Male Vs Female Brain

According to the Sex I.D. questionnaire on the following bbc website: http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/mind/ my brain has both male and female traits. Research into the male and female brain has shown that women tend to make use of both sides of the brain, whereas men mainly use their left side. In terms of marketing campaigns, understanding the differences in male and female brain processes is vital in producing an appropriately targeted advert. Take into account the picture to the right, if men and women were asked to look at the picture and then remember what was in the room the men would typically remember the location of a desk or bookshelf; whereas, a woman would typically remember the more intimate details such as a vase of flowers or a picture on the wall. When applying this to advertising and marketing it could suggest that women prefer to be presented with an advert that has a story behind it with more details, whereas men would prefer a direct advert displaying what the product is and what it does.

Research "Message order effects and gender differences in advertising persuasion" studies have shown that women tend to have a greater concern for others than men. This is applicable to the campaigning done by charities as they will use this concern that females have for others to gain donations.

In terms of other methods of marketing communications understanding the differences in the male and female brain is also vital to a campaigns success. For example, in direct mail women tend to respond to a more emotive style, in the form of a conversational tone, which is often found in mailshots from charities. Women also respond to strong colours and evocative images. However, men respond to a factual style where colours and images are irrelevant; this relates to the previously discussed different methods of thinking from a male and female perspective. Research has shown that a re-written factual letter for men generated a response 85% better than the emotional (female) one. Whereas for the women, the response rate was 15% lower than with the emotional mailshot.

Enterprise Experience...

" Everything Starts with the Customer" Andrew Carter (2008)

A dismal Monday morning turned into an enlightening and insightful peek into the marketing world. Luckily, i was able to meet first hand with a panel of industry members by being part of the team who helped in running the 'What Next?' event (a question-time-esque affair). Mr. Allan Rich (Non- Executive Director of Cello) spoke first highlighting that the recession was a ''fantastic opportunity'' and that a ''well run business will come through a recession extremely well". His enthusiam about the future of the marketing world was a welcome change to the doom and gloom that has seemed to consume the UK in light of the credit crunch. Many of the other panel members shared in Allan Rich's positive outlook for the industry with Ivor Peters (Board Director of the BWP Group) adding: " there is no solution because there is no problem".




Jamie Matthews (Managing Director of Initials Marketing) talked about a change in "balance of power" as many clients are under pressure, (from time constraints and budgets), therefore making marketing campaigns much more shorter term. With a move towards digital marketing and in light of marketing campaigns needing to reach all areas in a shorter term (for greater impact) there is a need for marketing companies to integrate their disciplines. This broadens their communication channels.



On a cold and dark Tuesday evening in a full lecture theatre,Tom Vic (Group Business Director of JWT), re-iterates the need for companies to embrace the new technological era especially in terms of mobile technology. A point stressed by Tom Vic was that although marketing is evolving through digital and online marketing the older traditional channels are adapting to the new times. For example, everywhere you look in an underground station or train there are advertisements. These are still effect, but, in order to update them and embrace the new technology available D.E.P.s (digitial escalator panels) have been created which link within the bluetooth of your mobile phone to produce a fluid moving image advertisement as you progress up the escalator.


Tom Vic created 5 key points of how traditional agencies should respond:

1. Forget above the line and below the line as marketing concepts.

2. Bring back the dictionary definition of advertising.

3. Re-structure business around brands and it's communications needs.

4. Invest in re-training and re-orientating agency colleagues.

5. Learn from the youth, for example, agencies using younger staff to train the older.



From Vic's lecture it became evident that technology should be embraced by all agencies as it can be used to enhance and better their campaigns. It appears that an agency should go back to basics and adapt to the times then their should be a return to "full-service" agencies but in a new format. Vic addresses the credit crunch as an opportunity to make greater focus on cost-efficiency and return on investment a concept which should be adopted in better times as well.





So, it appears that the future is bright for the marketing industry and it will not suffer greatly in light of the current financial climate. If we can all take the infectious enthusiasm of Allan rich along with the modern mind of Jamie Matthews and the experience of Tom Vic the modern marketing world seems a very optimistics place.

Advertising for the sexes..

The issue of male and female differences 'is much more fundamental than the usual myopic media one about where the ads appear: it's about recognizing women [and men's] different approach' (Financial Times, June 29, 2001)

Today's lecture entailed looking at the gender differences in advertising and how some adverts appeal more relevantly to women than to men and vice versa. Afetr being shown a slide show consisting of a variety of printed advertisements we were asked which one stuck in our mind the most and what ones we remembered. The females in the class tended to remember the adverts that involved a celebrity whereas the more humerous advert (involving a comical guinea pig) proved more relevant to the males. This experiment poses many questions about advertising for the sexes and the contrast between the two. This concept is invaluable to marketers and advertisers as they are able to target their market effectively and produce an advert which will have maximum impact through being relevantly appealing.

