also be impacts that reside at the implicit rather than the explicit level. Memory is not a neatly divided storage container. Rather, it’s like grabbing a bunch of ingredients out of various cupboards and throwing them together into a soup pot. It can be difficult knowing what came from where when it’s all mixed together.

This is what happens with false memories. Often, they’re external stories or information that we internalize, creating an imaginary happening that we mistakenly believe is an episode from our lives. Advertising has the power to plant images in our mind that get mixed up with our personal experiences, becoming part of our brand belief. These memories are all the more powerful because we swear they actually happened to us.

That Wascally Wabbit!

University of Washington researcher Elizabeth Loftus and her research partner Jacquie Pickrell have done hundreds of studies on the creation of false memories. In one, under the guise of evaluating a bogus advertising campaign, they showed participants a picture of Bugs Bunny in front of Disneyland, and then had them do other tasks. Later in the study, the participants were asked to remember a trip to Disneyland. Thirty percent of them remembered shaking Bugs Bunny’s hand when they visited the Magic Kingdom, which would be a neat trick, considering that Bugs is a Warner’s character and would not be welcome on Disney turf.

We all tend to elaborate on our personal experiences to make them more interesting. We “sharpen” our stories, downplaying the trivial and embellishing (and sometimes completely fabricating) the key points to impress others. When we do this, we will draw from any sources handy, including things we’ve seen or heard in the past that we’ve never personally experienced. To go back to last week’s Coke example, our fond memories of Coke might just as likely come from a Madison Avenue copywriter as from our own childhood. We idealize and color in the details so our conversations can be more interesting. It goes back to the human need to curry social favor by gossiping. When you have this natural human tendency fueled by billions of dollars of advertising, it’s often difficult to know where our lives end and our fantasies take over.

This mix of personal experience and implanted images explains part of where our brand beliefs come from. Next week, I’ll look at the power of word of mouth and the opinions of others.

There’s More to Coke’s Brand than Taste

First published September 4, 2008 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

Last week, I looked at the unprecedented backlash against the introduction of New Coke. The fervor of the protest took everyone by surprise, especially flabbergasted Coke executives (and truth be told, Pepsi brass as well). After all, New Coke was subjected to exhaustive consumer testing in the lab, and the results were clear: most people preferred the taste. So why did something that did so well in the lab fail so miserably in the real world? Why were people so passionate about brown, sugared water? Baylor University neuroscientist Read Montague set out to find out why in 2003.

More than a Blink

In his book “Blink,” Malcolm Gladwell advanced his theory of why Coke drinkers are so loyal to their brand, yet failed to pick it in a blind taste test. The problem, Gladwell says, is in the nature of the test. Coke is meant to be drunk in big gulps, not metered little sips common in taste tests. It’s only when you down a whole can that you can truly appreciate the distinctive biting tang of Coke. But, as Montague would find out, the reason for the irrational devotion to Coke has little to do with taste at all and much more to do with beliefs, emotions and memories. It’s our brains that love Coke, not our taste buds.

Montague and his research partners started with a common blind taste test, where after stating their preferences, study participants were given sips of Pepsi and Coke without knowing what they were drinking and asked to pick the drink they preferred. The results were all over the place. Coke drinkers chose Pepsi. Pepsi drinkers chose Coke. Going into the study, the groups split evenly based on their stated cola preferences and in picking their favorite drink, Coke fared slightly better than Pepsi, but there was little correlation between what people said they preferred and what they actually chose. Their tastes buds were not that finely tuned.

Mind over Matter

It’s only in the last few years that we’ve discovered just how powerful our mind is in altering our physical perception of the world. The world is what we judge it to be, and judgment is largely passed by mechanisms beyond our conscious awareness. This explains the “placebo” effect, noticeable changes in our physical being due to the power of suggestion alone. If our minds believe, our bodies follow.

In Montague’s (along with his co-authors, McClure, Li, Tomlin, Cypert & Montague ) study, the truly interesting findings came when people were put inside the MRI scanners. Remember, fMRI scanners (functional magnetic resonance imaging) allows us to see which parts of the brain are activated during specific tasks, giving us some clue as to what’s happening inside our minds. After devising a rather elaborate method to feed participants sips of Coke or Pepsi, preceded by visual cues of what they were drinking (the methodology description took up a good portion of the published paper and is worth reading just to see the lengths one has to go to if you’re intent on conducting fMRI research) the researchers analyzed differences in brain activity.

