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Time for Total Transparency: Why Saddington Baynes Are Inviting Customers into the Conversation

31/08/2022
Creative Production Studio
New York, USA
337
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The progressive production studio reveal how their neuro-led services unlock invaluable creative potential

The digital world moves at a rapid rate, highlighting the growing need for data transparency. Multi-layered modern marketing tactics and convoluted company data policies can leave customers feeling confused, exposed and vulnerable, as transactional transparency becomes synonymous with ethical business practice. Collectively, we face an ever-expanding digital landscape and a round-the-clock global datasphere, which often amounts to information overload. Add to this concerns about aspects of a data-driven society reshaping life as we know it, and it is no surprise that many consumers are wary of those who hold influence over our data. 

As the industry battles with widespread consumer scepticism which threatens to halt the progression of many fields - including neuromarketing - data-led enterprises, such as Saddington Baynes, are more aware than ever of their responsibility to demonstrate total transparency of the use and protection of consumer data. LBB speaks to Callum Gould, head of insights for the neurocreative production studio, who explains how involving customers in the conversation surrounding advertising insights reinforces trust and has proven to benefit both consumer and producer.


The Birth of Engagement Insights 


Saddington Baynes’ award-winning, neuro-led visual optimisation and consultation service, Engagement Insights®, has proven time and again that measuring the implicit response to advertising and marketing is a sure-fire way to gauge the effectiveness of the creative. Through non-invasive online neurological testing, the team is able to understand brain activity and use biometric analysis to discover the physiological reaction to messaging and imagery, which is then able to fuel their neuro-driven creative production. 

The idea of incorporating neuromarketing research into their work came about when Saddington Baynes’ CEO, Chris Christodoulou, attended a talk by neuro-behavioural marketer Thom Noble. A pioneer in the neuromarketing field, and founder of his own brand consultancy software company, CloudArmy, Thom spoke passionately about how adopting effective neuroscience practices can indicate “the best chances of producing content that grabs consumer attention, engages emotions and activates longer term memory.” In his talk, he highlighted how neuro testing was more accessible than ever before, with participants no longer needing to visit the lab, instead, being able to participate in tests from the comfort of their homes. This piqued the interest of Chris, an experienced digital artist who shared Thom’s passion and understood the power of harnessing consumer feedback in order to bridge the gap between what customers really want and what artists are delivering. 

This led to a decision to combine trailblazing CGI and virtual production with neurocreative research, and so, Engagement Insights was founded in 2014. For the last eight years, the in-house visual optimisation consultancy service has helped Saddington Baynes understand consumer behaviour and the emotional levers behind decision-making reactions, as they partner with brands to ensure only the most effective and evocative experiences are produced.


Interpreting Implicit Responses 


In order to best understand the decision-making processes behind consumer behaviour, Saddington Baynes have spent nearly a decade finessing their neuro-testing abilities, to guarantee deeper, more meaningful readings. “We're not asking personal questions or reading deep down into the respondent's brain,” clarifies Callum, “We are simply measuring the speed of response to content. It’s about measuring how people react to brands, which is effectively what we do all day every day anyway.”

The testing aspect is conducted in much the same way as other online market research, but with the Engagement Insights team paying special attention to the effect specific stimulus has on the nervous system. “When you see an advert, you will always have an implicit response, and we are able to measure this implicit response to the content people are seeing, giving us a better understanding of how it is received,” explains Callum.

When it comes to the collection and sharing of personal data, cause for concern has emerged as a result of infamous scandals surrounding the misuse of data by global companies. Understandably, hostility still surrounds the subject of data collection, and a report from Label Insight indicated that 94% of consumers prefer companies that practise transparency. In addition to clearly communicating what to expect from the testing process, Saddington Baynes maintains transparency by anonymising all data and never storing personal identifies of respondents in their database. “We will never individually call out a specific respondent; instead, we aggregate the data to ensure it's effectively anonymised,” says Callum. “When we are talking to brands about results, we present the data as groups, in a bid to bring people together as much as possible.”


What Customers Really Want


The end goal is to facilitate the production of implicitly impactful content, no matter the brief or demographic. There are myriad ways for the industry to measure effectiveness, but few methodologies enable brands to identify diverse emotional responses to a range of content. By putting the power back in the hands of the consumer, brands are therefore better equipped to deliver messages that truly resonate with their desired audience. Callum explains how the sheer scope of modern day KPIs complicates a process that can be reduced to a simple science. “Neurological readings allow us to understand how people respond emotionally to content – not just how they think they’re feeling. Take the infamous Kendall Jenner campaign for Pepsi; from a brand level, it was assumed to be a strong idea, featuring a famous person. However, if they had tested the implicit response of the content, they would have gained a deeper understanding and realised the message was implicitly received as jarring.”

In PepsiCo’s case, taking a neurocreative approach to the ad could have helped them avoid the now infamous PR scandal that entailed, in which the drinks company was accused of appropriating and trivialising the Black Lives Matter movement. “People may have this positive opinion of the overall message, but actually, implicitly they feel it is jarring because the brand and the actual message are quite different,” Callum continues, “If we're able to get that deeper reading, we can really understand how people feel emotionally, as opposed to how they think they're feeling. It’s about removing biases and getting a reading, without being invasive on customers.”

To avoid instances like this, Saddington Baynes team works toward enhancing, validating, and optimising creative ideas during all stages of the creative process. The innovative team calculates campaign value by testing what does and doesn't work, feeding their findings back to the client on a case-by-case basis. In the long run, testing brand imagery in this way is designed to increase the widespread existence of more evocative and meaningful advertising, as brands land on the right message. As a result, Saddington Baynes has the power to unlock untapped potential within the industry. “What used to traditionally happen was the highest ranking person in the room made the decisions,” Callum says. “However, if you can bring the customer into the conversation and tailor content to their emotional recall, that's a really powerful thing. Eventually, we hope to compile a complete ‘cookbook’ of different elements that go into creativity, in order to inform and inspire the future of advertising.”

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