Snack Feature: How Sticky® is Your Brand?
Sticky® ensures that companies don’t rely on simply choosing what “looks best,” but rather, what they know will increase brand awareness, maximize engagement, and optimize their return on investment. The company's President, Jeff Bander, explains it all in the latest edition of AndNowUKnow’s print publication, The Snack Magazine.
Check out this story in The Snack by clicking here, or read the full article below:
How Sticky® is Your Brand?
Let’s make a bet. What’s the first thing you notice on the Coca-Cola ad below – the bottle or the messaging? Sticky®, a media technology company based out of New York, says chances are you noticed the bottle or the logo first, and then the messaging. But do you know why?
“Eye-tracking tells you what’s being seen, what’s not seen, how long it’s seen, and in what order it’s seen,” Ephraim “Jeff” Bander, President at Sticky
, tells me. “Companies don’t have to guess. If they have a package they want to change, we’re able to help them make smart decisions based on what customers are looking at, instead of going off gut feelings.”
Using biometric data, Sticky® can accurately gauge in real-time what’s demanding the most attention from consumers’ eyes. This data is visually represented in the form of a heatmap, which shows marketers the path a consumer’s gaze takes when looking at advertisements, packaging, retail displays, websites or more. In a world where you can’t escape from advertising, it’s no wonder a company will pay top dollar to ensure its brand is displayed prominently against its biggest competitors. Biometric measurements are objective. Sticky® ensures that companies don’t rely on simply choosing what “looks best,” but rather, what they know will increase brand awareness, maximize engagement, and optimize their return on investment.
"Eye-tracking tells you what’s being seen, what’s not seen, how long it’s seen, and in what order it’s seen."
Take a look at Stemilt’s Fresh Blenders™ packaging for instance. A Sticky® heat map shows that a greater concentration of time and focus is paid to the high graphic centerpiece of the packaging where the brand messaging is also located. The opacity map indicates what areas on the packaging are seen and what areas (indicated by the darker regions) are not. Just these two areas of testing alone suggest that the packaging gets the most bang for its buck, with very little packaging unseen by Sticky® consumer panels.
“We offer fast insights, and we can help customers hit their target market,” Bander tells me. “Our fully automated, patented eye-tracking technology is quicker and more affordable. We also work with panel companies to find answers to questions such as purchase intent, brand awareness, and other attitudinal inquiries.”
Duda Farm Fresh Foods Citrines® clementine packaging is also another example of a great use of space and message placement. If Duda ever wondered if its Dandy Dude was at all effective, the answer is yes. The Areas of Interest map communicates that 96% of test subjects viewed the clementine character first and also spent the most amount of time focusing on this area. Product name came in a close second. When creating the design, Duda found that children are likely to request a snack because they notice the character on the packaging, and Dandy Dude is a memorable one.
AUTOGAZER: Online Research Platform
Traditional biometric examinations are costly and require specialists to set up equipment. However, Sticky’s® recently launched cloud-based AutoGazer platform provides companies with fast insights into how people look at advertising campaigns by using direct feedback from consumers, rather than having to reach them through an intermediary. No labs are required for this online research platform. A link is sent to the user which allows them access to the same technology that Sticky® employs in its managed research, but adds the tools to control their own studies and to pull their own reports from the cloud and off of Sticky’s® servers.
“While Sticky® has for a long time provided technology that delivers results and campaign insights to our customers faster than traditional, in-lab, eye-tracking studies, we have found that some of them wanted even more speed and flexibility than a managed platform can provide,” said Bander.
“Providing our clients with access to the same technology that we employ in our managed research, but adding the tools to control their own studies and to pull their own reports from the cloud, off our servers, saves them time and money, while offering the same guarantee of the quality of their results.”
AutoGazer allows accurate eye tracking from any webcam on a laptop or desktop computer. Once a company pushes content out to its target audience using Sticky’s® platform, results from the analysis can be downloaded within minutes. The webcam takes 10-20 pictures per second of a customer’s eyes and head, and thousands of points triangulate what they’re looking at, how long they’re looking at it, and in what order.
CASE STUDIES: Beneficial Performances
Several of the case studies performed by Sticky’s® online platform have proven beneficial for companies throughout the industry. Bander notes, for example, that see-through packaging can help increase sales simply because consumers perceive the product has fresher ingredients and feels less artificial. In addition, placing signage nearby showing a person using the product also helps increase the ring at the register.
“One store wanted to sell more chips to women. Initially, they had a sign showing a single woman running and looking over her shoulder. They changed it to a group of women talking with a bag of chips, and it had an increase on sales,” says Bander. “This case study demonstrated that companies need to show more than just the product. They need to show interaction and a human connection; not just someone by themselves.”
The first step is always catching a consumer’s attention. Interest follows soon after. The key, Bander tells me, is in understanding how our brains work.
“The right side of the brain processes images, while the left side processes text and numbers. If you want to connect and engage with your consumer, you want images on the left and text on the right,” says Bander. “If you do it the opposite way, your brain has to literally flip it. It doesn’t like to waste energy.”
Sticky® is currently working on a browser extension that can tell what ads people are looking at on webpages. “Half of all the ads that people buy are never on the screen, so they have zero potential to be seen,” Bander tells me. “As for the ones that have potential, someone might only look at half. The problem is that nobody knows which half it is. We can help companies by telling them how to monetize and optimize their ROI when placing ads.”
Sticky’s® self-serve AutoGazer platform (no software or hardware, just a built-in webcam, double opt-in) promises to be a valuable tool, giving important insights as to how to best tell a product’s story and create a strong and lasting connection with the consumer.
