When the creative process is not tightly connected to the understanding of the rational and emotional issues driving behavior, it is because the research itself has not been approached creatively with the freedom of thinking and methods of exploration designed to yield rich data."

These were the comments of Renee Love, president of Omega Group, Inc., in her presentation "Uncovering the Rational and Emotional Factors: Implications for Copy Development," at the fourth annual ARF Copy Research workshop in May at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in New York City.

According to Love, focus groups allow "a broad exploration of issues and concepts, yet they are not an appropriate method of digging deeply into the emotional factors driving behavior. One-on-one, in-depth interviews provide the optional setting to fully explore complex and sensitive issues to copy development."

Rational and emotional issues are highly interactive; rational factors can provide "permission" to make emotionally-based decisions, says Love. Consumer issues, both rational and emotional, are linked to copy development.

The copy for Mercedes Benz is one example. Love says it emphasizes "high resale value, safety and engineering, thereby giving 'permission' to own a luxury car."

Love points out that quantification is vital to determine the hierarchy of rational and emotional motivators, their proportion in the population, and ultimately, their proper balance for copy development.

Source of behavior

Love says that at the heart of research methodology is the development of a deep understanding of the source of consumer behavior, the predisposing events that happened often times in early childhood. After similar experiences occurred, behavior is fastened into predictable patterns. These patterns are of interest, says Love, because they represent a collection of cohesive rationally- and emotionally-based behaviors that allow us to trust that an individual will operate in a fairly consistent manner over time. It is these behavior patterns researchers want to understand, how they form and how we can change them.

Love gives an example of this by citing a previous ad campaign for Champion Spark Plug Co. The difference between an advertising approach based upon promoting product benefits is contrasted to one that encompasses emotional factors uncovered by OGI's research.

The 30-second commercial was de-signed to highlight the performance benefits of the Champion spark plug. The problems, says Love, are that Champion spark plugs have no discernible technical advantage over their major competitors and that Champion competes in an environment where many professional installers simply replace spark plugs with the original equipment brand.

Champion research

Love also discussed the marketing research that supported the develop-ment of Champion's current ad campaign which was developed by Scali, McCabe Sieves.

"Through a series of one-on-one interviews and group discussions, we discovered that the Champion brand, more than any other, was fondly remembered when professional installers recalled early teen-age learning experiences about car repairs. These events were emotionally charged rites-of-passage experiences; respondents felt a sense of accomplishment and a feeling of pride in directly contributing to the performance of their first car.

"Champion did not have a discernible technical advantage in product," says Love. "However, Champion had established an emotionally-based nostalgic relationship with its market. It also operates 14 technical vans around the country whose purpose is to support the delivery of professional training clinics. The competitors have none. This training supports the image of Champion and the technologically competent services these mechanics must provide to maintain their customer base."

Love says the positioning of the rational and emotional elements in the design of the commercial - the song's nostalgic theme, the camaraderie of the characters, the technical vans - are intended to deepen and sustain the relationship Champion has spent years in establishing its market.

Qualitative content

Love also discussed the context of qualitative research regarding the rational and emotional factors underlying purchase decisions as well as the method OGI has developed to engage in an intimate semi-structured interview with a consumer or an executive.

Context, says Love, is the space in which the pieces of the puzzle fit together. Through the successive recall of earlier and later events, the patterns and connections of consumer behavior begin to emerge. One-on-one interviews allow OGI to discover the framework in which this behavioral exists.

"During these interviews we do not ask why. Consumers do not know why they behave as they do. However, they can tell when events occurred, where they were, who was present and what happened."

The last step is to find out the meaning they associated with those events. "For it is the meaning that each of us attribute to an event that gives it power, the power to alter behavior," says Love.

The method is in-depth interviews focused on the recall of current and past experiences and the analysis, a process of isolating rational and emotional issues and associated patterns of behavior.

Love gave one example of a woman she interviewed who was extremely loyal to an over-the-counter (OTC) liquid cold medication. When the woman could not recall any immediate experiences supporting such great loyalty, Love worked back to childhood experience of which she had no conscious memory.

"At that point, under deep relaxation, she recalled that she had been taken, at an extremely young age, to a hospital in Germany during the end of the war. Her mother was not permitted in the ward. She went to an outside window and brushed the dirt off from outside in an effort to find her daughter. The child, seeing her mother outside, was screaming for her. A nurse came over to her with a spoon full of dark liquid medicine, telling the child that if she would take this medicine, she would be able to 'go home sooner to be with her Mommy.' This experience positively predisposed this individual to liquid medications."

The point Love was trying to make here is that many respondents in the study had similar, but less dramatic early childhood experiences anchoring their adult behavior toward specific forms and regimens of medication. Non-users of cold medications tend to have far fewer or none of these early predisposing experiences. In analyzing these data, OGI searches for patterns, the source of beliefs and the formation of product and brand imagery.

Partnership

Love said that qualitative research is a discovery process and in order to produce exciting research that supports, rather than inhibits, creative thinking, qualitative research must:

  • Be conducted in an atmosphere of trust and freedom among the research project team and the respondents.
  • Involve all relevant users of results, i.e., product manager, re-search and creative team members, media professional and others.
  • Be presented in an open forum, an inquiry of ideas.

"In essence," says Love, "I am speaking of partnership, a relationship of trust among people working together with a shared purpose, to generate superb creative advertising to forward the growth of their clients' businesses."