Back on Track – a Fresh Direction for the Rexona Brand
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CONGRESS 2007 Back on track A fresh direction for the rexonA brAnd Jaroslav Cír John Pawle Simon Patterson INtRODUCtION the marketing problem was that in france both deo- dorant brands were under pressure. in the year prior to this paper describes how rexona had lost its way in research rexona had lost share points to a local L’oreal france and how research was used to create a new brand, narta. rexona somehow seemed to have lost category language to show the way back to growth. touch with consumers in france. the other problem A fusion of different approaches was used, including was that marketing teams were dancing to different semiotics, extended creativity Groups, in-depth QiQ tunes without a common language. they couldn’t QualiQuant interviews and consumer Photo diaries. agree which of the following factors were causing the the approach used, based on the RESC™ model, looked problem, i.e. whether functional credentials were being at rexona in terms of the extent to which it fulfilled communicated strongly enough or whether cultural needs at the rational, emotional, social and cultural factors were having a stronger influence? Was the levels. Unilever management were at odds on why portrayal of femininity for rexona/sure optimal? the rexona was losing share with debate in some circles challenging task for the research was to diagnose at about efficacy communication while others felt that the what levels the problem was occurring, i.e. functional, cultural portrayal of the rexona woman was out of sync emotional, social and/or cultural and to create a common with how modern women feel about themselves. the language and agenda for marketing action to find a new research was needed to provide a definitive answer road map for these brands that had lost their way in this which went deep enough to understand how women market. conventional qualitative research had brought feel about themselves while also providing robust num- some of the problems with rexona to the attention of bers to ensure management would feel confident enough Unilever but wasn’t robust and conclusive enough for to take the decisions they needed to take to halt the them to develop a clear action plan. At the same time, decline of the brand. conventional quantitative research was not deep enough tHE PROJECt to tackle the emotional, social and cultural dimension of the relationship between the consumers and the brand. integration was the key to this project. the project objec- tives necessitated talking to all allied groups affiliated We realised that we needed to fuse and synthesise with this brand in Unilever, the amalgamation and fusion different sources of understanding including internal of different research techniques to crack the objectives, stakeholder interviews, semiotics, in-depth qualitative merging qualitative and quantitative research results, and sensitive online quantification. and finally creating a confederation of interested parties We also needed a model to interpret the results, and in workshops to unify Unilever thinking to solve the choose the RESC™ model. the RESC™ model involves marketing problem. looking at consumer needs holistically by going beyond rational (r) and emotional (e) motivations, to also look at Copyright © ESOMAR 2007 CONGRESS 2007 motivations at the social (s) and cultural (c) levels. this depth qualitative psychology can be fused with sensitive model is a powerful management strategy tool since it online research to delve deeper into the minds – and segments needs into these four levels of what motivates brains – of consumers. people to buy brands and shows whether brands are the RESC™ system originates in the search for holistic working either in harmony or opposition. in this case we explanations or causes of behaviour. Much depends examined qualitatively, through semiotics and extended upon the theoretical or philosophical orientation of creativity Groups™, what these needs are and how investigators, for example: they influence brand positioning.t hen quantitatively we segmented brands and people in terms of how brands • Psychologists identify causes in terms of perceptual, are positioned relative to these needs. sensory, cognitive, learning, thought, attention, and memory processes. We capture these under the term the RESC™ model is powerful enough to apply to a ‘Rational’. wide variety of categories and is particularly useful for • but psychology also focuses upon emotions, sensations, cross cultural brand diagnosis across different markets feelings, language, prejudice, beliefs, the unconscious, in different cultures. the principle behind RESC™ is that personality, and upbringing, now demonstrably active in human behaviour is heavily influenced byE motions, not neuro-science as well as classical psychology. these solely by Rationality. As Jung put it, there is a ‘thin layer we describe as ‘Emotional’. of Rationality’ surrounding our decision-making and • social psychologists focus upon the influence of the behaviour, a view which is being increasingly supported social or group situation on perception and conformity by investigations into neuroscience. consumers often to the implicit or explicit ‘rules’ of social behaviour. operate through the emotional centres of the brain, sociologists explain behaviour in terms of wider social independent of conscious control. Social and Cultural forces, like social stratification, that affect individual needs and associations influence emotional brand behaviour. this collection of influences we cover in our connections and are key influencers of consumer’s ‘Social’ category. thoughts, feelings and behaviours, in their everyday lives • cultural anthropologists look to cultural icons, symbols, and within their relationships with brands. there are the narratives, stories, folklore and social history to identify ‘hot spots’ of unconscious memories and associations, which of these binds cultures together or sets them or somatic markers, which control 95% (more or less apart. these we categorize under ‘Cultural’. depending on the product area) of how we behave and the brands we choose. Antonio damasio (994 and the point, of course, is that these various influences 999), who elaborates the ‘somatic-marker’ hypothesis, interact and influence one another. taken alone, they said that somatic markers are involved in emotional give rise to different and often conflicting interpretations, learning, help to reduce some options in decision-making each with their own paradigm (Kuhn, 970) but there is and highlight others. somatic markers represent the seldom a single cause of consumer behaviour, and in imprinting of emotions into long term memory that can the vast majority there is multiple causality. later trigger behaviour such as brand purchase when recalled into working memory. thus RESC™ is a way of hence in RESC™ we propose measures of four basic understanding and measuring the implicit associations levels – the Rational, Emotional, Social, and Cultural – within somatic markers. Rationality is often used to in order to reach a holistic view. out of this holistic justify what we do, and give us reasons to believe. brand data source we then identify which of these sources of choice then needs to take into account all aspects of our influence are likely to be more important in two ways: lives, our experiences, feelings, dreams and fantasies, as • first, by examining the qualitative outputs, including well as Rationality. in this case study, we show how in- phenomenological analysis, to provide psycho-social- Copyright © ESOMAR 2007 2 CONGRESS 2007 cultural insights into how and why consumers behave • concentric circles to show the progressive influence as they do. by phenomenological analysis (which some of R-E-S-C, and vice versa; psychologists describe as ‘sniffing’ the data!), we mean • Pyramidal models as in Maslow (954); developing empathy with target markets through the • or, more ‘geological’ models to show deeper influences language and symbolism they use in their stories and of E on R, which is a common metaphor favoured in projectives. psycho-dynamic theory. • second, by using statistical regression, correlations, social scientists often use the term ‘domains’ to describe and structural equation modelling to provide an analysis the influences upon behaviour.f or example, Averill and of statistical causality and segmentation of needs. Moore (99) suggest that three systematic domains are We can therefore bring to bear a sensitive combination important in understanding happiness – the biological of statistical and psycho-social-cultural approaches system, the psychological system, and the social system. (ragin et al, 2004). out of this, it is possible to describe others, e.g. Power and dalgeish (997), show that the rational, emotional, social and cultural factors driving information and influence can be grouped into similar behaviour. ‘QualiQuant™’ data is deliberately self-reported, domains: self, others, and the world. still others will using direct, indirect, and projective questioning. the encapsulate these forces into: micro, meso, and macro, RESC™ system is also designed to be versatile and showing similar influences of rational, emotional, social, modified to meet different areas of investigation. for cultural. example: the other key element in the RESC™ approach is deter- • take the question of determinants of product formu- mining how these motivation influence the consumer lation, and taste or smell. All of these are influenced by brand relationship. implicit in