New survey results: routines separate the healthy from the, well, not so

Most Americans are Health Intenders.  You know, they WANT to be healthier and make better choices, and they intend to make those choices, but life interrupts and they get side-tracked.


This is 45% of all of the people we surveyed.  They tend to be parents with kids under 18 at home.  Interrupted sleep and other priorities (read: "Mom, my book report is due tomorrow.  Do we have any poster board?") derail their best intentions.  


This group is also most likely to get in trouble once they start eating something they've designated as a forbidden food.  They strongly agree that, "Once I start eating one particular food, I'm off to the races."  


Many a healthful intention is wrecked in the DANGER ZONE between dinner and bed.  This is when these Health Intenders want something to help them unwind and be ready to sleep, but their current routine is to start snacking on something that's calling their name from the kitchen.  And, once they start, they find it next to impossible to stop eating that chocolate, or that ice cream, or those chips...


This DANGER ZONE is crying out for a new healthful routine to substitute for the destructive eating routine.  What could your brand offer?

Passion Point Marketing provides a new look at opportunities

Remember Copernicus?  He was the visionary who declared that the sun didn't revolve around the earth.  In fact, it's the other way around.


In the same way, innovation opportunities appear when we look at the marketplace through the consumer's perspective rather than from the manufacturer/marketer perspective.


Looking AT consumers (rather than seeing the world through their eyes) falls short.  This perspective, all too often grounded in assessing pain points, only reveals opportunities for incremental growth.


Seeing the world with the consumer at the center, rather than the brand, illuminates consumers' dreams, intentions and passions.


The game-changing opportunities come from three places:

1. Fueling consumers' passions.  Pampers Village does an awesome job of sharing a passion for raising happy, healthy babies with their consumer audience.  This kind of perspective creates the possibility for creating a platform for sharing this passion, not just creating content that runs on somebody else's platform.
2. Filling the gap between reality and the ideal.  The ideal is a concept like the horizon.  You never actually reach it.  Once you get close, something changes.  Closing the gap, however, is a powerful platform for step-change innovation.
3. Resolving dreams that conflict with each other.  For example, wanting to create wealth and being home most of the time.  Or wanting kids to like their lunch (so they'll eat it) and getting in some of the nutrition they need.  Or even wanting to lose weight and eat chocolate.

Align your ideas with your consumers' passions and their passions will fuel your growth.

Are you selling a product or a routine?

Consumers who are successful in achieving their goals have established beneficial habits, patterns or practices.


According to our recent Change Energy study, what differentiates the "Health Successful" group (20% of pop) from the Intenders (43% of pop) and the No Worries group (32% of pop), is their routines.  Working out and choosing health-promoting foods and beverages are part of their daily habits.  For the other groups, making health-promoting choices was a clear intention (for the Intenders), but life's other demands come first OR they have a more hedonistic, live-for-today kind of approach to life (No Worries).


We've identified places where those healthful routines do not exist. 


More on that tomorrow.  Or if you'd like a private look at the data, email kay@energyannex.com

Get a Reaction

Ever wish you knew in advance what kind of stimulus your consumers will take viral?


Private social networks are like science experiments.  You can add marketing elements and see what kind of reaction you get without the risk of widespread exposure.


Private social networks also allow you to learn what kinds of topics consumers want to talk and share about.  What kinds of discussion topics do they start about fabric softeners?  What types of videos will they upload showing their usage of kitty litter?  What kinds of comments about school lunches set off a groundswell of passion?


If you want to experiment, send me a note at kay@energyannex.com.

Passion trumps pain

Marketers are always on the lookout for pain points and problems they can solve.


The problem is that solving problems only yields incremental growth.  It limits your ideas to making "less squeaky buggy wheels" rather than a car.


Fueling consumers' passions trumps solving what are minor inconveniences or irritations.  Understanding their ideal experience, their goals, their ambitions is a great way to tap into what motivates them.


People move towards hope.


What's the hope that your brand offers?

Using Social Media Research as a Science Experiment

Is your social media research an exercise in math or a social science experiment?


Many researchers are using social media as a listening tool, employing web crawlers that monitor all digital conversations about their brands.  They compile statistics that act as an "early warning system" for developments in the market place.  This is the math-based approach to social media research.


Approaching social media research from a science experiment mindset shows new possibilities.


What happens when you give chronic fatigue sufferers information from a holistic sleep expert?  What discussion topics do heavy gum chewers start themselves?  What are the conversations between moms on the topic of how they negotiate with their kids about what goes into school lunch bags?


We create these kinds of provocative experiments via private social networks that we set up and monitor.  


We add different elements together, create a forum and learn what unfolds.


The idea or topic that really heats things up in the social media lab has enough energy to light things up in the larger marketplace.

Are you using social media as a source innovation?

Lots of companies are monitoring the social media conversations that are occurring about their brands and using social media as a marketing vehicle.


That's way underutilizing an amazing resource.


Social media networks can be built to see (through uploaded videos and photos) how your product is really being used... what situations, what the competitive set is in the usage occasion, how the package really works at home, and how well it fulfills in the moment of use in an in-home setting.


By encouraging participants to start their own discussion topics in a private social network, we can see what's engaging to consumers vs. using social media to understand how consumers react to what's important to marketers.


And what an amazing way to crowd-source ideas!