Innovation is a frequently used term, but what are its actual effects on human behaviour? Managing director at TRA Andrew Lewis explores how new technology is going to seamlessly merge the physical and digital worlds, and how this will allow people to alter their own realities.
Andrew Lewis argues that the answers to customer-centricity are unlikely to come from asking customers what they want.
Andrew Lewis reckons marketers need to become better at listening or risk being completely disengaged from who their customers are.
We aren’t as rational as we imagine ourselves. Everything from the colour of an item to the music playing in the background can influence our decisions. So, with this in mind, Andrew Lewis reckons marketers should take context seriously when targeting consumers.
Every year, StopPress asks players in the local industry for their reflections on the marketing year that was. Here’s what Andrew Lewis, managing director of TRA, has to say.
The rules that previously shaped the industry have been torn apart by digital disruption. So TRA managing director Andrew Lewis looks to rewrite the playbook.
Products don’t exist in a vacuum. And the circumstances they’re experienced in play a much bigger role than we realise, says Andrew Lewis.
Innovation is often revered as an esoteric art form, which only a few geniuses are privy to. But Andrew Lewis argues that everything isn’t as mystical as it seems.
The difference between consumers’ claimed behaviour and actual behaviour is often vast. And while marketers like to have concrete data to make plans, Andrew Lewis thinks they need to become better at observing customer behaviour.
Marketers have so many tools available to them to target customers and personalise communications. But they still need to bear in mind how people arrive at the front door in the first place, says Andrew Lewis.
At a time when he is being coaxed into commercial activities through nostalgia, TRA managing director Andrew Lewis reflects on why it’s important for brands to attach their experiences to consumers’ memories.
One of the persistent public views that exists around marketing and advertising is that these industries are great manipulators of us all, creating in us silly desires and passing fancies that divert us from a virtuous life path and empty our wallets with the skill of a pickpocket. And when one looks at something like the furore created by Lewis Road Creamery around chocolate milk, it’s pretty easy to see how people might start musing on this. But the truth is that we are a much less Machiavellian lot than our fancy milk would suggest.
You might not think there are too many similarities between treating syphilis and differentiating brands, but you’d be wrong, says Andrew Lewis, because it illustrates the importance of combining theory with practice.
Like beards and Jennifer Lawrence, customer centricity is having a bit of a ‘moment’ currently. But in this rapidly changing nation, we’re not listening hard enough to what customers actually want, says Andrew Lewis.
Incremental innovation might actually be hindering, not helping growth, says Andrew Lewis. So brands need to start acting like entrepreneurs if they want to find those breakthrough insights.
Andrew Lewis thinks that despite 50 years of research, practice, learning and refinement, we are still pretty rubbish at creating great brands that genuinely connect with people. And he thinks the secret to rectifying this might lie in the teachings of Stanislavski.
In an age where product information is readily available, Andrew Lewis says brand advertising is losing its efficacy in directing consumers’ choices—and it may even be making brands irrelevant.
Whether it’s trips to Cuba or brands and businesses, memory trumps experience in the human brain, says Andrew Lewis. So you need to design your services with that in mind.
Viewership of broadcast TV is declining here and around the world. And, in correlation, some consumers appear to have largely checked out of advertising altogether, writes Andrew Lewis. So a reliance on brand-led communications to drive engagement will be found wanting.
To be a great brand, consumers simply need to get a sense of the personality though its actions, rather than have it delivered fully formed, says Andrew Lewis.
Who are brands really talking to on social media? The converted, says The Research Agency’s Andrew Lewis.
The consumer may always be right. But let’s stop pretending consumers know what they’re doing, writes The Research Agency’s Andrew Lewis.
People don’t really understand the things they buy, says Andrew Lewis. And that’s the way
they seem to like it.
We live in a world of information overload, says Andrew Lewis. And as consumers start entering ‘The Age of the Cull’, brands that enhance life through digital connections are the only ones likely to survive.