Can you believe it’s September. The summer just flew by, didn’t it?!
Here in New Hampshire we can’t wait for fall foliage to peak in its vibrant colors. It’s simply spectacular. It’s so beautiful that I’d love to share it with you. So I’m planning our next one day, IconiCards™ workshop on Saturday, October 3rd to excite your creativity and delight your senses.
Our July session was a great success. Hear what attendee Drew Bischoff had to say about it. Click HERE to listen
Emotional Marketing Magic
Saturday October 3, 2009
Dr. Sharon Livingston
DATE: Saturday, October 3, 2009
TIME: One Day Training
LOCATION: My office just outside Manchester NH
Early Bird Cost: $997 before Sept 15th [otherwise $1250]
Come to this one day training session to learn great techniques for using archetypes in your work. You’ll be amazed at the variety of exercises and how well you can use them to gain deep insights into how people feel and relate to products, categories and interpersonal relationships.
Because the characters on the cards are so meaningful, the stories that come out of people’s experiences are more authentic and useful. It might seem like magic, but it’s not. It’s science.
Come learn this fascinating yet easy method to gain incredible vision. You will come out of this one day seminar with:
- A good understanding of the importance of archetypes
- Confidence that you can use this tool effectively in your profession
- Stories about current brands and their archetypes
- Ideas for applying archetypes to your
- marketing
- branding
- new product development
- research
- teaching
- counseling
An exercise you’ve created for your own particular challenges Ways to analyze the wealth of information A complimentary box of IconiCards™!
The NEW class is taking place on October 3rd
Call or email NOW to reserve a space
Sharonl@tlgonline.com- 603.537.0775
Thanks SOOOO much for taking the time to answer our emotional eating survey! The results have been fascinating and heart-felt. I resonate personally with much of what I’ve been reading .
AND, your response to the survey made me think it would be great to talk more in depth about the issues all of us with emotional eating habits deal with. So I’m very excited to invite you to attend a telephone group discussion we’ll be conducting next week.
The purpose for the groups is strictly research. Glenn and I will use what we learn to help us better understand and potentially find solutions that will help people who struggle balancing eating and comfort and weight and health.
There are four time slots. Let us know which of them would work for you. All are Eastern Time [so adjust for wherever you're calling from]
Monday July 27th at 3pm EDT [ ]
Monday July 27th at 6pm EDT [ ]
Tuesday July28th at 3pm EDT [ ]
Tuesday July28th at 6pm EDT [ ]
Email me with the best time and any other thoughts you’d like to share with me about the topic.
You can also call Portia at 800-431-8819 to sign up.
SPECIAL REQUEST
* Emotional Eating Survey:
http://www.EmotionalEatingTips.com
This is largely a personal request to add value to a labor of love Glenn and I have been interested in for some time, but we ARE planning to develop an “emotional eating deprogramming kit” and will be happy to give anyone who helps out with the survey a free copy.
Thanks in advance,
http://www.EmotionalEatingTips.com
You can hear him for yourself. Bryan talks about the value of emotional marketing and using archetypes in specific with a couple of exciting examples.
If you’ve been reading my newsletters for a long time, you know that I believe that marketing and branding are all about the product/customer relationship. In fact, brands are icons of the essence of those relationships and connections. We can talk more about that at another time.
Today, I challenge anyone to beat this fantastic customer relationship support example.
Setting the scene:
Yesterday, Glenn and I went to see our doctors in Kennebunk ME. It’s a 2 hour drive but well worth it. This dynamic duo discovered and CURED Glenn’s debilitating Lyme disease which had gone undiagnosed for 10 years. [Glenn is completely free of long standing migraines, joint aches and pains, has restored energy and basically got his life back.]
While it may sound very strange for a Pharma specialist like me, I’m personally a huge chicken about doctors and dentists, especially when it comes to poking, prodding and tests. So much so that Glenn suggested taking his blood tests at the same time I did and going for the results together so I would feel supported and maybe a little less of a scaredy cat.
So that’s what we did. About 10 days ago we did our 12 hour fast and headed to The Elliot Hospital Lab to get beakers of blood taken [just kidding, only 4 small vials, but it felt like a blood letting to me.]
