The Stickiness Factor

On Friday, we had a fresher’s party in our office. It is though a bit different from a regular Fresher’s party. It is NOT a party given for a new joinee from the team, it is rather the other way round. Whoever joins our team has to give a big treat to all the 15 members of our team…. Eeya! Now that’s what we call … Innovation J

But yeah, this is not the event which forced me to write, it is rather what happened in the way.

I was talking to my colleague while sitting in the co-passenger’s seat in his car. We were zipping over through this fly over. As my habit is, I was checking all the hoardings, posters and even sign boards coming our way. This big hoarding caught my attention. On 90% area of this hoarding, there was a picture of a hot chick with darkened midtones and shadows (done in photoshop to make the chick look ultra hot and sensual and inviting too ;) ). My eyes got ‘stick’ to the babe, and I kept staring at her till the last nano second possible. We are past the poster now, and I am still under her spell. After a few seconds, when she kindly returned my senses back, I tried to remember which category and which brand was she posing for.

One second, two seconds and Yeah, I could figure out the category – it should be a jeweler’s ad, because all of them make it the same way and show the same thing; hot chick wearing their jewellery. No matter how hard I tried , I just could not remember the name of the brand. Any guesses why? Simple! Cuz I did not notice it. My eyes were fixed on the pretty lady all that while.

Hmmm…. if it is happening to majority of the junta, the hoarding is exposed to, then it effectively means that Net Exposure to the brand is … is very very low ???

Money wasted?

This reminds me of the Sesame Street Case Study which Mr. Gladwell mentioned in his book “Tipping Point”.

To give a summary (I copied it from Wikipedia :D )–

Sesame Street is an American educational children's television series and a pioneer of the contemporary educational television standard, combining both education and entertainment. Sesame Street is well known for its Muppets characters created by Jim Henson. It premiered on November 10, 1969, and is the longest running children's program on television.

Malcolm Gladwell in his book has stated, "Sesame Street was built around a single, breakthrough insight: that if you can hold the attention of children, you can educate them".

(Below text is mine again!)

The guys in Sesame Street put a lot of research in each episode.

One research finds out on which portion of the screen, the kids are looking at. There would be some alphabets appearing at the bottom of the screen while the Puppet character in the show would tell kids about that alphabet.

The research showed that the kids were not looking at the alphabet, they were rather looking at the puppet character because the character was very dynamic and was having a lot of movements.

The puppet character had more Stickiness Factor than the alphabet. The Sesame Street then ofcourse made adjustments to improve the Stickiness Factor of the text.

If we go back to our lady on the hoarding, now can we say that the lady had more Stickiness Factor, so much more that I could not take my eyes off her face and see the brand? Yes, we can.

We moved a bit farther, and among the clusters of hoardings and posters, one hoarding with highest stickiness factor won my viewing time.

This poster had the same format. 90% of the space had 4-5 very fair and pretty ladies, with a line of text saying something about being stylish. This time also, the most pretty face, who was eventually the girl in the middle got my eyes ‘stick’ to her (and I believe that was the whole idea of putting her in the middle… good marketing .. thumbs up to them). Unfortunately, this time around also I just could not take my eyes off her to see the brand name, occupying 10% of the whole space in the lower right corner. But yes, even if my eyes were fixed on that pretty sticky thing on the poster, I could make out that it was a Star Network logo, but which Star TV? No Idea.

Well, let me not say that just because I had my eyes ‘stick’ to one part of the screen means that everyone looking at the hoarding will follow suit. But even if say 40% (which is quite possible) of the junta is doing the same thing then that means that the campaign is only 60% effective on the face of it.

I then started thinking what would I do if I have to put my brand’s hoarding in the city?

a. I would rather not design my hoardings before I finalise the places to put them. As this will enable me to design it by putting in elements which increase its Stickiness Factor to a level more than others. For example, if the area has a lot of color posters, I may use the contrast effect to grab attention by making my poster in Black and White.

b. This means that I may have same message given to people in different ways or designs. And if I am using a 360 degree approach to communication then I should be able to simulate same message in different ways through different media.

c. One may argue , having 4-5 different designs for say 20 locations in a city will shoot up the cost of the whole campaign, I would say, if we calculate Return on Marketing Investment, it will be better in this case.

d. I would take care of a few things while designing the hoardings-

i. I will not put large amount of text. I will try to keep less than 7-8 words on my hoarding (this is just my standard; I have no study to support it.)

ii. I will put pretty faces on it but will make sure that my brand name is also getting the required attention. For ex- in second hoarding above, they could have moved the logo from lower right corner to lower middle corner, exactly where the central pretty lady is.

Hmmm… I am just thinking how do we actually decide on the spots to put our hoardings?

Now that’s a good question, and I would like to think over it before I write on it.

Well, if you have got ideas, feel free to share… post as a comment to this post. Post-it! J

Thanks for visiting!

K.R.O