Mapping Territories in Aging with Haleon – Leaders in Behavioral Science

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About Leaders in Behavioral Science:

Aimed at exploring the role of behavioral science across market research, the series interviews insights experts with experience in behavioral science about current developments in the industry, their experience, predictions and more. Watch the previous episodes here.

Transcript: 

Anders: Hello there, I’m Anders Bengtsson, founder of Protobrand.
I’m really happy to have Teresa Correa-Pavlat joining me here today.
Teresa is Consumer Insights Lead at Haleon. Hello, Teresa.

Teresa: Hi, Anders. It’s so wonderful to join you today.

Anders: Yeah, likewise.
So today we’re going to talk about behavioral science.
We recently had an opportunity to work together with you, where we applied principles of behavioral science to a product on aging.
So I’m really curious to hear from you some of your experiences working with Protobrand and applying behavioral science to this very fascinating topic of aging, which we all people experience aging. It’s not something we can avoid.
So I’m really curious to hear some of the learnings and experiences you had working with Protobrand on this initiative.

Teresa: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, from a personal standpoint, I was hoping to unlock that miracle to slow down aging, but certainly that was not the scope of the project.
So in working with Protobrand, what I was most excited to understand was really, what is that psychology behind aging that consumers express intuitively without giving more of that system two thinking?
So we had certainly seen from a cultural standpoint that aging is top of mind for consumers. There’s different segments that are taking a look at how that might be manifesting for themselves and how they might have to think about aging as well.
And we had also done some qualitative too, but I wanted to lean into Protobrand’s technology to unpack or really map the space of aging and see of the learnings that we’ve seen in the marketplace, how are they manifesting for consumers through this exercise?
And then determine what is the size of those territories that might best fit with our organization’s goals.
And so for me, the opportunity was really in terms of twofold, was really unpacking all of those different territories so that we could really reach the consumer from an emotional standpoint and be able to determine what is a way to show up more relevant, more meaningful, and also be empathetic to where they might be as they’re thinking about aging.
And then certainly determine what are the sizes of the different opportunities as well.

Anders: Great. And so that’s great to hear. And for this particular study here, we applied one of the behavioral science methods we use quite often at Protobrand, which is a visual technique using visual metaphors.
And you mentioned here system two, system one, and what really that method is doing is that it allows us to tap into the system one, the non-conscious.
So getting to people’s deeper thoughts and feelings that they have about the topic like aging is a way to get beyond those surface level ideas that we may have and just, you know, if we asked a direct question about aging, we might, you know, people will tell us a very obvious, you know, functional perhaps science of aging, what that might mean, but perhaps forgetting the deeper structures that are influencing how they think and feel about aging and decisions that they go about when they make decisions that they believe is impacting how their body and their mental state of aging.
So I’m wondering then, because this is a bit of a different method than perhaps a more traditional market research study that uses attitude scales with the Likert scale.
I’m curious, how did the organization, your colleagues at Haleon, how did they receive this work when you shared it with stakeholders?

Teresa: Yeah, I mean, it was super well received. And I think we were able to deliver more even than what was expected. Every piece then of the learning in terms of how we might use it is grounded within the consumer insight. So it was super well received.

Anders: So I think what you’re referring here to is that there is both the language, the actual words and expressions people use, but then also visually and in terms of visual universe, metaphors, colors and so forth in terms of how aging is expressed.

Teresa: Absolutely. I mean, you’re able to see what is the symbol of aging for consumers, and you’re able to look at it across different audiences.
Certainly you have the flexibility to dig deeper across the different territories that were uncovered and different potential audience segments.
So, you know, we know that personalization is a trend that continues to grow. And so I think that being able to tap into this system one behavioral science approach makes us better equipped to understand how can we come across more personable and approachable to consumers.