The Brain on Coke

In one group, they provided two sips, one of Pepsi, the other also of Pepsi, but in an anonymous presentation with participants being told that the second sip could be either Coke or Pepsi. In the second group, the same thing was done, but this time it was Coke that was both the identified and anonymous drink. Then participants were asked to state their preference. In the Pepsi group, about half the group chose Pepsi and there was no strong preference over the anonymous drink (also Pepsi). But in the Coke group, the respondents overwhelmingly chose Coke over the mystery cola (also Coke).

When Montague examined the difference in brain activity, the difference between the two groups was fascinating. When the identity of the cola wasn’t known, the only brain activity registering was in the Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex, an area associated with feelings of reward. When participants were told they were drinking Pepsi, the brain activity didn’t change significantly. But when the third group was informed they were drinking Coke, suddenly other areas of the brain started lighting up, including the hippocampus, parahippocampus, midbrain, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, thalamus and the left visual cortex. What was happening? Well, Coke was obviously eliciting a much strong mental response than Pepsi. People were experiencing Coke at two levels: first, the sensory reward, and secondly, by tapping into people’s beliefs and feeling of self-identify. The parts of the brain that lit up under the conscious awareness of Coke are suspected to control access to emotion and act as gatekeepers to working memory. The brand belief structure of Coke was being mentally loaded up and altering the perception of Coke’s taste. The effect was so strong yet so far below the level of consciousness, brand loyalists swore they could identify Coke’s taste and preferred it, even though blind taste tests consistently proved them wrong.

Coke’s Brain Branding

Somehow, Coke has created a brand that its fans believe in and identify with. The brand unlocks a treasure trove of brand reinforcements that have little to do with the taste or quality of the product. And it was this effect that Coke turned its back on in the introduction of New Coke in 1985. It’s this untapping of brand beliefs we have to keep in mind when we talk about branding and search. With search interactions, the appearance of a brand can unlock belief structures just as strong as Coke’s. In the next column, I’ll explore some of the many elements that go into the building of these beliefs.

For Coke, Brand Love is Blind

First published August 28, 2008 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

In 2003, Read Montague had a “why” question that was nagging at him. If Pepsi was chosen by the  majority of people in a blind taste test, why did Coke have the lion’s share of the cola market? It didn’t make sense. If Pepsi tasted better, why wasn’t it the market leader?

Fortunately, Read wasn’t just any cola consumer idly pondering the mysteries of brown sugared water. He had at his disposal a rather innovative methodology to explore his “why” question. Dr. Read Montague was the director of Baylor University’s Neuroimaging Lab and he just happened to have a spare multi-million dollar MRI machine kicking around. MRI machines allow us to see which parts of the brain “light up” when we undertake certain activities. Although fMRI scanning’s roots are in medicine, lately the technology has been applied with much fanfare to the world of market research.  Montague is one of the pioneer’s of this area, due in part to the 2003 Coke /Pepsi study, which went but the deceptively uninteresting title, “Neural Correlates of Behavioral Preference for Culturally Familiar Drinks” (Note: Montague has since picked up a knack for catchier titles. His recent book is  “Why Choose this Book? How We Make Decisions” ).

Believing in Brands

In my last two columns, I talked about how our emotions and beliefs are inseparably wrapped up in many brand relationships. The strongest brands evoke a visceral response, beyond the reach of reason, coloring our entire engagement and relationship with them. It doesn’t matter if these brands are better than their competitors. The important thing is that we believe they are better, and these beliefs are reinforced by emotional cues.

This certainly seemed to be the case with Coke and Pepsi. The market split was beyond reason. In fact, the irrationality of the market split caused Coca Cola to make the biggest marketing blunder in history in 1985. A brief recap of marketing history is in order here, because it highlights one of the challenges with market research: namely, that there’s a huge gulf of difference between what we say and what we do, thanks to the mysterious depths of our sub-cortical mind. It also sheds light on the strength of our brand beliefs.

Coke’s Crisis

Through the ’70s and ’80s, Coke’s market share lead over Pepsi was eroding to the point when, in the mid ’80s, Coke’s lead was only a few points over their rivals. This was due in no small part to the success of the Pepsi Challenge advertising campaign, where the majority of cola drinkers indicated they preferred the taste of Pepsi in blind taste tests. This wasn’t just a marketing ploy. Coke did their own blind taste tests and the results were the same. If people didn’t know what they were drinking, they preferred Pepsi. It was panic time in Atlanta.

