Editor’s note: Mike Anastas is president of Focus Probe Inc., a Hartsdale, N.Y., research firm, and a member of the Qualitative Research Consultants Association. Jim Aucone is a strategy consultant and former president of Deutsch Advertising, N.Y.

Consumers have caught on. They think that most products, like most politicians, are pretty much the same. They know that product demonstrations can be enhanced. They see through the paid celebrity endorser, and they also know the “real people” they see on TV have been carefully edited and may not be real anymore. They’ve been trained by the media to look for the spin behind everything they see and hear. They are insiders. They are in-the-know.

The later Baby Boomers and their children have grown up to be as cynical about advertising as they are about the world around them. They learned early in life that not every toy performs like the one on TV and not every cream cures their acne.

Today’s consumer likes humorous reminder advertising like the Bud-weis-er frogs, and satirical advertising, like E-Trade and Priceline.com, but they do NOT like to be sold.

Yet every day they make brand choices and decisions. Every day, even though they are cynical about the marketing game, they buy. How do you motivate them to buy your product or service?

One way is to spend a lot of money. Another way is to use qualitative research to identify a personal brand reward.

Personal brand reward results from qualitative research that goes beyond typical brand attributes, parity brand benefits and even beyond brand values. It is the way your brand makes the customer feel, the emotional payoff that differentiates your brand from the others, that motivates consumers to buy. Personal brand reward is not about your brand, it is about your brand’s customers. It’s letting your customers sell your brand back to you, in terms that are deeply meaningful to them. They reveal the emotional language they use to make decisions, not what you tell them.

Focus group discussions or one-to-one interviews can discover a personal brand reward for your brand that will:

  • differentiate: be proprietary and unique;
  • motivate: be relevant enough to strike a chord;
  • communicate: be easy to execute.

Preparation is important. Before starting qualitative research, learn as much as possible about perceptions of the brand and its competitors. Poke around, shop for the product or service, and ask questions of salespeople, retailers or distributors. Identify consumers who personify heavy users, the heart of the market. Read the MRI and other data to define the profile of frequent users who know the category and, in most cases, play an important role in brand share.

The sequence of your qualitative questionnaire or discussion guide is important. Consider the implications of cumulative learning during the group or interview. Try not to show respondents ideas or concepts about the brand before you seek their personal brand reward or they may simply play back what you gave them.

Keep respondents involved and forthcoming with a variety of techniques. The perceptual map is a good way to analyze brand differences based on polar opposites that represent important, meaningful factors, such as fashion vs. function, and low cost vs. costly. Respondents show where each brand belongs on the map.

Personification and visual projective techniques help define each brand’s image. In a study of brand images among teenage chewing gum users, one brand was seen as an older school teacher and another brand as a younger sports car driver. Guess which is the leading brand.

Give respondents time to unload how they use the brand or service, what they like, or perhaps don’t like, about it. Get all the logical stuff out of the way before you reach for the intangible, emotional payoff.

Finding a personal brand reward is a result of carefully positioning the end of a benefit ladder. Benefit laddering starts with a series of steps like this:

  • Which features of the brand are important to you?
  • What benefit do you get out of these features?
  • Which one of these benefits is MOST important?
  • What is it about that benefit that makes it important?
  • What would you miss if you did NOT have that?

At this point, the benefit ladder must be positioned to discover the brand’s “reward” or “emotional payoff” by exploring “What’s in it for you” or, even better, “What do you, personally, get out of that?” It’s a big step beyond logic. It seeks to define not just the benefits but the feelings about the brand that drive brand loyalty and preference. Based on a personal brand reward, advertising is more likely to charm the cynical consumer into the message, rather than away from it. Attributes can be boring. Benefits are often very similar among leading brands, but a uniquely stated personal brand reward can help set a brand apart and ahead of its competition.

Astounding rewards

We have discovered some astounding personal brand rewards. Frequent flyers who also vacation by train talked about seeing fabulous mountain vistas, valleys and rivers, mountain lions and sunsets you never see from a plane or a super highway. The personal brand reward is being closer to the Supreme Being. How, in heaven’s name, does train travel get them closer to God? By getting them closer to nature.

One segment of upscale savings bank business customers, a very desirable target, liked the fact that their bank attracted a wide range of customers, from families cashing welfare checks to professional people in coats and ties. The personal brand reward is a feeling of belonging and importance, not insignificance.

Homemakers who use a brand of adhesive shelf paper as soon as they move in somewhere revealed that even though the benefits may be functional, the personal brand reward is pride in being as good a homemaker as Mom and Grandma. (Not an easy trick in the year 2000.)

The personal brand reward for homeowners who refuse to shop for a new utility company in this age of deregulation is not just the feeling of security about having a local source of supply. The deeper reward was a satisfactory feeling of loyalty for sticking with the company that always supplied them with energy, except for storms and acts of God.

Can be sold

There is no question that consumers are more cynical now than they were generations ago. But they can be sold, if you reach them on their own terms, explore the feelings and emotions they have, and mirror those feelings back to them as personal brand rewards.