22/02/2010
David Thomson was recently interviewed by the editor of Drinks International magazine, and the resulting article has been published in the February issue. David's views on market research, academia and whisky preference all feature strongly!
22/02/2010
David Thomson has been invited to present at the IFT's annual meeting in Chicago on 20th July within the scientific program. This meeting is the world's largest event bringing together the science and business of food manufacturing and supply.
Tags: ift, chicago, conference
15/01/2010
David Thomson's article published in full within Esomar's Research World Magazine.
Tags: esomar, research world, article
23/12/2009
27/11/2009
David Thomson has just had his article explaining Brandphonics published in the annual Viewpoints supplement that is sent out to all readers of Marketing Week magazine who have responsibility for buying market research.
Tags: viewpoints, article, marketing week
19/10/2009
BMW rolls out its new advertising campaign emphasing just one emotion - joy. It's an interesting change for a brandowner that has stuck quite rigidly to communicating functional benefits - albeit using emotional cues - in the past. This new campaign puts this single emotion at the heart of the brand.
http://www.bmw.co.uk/bmwuk/about/news/0,,1156___co-181255800,00.html
Tags: BMW joy
15/10/2009
Blog post on emotions in research.
http://www.research-live.com/4001151.blog
Tags: research live, blog
05/10/2009
We agree with you, Simon. If brandowners diverted 5% of their above-the-line spend into getting the whole brand experience optimised and aligned against the right criteria, then brands would be stronger, more successful, and more able to sustain a small premium. Brandowners must do more to understand the sensory experience of their brand.
http://www.marketingweek.co.uk/make-sense-of-brand-promise/3005048.article
Tags: brand sense, promise index
02/10/2009
One of the challenges in creating an emotional lexicon is making it culturally relevant. In one of our current projects, we are creating an emotional lexicon for the Japanese market. Given the fundamental differences between the Japanese culture and language and western ones, we are recruiting a specialist panel led by a bilingual expert to create the lexicon from scratch, before we move into the quantitative research phase.
03/08/2009
MMR presents two posters and participates in a workshop at Pangborn Sensory Science Symposium.
24/07/2009
New service for aligning and optimising brands is launched by Brandphonics and BRAND sense agency
Tags: smash your brand, syb
23/07/2009
The power of smell - is it really possible to alter the way your hair feels by just changing the smell in shampoo?
Tags: synaesthesia, smell
21/07/2009
09/07/2009
Opinions are split after the publication of a book arguing that food companies are engaged in a conspiracy to create irresistible food, which is the single biggest cause of obesity.
Tags: the end of overeating, bliss point
22/06/2009
Brandphonics and MMR people spend a day helping carry out DIY and gardening tasks at Sue Ryder Care Hospice in Nettlebed.
22/06/2009
17/06/2009
15/06/2009
I'm not sure this is quite what we had in mind when we urged brandowners to deliver more of a multi-sensory experience.
Tags: sensory, Burger King, fragrance
15/06/2009
08/06/2009
Gareth provides proof that retailers are brand-builders to be reckoned with.
08/06/2009
This post looks at the similarities and differences between Kansei Engineering (or Affective Design) and the Brandphoncs approach to new product development.
Tags: kansei, affective design, brandphonics
01/06/2009
An interesting article for anyone interested in linkages between the various senses.
Tags: Synaesthesia, bbc
22/05/2009
You think I'm going to conclude that we need both ....
May be. Let's see how we get on. Inspiration for this post was this really well-written piece about the pros and cons of creative and analytical approaches to marketing generally...
22/05/2009
22/05/2009
21/05/2009
18/05/2009
"Promotional offers hit record with 32% of consumer spend". Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. This is reported in The Grocer today.
Long gone are the days when a "reasssuringly expensive" tagline could be an appropriate way of supporting something with mass appeal. Consumers' perceptions of price, quality and brand are these days far more complex. We are adamant we want great value at every price point.
11/05/2009
Great quote in today's Grocer (not yet on their website). "The shopping list is back". James Lowman, CEO of ACS - the voice of local shops. It's an article looking at the reasons for dropping volumes in the impulse market. It's so obvious really, but manufacturers cannot afford to ignore the implications...
Tags: shopping list, impulse
08/05/2009
07/05/2009
This report in Marketing Week is worth a good read. There should have been a hyperlink to the e-version of the article here, but I cannot find it (just a tiny whiff of irony). In the meantime, you might find the article on your desk - that pile on the left looks pretty promising...
Tags: social media, Conquest, Metaphorix
07/05/2009
HSBC's recent adverts summarise more eloquently than us why single images can be "too good to be true" in research terms. Only after very careful choice and validation, can their meaning in a research environment be understood with any clarity...
05/05/2009
A fascinating documentary on the recent history within the world of food science. This programme (on Iplayer) seemed to be missed by quite a few colleagues...
Tags: food science, iplayer
30/04/2009
Great idea from that very emotional brand Marmite.
They have traded off their "love it or hate it" taste and in many ways I think they have been correct to stick to the (broadly) single product strategy but I agree the time does feel right for them to expand a bit...
Tags: marmite, brand extension
30/04/2009
To start the process, we needed to be able to identify the diverse range of emotional triggers that brands convey to consumers. This isn't simply a range of emotions that people can feel on a day to day basis, but conceptualisations based on the messages received through interaction with a brand across any of its consumer touch points.
Tags: lexicon, process, emotion, trigger, conceptualisation
30/04/2009
A new market research service, launched today, will help manufacturers take deliberate and effective steps to build emotional bridges to consumers when branding, formulating, packaging and marketing their products. The service, developed over five years by MMR Research Worldwide, one of the UK's largest privately-owned market research companies, provides a revolutionary 360-degree view...
Tags: press release, Brandphonics
24/04/2009
The Brandphonics® matrix provides a simple framework within which to evaluate your branded offer. We have identified that brands communicate emotional, functional and hedonic equities via inherent or engineered triggers, across the main consumer touch-points of branding, packaging and product.
Tags: matrix, emotional, functional, hedonic, best/worst scaling, equities, triggers, psychometric, Belbin, Myers Briggs, choice-based, Brandphonics
24/04/2009
How exactly does a brand change the way that consumers behave?
Well, there are clearly a number of thought processes, both conscious and sub-conscious that the consumer goes through that determine their own personal reaction. Consumers can be reasonably articulate in explaining what they perceive about products, packs, ads etc and consequently research has focussed on this element of the process as a convenient means to try and understand the likely impact on consumer behaviour.
Tags: brand, behaviour, Brandphonics