Enter new Coke. It was a lighter, sweeter drink that was possibly the most thoroughly tested consumer product in history. Coke was preparing to kill the golden goose, and it wasn’t a decision they were taking lightly. If they were changing the secret recipe, they were making damned sure they were right before they rolled it out to market. So they tested, and tested, and tested again Coke meticulously did their home work, according to all the standard market research metrics. The results were consistent and overwhelming. In the tests, people loved New Coke. Not only did it blow the original Coke formulation away, it also trounced Pepsi. They asked people if they liked New Coke. Yes! Would you buy New Coke. Yes! Would this become your new favorite soft drink? Yes, Yes and Yes! Feeling exceptionally confident, Coke bit the bullet and rolled out New Coke. And the results, as they say, are now history.

Classic Coke’s Comeback

On April 23, 1985, Coke shocked the world by announcing the new formulation and ceasing production on the original formula. And, at first, it appeared the move was a success. In many markets, people bought new Coke at the same levels they had bought original Coke. They kept saying they preferred the taste. But there was one critical market that new Coke had to win over, and that wasn’t going to be easy. In the Southeast, the home of Coke, people weren’t so easy to convince. There, ardent Coke fans were mounting a counteroffensive. By May, the “Old Coke” backlash had spread to other parts of the U.S. and was picking up steam. Soon, a “black Coke” market emerged when deprived Coke drinkers started bring in the original Coke from overseas markets where the old formulation was still being bottled. By July, the Old Coke counteroffensive was so strong, the company capitulated and reintroduced the original formulation as Coke Classic. Within months, Coke Classic was outselling both New Coke and Pepsi and began racking up the highest sales increases for Coke in decades, rebuilding Coke’s lead in the market.

Although it eventually worked out in their favor, Coke executives were puzzled by the whole episode. President Don Keough admitted in a press conference, “There is a twist to this story which will please every humanist and will probably keep Harvard professors puzzled for years, The simple fact is that all the time and money and skill poured into consumer research on the new Coca-Cola could not measure or reveal the deep and abiding emotional attachment to original Coca-Cola felt by so many people.”

Keough was amazingly prescient in this statement, although he had the university wrong. Almost two decades later, it would be a professor at Baylor, not Harvard, that would dig further into the puzzle. Next column, we’ll see what one of the very first neuromarketing studies uncovered when Montague replicated the Pepsi Challenge in an fMRI machine.

Why Do We Search?

First published June 19, 2008 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

This is the second in a series exploring the question of how we interact with search pages and the impact on brand relationships. Today we look at why we search in the first place.

Let’s begin with perhaps the most fundamental question ever asked in this industry. Why do we search? I’ve been in this industry for over 12 years now, and I’m not sure I’ve ever heard an answer to it. Why do we seek information? Is this need cultural or inherited? Is how we seek information changing?

 

The Roots of Curiosity

We search because we are curious. And curiosity comes from chaos. Curiosity allows us to survive in a dynamic and unstable environment. The more things change, the greater our curiosity. It keeps us alert and looking for the knowledge we need to survive. So the drive to be curious is inherited, but the degree of curiosity is cultural. Our environment determines how curious we are. If nothing changed, we wouldn’t need curiosity. So it’s probably not coincidental that for some of us, curiosity declines as we age. We seek more stable environments. Our need to monitor and adapt to our environment decreases, and with it, our need to learn.

We seek information for many reasons. Remember, almost every action we take is driven by emotion, but there is usually a rational justification that accompanies it. Our emotions and our reason work together to pick the best possible path for us. Antonio Damasio has done extensive research in this area, referring to our emotional cues, our gut instincts, as “somatic markers.” Rational thought needs information, and information, in turn, feeds our emotions. Information is essential grist for our curiosity mill.

Essential Information

Information is key in everything we do. Either we have this information stored in our brains–allowing us to conduct the task in question or function normally–or we don’t, causing us to seek it. The problem in seeking information is not one of quantity, it’s one of quality. There has never been more information available, but it can be difficult finding the right information. In our culture, a huge part of our cognitive effort is spent filtering out the onslaught of information that bombards us every day. No culture in history has been surrounded by more information than our present one, and it’s expanding exponentially.