The advert to the right invovles a female product which is clearly targeted to a female audience. The use of sensual colours which relate to the colours on the bottle of the perfume is appealing to the visual sense;this is enhanced further through the inclusion of the celebrity Beyonce Knowles. The product is clearly shown in the foreground accompanied with the bold 'true star GOLD' title which indicates exaclty what the product is and how it looks. What is interesting is that the perfume advert does not address the sense of smell which is paramount to the success of a perfume.

In contrast to a typically female advert, the advert to the left could be described as 'typically male'. Rather than being appealing, the advert has taken a humerous approach which would be relevant to the male mind-set. The advert is aiming to advertise online bingo to the male sex, an area which is largely dominated by female directed comapanies such as Foxy Bingo. In order to have maximum impact the advert created is overtly funny with a man breast feeding a baby with the tag line 'Where have all the women gone?'.

With gender difference in mind, we are now comtemplating what our personal perception experiment would be and which variables we would test according to perception theories from theorist such as Solomon et al or the black box model.

Personality

Prior to today's lecture we were asked to take the Simpson's personality type test and unfortunately mine was Krusty the clown. However, on first glance i thought this would be something negative, however,on reading the personality it related to my personality quite accurately. It described me as enjoying lively intellectual conversations, welcoming interactions such as learning opportunities. As well as describing the strengths of your personality the test also described the weaknesses which were also quite true as i am often direct and confrontational.

Personality: "a person’s unique make up, which consistently influences the way the person responds to his or her environment” (Solomon 1999)

Self Concept: "the beliefs a person holds about his or her own attributes & how he or she evaluates those qualities” (Solomon 1999)

Personality is unique to each and every person; marketers and advertisers are interested in the concept of personality in purchase choice. If personality was a key element to purchase choice key personality aspects could be targeted by marketers and advertisers to produce a suitable and effective campaign. However, it may be that self- concept is more of a key determining factor in pruchase choice. But, both personality and self- concept are hard to segment due to the complexities of a person's unique make-up.

Hollander conducted extensive research into personality and derived 4 key aspects of personality; external, internal, dynamic and consistent. External is the way that a person interacts with other people, internal is a combination of their attitudes and values, dynamic is how they behave when faced with a new situation and consistent is their characteristic style. Although this research provides us with valuable insight into personality psychologically it does not relate personality to consumer choice. This can be best demonstrated by J. Aker (1997) who derived a brand personality framework which shows how personality could be marketed by relating something like sophistication to an upper class personality or someone that is charming. By showing something to be sophisticated a marketer is able to vaguely target a personality type which would be associated with sophistication. By clicking the following link: Jaguar commercial you are able to see how advertisers have produced a sophisticated and professional advert which will in turn appeal to upper class, and supposedly charming personality types.

Despite being closely linked with personality self- concept is very different. Solomon (2001) states that "people see themselves as they imagine others see them." For example, someone suffering from an eating disorder such as bulimia or anorexia nervosa will believe that they are fat as they have the belief that others think this of them. When in reality, they are extremely slim. William James (1890) argues that self- concept derives from social comparisons with others. A person's self-concept is probably more important to a marketer as a person will make choices upon their beliefs and consequently what they believe about themselves. This will directly influence their decision making and therefore marketer should be interested in this more as this could be their deciding factor.

However, both personality and self-concept are extremely hard to target as everyone has many different elements to their personality and self-concept. A person may also be very shy about their self-concept, for example, not admitting that they have an eating disorder whilst portrayign a confident personality. It appears that personality and self-concept will baffle marketers for years to come.

''Need does not exist but the desire or want can be created" (Ruth Hickmott, 2008)

Today's lecture addressed segmentation one of the key areas of marketing. Marketers are constantly trying to sort people into different segments so that they can be targeted and then their product or service can be positioned effectively within that market (STP Marketing). To demonstrate the difficulties that marketers have in segmentation we were asked to group a variety of shapes, numbers and colours and found that there were endless possiblities as it could be interpreted in any way desired.

Information about customers comes from a variety of different sources such as market research questionnaires and even information supplied from the seemingly harmless Tesco club card database. Tesco can now profile each of their customers using their database. This allows them to market products directly to the different segments of consumer which, in turn, generates profit.

Smith (1957) claims that “Segmentation is based on the observation of evolution of demand and represents a more precise and rational adaptation of the product and the marketing effort to meet customer or user demands”. Similarly, Kotler (2000) describes segmentation as
“the subdividing of a market into homogenous (or similar) subsets of customers, where any subset may conceivably be selected as a target market to be reached with a distinct marketing mix". All in all, both of these marketing heavy weights describe segmentation as finding out what the different groups of people want.

In the new Feria hair colour commercial, the product has been targeted at women desiring a change in hair colour. Loreal have segmented their product to young to middle aged women (this is apparent through the celebrities used) and to an audience which regularly dye their hair (shown through the use of listing the positives, seperating their product from another hair colourant).

Perception Continued...

