Answers

General Questions

What is the Imprint Analysis?
The Imprint Analysis is a systematic process which provides key knowledge for brand building, new product development, identifying new segments, tailoring messages to consumer and organisational change and integration.
Our process fulfils two roles; one is to provide key knowledge for companies’ strategic planning process. The other is to develop client teams who will implement this strategic knowledge on an ongoing basis. The execution of the strategy is as important as the discovery of the set of rules dictating the audience’s actions.

How do you obtain your findings?
During our workshops we filter all the information given by the participants, determining the elements that lead people to take action. Our tried-and-tested methodology translates the contradictions of human behaviour into concrete knowledge, identifying the market's present and emerging needs with remarkable accuracy.

How do you relate to market research?
Market research quantifies and qualifies ‘what people say’. People, however, say one thing and do another. How do we know that the answers obtained are relevant to the problem at hand? We concentrate on exploring what people do and why they do it. We use a systematic approach to examine the clients’ and consumers’ experiences and determine the frames of reference which drive them to take action. We also develop a client team to use the findings on an ongoing basis. The market research department often collaborates with us, helping to recruit respondents for workshops and, later, to quantify the findings.

What are your credentials?
We have an impressive track record, having successfully worked for clients such as AstraZeneca, Clarks, Kellogg’s, Lego, Nokia, Shell, Unilever and Wyeth. In the section ‘clients’ you can read what some of our clients say about us.

How do you make sure that companies act upon your recommendations?
Clients are involved in the process from the outset. During the workshops they sit side by side with respondents. The key for implementing the findings at an early stage is client involvement. Our process provides clients with a ‘new pair of glasses', which reveal what truly motivates their audience’s actions. Implementation starts at the end of Phase 1 (usually, the process consist of two phases). By the end of the project, some of the results are already implemented and tested.

What is Imprint?
Each environment has its own unique underlying system of beliefs, values, structures, languages and symbols that determine how the members of that environment see the world and react to it. To be accepted, newcomers have to learn the environment’s rules.
'Imprinting' is a process that begins at birth and operates below the level of conscious awareness. When a neural transmitter passes a nervous impulse from one neurone to another, a neural pathway is created. As the process is repeated, the pathway is progressively more deeply imprinted. Over time it becomes firmly established and remains fundamentally unaffected by opinion, whims, or fads. While environments are dynamic, many imprints - passed on from generation to generation - seem to change very slowly, if at all.
Imprinting is always associated with emotion. The sharper the emotion the stronger the imprint. Events and experiences imprinted at a very early age or in situations involving strong emotion are usually retained below the level of consciousness, but, never-the-less influence our behaviour throughout our life-time. Imprints are the means by which the members of a particular environment are pre-organised to survive. They shape our perceptions when, as children, we begin to learn the language, and they are necessarily language-based. The associations are strengthened as we test them for ourselves. They are unspoken and generally unrecognised rules we live by. They are neither right nor wrong - they are simply there. Being aware that we have them is a first step to understanding why we feel and act the way we do.

Brand Building

How can we use the Imprint Analysis in our aim for global branding?
There are a lot of different mindsets across markets, however, for some brands, common mindsets can occur. The Imprint Analysis identifies the common ground across different markets, which enables clients to develop an effective global branding strategy.

We are in the process of re-branding; why should we call Cultural Imprint to help us?
A product only becomes a brand when it sits comfortably in the consumers’ life. To do that you have to understand the consumers’ mindset. No dialogue takes place without a comprehensive understanding of what your consumers really want. Consumers’ mindsets are highly contradictory. Our process translates the contradictions of human behaviour into something concrete, identifying how to draft the messages back to consumers. In a non-confrontational way, our process identifies the ‘images’ and ‘situations’ that make consumers receptive to the benefits of your brand.

During your projects are you also branding internally when you build the brand?
Do you always look to the market for internal branding?
In order to accelerate corporate change and help employees ‘live’ the brand, organisations put effort into building the brand internally as well as externally. The Imprint Analysis helps employees to ‘live’ the brand through client involvement in the consumers’ workshops. Each workshop accommodates 25 respondents of which 5 are employees. By the end of the process a large number of employees have had a ‘hands on’ experience with consumers. This involvement has helped employees identify with their customers’ needs. As barriers between clients and customers are removed, employees learn to change gradually and the organisation adopts the culture of their customer.

New Product Development

How can we develop new products, which are in tune with new trends?
Making assumptions about trends can be dangerous. Organisations need to examine further how consumers assimilate new trends.
Take the trend for ‘technology’ and the use of mobile phones. Some years ago, the CEO of a major mobile communications company said: “Consumers’ choice of mobile phones is driven by technology, not appearance”. His words made rational sense; consumers were indeed fascinated by the advances in technology. This assumption, however, was disastrous.
Our process reveals that mobile phones are much more than just technology. They are an integral part of young consumers’ identity. At Cultural Imprint, we call it the first level of ‘robotization’. Young consumers previous experiences of portable video games, such as game boys, paved the way and helped transform the technological dimension even further.
To innovate and address consumers’ emerging needs, engineers and designers must have a ‘hands on’ approach to consumers. Otherwise, innovation can become bureaucratic and out of touch. Our methodology enables that to happen. During the workshops, the barriers between client and consumer are removed. The process allows clients to reconnect with consumers because they experience the new products and concepts side by side. Clients learn to ‘walk in their consumers’ shoes’ and evaluate the new products through their consumers’ eyes. The results are successful NPD and innovative ads.

