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See www.amsrs.com.au
‘Bubbling brooks’, ‘Rolling waves’, ‘Flowing streams’ and ‘Still waters’ – these are four ‘somatic identities’ describing girls between 18 and 24. According to Liane Ringham of INSIDE STORY, somatic identities are strongly relevant to pack design and point of sale. She has spent the past four years exploring somatic metaphors and somatic identity and how these are potentially relevant to marketers.
For some time now research briefs have been calling for an understanding of emotions as well as guidance in connecting with consumers at a deeper level. Early in 2006, INSIDE STORY started specifically researching the new area of marketing somatics, seeking to identify codes that can be used to ‘talk’ to consumers at a deeply emotional level.
A review of recent ads in a range of popular magazine titles targeting youth, including Marie Claire, Cosmo, Zen and Cleo, reveals that most advertisers are targeting a fairly narrow expression of female identity. The trend is to target the somatic identity we have called the ‘Bubbling brooks’, which describes young women who strongly identify with the colour fuchsia, hearts, flowers and things that sparkle and attract visual attention. These are the ‘material girls’ and therefore understandably attractive to advertisers, especially youth advertisers. However, the codes or symbols may repel many more girls than they attract. It is also possible that advertisers are missing out on even more compelling opportunities that have a better fit with their brands.
What is somatic identity?
The construct of somatic identity is adapted from neuroscientist Antonio Damasio’s framework. Somatic or somatic-emotional identity lies deep within the subconscious. Somatic identity relates to a tendency to lock into a certain bodily or sensory reality that becomes identified as the self. This experience of self is observable in repeated patterns of physically reacting to the world. To understand this idea, imagine the slouching shoulders of a young teenager hiding behind a fringe, gravitating to the back of the classroom and seeking the emotional comfort of lying under the doona in the bedroom. This pervading downward physical orientation to the world is linked to how this 'Still waters' girl sees herself. Somatic identity also provides an overiding metaphor for interpreting and responding to many aspects of the world around her. For example, some things are experienced as being ‘over the top’ or ‘too out there’ and just basically ‘not me’.
We are finding that these ways of experiencing the world relate to our feelings about a wide variety of objects in the world including those of interest to marketers. Just as some people might see a Necker box from the top, bottom, left or right – consumers lock into a way of experiencing the world of marketing and reacting to its offers.
Somatic metaphors
Metaphors pose a means of getting deeper as they enable access to feelings and thoughts that can’t be readily expressed in words. Latest thinking about emotions points to the potential importance of somatic metaphors because emotions are embodied – that is, experienced in the body. By accurately reflecting the bodily experience marketers create more powerful communications. Metaphors are perfect for this.
Some examples of somatic metaphors are: ‘step forward’, ‘over the top’, ‘hidden’, ‘surface’, ‘deep’, ‘down to earth’, ‘expanding’, ‘out there’, ‘warm hearted’, ‘blood boiling’, ‘weighted down’, and ‘backed up against the wall’. These metaphors all relate to bodily experience. They can contain clues that help researchers understand people’s emotions as well as predispositions to like and dislike ads, packs and brands.
Identifying somatic identities
After a number of experiments with somatic metaphors over the past four years, we felt we were ready to start consolidating this knowledge. The first phase of the qualitative research was carried out between January and April 2006 in Australia, Singapore and Malaysia. It focused on the youth market of females between 18 and 24 years. Water is an excellent metaphoric medium to express somatic identity for young women because of the changes they go through at this stage in their lives and because of its essentially feminine quality.
So far we have identified four somatic identities. Girls in this age group tend to be either one of these identities or a blend of them. They are:
· ‘Rolling waves’ who predominantly identify with the movement up and forwards. For example, they are likely to identify with and relate better to ads that show people and objects moving in a forward and upward movement and this orientation to the outside world is also reflected in their motivations
· ‘Bubbling brooks’ who bubble up from the surface. For example, they are likely to be very responsive to champagne as a product category and to ads that show light reflecting from a surface as their whole experience is about the surface of their bodies with not a lot of focus on what’s happening inside
· ‘Flowing streams’ who are self contained people who have a deep sense of themselves as having an inner and an outer self. They look for deeper meanings in all things - looking past the surface attractions
· ‘Still waters’ who are directed downwards. One variation of this are the really cool girls with attitude whose relationship to the world is from a position of down pushing up epitomised by the Hip Hop and Post Grunge sub-cultures.
A set of codes underlies each somatic identity which helps to explain what they like and don’t like. The biologically pre-programmed codes cover shapes, kinesthetics, and colours, so they are directly useful to creatives and designers.
Applications in packaging and advertising
The emerging somatic identities are providing a set of codes that can be used to develop advertising, packaging and point of sale briefs. For example, the codes can assist in packaging decisions such as whether to box, to have a viewing window or, whether there is interactivity and the type of interactivity.
The qualitative research has so far used a wide variety of de-branded stimuli to test out whether the codes translate into useful means of understanding packaging and advertising dispositions. For example, this perfume bottle (Alexander McQueen’s Kingdom) is pretty well irresistible to ‘Rolling waves’. It says many of the right things for these girls who respond particularly to the colour red, its semi open nature and the way it rolls forward. However it is quite repellent to the other types who find the codes that resonate so well with 'Rolling waves' are for example, ‘too intense’.
The frameworks have potential consequences for branding, advertising and direct selling. In relation to branding, Coca Cola for example, is the archetypal ‘rolling wave’ brand. Its red wave has a lot of appeal for this consumer. The latest campaign departs from some of those codes which may be right for the way they want to evolve the brand for today’s consumer or mismatch depending on what they are trying to do.
Widening the vocabulary
Damasio’s initial aim was to understand emotions. This led him to deal with consciousness and identity formation. Put very simply, the idea is that our identities originate in the body and our senses of self are based on mappings of the bodily experiences. Our somatic or bodily experiences are also the intimately involved with our emotions. Somatic metaphors have a natural fit with Damasio’s framework and it seemed logical for us to use our extensive experience in metaphor to explore this framework in a marketing context.
We need to widen our ‘vocabulary’ to encompass experiences that cannot be readily expressed in language. This is where metaphors became very useful and where somatic metaphors are working particularly well as a means of gaining insight.
By Liane Ringham, Managing Director INSIDE STORY. Liane presented findings from her marketing somatics research at the INSIGHTS 2006 conference in April 2006 in Sydney, in Singapore to marketers at a seminar on Youth Marketing in May 2006 and at the ADASIA conference in July 2006.
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