Spurred by research, Girl Scouting calls 21st-century girls to action

What did you do today? It’s the question at the forefront of Girl Scouts of the USA’s rebranding and revitalization effort. GSUSA poses the question to a new generation of girls and adult volunteers who participate - or could participate - in Girl Scouting annually in hopes of boosting enrollment and volunteer numbers. After a period of research and development, Girl Scouts debuted a long-term, multichannel brand campaign to reacquaint the country with the organization and communicate the power Girl Scouting has to change the world.

“What we’re doing with this initiative is repositioning Girl Scouts with a message that is relevant to girls and the lives they lead today,” said Laurel Richie, CMO and senior vice president, GSUSA, New York. “To some degree, our brand had faded and our research revealed that while many girls and parents knew about us, they had a very limited view of us. While we are proud of our $700 million cookie business run by girls, we offer so much more than that, and this new work is designed to let people know about all the new and exciting things girls do every day as Girl Scouts.”

The branding, in the works as part of the organization’s overall transformation that began in 2004, is composed of a new visual identity, which includes a trefoil mark; revised color palette; and refreshed logo that was originally created in the 1970s by designer Saul Bass. The initiative also includes plans for a 360-degree marketing program that taps the online, place-based and traditional media.

As part of the What Did You Do Today? campaign, Girl Scouts has developed Spanish-language advertising to target the Hispanic market, one of the few girl populations in the country that is growing. The Girl Scout Leadership Experience also features a series of 15 outcomes, or benefits, that for the first time will allow Girl Scouts to gauge how well its program is working in terms of developing key leadership skills in girls.

Brain scanning surprises researchers in sunscreen study

University of California - Los Angeles (UCLA) neuroscientists have shown they can use brain scanning to predict behavior even better than the people themselves can. The study, conducted by UCLA faculty member Matthew Lieberman and UCLA Ph.D.-recipient Emily Falk, indicates that increased activity in a brain region called the medial prefrontal cortex among individuals viewing and listening to public service announcement slides on the importance of using sunscreen strongly indicated that these people were more likely to increase their use of sunscreen the following week, even beyond the people’s own expectations.

For the study, Falk, Lieberman and their collaborators sought people who did not use sunscreen every day. The study group consisted of 10 male and 10 female participants. The participants had their brains scanned using functional magnetic resonance imaging at UCLA’s Ahmanson-Lovelace Brain Mapping Center as they saw and heard a series of public service announcements. They were also asked about their intentions to use sunscreen over the next week and their attitudes about sunscreen. The participants were then contacted a week later and asked on how many days during the week they had used sunscreen.

Lieberman and Falk focused on part of the brain’s medial prefrontal cortex, which is located in the front of the brain, between the eyebrows. This brain region is associated with self-reflection - thinking about what we like and do not like and our motivations and desires.

“From this region of the brain, we can predict for about three-quarters of the people whether they will increase their use of sunscreen beyond what they say they will do,” said Lieberman. “If you just go by what people say they will do, you get fewer than half of the people accurately predicted, and using this brain region, we could do significantly better.”

This finding could be relevant to many public health organizations, as well as the advertising industry. While advertising agencies often use focus groups to test commercials and movie trailers, in the future they and public health officials could perhaps add “neural focus groups” to test which messages will be effective while monitoring the brain activity of their subjects.

Pantene research explores women’s feelings about bad hair days

The dreaded bad hair day is the focus of a major research and advertisement effort from Cincinnati consumer packaged goods company Proctor & Gamble. The campaign is aimed to regain some of P&G’s Pantene shampoo and conditioner market share that was lost during the Great Recession when women traded down to lower-priced rivals like Suave and Tresemmé, according to Ellen Byron’s June 30, 2010, article, “Wash Away Bad Hair Days,” in The Wall Street Journal.

In spring 2009, scientists at P&G dove into women’s feelings about their hair with a two-pronged approach. First, the women respondents were given the Positive Affect Negative Affect Schedule, a psychological survey intended to gather insights into mood and hair-related emotions, and secondly the respondents were hooked up for a high-resolution electroencephalogram using neuroscience equipment to measure brainwaves as women watched ads.

P&G surveyed almost 3,400 women, who rated how intensely they felt 20 specific emotions in relation to their hair. Then, about 1,300 women went on to use Pantene hair products for one week and afterward completed the questionnaire a second time. About 900 of these women used new Pantene formulas and packaging, and about 400 used older versions. New-Pantene users gave especially high scores to four emotions - excited, proud, interested and attentive. Test administrators classified the feelings “excited” and “proud” as components of joy - a good sign for Pantene’s new look and formula.

P&G’s ads - a direct result of the company’s research efforts - began airing in May 2010 and attempt to show how bad hair makes women feel. During the research, scientists found that the surveyed women felt less hostile, ashamed, nervous, guilty or jittery, depending on the hair products they used, while at other times they said they felt more excited, proud and interested.

The research and advertising effort capped years of work at P&G to reformulate Pantene products; redesign the packages; and pare the line down from 14 collections spanning 165 individual products to eight. The new formulas are grouped into four main hair categories - curly, fine, medium/thick and color-treated - and packages are accented with bright colors. P&G also retained the Classic Care, Nature Fusion and Relaxed & Natural lines and upgraded a fourth line, dubbed Restore Beautiful Lengths. In all, the research helped whittle down the Pantene line to 120 items.