I like to get temptation out-of-the-way immediately. My habit is to stretch for the bowl to find a suitable treat at the beginning of a meeting.  That is until last Friday.  You see, on that day someone decided to fill the bowl with Hershey’s Kisses and Wintergreen Lifesavers.

Being my normal habit – I didn’t even think, I just reached for the bowl, spied a nice dark chocolate Kiss and popped it in my mouth.  It was at that moment, my treat grabbing habit came to a screeching halt.  All you Sensory people know exactly what happened.  The powerful Wintergreen character of the Lifesavers had melded with my dark chocolate Kiss, creating an unexpected and altogether unpleasant sensory experience.

This is what is called “disruption.”   Where a person’s habits become disrupted, moving them from simply sensing behaviors to seeking behaviors.  Now instead of habitually reaching for the bowl, my brain is quite active and rational…

• What is in the bowl?
• Can I trust the flavors?
• Do I know what used to be in the bowl?
• Am I really hungry anyway – maybe I should just have a cup of tea.

Disruption is an important part of product innovation.  In order for your new product to succeed, you have to disrupt current behaviors.  I’m not suggesting you go around spiking conference room treat bowls, but you need to have a plan to get people seeking alternatives and guiding those seekers to try your product.  Then leverage product cues to create a new experience that instills new habits that include your product.

My colleague had a good point.  It got me thinking about products where negative emotions are really important.  Then I saw this poster for Purell^®.  Just thinking about that kids’ little finger stirs up incredible emotion.  And it’s not just any emotion – it’s two very negative emotions: fear and disgust.  It’s so intense just looking at the poster; it makes me want to run away!
Put yourself in the mindset of a Purell^® employee.  If you’re working on this particular initiative, understanding the emotions for fear and disgust are of paramount importance.  You need to design your product to reduce those emotions in order for the product to be successful.  While the product itself might not create these emotions, it certainly has to be designed to reduce these emotions.

Now, there are also positive emotions to consider with this product, with relief being the most prominent in light of the fear that is cued by this market positioning.  Conducting research to understand the product attributes that cue the reduction of fear and disgust and enhance relief and desire, will ensure that the product is aligned with its market positioning.

The point is, don’t discount the value of negative emotions.  They are used in communications all the time – because they’re great at disrupting behavior.  Keep an open mind.  You may find yourself “picking” a negative emotion to align your product with your market communications.

Being immersed in consumer behavior research, I’ve identified four types of behaviors as critically important:

• Seeking: Searching out solutions or considerations that address concerns that are important.
• Selecting: Choosing to buy or use a product or service.
• Sensing: Reacting habitually from sensory cues in the environment, the priming of new cues at trial and the reinforcement of cues and habits through repeat.
• Sharing: Telling or showing others about experiences, beliefs or ideas.

I believe there is value in considering the drivers of each behavior in a given situation, as well as understanding how the behaviors interact with each other in sequence over time – seeking a product, then selecting it, then sensing it and finally sharing the experience with others.

As an industry we tend to focus too heavily on a single behavior – guess which one – which makes it difficult for a researcher to truly understand how to build a product that will disrupt a person’s current habits in favor of a new product experience.  We need to open up our research practices and seek information that allows us to understand how to impact all behaviors, not just one.

What are your thoughts on categories of behavior?   Which behaviors are your biggest challenges in research?

That’s an interesting question. Nostalgia is in part a longing for a time past. It’s a time or experience that you desire to have again, yet one that you can never regain. Nostalgia is what you feel when your desire for time past collides with time present.

When you are feeling nostalgic, you’re feeling emotions associated with a particular moment of time from your past.  For instance, I remember being a child, standing in my Grandmothers kitchen, helping her make bread. It’s a whole body experience where I close my eyes and picture myself right there, breathing in the aroma of fresh baked bread. I feel the love, the happiness and the sadness associated with that time I long to regain.

But how far back does the memory have to be in order for it to create a feeling of nostalgia? If there is a time-frame, then it certainly begs the question at what age can we begin to feel nostalgic?

Innovation is just like this. Many people I have talked to about innovation think their goal is to find that elusive needle in the haystack. But that isn’t what innovation is about. It is about seeing the hay in the haystack. Seeing what can be a large part of a consumer’s life, rather than a single shining moment.

If you innovate to find the needle, you will end up with a product that has great trial and people will be happy with it. However, it doesn’t become part of the hay that is the majority of their lives. If you innovate to find the hay, you will find a products that connect with a large part of a consumer’s life – creating greater, more long lasting meaning. You will find products that will continue to enrich people’s lives for a long time.

Innovation is about seeing the hay in the haystack, not finding the needle.

Fast forward to my high school graduation. Why is it that the person who has the hardest time pronouncing  names is the one that gets to announce them as you walk across the stage? Well, my grandma was showing up and I sure couldn’t have this guy saying my name wrong. So I needed a rhyme. “Looky, Looky here comes Greg Stucky” was out because I knew just how likely he was to actually say that out loud during the ceremony. So mom suggested I just tell him that it rhymes with cookie. Ah, perfect, simple, effective, and no chance for embarrassment. Well, that is until I walked across the stage and was announced as “Greg Stew-ky….uuhhh cookie, ummm Stoo-oky.” Even at my last high school reunion, classmates I hadn’t seen in over 20 years were still having fun drawling out the “ew” in Stew-ky. Of course all the beer they consumed made it that much more fun.

It is interesting what sticks with you, the things you remember. Those moments in time of heightened emotion last in your memory forever. Those moments that are so powerful that you don’t need any photos to remember them. Those memories that connect with all your senses to the point you can actually re-live that moment with vivid images, crisp sounds, clarifying aromas, and the tingle of emotions.

If you have a moment, tell me the story about something that sticks with you.