[MUSIC]

So today, we're going to talk about brand

messaging and communications.
We're not going to start at the strategic
level, but we're going to
go a little bit further down into the
implementation and tactical level.
And talk again about the way the
consumers perceive your brand messaging
and marketing.
So, let's first start out with, what are
perceptions?
Perceptions is probably one of the
most important aspects in consumer
behavior, and
in understanding consumer behavior.
What is a perception?
The perception is the process of
developing an interpretation of a
stimulus.
Or in other words, deciding exactly what
the stimulus means.
This is really, really an important,
crucial
area in consumer behavior for two reasons.
First, whatever cons, customers perceive,
is
what affects their subsequent actions and
behavior.
And second, and this is what's
interesting,
what they perceive is not necessarily
what's true.
Why is that?
Well, the process of perception is
constructive.
People construct their interpretations on
the fly.
And this process is inherently biased.
It contain, it, the process of perception
comes in several different stages.
The first two
stages are, the stages of attention and
exposure.
Before you can form any kind of
perception,
you need to be exposed to the stimuli.
And you need to pay attention to that
stimuli.
Pay attention to what's salient to you.
And we know that that process is very
biased.
You only expose yourself to things.
But there's, sometimes there's accidental
exposure.
But when
you're consciously exposing yourself to
things, many times it's a
function of what you believe, what you're
prior beliefs are.
Let me give you an example.
Say you think that a part of town is not
safe.
Well, you won't go to that part of town.
You'll stay away from that part of town.
So you won't expose yourself to something
you don't think is safe.
As a result, you never have, ability to
change your perception, of that area of
town
because you don't collect new data.
So we know that exposure can be selective.
Similarly, even if you are exposed to
something, if you don't
pay attention to it, again it can affect
your, your perceptions.
And we know that there's 2 kinds
of attention, there's voluntary attention,
and involuntary attention.
So involuntary attention is something like
big bang, and you pay
attention to it regardless of whether you
would had intended to.
But for
voluntary attention, that again is
selective.
So we have the possibility of selective
exposure, and selective attention.
That means you're not collecting data on
things that
might be, might be able to change your
perception.
So that's first stage of bias.
The second stage of bias is once you are
exposed to something,
and if you pay attention to it, then you
have to interpret it.
And we know
that you interpret data subject to what
you already believe.
So for example, most people know if
you watch a presidential debate, it's
important
to have representatives who in interpret
what
happened in the debate from both parties.
Because we know a priori, the
interpretations are
going to vary based on their prior
beliefs.
And, that's the same thing for any kind of
consumer behavior.
You're exposed, pay attention to certain
stimuli.
But you interpret it subject to your prior
expectations.
As a result of this, perceptions are
frequently
biased, and they don't necessarily
represent what's true.
So what's the overview of the perceptual
process?
You're expo, there are sensory inputs that
the marketer puts out.
There's, we're going to talk about it,
brand communication, there's advertising,
there's packaging.
All sorts of different, sensory inputs.
And then you are
exposed to them, or you're not.
And sometimes the exposure, as I
mentioned, is in a bias, bias way.
And then, even if you are exposed to these
inputs, you know,
and you're exposed to thousands of
marketing measures, marketing cues every
single day.
But how many of them do you pay attention
to?
So, first there's the issue of exposure.
Then there's the issue of whether or not
you pay attention to it.
And finally, there's the issue of
interpretation.
Let me give you an example here.
This is a psychological test.
It's called a Stroop Test.
And what I want to show you is that, your
perceptions, and I just
explained to you your perceptions could be
biased, but your perceptions affect your
subsequent behavior.
Regardless, it's almost an automatic
reaction.
You have a certain perception, and then
you automatically respond to that.
And it's very had to control that, even if
you think, well I
understand that my perceptions might be
biased, and therefore I'm going to
try to do something to control that, so I
don't react inappropriately.
But these perceptions are automatic
things, and
it's very hard to block their effect.
So let me just give you a little test
here.
I'm going to show you several words on the
screen, and what I
want you to do is tell me the color of the
font.
Okay, so let, there's going to be four
words, and
I'm going to just put them up on the
screen,
and to yourself tell me the color of the
font.
So, here are the words.
Here's the second one.
The third one.
And, the fourth one.
Now, by the fourth one, you probably got
what was going on.
I mean, the first one, maybe you were a
little bit surprised.
And you saw that the word was blue, but
the
color of the font was red, so the answer
was red.
By the fourth one, you understood the
pattern,
but it was still hard to break it.
You couldn't stop yourself from reading
the word, and reading
the word affected your subsequent
behavior, it slowed you down.
That's actually the purpose of the Stroop
test.
It's a stress manipulation, it makes
people feel
a little bit uncomfortable because of that
dissonance.
