The Researcher’s Bookshelf: Going deep with branding and improving your empathy

Branding Between the Ears

Sandeep Dayal

Sandeep Dayal’s “Branding Between the Ears” is a comprehensive deep dive into the state of current popular thinking about the psychology of brands and branding (with copious System 1 and System 2 references, naturally). But more than that, importantly, it’s packed with real-world examples of brands (many of them from health care/pharma) that illustrate the approaches he’s talking about to tap into consumers’ stated or (more likely) unstated emotional or psychological needs. 

From watchmaker Patek Philippe and beer brand Guinness to ACT II popcorn, Dayal cites brands and marketing campaigns that illustrate the application of concepts like anchoring bias, reframing or flirting training. (Of course, the successful companies he mentions do have one important thing going for them: their products work and work well. No amount of emotion-connecting or empathy-signaling is going to make up for a shoddy product – which he readily acknowledges.)

Each product, product usage and consumer is different and thus there is no one-size-fits-all approach to understanding the motivators. Thankfully, that’s what marketing research is great at! And while Dayal doesn’t necessarily posit research as the way to uncover consumer motivations, he makes liberal use of examples of insights from focus groups that informed the thinking about and search for ways to understand pain points and mental states.

The book is certainly interesting and substantive enough to warrant reading on its own but if you are wrestling with a new brand that hasn’t found its footing yet or an existing one that seems to be ebbing a bit, I could see the value in a close consideration of the ideas Dayal lays out, especially if you arm yourself with a list of the brand’s benefits and value propositions and analyze how they might be best positioned and communicated to target audiences using the concepts presented here.

Tell Me More About That

Rob Volpe

In “Tell Me More About That,” marketing researcher Rob Volpe takes readers on an entertaining journey through his experiences interviewing and talking to consumers, typically in an in-home setting, as part of various ethnographic research projects he and his company Ignite 360 have been involved with. While the stories are by turns compelling, moving and at times laugh-out-loud funny, his aim is decidedly not to sensationalize or poke fun but rather to use the examples to show how much each has taught him about the value of empathy and effective interviewing.

Like any good storyteller he has an eye for detail and a deft sense of pacing that makes the reader anxiously await what’s next (especially in the at first unsettling and then poignant tale of a respondent whose house reveals a great deal more about his life than his words do). But the book is so much more than just a collection of interesting anecdotes from the research trenches. He writes with candor about being gay and shows that though others didn’t reserve their judgments of him, he was able to turn years of being taunted in elementary school into a life employing empathy to make others feel comfortable enough to welcome strangers into their homes to talk in-depth about themselves and their habits as consumers. 

And far from holding himself up as some shining example of acceptance, he writes with an engaging humility, acknowledging that he’s not always perfect in his own application of the tips he is imparting. 

I’m biased of course, knowing Volpe a bit professionally from chatting at industry events and during some of the webinars his firm has done with Quirk’s. His prose mirrors the way he comes across in person – thoughtful and engaging, with a playful sense of humor.

I was heartened to see him thank legendary moderator and teacher Naomi Henderson in the acknowledgments (though also saddened by the knowledge that she died just prior to the book’s publication) for unlocking his moderating skills and for granting him the use of the phrase that inspired the title of his book. Her methods are on display throughout and I know she would be proud of her student’s accomplishments.

Especially in these fractious times, when grace and patience for differing viewpoints are in short supply, it’s more important than ever to be able to see things from another’s perspective – whether it’s for gathering research insights or in day-to-day life – and Volpe offers solid, sensible guidance for how to do that.