Mind Readers: What Sponsors Really Want

Based on The Persuaders, Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink, and Malcolm Gladwell’s Spaghetti Sauce podcast, it seems like it is almost impossible to understand what customers really want. Along those same lines, it seems like companies have to spend thousands of dollars paying outside consultants just to discover these “primal urges” that lead to consumer satisfaction. This search for the Reptilian Code of the human unconsciousness hit close to home for me. As a future sports marketer, a portion of my work will involve satisfying the needs and desires of sponsors. In particular, to reach my professional goals, I need to satisfy these sponsors’ desires in a whole new way by creating marketing programs that effectively create the activation/brand recognition that these sponsors covet. Thus, the question arises of how do I discover what sponsors really want if they are unaware of the real desires of their target customers as well as their personal business needs?



For example, USA Track and Field is sponsored by Nike, Visa, 24 Hour Fitness, and Hersheys. These primary sponsors pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to host events, post signage, display their logo on uniforms, and gain exclusive access to a distinct target market. Are these sponsorships the best ways to reach a target audience? Does the desired audience even notice these sponsors?



According to a recent article at NPR.org titled “Many Ask If Olympic Sponsorship Is Worth Cost” By Louisa Kim, the author argues that sponsors may not be getting the return they think. For example, the article provides a quote referring to the recent Beijing Olympic Games where a market research group found some consumer confusion as to whether Coke or Pepsi was the title sponsor. It goes as follows: "We've done research in ten cities throughout China and we've found most consumers have no idea who the actual official sponsors are," says Shaun Rein, head of the China Market Research Group. "We found 40 percent of consumers thought Coke was the sponsor, versus sixty percent for Pepsi." Unfortunately for Coke, 60 percent of the sample population didn’t even realize Coke was the title sponsor. Yet, Coke spent over $70 million to be one of twelve title sponsors for the event.

Now as a future sports marketer, I face the problem of developing new marketing programs that actually provide ROI to sponsors. Since I’m not blessed with unprecedented creativity, I will be forced to engage in typical marketing research to gain the customer insight necessary to unlock these unconscious desires of consumers. Based on the lectures, I feel like some sort of non-traditional approach will be the most effective. For instance, Dr. Rapaille’s three step technique provides million dollar insight just because he knows how to look at a problem and develop a unique solution. Thus, I think the most effective way to research sponsors needs comes from ethnographic approach where you study consumers in their natural environment. Specifically, I would use a qualitative research technique known as “Free Association.” I think this technique will allow sports marketers to discover whether sponsors’ customers are receiving the effect sponsors desires. Also, I think this technique will allow sports marketers to adapt their marketing programs to build the correct associations.

To discover what new marketing programs would be desirable, I think an experiment would provide interesting insight. For example, in class, we watched a very unscientific experiment about neuroscience where a grocery store shoppers brain waives were measured to see her responsiveness to different promotions. I think it would be interesting to do a similar type of analysis in regards to sponsorship, but this experiment could be tailored to sponsorships by also using a conjunct analysis (most sponsorship come in packages). These two methods of research seem particularly effective to gather insight into the customers’ needs. Consequently, a sports marketer can use this insight to tailor sponsorships more to what consumers want. While this may seem simple, many sports organization are so caught up in what’s always been done that many sports organization have forgotten to look for what customers truly want (i.e. Song Airlines desires to pitch the flying experiences rather than cheap rates).

Lastly, I wanted to comment on the importance of using secondary research in marketing. Often times, many publications and marketing groups have already done studies similar to the information you are trying to gather. Therefore, it’s important for a sports marketer to stay up-to-date with modern marketing research. Even if the information is not directly related, it may provide applicable information that can be used to gain insights into your customers.

The Persuaders

Dr. Rapaille is known as the “Marketing Guru” to many Fortune 500 companies. These companies strongly believe in Dr. Rapaille’s ability to reveal consumer’s unconscious desires. While it may seem ridiculous for a company to invest millions of dollars based on Dr. Rapaille’s ideology, his method has proven effective. For example, in the movie The Persuaders Dr. Rapaille claims credit for the success of the Cadillac SUV. Originally, Cadillac did not market their SUVs correctly;thus, they were not selling. These vehicles were not selling because the product did not meet a consumer need; rather, Cadillac failed to properly identify the need consumers wanted satisfied out of an SUV. As a result, Dr. Rapaille recommended selling domination because his researched showed that consumers where looking for power and strength in an SUV.

To discover what consumers really desire, Dr. Rapaille uses a three-stage technique in his market research. The three stage technique is as follows:

1) Understand the Deep Reasoning Behind People’s Thoughts
2) Examine the Emotional Aspects of those Thoughts
3) Diving into the Primal Core of the True Rationale Used in those Thoughts to Understand Consumer Behavior

In the movie The Persuaders, Dr. Rapaille uses this three stage technique to better understand what consumers are searching for in the word luxury.

The first stage of this technique involves Dr. Rapaille building a level of comfort with the consumer. He gathers a small focus group and asks them to share their thoughts on luxury. In this stage, Dr. Rapaille expects the typical responses people usually say about luxury, such as expensive and ritzy. Additionally, Dr. Rapaille uses this stage to allow the focus group participants a chance to feel good about themselves and feel like they are really contributing to the research.

Once the first stage is completed, Dr. Rapaille is able to continue the other two more important stages. In stage two, the focus groups are asked to dig deeper into themselves and find the emotional feelings they connect with luxury. Specifically, Dr. Rapaille asks the participants to describe luxury to a five year old from another planet. As a result, the participants are forced to dig for the most basic dimensions of the word luxury.