Sometimes our need for information is purely rational. We need information to complete a task (looking up a phone number, referring to a map, reading directions) or to learn something new. Sometimes our need for information is less clear-cut, tied in with the social machinations that make us human. Remember, gossip is a glue that binds our society, and gossip is nothing more than the gathering and sharing of personal information. So our information-seeking is often tied to an incredibly complex concept of social structure and status. Sometimes we seek information because we need it. Sometimes we seek information just because we want it. Information is a valuable currency in our society, and it can be one factor in determining social status. Obviously, the information gained from supermarket tabloids and searches for “Britney Spears” is of questionable value–but we, as humans, also have a need for this type of information. Information helps define political structure and alliances, in-groups versus out-groups, elevated status within a group and other purely social functions.

The Easiest Path to Information

Our quest for information comes from within and without. As we constantly scan our environment, we find situations we need to respond to. This can trigger a physiological and intellectual chain of events that requires information. We scan our store of information, retrieve what we have and identify what we don’t. Sometimes the need is immediate. We need the information now. Sometimes it’s far off and the information-seeking process is of much longer duration.

If we need to seek information because we don’t have it stored in our memory, most of us will take the easiest path. Our information retrieval habits will vary from person to person, but generally we seek to save energy, so we will take the shortest route to the information. And our path will be dictated by how well we know what we’re looking for. When we seek information, our quest can fall into three different categories: we don’t know what we’re looking for, we know what we’re looking for but don’t know where to find it, or we know what we’re looking for and where to find it. Which path we take to find information depends on where we feel it will be easiest to find the answer. When we talk about information-seeking and the ease of retrieval, the Web–and in particular, Web search–has been the most significant development in the history of man. That’s where we start in the next column.

Digging Still Deeper into the Search Branding Question

First published June 12, 2008 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

I love debate. I love defending my ideas, and in the process, shaping, refining and sometimes discarding them as they prove to be too unwieldy or simply incorrect. My last two columns have generated a fascinating debate around the concept of branding in search. Fellow Search Insider Aaron Goldman, comScore Chairman Gian Fulgoni, his senior vice president of search and media, James Lamberti, Erik du Plessis, Millward Brown executive and author of  “The Advertised Mind” (fascinating book, by the way), as well as a host of others, have taken up the debating gauntlet on this particular topic.

As luck would have it, we just wrapped up a study with Google in Europe — and data there seems to show that I’m dead wrong about the inability of unclicked search ads to build brand, reinforcing the view of Gian and Aaron (Aaron has his own research, and ours seems to support his findings). We saw brand lift (based on traditional metrics) of anywhere from 5 to 15% on even unclicked ads. And this was with thousands of respondents across four different product categories in three different markets, so I don’t think it’s an anomaly.

The easy thing would have been to toss in the towel and admit I was wrong. But I’m not so sure about that. I’m convinced the neurobiological underpinnings I outlined in my column two weeks ago are sound and that the reasons for the apparent contradictions lie in some aspects of the search interaction and brand recall that I overlooked and the metrics we use to measure them.

But, in looking at this, I realized that this topic lies at the heart of a fundamental and not-yet-explored aspect of search: how does it influence our brand relationships? In one regard, I’m wholly in agreement with Aaron, Gian and James. There’s a tremendous amount of branding value being left on the table with search. Where we differ is in the nature of that value. But that’s not an easy thing to explore. It’s certainly beyond the scope of a single column. So yesterday I sent an email to my MediaPost editor asking if I could use this column over the next several weeks to lay out my hypothesis for how we interact with search. Thankfully, she agreed. So, beginning this week, I’d like to begin unraveling that knot.

In my weekly columns over the next few months I’d like to explore several questions:

Why do we search: This goes to Aaron’s comment that we don’t always search for information about a purchase. And this is absolutely true. We search for many different reasons. I’ll look at what motivates us to search and our mental frame of mind when do so. Is searching a conditioned behavior?

Why we search the way we do: Through all Enquiro’s research, we have found very consistent search patterns. Why do we search the way we do? How do we forage for information? And why is a search engagement “thin,” while a Web site engagement is “thick”?

Why does searching trigger information retrieval, but doesn’t necessarily create new memories: I’ll look at how memory works, specific to the act of searching, and how this differs from other types of advertising.

