Gen3 Marketing: Triggering the Resonance Response
Reading Time: 〜6 minutesThis is Part III, the final chapter. Read Part I here, Part II here.
During my 13 years at Dentsu Tokyo, I asked some hard questions that made me less than popular:
“What is a planner?”
“What is a strategic planner?”
“Is there a difference between a planner and strategist?”
“When you say it ‘worked’ what does that mean?”
“How can you target conversions in one campaign, and social engagement in another using the same basic ads? Won’t they just do what they want?”
They looked at me like I had just brought BLTs to Ramadan.
It took me seven years before I had a cogent answer on what strategic planning strategists do.
The “it worked” question is still in their Gen2 system awaiting an answer.
The Gen3 version of “it worked” is the resonance response.
How do we trigger the resonance response? We need a resonant stimulus.
A stimulus is something that evokes a specific reaction. In our case, the brain. So a stimulus can be an ad, a video, content, or anything we can put into the environment.
A resonant stimulus is one that agrees with us. It feels right. In order to create this sensation, the stimulus must be in alignment with the cognitive traits of the observer.
What are cognitive traits? It could be personality: introversion, extraversion, agreeableness, etc. Or it could be a motivation to achieve and be better than others, or even a fear of failure. Those who experience negative emotions strongly resonate with FOMO style messaging. High openness people love adventure, the outdoors, abstract images, and anything that challenges their intellect.
In order to build a resonant stimulus (message, content, video), we need to know the cognitive traits of the audience. Once we know these traits, we can build creative messaging that is in alignment with those traits, and there are two tremendous benefits to doing so:
Getting into the brain.
Your brain has a filter called the reticular activation system. It removes more than 99.99% of your reality each second. If you want to see this in action, search Youtube for “cocktail party effect,” or even better, “the selective attention test.” The brain has the bandwidth to allow in only the information that is highly relevant to your survival, and nothing else.
Stated another way, if your message is not resonant, it’s likely invisible. That’s the penalty for Gen2 intuition-based, liking-evaluated ideas.
2. Trigger the resonance response.
The holy grail of customer creation and revenue generation.
If the resonance response is the key to customer creation and revenue;
And knowing the cognitive traits of the audience is the key to triggering the resonance response;
Then cognitive traits are the only “insights” that are “actionable;”
And the only insights necessary.
MY GIRLFRIEND IS IDENTICAL TO YOURS
She’s not, though. Nor is my playlist, my reading list, and any other interest we may have in common.
People are different.
The video and music streamers know it, the matching apps know it, Amazon knows it — there is psychological variance across the population. Western culture is vocal in celebrating individuality, “you do you,” and all that. It’s a huge underscore to this variance.
So the question is: why the hell doesn’t the ad industry get it? “Let’s come up with the big idea, the one everyone will like.”
Right now, one of you Gen2ers is thinking, “But this is why we have targets. Seth Godin tells us ‘smallest viable audience!’”
I have a challenge for you. Invite your CFO to your next kickoff meeting and let him know that you are going to skip the TAM and go after the “smallest viable audience.” And when he questions you about it, tell him that Seth Godin said: “It’s enough.” Carefully observe what happens next.
Gen3 marketing allows you to go after your Addressable Market (whichever flavor floats your boat), all at the same time. Remember the RAS? What is intended for one audience cluster will be invisible to another.
“But, but…consistent message across touchpoints, channels, and devices!!!”
Old Gen2 news. Welcome to the new Gen3 world of human-focused customer creation that flows with how the human brain works.
The world’s first and only platform that can profile audience clusters across all their glorious cognitive diversity is called ax3. It scans and analyzes large swathes of audience, and provides a blueprint on exactly what you should make in order to be cognitively resonant with each audience cluster. Have you ever seen Ipsos or Kantar give you this level of direction?
GOODBYE A/B TESTING, GOODBYE GEN2 INSIGHTS 👋
Gen2 companies like the aforementioned, conduct research by asking the conscious mind questions. The problems are myriad, but the most obvious are:
Cognitive biases. Ex: social desirability bias.
“Hey middled aged guy, why did you buy the Ferrari?”
“Oh, uh, yeah, well, I really appreciate the engineering.”
Riiiight.
Decisions are non-conscious processes
We don’t have access to the sub-conscious parts of our brains. Hence the “sub” part, which means below. Below the surface of our conscious awareness. So when you ask people questions, even in daily life, you’re getting highly filtered and distorted answers. But you knew that…
As you can imagine, if you are A/B testing intuition-based ideas that you pulled out of your ass (or based on Gen2 research), and were not in any way designed for resonance, one version will perform better than another, but you’ll have exactly zero idea why. You can speculate, but the conclusions you land on will be based on the erroneous yardstick of liking. Analytics works much the same way: this button gets clicked more, so “change all the button colors!” Or “53% chose this path to purchase! Change it all to that!” What about the 47% who chose something else?
Gen2 market research companies, it was fun while it lasted. We really enjoyed looking at segments like obsequious baristas who seek finesse and trying to figure out a) what that means, and b) what the hell we can make out of it creatively. But your time has come. We now live in a heliocentric solar system and we know germ theory.
A BETTER WAY: RESONANCE TESTING VIA SMARTWATCH
The resonance response, the release of dopamine and oxytocin, is communicated to the heart via the cranial nerve and can be detected with an Apple Watch or other fitness device. This means the subjects simply look at their phones, wearable devices connected to the Immersion app, watch whatever the stimulus is. When it’s done, they put their phones away, and collect their payment. No questions, no biased answers, no self-reporting. Pure resonance testing. If you want to see the research Paul Zak and I did on the Cannes commercials using this tech, reach out and I’ll send it to you.
THE GEN3 MARKETING CAMPAIGN
Lately, people are using the word “diagnosis” in the same sentence as Gen2 research concepts. This is actually not possible. Asking people to self-report is like a doctor trusting patients to self-diagnose.
A stomach ache can be any of 100 different issues, and each requires a deeper examination than a self-reported “my tummy hurts.” So it is true with the diagnosis of an audience. Asking people what they like or why they chose or did something—to assess what they like—is not a diagnosis.
The objective is to create resonant messaging that will trigger the resonance response, the one phenomenon responsible for powering free markets. Therefore the first step is to diagnose the cognitive traits of the total audience — all consumers who have affinity for the product. This is what ax3 does.
The output of ax3 is not segments with amusing names, but instead what we call the “unimpeachable brief.” Each cluster has descriptions of the cognitive traits, as well as images and copy examples of what to create in order to be resonant. This is the level of Gen3 — no speculation, no interpretation, no opinions, just human creatives putting their magic into the concepts that will be resonant.
From here, we test resonance to make sure that each concept or direction elicits the resonance response (or Immersion) in each audience cluster. It is essentially winning the war before the first shot is fired, how to deploy huge media spend with total confidence.
Oh yeah, we also have a method on how to dominate your category using ax3 output, but that will be another post.