This second stage seems to relate to Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink. This three stage technique essentially aims to identify the unconscious thoughts people have about certain products. Without going through all three stages, many individuals tend to tell marketers what they think they want. Dr. Rapaille has realized that what consumers think they want doesn’t always match with the primal core of what consumers subconsciously desire.

After the second stage is completed, the focus group participants are utterly confused as to what they are doing. This confusion is exactly what Dr. Rapaille wants because it encourages the participants to step out of their comfort zones and share their true feelings. To further help this process, Dr. Rapaille has all the chairs removed from the room and the lights turned off. Once the lights are turned back on, Dr. Rapaille believes the participants are in a vulnerable state and ready to share their deeper primal urges. He believes that many of these deeper urges lie dormant unless the participants all go through this complete three stage process. After completing this process, Dr. Rapaille is able to understand the so called Reptilian Code of consumer decision making. This Reptilian Code is basically the unconscious desires consumers have for a certain product and/or service.

In addition to explaining the three stage technique used by Dr. Rapaille, The Persuaders describes an all new Delta airline known as Song Airlines. This airline aims to compete with other airlines in a whole new way. Specifically, it plans to compete on the experience of flying Song. Also, the airlines planes to primarily appeal to women because this segment is generally ignored in the airline industry.

Overall, I feel like this Airline is a little too far ahead of its time. Eventually, I think all airlines will have to switch to this strategy, but right now I think most consumers still look for cheap rates when flying. Thus, it’s important to express these reasonable rates to consumers in marketing programs. No matter the product, all business must remember that they cannot succeed unless they meet a consumer need. At this time, consumers desire cheap rates. While creative, Song marketing programs failed to show consumers how they satisfied this need.

The best example of Song being too forward thinking comes from the movie The Persuaders. In one scene, a man comes to a Song store in a mall completely confused. He does not know that Song is an airline. As a result, he does not seem interested in flying song because he appears frustrated with the ambiguity of the company. Thus, I think Song poorly launched their new form of flying. While the marketing program should create buzz, it should not create frustration. I think the Song airline created negative feelings towards flying Song because consumers had no idea what product/service Song offered.

With that said, I think Song did a great job in creating a Song culture. The training ensured that all employees associated with Song gave off a similar message. This similar message is vital to creating a new brand. Through these well trained employees, Song ensured consistency in their brand image. In that sense, Song actually reminds me of Disney in the way that they make sure all guest receive the exact same type of service experience.

Think Different

In chapter five of Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink, the author takes an interesting approach to gaining customer insights. In particular, he examines how difficult it can be to gather primary data because sources often cannot describe spontaneous opinions and decisions that arise out of the unconsciousness. As a result, Gladwell tries to educate the reader on the right and wrong ways to obtain insight from customers. Despite the many lessons in Gladwell’s piece, I will exam the two subsections focused on “A Second Look at First Impressions” and “The Gift of Expertise.”

First, “A Second Look at First Impressions” describes how many peoples’ initial explanations of how they feel about a product or service is not always accurate. Therefore, special care must be taken when gathering information from surveys and focus groups. An immediate example that comes to mind is America’s Guilty Pleasure-reality TV. On a pure quality standpoint, these T.V. shows are horrible, but yet they receive outstanding ratings. For instance, “Hole in the Wall” is a Fox reality show that involves contestants contorting their bodies in an attempt to fit through a massive moving wall. If this concept was given on paper, many respondents may ridicule it and find it incredibly stupid. This type of review would actually be wrong. This TV show is widely successful across many countries and recently has shown some success in America. Fox is actually still airing the show on Sunday nights.



The main point of this example is to supplement Gladwell’s point that peoples’ first impressions are not always correct. As marketers, we must consider this when creating new innovative marketing programs. If an idea is new, it may be considered weird and not receive good initial reviews. Despite these negative reviews, marketers must dig deeper to ensure that people’s first impressions are really indicative of their true feelings. Otherwise, marketers may throw aside the best marketing program in centuries only because people do not understand what they really like. As the famous Think Different Apple Quote goes, … “the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.” This mindset must be maintained by marketers to ensure that the appropriate marketing programs are used even if the target population does not immediately understand it.

Since the average person cannot always identify their preferences, it’s important to take into consideration the opinions of experts. Malcolm Gladwell stresses this idea in his subsection titled “The Gift of Expertise.” Specifically, the author expands on how the average person knows how he/she feels about a certain product, but has trouble explaining these feelings. Consequently, it is important to seek the advice of experts who know how to articulate their thoughts about a product. Essentially, these experts have a better grasp of what most people act and feel unconsciously.

For example, I strongly believe there are two aspects to the world of sports. For most, sports are a simple game in which X amount of players aim to score more points than the other team. On the other hand, a sports expert, such as myself, would not describe sports that way. To an expert, sports are an escape from reality that allows individuals to unite and believe in a common cause. As this sports example shows, an expert and an average person can see the same thing in very different ways. These differences are not a result of variance in the population, but rather just an example of experts having a better understanding of their unconscious thought.




By considering the added value of expert opinion, a marketer can learn to appreciate a certain tier of a segment. Like the 80/20 Rule, marketers may want to develop a similar approach to marketing research. It may quite possible be true that most of your quality data only comes from a small section of your target population. Consequently, a marketer must learn to cultivate and indulge in the relationship he/she has with that small portion of the population considered an expert.

Overall, Malcolm Gladwell has provided a foundation to look at customer feedback in a whole new way. These unconventional thoughts will help me to probe deeper to gain new insights from customers. I really believe that this deeper examination will lead to the next brilliant marketing campaign.