What Lies Beneath: Using Projective Techniques to Get to Emotional Brand Drivers and Barriers

By Bart Weiner, Group Chief Operating Officer, GfK U.S. Healthcare Companies

You just bought a new car. A BMW to be exact. As you pull into the office in your new wheels, a co-worker takes notice and asks why you chose a BMW. How would you respond?

While you talk about BMW’s high level of performance, reliability and level of service – the rational reasons behind your choice – you may also be thinking about the prestige and status you feel as a BMW owner – the underlying emotional attachments you have associated with the BMW brand.

While the rational decisions for purchasing a product are telling, it is sometimes more important to probe deeper and uncover the meaning behind those choices. Particularly in today’s highly competitive pharmaceutical market full of crowded categories and undifferentiated product features, marketers need to tap into the emotional aspects of brand choice to make a brand stick.

To identify the emotional context of decision making and understand the drivers connecting customers to favored brands as well as barriers to preventing a brand’s use, emotional drivers and barriers research is conducted using projective, or enabling, techniques. According to ESOMAR's official definition, projective techniques are a form of disguised questioning that encourages participants to attribute their feelings, beliefs or motivations to another person, object or situation.

With its basis in clinical psychology, applications of projective techniques range from marketing/advertising to forensic profiling. Projective techniques are a valuable tool because they focus both on the power of words as well as the intricacies of nonverbal communication. Words must be interpreted carefully because a single word can be used to express many ideas and word choice can significantly change the meaning of a message. Additionally, it is important to go beyond words/verbal communication because research shows that 90 percent of human communication is nonverbal (tone and manner).

Projective techniques are best used in the following situations:

Research areas with high emotional content

Positioning Segmentation Messaging Creative concept Brand personality

Global or cross-cultural research

Probe culturally embedded images and associations that vary across cultures

To get beyond the rational elements of purchasing decisions

Underlying hopes Motivations Desires Concerns or unmet needs

Various types of projective techniques are available for use in marketing research with the most common listed below. Depending on the exact technique chosen, outputs will range from visuals (psychodrawings, collages and pictures sorts) to rich verbal descriptions (character associations, color test, role playing) that provide insight into a respondent’s motivations, desires, unmet needs, etc. This powerful data can then be used as input to help a broad team of marketing, marketing research and ad agency personnel shape the creative development and tone of product communications.


Commonly Used Projective Techniques

	What It Does	How It Works
Character Associations	Illustrates the characteristics of a brand	Respondents asked to think about the characteristics of Brand X and what animal (or car, fictional character) can also be described in that way
Color Test	Reveals brand personality characteristics; focuses on descriptors of color that relate to personality	Respondents provided a color palette and asked what feeling each color conveys and/or which feeling is associated with Brand X
Role Playing	Illustrates verbal dialogue; highlights potential barriers/obstacles or critical points of opportunity around decisions; highlights brand characteristics	IDIs: Respondents describe what characters do in a particular situation (e.g., the cocktail party) Focus Groups: Respondents assigned to a specific role; each participant must dialogue as that person/role (e.g., the sales call)
Benefit Laddering	Finds underlying motivations, higher order benefits/ consequences of brand choice	Focuses on a particular purchasing decision and probes what is important and why it is important
Psychodrawing	Allows participants to express wide range of perceptions by drawing how they perceive a brand	Respondents draw cartoons, shapes or figures to express feelings
Collaging	Helps discover subtleties, adds texture/depth to complex layers of thoughts/feelings about situations, products, etc.	Respondents cut out pictures and words from magazines to create a collage
Collaging (Alternate)	Uses visuals to express feelings about self or self-image	Respondent takes photos or brings pictures to research that they feel describe certain aspects of themselves
Picture Sort	Uses unrelated visuals to trigger feelings about or images of a product/brand/company	Respondent selects from provided assortment of pictures representing a range of activities/moods and describes what feelings are associated with each
Emotional Expression Test	Uses pictures of facial expressions to help respondents describe feelings	Using deck of faces representing a range of moods/feelings, respondent selects faces and describes what feelings are associated with it and why it relates to Brand X

To gain the most benefit from projective techniques it is important to consider what technique is most appropriate for the respondent and further, what setting is most appropriate for the technique. For example, some techniques, such as benefit laddering and picture sorts, are not appropriate in focus group settings. When using other projective techniques in group settings with patients, think carefully about the topic and appropriateness of sharing on sensitive subjects (ED, insulin use, depression). Physicians can be tough to break when it comes to emotional driver work, so working with them in an IDI setting is best as they may require extra time and many rounds of probing. Patients, on the other hand, are more willing to communicate their emotions, but find it difficult to express themselves. Thus, they may need a lot of time to get the words out and might need to explain their thoughts several times until the moderator fully understands what they are trying to say.

In summary, when overcoming the challenges of conducting marketing research in crowded, undifferentiated markets, consider using projective techniques. The research approach can yield rich information that can be incorporated into the product positioning, messaging and creative process to help develop branding that will stand out in today’s pharmaceutical market.


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