Yesterday was our day to make the trek out to southern Maine to get our report cards. That’s how it always feels to me. As soon as the word test is used, I develop performance anxiety. “Sorry, Dr Livingston, but you failed on your liver enzymes, barely passed on C Reactive Protein and you need to work harder on your metabolic syndrome factors.” I’m not sure which is more traumatic; having my blood drawn or the anxiety of being “graded.” Ugh.
We got to Kennebunk early with plenty of time to pick up an Rx that we needed to bring with us for our appointment. In fact, it was the whole reason for making the long drive. Otherwise we could have gotten the feedback via phone.
Here’s a question.
What’s the best way to get a fix on the optimal balance of cognitive (intellectual/factual) and emotional punch in positioning a product for physicians?
Anne
Hi Anne,
Great question. As you might imagine, I’d think qualitative is a good approach. Actually we do this kind of work all the time and have a project where we’re trying to figure that out next week. In general, what we’ve observed is that often physicians [not unlike consumers and patients] are convinced by an emotional appeal and then justify with a rational reason why.
Research has proven that the factual needs to be stated, while the emotional performs better when suggested in mood and tone rather than communicated directly. So in addition to the inferred feeling one would get in prescribing this drug, the visual is key in conveying the emotional benefit.
If you know the possible facts and have a sense of emotional factors that might be tied to them, it’s easy to create a test. Just mix and match and create some kind of round robin approach to study which are most compelling. The ratings and rankings will speak loudly to help you figure out which has more weight – the facts or the feelings. Asking why for the rating will also help. Using projective techniques to get at underlying feelings will complete the picture.
Here’s what we tend to do. There are several steps.
We first work on understanding what gives them satisfaction in being a doctor. This is often very different from specialty to specialty. As I’ve mentioned in other newsletters, for example, Neurologists revel in solving the puzzle; Ophthalmologists are tinkerers who like to fix things; interventional cardiologists are adventurous rescuers like Indiana Jones; Nephrologists are sensitive Mother Theresa’s who enjoy holding their patients’ hands and hearing their stories.
It also differs within specialty for the area they’re treating. For example, Pulmonologists are very involved and compassionate in treating cystic fibrosis patients, but are almost annoyed with what they consider to be simple asthma. Allergists, on the other hand, are highly motivated to care of their asthma patients while seeing other respiratory allergies as mundane.
Once we have a sense of general motivators, we need to delve into the particular disease category and options for treatment. For a given problem, it’s what kind of solution brings the doc closest to their personal sense of meaning and/or fulfillment.
In a recent study, superior efficacy, which was the most important functional benefit for a new drug [surprise, surprise] was linked with a couple of different brand archetypes in the ad concepts. One laddered up to the brand being a future thinking visionary. The other laddered up to the brand as a powerful conqueror. The Visionary ads never were rated higher than a 6 on a scale of 1 – 10, where 10 was extremely compelling. The Conqueror ads ranged between 7 and 10.
Interestingly, the Visionary approach made the client feel good about itself. Think about all the mission and vision statements we see for Pharm Cos. There all about thinking forward and working on positive visions of future interventions.
But the Conqueror approach gave the doctors a better weapon for their armamentarium. If they used this drug, they were more likely to obliterate a nasty little problem. Patients would be happy, send referrals, not call them at night, and even thank them.
Stepwise?
Test product profile and various messages for most compelling points of difference and reasons to believe.
Turn winning messages into potential positionings linked to emotional end benefits for the doctors’ various specialties and test for which are most compelling. Emphasize different aspects of Effectiveness, Safety, Convenience, Form, etc. in different positionings. Ladder up main benefit to emotional end benefits to see if we hit the mark. Observe and analyze which functional and emotional rise to the top.
Take winning positioning and craft into potential communications. Again get compelling ratings. Unearth archetypes for winning ones. Archetypes confirm emotional end benefits.
So in summary, I think both the emotional and functional are critical. In our experience, the Emotional tends to be the stronger driver AS LONG AS it’s married to a key product feature and function. Empty emotional promises create cynicism and fail.
