“Brand changes everything.”
— Emily Heyward, Obsessed
The first thing to think about when using research to discover brand opportunity and drive creative is to realize that not everything you might want to test will yield useful or actionable data. I’m speaking from experience here, because sometimes the answers you get from surveys or interviews are not what you expect and can even be converse to what your instincts are telling you are correct.
In her book, Obsessed, Red Antler co-founder, Emily Heyward, talks about the shortfalls of user testing. When put on the spot, users tend to make decisions that make the most sense to them in that moment. For instance, customers will choose a name or logo that is the most literal to what a product is or does. If our goal as creative partners was to be as literal as possible, great! But therein is one of the most important differences between Brand and Brand-ing. When you have defined the brand and committed to it, your task is to make sure that research and creative serve the brand and not someone’s arbitrary preferences as reported on a survey.
Objective vs. Subjective Brand Truths
Some truths are objective, and these things are more likely to yield results that are actionable. Examples of this would be: the current status quo in a space, facts about the current culture, consumer habits, and consumer preferences. We test these with a high level of confidence and unearth surprises regularly.
Subjective truths are specific to the brand, and you have to be very careful testing things like: emotion evoked by a brand name, backstory, cultural context, branding, and packaging. These things are challenging to test and get real results, and I believe they typically break down because respondents try to answer emotional questions from the logical part of their brain — which is the opposite side that we want to appeal to. It’s also incredibly hard to give a random subject enough context to give you sounds feedback within the time that you have with them. There are exceptions, but by and large, what you have is something akin to asking someone looking through a keyhole to give you feedback on everything that’s on the other side of the door. You’re likely going to have a bad time as a brand strategist advising designers to make decisions based on this type of survey data.
We’ve all heard of analysis paralysis, overanalyzing details to the point of being unable to act with confidence. We’ve seen it with clients so many times at the agency over the years, and I can tell you from experience, you’re typically asking for trouble when you effectively try to crowd source data on things that should come from within: name, brand story, and even packaging designs are highly subjective and need to point back to the brand.
In the past, when we did test these subjective truths, we were almost never happy with the results. Often, things felt counter to what our gut was telling us, and it’s really difficult to deliver work and get the all important buy-in from stakeholders — which is a risk you were ironically trying to mitigate with the research! I’ll admit that interviews can be helpful and focus groups can be even better if you’re both lucky and good, so proceed with caution. At the end of the day, founder and stakeholder buy-in and belief power trump all of it. Be careful getting advice or feedback from anyone who has less than the full context.
The founder’s brain trust can be a good litmus test, but only the founder themselves and their primary stakeholders tend to know what is authentically true and correct based on intimate knowledge of the vision. And while we’re on the topic, founders can’t feel just “okay” about anything in regards to the brand strategy or branding decisions — they need to be on fire about the details. A founder’s excitement is rarely the floor of how excited customers will be about a product. More often it’s the ceiling.
One caveat: there is value to testing things like packaging design and other collateral if you’re specific with the feedback that you ask for, and keep it simple.
For example, when A/B testing a package mockup in the aisle where the product will be, try:
- Asking: which of these two grab your attention more — in a positive way?
- Always switching the order in which things are presented to remove bias
- Try and make differences minimal, or you might get the wrong feedback on the wrong thing.
In a nutshell: don’t try and crowdsource the answer to things that would better come from the founders, stakeholders, or the brand’s brain trust. Try and identify where the risk is that you’re trying to speak to, because at the end of the day that’s the goal of good research: to identify risk and open the door to the best outcomes for the brand.
