Eggy Weggs? Put Up Your Dukes!

Peter Fondulas and I have been together for more than 25 years now, and never has a cross word passed between us. As a point of comparison, my wife and I have been together for 38 years, and several cross words have passed between us.

Then I read Peter's May 15 blog entry in which he argues that projective techniques in research "help me feel 'creative' . . . , [but] in and of themselves, they yield little more than broad generalities. . . . Quite frankly, I have my doubts about [their effectiveness]."

Fightin' words.

Blasphemy.

Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?

The goal in many of our projects is to identify the underlying emotions and images that motivate consumer behavior. But expressing image and emotion for a product, a service, or a brand isn't easy for consumers. Projective techniques employ analogy and metaphor ("If brand X were an automobile . . . ") to make it easier for consumers to think about and express their product or brand images and associated emotions.

In my experience, far from producing little more than broad generalities, projective techniques produce laser-like illumination of what we are trying to understand for our client. At the very least, such techniques create a compelling visual image of a brand for management to keep in mind in developing marketing strategy; often, such techniques provide a veritable blueprint for management action.

Peter's own examples are evidence for my point:

• It's true that in every brand personification exercise one brand is old and stodgy and wears a business suit, while another is young and hip and wears khakis; but I guarantee you the senior managers of the stodgy brand, sitting behind the one-way mirror, squirm a bit, shake their heads at what has become of their brand, and commit themselves to taking action. There's no future in being old and stodgy.

• In a photo sort when a consumer says, "I picked the photo of a lion because I feel proud," it may be cliché to us as researchers, because we hear such reactions all the time, but it's unlikely that consumer would have spoken of his/her pride in using the product in question without use of this projective technique. Pride, after all, is a deeply felt emotion; you can bet the brand managers behind the glass made note of how their brand makes its users feel--and how, by extension, they might position their brand to tap that emotion.

Every time I have used a projective technique--from color chips, to brand as automobile or animal, to the techniques Peter cites--I have come away with insight I couldn't have uncovered without use of such a technique. And, every time, our client has come away with a compelling visual image of its brand against the competition in the hearts and minds of consumers.

Yes, it's true--in a projective exercise we establish the context for consumers: think of the brand as a person (not a car this time, or an animal, or a color, or a sound, etc.). But that doesn't limit consumers' thinking; it opens their thinking. It allows them to think about something difficult to express (their emotional connection to a brand) using an analogy that provides a bridge from the familiar to the difficult.

"A good analogy," as psychologist Steven Pinker wrote in last Sunday's New York Times Book Review (reviewing Natalie Angier's The Canon), "does not just invoke some chance resemblance between the thing being explained and the thing introduced to explain it. It capitalizes on a deep similarity between the principles that govern the two things."

Projective techniques capitalize precisely on this notion of "deep similarities." What may seem like "cliché and generality" for the seasoned research professional (because we hear the same reactions over and over to, for example, the brand personification exercise) is not cliché and generality at all--it's evidence of archetypal beliefs and emotions that reveal themselves precisely through the use of these various projective techniques.

I just now reread Peter's May 15 entry. What was it that little kid said to Shoeless Joe Jackson (he of the 1919 Black Sox scandal in baseball)?

I remember.

"Say it ain't so, Joe. Say it ain't so!"

[NOTE TO READER]: A difference of professional opinion does not equal cross words.