Sentient Insight: the business blog for consumer psychology and consumer marketing

At Sentient, we examine consumer associations with brands, including corporate and product brands as well as the brands of individual people. For example, Sentient used the Automatic Brand Association (ABA) methodology to reveal voters’ associations with presidential candidates before the 2008 election. The unconscious positive and negative associations with an individual’s brand has an impact on behaviors toward that individual. This impact of the unconscious mind on automatic associations with people was painfully evident in an episode of Top Chef: Las Vegas on Bravo TV last week. Charlie Palmer, celebrated chef and restaurateur, was the guest judge on this episode’s “quickfire challenge”

In the continued quest to find the marketing “silver bullet” in these recessionary times, there’s been a lot of talk about branding. And while marketers continue to discover that branding is not simply about logos, colors and visual cues, some pause at strategy and don’t get to the heart of the matter.  The heart of course is the interaction people have with your brand; it’s  interaction that creates the experience that makes emotional connections between brand and customer. We were reminded of this recently at a panel discussion with several prominent CEOs in Boston.

While consumer confidence is showing signs of an uptick, retailers are remaining cautiously optimistic for a decent holiday season. The National Retail Federation has projected holiday sales (sales made during November and December) will fall by a modest 1% this year. Clearly a projection in the upward direction would be preferable, but in these times, flat is the new growth, so shouldn’t we be jumping for joy?  Not really, when you consider the self-reported data that reflects a changing sentiment around shopping. Consider these facts: - 57% of non-affluent households surveyed in the September First Command Financial Behaviors Index (conducted by Sentient on behalf of our client First Command) say they will spend less on gifts this holiday season.

I love Starbucks coffee. I’m a brand lover for sure – I make several stops per day for their delicious dark roasted coffees. But I’m not a fan of their latest taste test for their new instant coffee (VIA™) because it stacks the deck in favor of their new product. This morning I promptly walked into my neighborhood Starbucks, and stepped up to the counter to take my taste test of the new ready brew instant coffee (there was a coupon for a free tall coffee waiting for me after the test). The task was to see if I could taste the difference between two blind samples of coffee, and to tell my Barista which one I liked better. Traditional instant coffee is known for being flat and flavorless on the tongue, and the new Starbucks VIA™ is pitched to be the opposite. One sample...