Identifying new segments

How can the Imprint Analysis help identify new segments?
Imprint Analysis is a process based on reality; contradictions and all. We don’t accommodate consumers’ contradictions to fit in with existing intellectual models. Our systematic approach to determine the real needs of the markets often leads to provocative findings. Consider the trend for health eating. In the 90s, many ‘pleasure food’ companies were concerned with this trend. As people became health conscious, would companies have to change their brands? Our project for a global food company revealed an interesting polarity in the concept of healthy eating. We identified a new segment of consumers. From Monday to Friday these consumers wanted products that were ‘0’ fat. As compensation, however, on Friday night consumers craved super fat products. This new segment became very important for our clients. As a result, new forms of communication were created and a new super fat product, which became a mega brand, was developed.

Tailoring communication to consumers

Why does our new marketing campaign, which creates off-the-chart excitement,
fail to generate additional income?
People are entertained by ads! Ads are like short films that people want to see over and over again. However, often enough, people can’t even remember which brand the ad is selling. To encourage consumers to buy your brands, you need a process to determine the ‘package of associations’ acquired during the consumers’ experiences. This ‘emotional package’, usually outside awareness, dictates consumers’ relationship with brands. Once this knowledge is incorporated in your communication, it will encourage consumers to buy your brands.
Consider our project for a global food company. The process determined the mindset of ice cream. It identified the triggers and barriers for effective communication. During the final presentation the category manager showed us an ad and asked if it encouraged consumers to buy the ice cream brand. The ad did not fit in with our findings. The director said it had the highest recall in advertising ever. We asked how frequently people bought the brand. The frequency of purchase of that brand was close to zero. That was really odd! People remembered the ad in order not to buy the brand! Later on, the product was renamed and advertised following the ‘recipe’ developed during the Imprint Analysis and frequency of purchase increased.

Pharmaceutical companies often ask: ‘It seems that we describe our drugs almost the same
way as our competitors. How can we communicate our brand?”
The only way to successfully differentiate your brand is to identify entry-points for communication that resonate with your target audience. This knowledge is key to differentiate your brand. Our process determines how doctors and patients relate to the condition treated by the brand. By exploring the audiences’ experiences of the ‘condition’ and of the brand, the process reveals the ‘images’ and ‘situations’ to use in order to build and differentiate your brand image.

Organizational Change & Integration

How can Imprint Analysis be used to facilitate organisational change and integration?
Over the years that we have worked with organisations undergoing restructuring, change and integration, we have observed that there are two sides to a corporate culture. One side is easy to identify and can be readily explained by the CEO, management and employees. The other one, however, seems to be outside the associates’ awareness and yet, paradoxically, this is the element they use most, but which they cannot describe objectively. This ‘hidden’ part is associated to a sense of identity and security and when disregarded tends to make employees very angry. This is the part, which is often responsible for sabotaging the change process. Imprint Analysis is ideally suited to address these issues, as it brings to the surface the hidden element of the corporate cultures of acquired companies.

How can Imprint Analysis help in the communication of organisational change?
Imprint Analysis will identify the ‘entry points’ for communication, which accelerate the process of integrating change. Furthermore, as a part of the project we develop client teams, who will become experts in facilitating change. The ‘core competence’ remains within the organisation. This knowledge will allow you to determine precisely where the companies appear within the change curve and, also, to adopt the measures needed to manage the uncertainties experienced by the employees. Numerous projects with global corporations have shown that this knowledge helps to take the ‘sting’ out of change. Radical change in job description, tasks and work methods, were described by employees as being the logical ‘next steps’ in their working life.

How do you deal with the fear people have about corporate change?
How do you make them receptive to change?
Usually people have contradictory responses to change programs. ‘Change’ is perceived as a threat to their existing identity and creates a lot of insecurity. We identify the triggers and barriers of ‘change’ and define a set of actions that support employees. As employee identity is supported, they become receptive to change.

Why is cultural integration so difficult? We hired 10,000 people last year and they fit perfectly in the culture. But with the 200 people of an acquired company we have much more trouble!
Often with cultural integration the employees feel devalued. They feel ‘invisible’ in the new organisation. In this frame of mind they tend to shun new working methods brought about by the merger. Over-rational communication that extols the benefits of cultural integration just makes things worse. To be successful, organisations need to determine employees’ emotional barriers that sabotage change, as well as, the triggers that accelerate the integration process.