Anders: Right, right. And you mentioned that prior to this work, you had done some qualitative work.
And actually what this study is about, it’s a sample that is a large sample. So it’s a survey. But at the same time, there’s actually qualitative data, but it’s collected from many respondents.
And the sample was fairly large here. So you could actually look at subgroups of audiences and so forth to see how do they relate to aging in different ways.
So it’s a way of really scaling the qualitative data collection. And then through text analytics, we identify salient themes to see what is the lay of the land and how does it compare to different audiences.
So we’re trying to achieve a lot here by going to the why behind the what and exploring that in the qualitative data that is captured from a system one perspective, but then also quantifying that in the end. So it’s trying to do a bit of both here at the same time.
And technology is really helping us. These days, AI plays a huge role in helping us collect better data and systematically analyze that data in ways that previously wasn’t possible.

Teresa: Absolutely. I mean, and to build on that, we’re able to tap into what are some of those barriers? What are the things that actually motivate them, perhaps, as it relates to aging?
So it is quite a fruitful study. It certainly further enhances any sort of learnings that you may have from trends or any custom work that may have been done in the space as well.

Anders: So in this day and age, when AI is on everyone’s agenda, what would you say to those who say, well, can’t we just ask, you know, can we just rely on AI to tell us what aging is about?
What would you say to those? Like, why is it necessary? Why do you believe? And why should Haleon care about talking to consumers and getting their authentic voice as opposed to asking AI for how people relate to aging?

Teresa: Yeah, no, I can certainly see that being a topic. I mean, I’m a huge advocate of AI. I integrated myself into the work. But I will say that behavioral science is still very much needed because with AI, you’re able to assess and synthesize what is it that consumers might be expressing about a particular topic.
With behavioral science, you’re able to get that cognitive, emotional thinking right away. And it’s so intuitive. The process makes it so that consumers have to intuitively respond.
And so the exercise that we worked on with Protobrand, where it was both visual and language, it enabled us to then understand in consumer words, how are they expressing themselves?
So the way I see it is AI gives you that curation and synthesis of how consumers might be thinking about a particular topic. But the behavioral science gives you a sense of how do you start to articulate that both through messaging and visual representation in a way that really feels more personal to consumers.
So it’s helpful to have both. I don’t think one is a replacement for the other, but I certainly think that the behavioral science piece really helps you get to those deep-rooted emotions.
And I will say with the behavioral science, because it is consumer-first, you’re able to get a lay of the land in terms of within the space, for instance, of us for aging, what are those different territories that are potentially either more fruitful because we see a lot of heart from consumers there, or what are territories that there’s perhaps more opportunities for certain audiences more so than others.
So I do think that behavioral science is quite important and part of your learning plan.

Anders: That’s it. I’m glad to hear that you mentioned that in terms of it’s sort of consumer-first here in terms of how they express their deeper thoughts and feelings about aging.
Because a lot of market research is really where we as marketers come up with terms and then we say “Okay, let’s test this with consumers and see if they agree or disagree.” And we give them a Likert scale to agree or disagree with it. But then it’s our language as opposed to their language.
And these projective exercises that the respondents in this study went through, it was really designed to really cover their deeper thoughts and feelings, their words, their visuals, as opposed to what we as marketers could come up with.
So you get that sort of putting the consumer first as opposed to putting them into a mode where they just react to stimuli.
So that’s something that I think is really beneficial in this day and age where we have so many ways of just testing things, but we need to get good input in the first place so we have good materials to work with.

Teresa: Absolutely.

Anders: Well, fantastic, Teresa. This is so great to have you on today and talk about behavioral science.
Looking forward to future opportunities working together on fascinating topics because these are the foundational insights that lead to a lot of the work that you’re responsible for.
We’re going to talk about how you use insights because that’s, of course, something we don’t want to share here on the air.
But being able to explore these kind of very complex problems and provide these foundational insights is really, truly powerful.
So thanks again for joining. Really appreciate it.

Teresa: Thank you, Anders. We’ll talk again soon. Thank you.

Anders: Talk soon. Thank you so much.