I'm sitting in Chicago O'Hare waiting for a connecting flight. I don't know about other people but I enjoy these little breaks. I don't have a smartphone of any kind so I don't get messages, TXTs, twits or any such from people. I don't hook into the local internets because nothing coming through emails could be so important that I need to see it "right now". Anything that important, call me. To that end, I get the occasional phone call but that's about it. Nobody knows me so I can travel incognito. This means I can take out my laptop and catch up. Right now I'm going over some research on gender analytics NextStage completed a while ago.
Let me share some of the findings with you. We haven't published this anywhere yet so you're getting a preview.
Dimensions of Motherhood
There are two primary dimensions to motherhood (as far as neuromarketing is concerned):
- She brought forth and carried forward (being a woman)
- Transformation
More succinctly, motherhood is all about guiding through change. Mothers guide their children through life from suckling babes to productive citizens and sadly, sometimes beyond. Wives guide their husbands through their different parts of life, from little boy who suddenly got responsibilities to trusted companion and lover whom they've made a life with. They guide their peers, they counsel all those around them.
When you're a mom, change is where it's at.
Motivating Moms
The primary female motivator is community. Moms go a bit further by adding concepts of protector and nurturer. Both of these apply to immediate family, to a large degree their extended family and to a certain degree to their various social networks.
Nurturing is an aspect of transformation. Use the dimensions as aspects of motivation. Mom is an important decision maker and her decisions will be based on whether or not desired changes can be achieved in her various communities.
MultiChanneling Mom
Moms more than dads, males, single women and married women without children prefer to get their information via multichannelling. This may be due to the limited time they have per channel, it may be due to a simple axiom that the more touchpoints there are between a brand and a Mom the more likely she is to respond (I'm not saying the latter is the case, it's simply a rule that holds in general and may be more extant with moms).
Notice my use of the term prefer in the above? I'm using it selectively. You won't see them intentionally going through various media channels to get their information, nothing like that. They don't know they are making that preference. It's a non-conscious preference. What happens is simple enough; the more varied the information sources (media channels) are, the more likely Mom is to decide the information being received is accurate. If one of these media channels is a trusted social network, you're golden.
Emotions Can Be Gateways or Barriers
Emotional appeals to Moms will either work gloriously or fail miserably with rare if ever any middle ground. The only way to do an emotional appeal to a Mom is within a very tightly defined cultural identifier -- faith, ethnicity, language, sports affinity, etc. If you can somehow tie your brand to a cultural identifier then once again, you're golden. If not, don't. I've never seen an emotional appeal to a broad based Momic audience work (and please let me know if it has!).
Designing for Moms
No matter the product or service, no matter if the intention is to provoke reflection or invoke action, design your creative with sensory attributes that trigger the desired responses. Rich media is great at this as you can create video and audio that will cause Moms to relate (more and more folks are writing about mirror neurons and how the hippocampus affects decision making more and more. Well, hey...Welcome Aboard!. I've provided some links below). Moms make decisions that affect changes in relationships. Rich media is excellent as showing moms how to make successful decisions.
And Keep It Simple
Design that works is difficult to achieve and usually because someone somewhere decides things need to be subtle.
Forget subtle. Hit them over their heads. Especially moms and not because they're dumb, but because they're busy. Get their attention first, lock their eyes on your creative then be subtle. Lead them, yes, and you can't lead until they're following you first. Few people have the time or energy today to interpret your creative in the ways necessary to integrate it into their lives and act upon it. Any spare cycles they have to go through that process they'll be spending with a glass of wine and a Nora Roberts novel.
Summing up:
- Remember to help Moms manage transformations in their lives and in the lives of those around them.
- The more social their experience of your brand the more they'll respond to your brand.
- Get your message to them through as many outlets as you can.
- Use emotion based marketing only within clearly defined cultural milieus.
- Use rich media when you can.
- Keep it simple.
Please contact NextStage for information regarding presentations and trainings on this and other topics.
Upcoming Conferences:
- teaching a Masters Class among other things at the iMediaConnection Brand Summit 7-10 June 09 in Colorado Springs, Colorado
- doing a presentation on Machine Detection of and Response to
User Non-Conscious Thought Processes to Increase Usability, Experience and Satisfaction - Case Studies and Examples at the Towards a Science of Consciousness 2009 11-14 June 09 in Hong Kong, China
- presenting a formal research paper entitled Machine Detection of and Response to
User Non-Conscious Thought Processes to Increase Usability, Experience and Satisfaction - Case Studies and Examples at The 7th International Conference on Computing, Communications and Control Technologies: CCCT 2009, The 2nd International Multi-Conference on Engineering and Technological Innovation: IMETI 2009 10-13 July 09 in Orlando, Florida
- Bentley College KM Forum Symposium, "Multi-cultural collaboration: Working in Teams across Disciplines, Geographies, and Languages", 30 Jun 09
- The 4th Annual SNCR Research Symposium & Awards Gala at Harvard University in Cambridge, MA, 5-6 Nov 09
Come on by and say hello.
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