If I put the words up where the words
match
the color of the font, the task is much
simpler.
So here's four words where the color
matches and you can
see, it's much easier, it's much faster to
say the words.
This is the same thing in the way
marketing I'm
going to show you that color has an
effect, brand name has
an effect.
And you cannot block this effect.
It affects your subsequent perceptions and
subsequent behavior,
and it's an automatic reaction that's
difficult to stop.
So let me just give you, here's an
example.
If I told you this is luscious chocolate,
and I
show you a picture of it if the shape of a
cow pie, it's very hard to stop that first
initial feeling
of, ooh I don't want to eat this, that
disgust feeling.
And you know that it's good chocolate, but
the shape has an involuntary effect on
you.
And that, that's a very important thing to
understand.
So marketers need to understand how these
things affect your perceptions and your
subsequent behaviors.
Because as I say these are automatic
reactions.
There's some visual illusions you may have
seen these before.
I can show you these two lines on the
screen.
I will tell you you can measure them, they
are exactly the
same length.
However one looks longer than the other,
and you just can't stop that feeling.
Even though I tell you they're exactly the
same length and I can prove
it to you, you still have the perception
that the one on top is longer.
Here's another example, here's an example
of how
your prior expectations influence your
perception of the stimulus.
So if I ask you, what is this that I've
put on the screen.
You'll answer differently if I show it to
you this
way versus when I showed it to you this
way.
And so that shows you what you perceive
that
stimulus is, is a function of your prior
expectations.
Here's another one that we know, and this
one
I'm going to take a little bit closer to
marketing.
There, there's a perception bias that's
called the proximity bias.
And what the proximity bias says, is if
things are close to each other, you assume
they're more similar.
So if I asked you which lines are similar
to each other,
most people will say the two lines that
are clustered together are similar.
So that they'll cluster the two lines that
are close to each other,
rather than say the two bold lines or the
two thin, thin lines.
Because you make this inference of, things
that
are close to each other must belong
together.
And you can see this in the supermarket,
in stores.
It, if, say in the salad dressing, salad
section, and where there's
vegetables marketers may put, or grocers
may put salad dressing near those salad.
There's an implicit assumption that if the
product is near another product, they
belong together.
So that's a perception.
That physical distance affects whether
things are similar or
belong together.
In the mall, stores that are close
together or seem to be more similar.
And there's a lot of there's a lot of use
of this particular bias.
Another one is the similarity bias.
Things that look alike, people assume have
the same quality.
So this is the the, the underlying the,
theory behind, say, store brands.
If a store brand makes itself look very
similar to
the national brand, you assume the
quality's the same, even though
you haven't tested it, you don't know if
that's the case.
You're making an assumption of perceived
quality, based on this process of
similarity.
And so these perceptual inferences are
very, very
strong at influencing your perception of
quality, the way
you consume the product, the way you
experience
the product, the price you're willing to
pay, etc.
And it's a very,
very important consumer process for
marketers to understand.
It's particularly important in branding.
So we know that if you take a glass of
cola or a bottle of cola, and you slap on
a brand, say the Coca Cola brand, people
will have
different perceptions about that product
than if the brand wasn't there.
With the Coca Cola brand on it, people
will think it tastes better.
They're willing to pay a higher price.
They'll make all sorts of other
inferences,
even if the product's exactly the same.
Once we put a brand on it, it changes the
perceptions of the product.
And people think, I'm not subject to that,
I know.
I can judge certain products by the
quality.
I'm not influenced by brand names.
And, we know from experiment after
experiment
after experiment, that, that's just not
true.
People are very
much influenced by the brand name that's
put
on the product, independently of the
product quality.
it's same way in the Stroop test.
You just can't stop it.
Once you see that brand name, you have
certain perceptions.
You make certain inferences about that
brandname.
And those perceptions are translated to
the qual, to the product.
We know that brand is such a powerful
brand as we mentioned before.
it has so much influence.
The Coca Cola brand name has been
estimated
to be worth 70 billion dollars as an
asset.
Just putting that brand name on a product
will change, as
I said price premiums people are willing
to pay, the quality, etc.
When you know that that brand is worth so
much, many
times people look for ways to leverage the
brand for growth.
So ex, for example, you know Coca-Cola is
associated
with the cola soft drink.
In 1982, Coca-Cola took that brand name
and put it on a brand new
product at the time, that no one had
tasted before, a diet soft drink.
They call it Diet Coke.
And automatically, even though that
product was not on the market before,
people assume it has hot better taste,
it's a higher quality product.
And again they're willing to pay a higher
premium price for that product.
This is a brand new
product, but the perceptions of it are so
high
because of the brand name that's stamped
on the can.
[MUSIC]