Naked: Stop the song and dance and get consumers to act

In a provocative session at Spikes Asia 2012 in Singapore on Monday, Ferrier and Imogen Hewitt, managing partner Southeast Asia, Naked Communications, said the most effective way to prompt change in consumer behaviour is through action, not by changing thoughts and feelings.

Ferrier said once somebody has taken action, they will then change their feelings towards the brand to justify that behaviour to themselves. This will ultimately result in a stronger emotional connection with the brand, he said.

He advocates the so-called 'Benjamin Franklin effect' that works on the idea that asking someone to do something for you is the fast-track way to get them to like you.

“So stop asking what we can do for our consumer, stop the song and dance to ingratiate ourselves to the consumer,” he said. “Get them to do something for us and they will like us even more.”

Ferrier later told Campaign Asia-Pacific that the focus on storytelling is stopping the industry from interacting with consumers and prompting action. “All that is doing is treating consumers as a one-way, passive vehicle,” he said.

But if brands are to command action, the advertising ideas and the insights behind them need to be significantly better, he said.

Ferrier added that the world of insights has now changed from needing to find the “big, penetrating human truth” to finding the behaviour insights that is going to move units and help build the brand. 

He points to a recent campaign devised by Naked Communications for spot cream Oxy, which was based on the insight that men like watching videos of other men squeezing zits.

“That insight is not a deep, penetrating, fundamental human truth; it’s just bloody useful,” Ferrier said.  “We get hung up on trying to get very deep… [ we need to focus] much more on understanding who our people are, the behaviour we want to change, and then finding the insights around that behaviour.”