Why we use search differently at different stages in our purchasing behavior: The way we use search early in the process can be significantly different than the way we use it later. And it’s not the classic search “funnel” you may think.

Why the traditional brand metrics used are not accurate measures of likelihood to purchase, especially when applied to a search interaction.

Why search can be the most important brand tool in a marketer’s arsenal, if it’s used in the right place. It’s a matter of understanding what search can do and what it can’t. And, even more importantly, understanding how to measure that value.

And finally, will the changing nature of search change the way it acts as a branding strategy?

In this process I hope to provide supporting research where I can (there’s little empirical research in this area). I’ll also be reaching out to others, including my debating partners, to capture their views as well. And, as always, I invite you all to join the conversation.

Branding, The Mind and Search

First published June 5, 2008 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

In my last column, I opened up the search “branding” can of worms regarding unclicked search ads and generated a fascinating discussion with Gian Fulgoni and James Lamberti from comScore, as well as Aaron Goldman from Resolution Media, who has unpublished research that sheds new light on the subject and counters my argument. I think it’s fair to say that the value of an unclicked search ad still needs further research to resolve the question.

If it proves that there is brand lift created, then the question of pricing models currently used comes back into play. As Lamberti mentioned, perhaps the problem is not the pricing model but the measurement methods. And, as Jonathon Mendez from Ramp Digital added, “Is Google leaving lots of money on the table? They’re the most insanely profitable company of our time — I think they know what they’re doing.”

How Much Value is There in Search?

Could it be that we’re all right? Could it be that there’s so much value in the search interaction that Google can be leaving money on the table and still be insanely profitable? I do believe that in the case of branding impact, there is a distinct difference in the nature of the impact of the search ad from almost any other form of advertising, which is the topic of this column.

As I said a few columns back, search is more than a channel. It’s a fundamental human activity, and the same things that may be working against search in an implicit engagement way are very much working for search in an explicit way. The nature of our engagement with search is much different from other advertising.

Daring to Define Engagement

The Advertising Research Foundation has been struggling with defining engagement as a cross-channel effectiveness metric for years now, without making much headway. The problem is that engagement with a TV ad is a totally different proposition than engagement with a search ad.

Let’s look first at TV. In the 1980’s, the ARF conducted a major research study called the Copy Research Validation Project (as referenced in “The Advertised Mind,” by Erik Du Plessis). The purpose of the study was to isolate the factors that were common in successful ads. What was the one factor most predictive of success, which was actually thrown in as an after-thought? Whether people liked the ad.

Before most ads can work, they have to get our attention. And we pay more attention to things we like. This led to a hyper-creative explosion in the advertising biz, as agencies churned out ads designed first and foremost to make us like them. Unfortunately, most ads forgot that once you get someone’s attention, you also have to sell something. And that can be a difficult balance to maintain. Our cues to switch selective perception to something that captures our attention and our natural defenses against unsolicited persuasion usually work counter to each other. And it’s in that dynamic abyss that 250 billion dollars of advertising — in the U.S alone — gets poured every year,.

Search: Likability is Not a Prerequisite

But search is different. You don’t need to like a search ad, because it doesn’t have to capture your attention. You’ve already volunteered that attention. Search is used to gather information about an upcoming purchase. You’re fully engaged. You’re focusing on it. There are no cognitive guards on duty, protecting you from unscrupulous persuasion.

There’s another difference. Other advertising interrupts you when you have no intention of considering purchasing the featured product or service. Search reaches you just at the time you’re most fully engaged in consideration. And there lies the tremendous value of search, as it opens the door to the most engaging interaction with a brand that there can be: the online visit.

The Most Effective Engagement Point

Once consumers have knocked on your door through search, you have a tremendous opportunity to engage them. They have expressed interest, they are actively and fully engaged, they’re looking for information and they are ready to be persuaded. In the universe of consumer motivation, all the planets are perfectly aligned. You simply cannot find a better touch point with a consumer than this.

But the key is, you have to let consumers drive that interaction. They may simply be looking for rational purchase validation information, they may be researching alternatives, or they may be looking to be emotionally persuaded. A Web site can do any and all of the above, but it has to be at the visitor’s imperative.

