Reptilian! THE CHEESE IS ALIVE!

This isn’t part of any of the questions or assignment, but I just loved “Do you feel accepting when you eat bread, do you feel lonely when you eat bread?” That comment just resonated with me. It made me worry about what was to come. As marketers are we supposed to be a bit zany asking off the wall questions. When I think of bread, I think carbs. Then even nuttier was “the cheese is alive!” I just had to get that off my chest because it was a little weird and made me question why I was watching this video.

Now to begin with Dr. Rapaille, his way about interrogating consumers and gaining insights is very different from the traditional method of asking “do you feel accepting when you eat bread?” He begins his three step method by going after the brains cortex. He asks the individuals in his different focus groups to take a look at a word, such as “luxury” in the video, and then say words that they feel are associated to this word. He asks them to come up with words that they think of when they hear the word “luxury”. I would call this the cortex step. The narrator describes the three steps as through reason, past emotion and finally to the primal core where Rapaille feels that all purchasing decisions lie. Therefore the first step is to blatantly ask the consumer. He says that people want to show how intelligent they really are. Then he explained that in the next step he wants to get into the emotions of the consumer. He asks them to tell them a story like he was a 5 year old. He says that this works because the consumers no longer try to be logical, but rather they try and explain a story to a 5 year old. This plays into the emotion of the consumer and starts slowly progressing away from the logic. This is one step closer to discovering the underlying rationale behind consumer purchases. In the third step he begins by placing them back in the room with only pillows occupying the space. He then emphasizes searching for the reptilian code. Here he tries to tap into the primal instincts of humans. He believes that consumers make their choices based on primal instinct.

When looking at the reptilian code for the example given which was luxury, I began by going through the first step of the process. Some words that came to my mind were costly and elite. I didn’t go through the second step, but I ended up realizing that my primal code for luxury is prestige and the way a product will make me look to others.

Song Airlines was a very interesting concept. As I’ve written in different blogs, I have this new found passion for organic meals. While watching the piece on Song Airlines, I became confused about who the company was. However, when they mentioned Jet Blue, I immediately knew that company. I never had even seen the commercial that was featured in the movie. However, I did enjoy watching the marketing consultant as he sped through ideas that he felt would convey the message of the airliner. I also liked that they referred to themselves as guerilla marketers. They felt they were the underdog. This showed in their showing of the commercial. They were going after a niche market and usually the niche company is the underdog to larger companies, in this case Jet Blue and other larger major airliners. Some things I didn’t like were the things they were offering. At the time of release of this move, which was around 2004, organic food wasn’t large enough, and didn’t have a large enough market base to propel Song Airlines in that respect. I also didn’t like the way they were going about competing with their competitors. They had to show points of differentiation that were relevant to people who would fly. In the airline business, an empty seat is lost money, and I don’t feel that with their offerings they could legitimately compete with any other company. They would have had to substantially increase price in order to cover the cost of their services which didn’t serve a large enough market to begin with.

I really enjoyed the Persuades because it made me think a lot of what I do as a consumer. It also gave some good views as to the way marketers go to attempting to persuade the consumers to spend money. BIG MONEY!