Let me know if that helped. And feel free to ask again, or ask it in a different way if I’m off the mark.
Isn’t it amazing how many hats we have to wear in running a business!?
In addition to setting up projects, running groups and IDI’s, teaching, and volunteering for QRCA, I also have to learn how to communicate using Social Media. [ And I can't imagine how professional women with kids manage to do it!]
I’m trying to develop my blog www.positionyourbrand.com/blog and could use your help.
I’ll answer any and all questions you have on branding, qualitative research, projective techniques, consumer psychology, laddering, NLP, MBTI, group dynamics or how to deal with your kid, wife, boyfriend for that matter!
Just post a question on the blog and I promise to give it quick and serious attention.
Thanks in advance.
or not doctors will “play.”
What drives that question is the belief that professionals are trained to only react to facts. Moreover, there’s a sense from many researchers that it’s almost insulting to invite physicians to free associate and divulge their real feelings. It’s almost as if they’re above the emotional and visceral.
Yet isn’t it a combination of looking at the data and one’s intuitive sense that makes for the best medicine? Good doctors avoid becoming walking brains and stay connected to their hearts and instincts when investigating issues with their patients.
Over the years I’ve successfully employed virtually all the same projective techniques I’ve used with patients and consumers with physicians. And, interestingly, the vast majority of doctors find them intriguing and a RELIEF! They get to take off their fact finding hat for a few minutes and invite their creative process. While at first it might be a little strange, a little different, being playful is a wonderful departure for them from the seriousness of everyday work.
So, you’ll hear doctors voices become animated as they tell you what they see in a guided imagery. Their eyes brighten in choosing IconiCards™ to add to a collage that depicts how it feels to work with various conditions. They lean into the table to tell you the story they’ve just created in their imagination. [Compare that to the lean back, arms crossed posture, dispassionate voice you often see and hear when they're asked to respond to a medication profile.] By just presenting facts and asking for a reaction, we invite detached involvement and then wonder why it’s so hard to read what physicians really want.
- The condition that’s the subject of the interview, e.g., hypertension AND can be any condition/disease state
- A typical hypertension patient
- The doctor in the role of treating hypertension
- A preferred medication in the doc’s armamentarium
Sometimes, the participant will ask if more than one card may be chosen. Answer that “up to 2 would be fine”. Most will select just one.
Remember, that the more creative you are willing to be in crafting interesting exercises for your study, the more depthful, intuitive and emotional will be the responses, EVEN and perhaps especially with physicians who enjoy the opportunity to recognize and liberate their whole and original selves.
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IconiCards for Emotional Insight Magic
Dr. Sharon Livingston
DATE: Saturday, July 18th TIME: One Day Training LOCATION: My office just outside Manchester NH Early Bird Cost: $997 before June 15th [other wise $1250] A special invitation to you to learn great ways to use IconiCards. Come to this one day training session to learn great techniques for using archetypes in your work. You’ll be amazed at the variety of exercises and how well you can use them to gain deep insights into how people feel and relate to products, categories and interpersonal relationships. Because the characters on the cards are so meaningful, the stories that come out of people’s experiences are more authentic and useful. It might seem like magic, but it’s not. It’s science. Come learn this fascinating yet easy method to gain incredible vision. You will come out of this one day seminar with:
The NEW class is taking place on July 18th Sharonl@tlgonline.com – 603.537.0775 Call or email NOW to reserve a space
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Just realized that I showed the wrong date for the class on Using Archetypes for Insights. It’s going to be on May 30th, rather than May 23rd.
IconiCards™ The Insight Mining Machine:
1 Day Seminar $1,250
Early Registration by May 8th is only $997.00
Includes Breakfast and Lunch
Iconicards™ Discover an amazingly fast and easy to use method for getting people to open up about their most deeply held thoughts and feelings about a brand or personal issue. AND, Increase your OWN brand’s sales value by developing YOUR customized Iconicards technique to use with clients. Get 5 instant, ready made, easy to use deep dive exercises for Iconicards™ archetype cards.
Where: Manchester NH
To Register: Contact me at sharonl@tlgonline.com;
603 537 0775
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