This week, we put our 'perception' knowledge into practice and devised some experiments that would test our classmates perception. Natasha and Laura used a variety of visual perception tests to discover what we saw clearly in the foreground and what we disregarded in the background.
The picture to the left can either be seen as a young woman or an old hag. It is your perception which interprets the way that you see it. Natasha and Lauran found that 7 out of the 8 particpiants (four female and four male) saw the young maid with only one seeing the old hag. This concept of foreground and background is important to printed advertising as a means of marketing communications. For example the picture to the right is an effective printed advert for wonderbra as the product is in the foreground and the image conveys the busty 'wonder' image that they are trying to achieve.

Natasha and Laura's experiment gave us all valuable insight into our visual perceptions and how this can be applied into marketing communications. However, it is not only visual techniques that can produce effective marketing communications but all of our other senses too. For example, Agata and Magdalena showed the class how perception can be aroused through smell. We were asked to smell different shampoos and discuss their price and if we could relate it to a brand. A majority of the participants recognised the brand of Dove and everyone identifed the cheapest brand which smelt the worst. This highlighted that our sense of smell is an important part of our perception and that we relate a less inticing smell to a cheaper brand. This lead to a discussion about the success of Dove in creating a smell which is continuous across their products, therefore making it clearly identifiable.

This developed into a more academic discussion of the perceptual set which can be best described by Vernon (1955) '' the individual develops a persistent and deep rooted way of perceiving, thinking and believing''. The perceptual set works as a selector interpreter and can be influenced heavily by marketing strategies. Our tendancy to try to make sense of things means that we actively seek to process stimuli and make some sense of it. This concept is important in Gestalt Psychology. In essence:

Gestalt is the German word for "form," and as it applied in gestalt psychology it means "unified whole" or " configuration." The essential point of gestalt is that in perception the whole is different from the sum of its parts.

To understand the complexities of Gestalt psychology please click on the following link : Gestalt Psychology

Buyer Behaviour

As a consumer, we all make decisions as to what we are going to buy and where we are going to buy it. We often don't recognise that there are many factors in play by businesses which heavily influence our decision. These factors are best described as stimuli which in turn correspond with our individual characteristics and our decision making process which result in a response. This can be demonstrated through the 'Black Box Model' pictured below:

http://tutor2u.net/business/marketing/buying_stimulus_model.asp

This visually shows the process through which our buying decisions are made. An alternative process is that devised by Kotler which suggests the following five stages of the buyer decision process: need recognition, information search, evaluation of alternatives, purchase decision and post-purchase behaviour. However this doesnt necessarily apply to impulse buying as this would discount the information search and evaluation of alternatives stages of the process.

Both the 'Black Box Model' and Kotler's five stage buyer decision process rely upon consumer behaviour as it is their characteristics which determine how they percieve the stimuli (tutor2u, [online],n.d.). The following diagram portrays the different factors which affect consumer characteristics:

For example, what would make someone chose Patene over another leading hair care product? This may depend on their social class (due to it's relatively high price), their social network (if friends/relatives use it and have recommended it), their lifestyle (if they take pride in their appearance and integrate this into their life), and their previous perception of the brand. All of these things contribute to the buyer's decision which is aroused through marketing stimuli such as printed and TV adverts. Clicking on the pantene icon below will take you to a recent pantene advert. From the advert you will be able to see that strategic marketing is vital in the persuasion of a buyer making a decision.

When looking at consumer behaviour, it is apparent that perception plays a key role within the decision making process. According to the dictionary perception is defined as the following:

1.the act or faculty of apprehending by means of the senses or of the mind; cognition; understanding.
2.immediate or intuitive recognition or appreciation, as of moral, psychological, or aesthetic qualities; insight; intuition; discernment: an artist of rare perception.
3.the result or product of perceiving, as distinguished from the act of perceiving; percept.
4.Psychology. a single unified awareness derived from sensory processes while a stimulus is present.
5.Law. the taking into possession of rents, crops, profits, etc.

Perception is probably best described by Schiffman & Kanuk (2003) who state that it 'is how we see the world around us'.It is our perception that guides our decision making process, often unconciously. Our perception is aroused by certain stimuli which is often placed strategically for the consumer. This results in affective selling techniques and ultimately persuades us to make a purchase.

Freshers First Thoughts...

Who would of thought that an egg could sum up your whole life in an 'egg-shell' (excuse the dodgy pun) but it really gets you thinking... do my possesions make me 'me' or does my sense of self make me 'me'. What i have learnt is that it's a bit of both. It was an interesting introduction to the psychology behind consumer behaviour and reflects the outlandish teaching style of our lecturer Ruth.
If writing all of our qualities inside a giant egg and allowing your class mates to fondle your personals wasn't enough, Ruth then made us create a blog... so we can share our new found knowledge with the world wide web. So here i am, creating a blog (one of many)... feeling slightly worse for wear letting you all know that the bloggin' legend has begun possibly the best series of blogs to grace the web.

Bloggin' Ledge x