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Articles by Simon Collister
From Curious to Committed: What Turning Casual Fans into Champions Means for Brands
By Simon Collister, Director, Human Understanding Lab, UNLIMITED, part of Accenture Song Over three-quarters of women’s sports fans engage with it on a ‘casual’ level according to research from Unlimited’s Human Understanding Lab. This means that they currently only follow the big games, tournaments and competitions, and presents a significant opportunity for brands and rightsholders. This cohort of fans is already somewhat engaged. They are already sitting at the top of the ‘fandom funnel’.
The power of neuroscience-led storytelling
Standing out requires more than creativity — it demands a deep understanding of how the human brain processes information. This is crucial for creating and executing marketing strategies, campaigns, stories, and internal communications. Neuroscience-led storytelling is one powerful way of doing this. By leveraging insights into how the brain handles information, emotions, and experiences, brands can create stories that captivate, engage, and influence audiences more effectively.
AI is already helping marketers do more, by augmenting (not replacing) them
We asked ChatGPT to write a Valentine's Day message from Kanye West to his wife and it was unhinged "I love you like Kanye loves Kanye." Given it's Valentine's Day, we thought there's no better way to celebrate than to see how ChatGPT might write a …
Zillennial marketing: access the hidden generation
What’s green, keen, and completely misunderstood? That would be the Zillennial generation This ‘in-between’ age group is a demographic of climate advocates, eager spenders, and unrepresented consumers. They are the people who fit right into the centre of two demographics that no one (including themselves) really knows about. Born between the early 1990s and the early 2000s, Zillennials are generally between 23 and 33. But there’s no strict cut-off point for when someone is or isn’t a ‘Zillennial’.
Well-being of Gen Z and the rise of Gen X TikTokers
We see it all the time on social media: influencers and individuals pushing people to take care of themselves, all day every day Closely followed by businesses and brands shoving similar content down everyone’s throats (especially that of Gen Z). It makes you wonder… why do brands seem to care so much about teenagers and young adults? In an era marked by individualism it’s critical we re-evaluate our capacity for empathy.
Brand balance: think fifty shades of grey
Balance is tricky thing to maintain, just ask any tightrope walker, 18-month-old toddler, anyone learning to ride a bike, all BBC journalists and most politicians It can be hard to sell too — we’ve all heard that ‘brand X has half the fat but all the flavour‘ but few or any of us believe the claim. We live in a world where we have been schooled in binary thinking — it’s right or wrong, left or right, black or white.
New InMobi insights reveal key strategies driving QSR consumer loyalty
InMobi, a leading provider of content, monetisation, and marketing technologies that help businesses fuel growth, released new insights from its annual survey that shed light on the evolving consumer preferences and behaviours with Quick Service Restaurants (QSR). The study, conducted year-over-year, found that consumers value QSRs most notably for convenience and that loyalty programs are key to attracting more consumers. Brands should know: Consumers value QSRs for convenience.
Index launch to shake up how Gen Z research is conducted
A new Index officially launching this week from Imagen Insights will enable thousands of young people aged 16-28 to provide opinions, insights and feedback to brands while getting paid every time. This latest innovation will enable brands to access long-form insights from Imagen’s global communities every day by searching for keywords and topics.
The fight for consumer attention
One thing is certain in brand marketing: the competition For thousands of years, brands have battled in countless ways to cut-through and gain customer attention in highly competitive environments. Whether it is via colourful floor mosaic advertisements in Ancient Rome or the modern data-driven multichannel approaches used today, brands have always had the same objective — to stand out and grab attention of the time-poor potential customer.
What's the right (and wrong) kind of empathy in marketing?
Brand values and brand books are beautiful things Life only gets difficult when real people turn up for work. Check out British Gas’ list of values. The first is Care. And we’ve seen how that’s going. Instead of focusing on communicating idealistic values, isn’t it time for marketing to start signalling empathy with the customer? Marketing has tried it before.
ChatGPT: tech changing how we interact with AI
You surely have already heard about ChatGPT (Generative Pre-training Technology). Since OpenAi launched the new service, it has generated great hype around it: 1 million people signed up in the first five days creating poems, song lyrics, research articles, HTML and python codes, and business plans. GPT technology is changing — and will change — the way we interact with artificial intelligence, and it has the potential to deeply transform several industries and jobs.
Hustle Culture is Dead. Don’t mourn.
Today, the world of work has a fresh vocabulary. Last year’s mass exodus was dubbed ‘The Great Resignation’ after 47.4 million Americans quit their jobs. It’s a story sweeping across a global stage—markets in meltdown, growth stagnating at a snail’s pace. There’s a ‘war for talent’, with businesses battling to fill roles in a scarcity of skilled candidates, and forced to dig deep to retain current employees. And forget sharing the load.
On wisdom and age
I was a bit surprised to find myself disagreeing with Oscar Wilde’s claim that “with age comes wisdom” until I read his all important caveat “but sometimes age comes alone”. That’s a statement you would have to be a fool to disagree with — we’ve all met older people who have seen and done everything but somehow kept their mind closed and learned nothing along the way.
The foreseeable future: brand experiences in Q4 | Opinion
With the summer starting to fade, it’s time for brands to gear up for the fourth quarter of 2022. But what should they be focusing their energy and budgets on? Sarah Owen speaks to some leading lights to find out. Victoria Herrick, strategy partner, Strat House “The summer of sport has been a massive opportunity for brands to get involved across multiple events (even if they only do small-scale experiences) and this will continue throughout the World Cup and in the build up to Christmas.
Boxclever announces two promotions | News
UK – Customer experience and brand strategy agency Boxclever has promoted Karla Rendle and Charlotte Hodgson to associate directors. Rendle (pictured above right with Hodgson) becomes an associate director for the qualitative side of the business. She joined the company over two-and-a-half years ago as an insight manager. Previously, she worked in the insights function at New Look and as a fashion and beauty senior analyst at Euromonitor.
Does 'belonging' influence brand success? | Opinion
The concept of ‘belonging’ is a powerful one in human psychology. Dr Simon Collister of Unlimited looks at how brands can use our need for ‘belonging’ to connect with consumers and foster greater diversity and inclusion. Professor Gina Rippon, in her recent book, The Gendered Brain, demonstrates how brain imaging proves that traditional sex and gender stereotypes in advertising produce harmful effects.
IRI and NPD complete merger | News
US – Information Resources Inc (IRI) and the NPD group have completed a merger to create a global technology, analytics and data provider. The merger brings together colleagues across the globe to offer more than 7,000 clients a view of consumer behaviour and retail purchasing and consumption trends across a broad range of industries. A unified name and brand for the combined company will be announced at a later date.
Vaccine Disinformation & Strategy
Welcome to my first newsletter! I’ll be publishing weekly ‘long reads’ on Thursdays or Fridays giving you the opportunity over the weekend to grab a coffee and immerse yourself in the ideas and insights brought to life in each newsletter. The plan is to draw on topical or pertinent ‘big ideas’ that inspire and influence human behaviour, boil it down and distil it into practical insights.
Are retailers close to closing the online/offline gap and creating truly connected customer journeys?
As e-commerce takes the driver’s seat, retailers are searching for new ways to streamline the offline/online transition. Purchase behaviour Tech-driven innovation E-commerce & mobile retail Omnichannel retail Customer experience Best practice In our technology and data-driven marketing world, retailers are increasingly concerned with smoothing out the online/offline customer journeys to ensure that potential customers switch seamlessly between the different moments – on- and offline – on the...
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