Do I think there’s tremendous brand value left on the table with search? Absolutely. And as James Lamberti from comScore said, uncovering that value lies first in better measurement. If we can prove the value, whether it’s implicit or explicit, that may indeed lead to a different pricing model. Let’s face it; we’re a long way from understanding online consumer behavior. As we gain more understanding, expect changes. Expect lots of them.

 

The Last Word on Breaking the Google Habit

First published March 13, 2008 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

When I started this series of columns, I had no intention of making it a series. But now, with the fifth (and final) installment, it looks like I may finally break this particular habit. It’s been fascinating for me. Hopefully it’s been equally interesting for you.

We Develop Strings of Habits

In last week’s column, I talked about environmental cueing and reinforcement. Here, cues in our environment (the ubiquitous toolbar search box, for example) trigger a habit, and the expected outcome (the delivery of relevant results) reinforces the habit. This creates a sustaining cycle.

But there’s one other aspect of habits that we should look at. We tend to develop habits as strings of events. One environment cue might trigger a series of actions. The classic example is those who need a cigarette when they have a drink. Some recent research paints a fairly bleak picture of North American society and shows how obsessed we are with habit-inducing cues. The “why” question poised was why French people were less obese than Americans, despite a diet high in fat. It turns out one major reason why is that Americans let external cues, such as which TV show is on, drive their eating patterns. We always have a bowl of Chunky Chocolate ice cream while we watch “Desperate Housewives.” The French tend to eat when they’re hungry, and stop eating when they’re full. For the French, eating is a joy. For Americans, it’s a habit.

Swimming Upstream

As I mentioned before, to break a habit, you have to intercept before the habitual behavior, rather than try to educate and modify after the fact. And the less thought required to execute the behavior, the harder the habit will be to break. If your habit takes a few seconds to do, the opportunities to intercept and kick in the rational brain are minimal. This provides a distinct challenge to anyone looking to usurp Google’s search crown. Searching is becoming easier than ever.

The competitors have to look at that split second that exists between the awareness of the need for more information and the instinctive move to the nearest search box to launch the query. It’s in that tiny sliver of time that the opportunity to break the Google habit exists.

Searchis Interruptis

So, given the fleeting nature of this opportunity, how do you grab it? One way is to anticipate the need of search before it happens. This is the implicit query work that Microsoft was experimenting with sometime ago. As you work on a task, potential search queries are monitored in the background and are presented to the user. But a constantly shifting window of potential searches would probably drive us all batty.

Another way is to integrate search at an application or OS level, making search even easier and inserting a habit-breaking context switch into that tiny sliver of indecision that exists between awareness and Google.

Attack the Weakest Links

But even integration of search at this level won’t be enough. Remember, we tend to give the advantage to the incumbent. We actively look for reasons to maintain the habit, and we ignore information that runs counter to our habitual choice. Even if a search alternative is one click less to get to, that alternative still has to provide a significant reason to switch. They not only have to beat Google at the game of search, they have to do it in a decisive way. For this reason, a competitor has to attack Google’s user base at the weakest point, the ones that are using Google because it’s handy, not the Google loyalists.

True User-Centricity

This brings us to my last strategy for breaking the Google habit: a truly user-centric search tool.

Up to this point, verticalization in search has taken one of two forms. Either engines have attacked a topic category (i.e. Business.com and B2B, Lawyers.com and legal services, Expedia.com and travel) or a type of content (i.e. Blinkx and Youtube for video, Technorati for blog posts). These approaches tend to be vulnerable because we are creatures of habit. Generally, we prefer to use one place to launch our searches. We’re already using Google for most of our searches, so if it can provide an equivalent experience to these vertical engines, it can quickly assimilate the traffic and squeeze the verticals out.

This is not as easy as it sounds. Google has yet to provide an equivalent experience in most of its verticals, but now that it appears that the default design of the search results page is no longer a sacred cow, I would expect the functionality gap to close quickly.

But what if we took a different approach? What if rather than verticalizing around a topic or content bucket, we verticalized around a type of user? What if we maximized the search experience for millennial males or female baby boomers? The verdict on personalized search seems to be that a one-size-fits-all solution is a long way off on the horizon, but an intermediate step might be to tailor an engine for a segment that shares similar needs and expectations. By focusing on a niche strategy, you might be able to break the Google habit, one segment at a time. In this way, you might be able to provide the discontinuous innovation needed to catch people upstream, before they get swept away with the Google tide.