Sitting at my desk at home, I can't help feeling a vague echo of pre-exam nerves as I scan the online questionnaire before me. "You will see a number of visual symbols, each symbolising an element of everyday life," I am advised. "Consider these, then respond. But don't think too hard: be spontaneous. And don't worry, as no answers are 'right' or 'wrong'."
With a deep breath I move my mouse to open the first section and find a sequence of colour charts, like the ones you get in DIY stores. "Click on the subtle tone that best matches the main block of colour," I'm told as different colour combinations flash before my eyes. Then, by clicking on different parts of the screen, I mix pairs of colours to create a third.
The next bank of questions revolves around symbols - some neatly drawn with sharp outlines, others with rough edges - from which I must select favourites. On I click, trying not to puzzle why a large circle within an outer one like a bicycle wheel is more appealing to me than an outer circle containing a tiny one like a racing-car tyre.
The last two sections comprise visual conundrums. The word "red" is spelled out in green letters, but which colour did I actually see?
Overlapping shapes in different tones - a circle and a triangle, for example - appear briefly on screen, but were there three different colours, or two? The final challenge involves adjusting a series of pictures by tapping "plus" or "minus" until certain visual effects are no longer visible.
After 15 minutes, it's over. I've worked my way through 76 visual conundrums as spontaneously as I could. My results will be emailed within an hour - time enough to ask the creators of this questionnaire (the core element of BrandIQ, a new planning tool for advertisers) how the results will reveal what style of advertising I'll notice.
The man with the answers is David Scheffer, who spent 15 years researching implicit personality and motivation at the Universities of Osnabru¨ck and Hamburg before co-developing BrandIQ with d.pole (part of the international ad agency Publicis Worldwide). BrandIQ, he says, is a new approach to consumer research because it doesn't ask direct questions. This is important, as most decision-making is subconscious - so when asked what we think, all we can do is post-rationalise. "Multiple-choice questionnaires and personal interviews either deliver people's extrinsic characteristics - sociodemographic data - or personality insights that merely reflect how they see themselves," Scheffer explains. "The processing of visual impulses in our brains, however, is made subconsciously with no interference from the conscious mind."
BrandIQ combines understanding of personality and personality types, gained through studies using EEG brain scans, with Jung's personality-categorisation model (an approach widely used in psychometric testing by HR departments) and Psi Theory - a model of the brain's processes. By applying these to the results of a questionnaire measuring a person's cognitive perception processes, Scheffer explains, BrandIQ promises to predict the consumer behaviour of different personality types. "Personality rather than age, sex, class or upbringing is the single most important filter affecting individual response to the world," Scheffer says. "It's the core of every human, and strongly influences decision making processes. Experience, personal values and socio-demographic elements are merely additions to personality and don't have the same influence."
The premise is that every personality type has a special way of perceiving graphics and makes decisions on the basis of this. "Talk to one personality type about an airport and they'll see it as a functional system. Sell it in emotional terms and they won't understand, as what motivates them is information," says Matthias Berndt, CEO of d.pole. Another type will see it as a place of hellos and goodbyes, a more emotional response, and be far less responsive to adverts packed with facts.
In my case, BrandIQ suggests that I am spontaneous and instinctive.
My decision making is logical, but my perception of reality is intuitive - abstract and unconventional. "Consumers of your type are best reached using communications that are clear, direct and dynamic rather than subtle," he adds. "They get bored if something is the same for long. They respond better to dynamic, forward-looking brands."
This thumbnail sketch seems a bit of a generalisation. Yet Berndt insists that when an advertiser knows which personality types dominate its target market, the ability to tailor communications accordingly can boost effectiveness. Sampling just a thousand consumers can provide enough information for a brand to build a map of its market's personality type.
A number of Publicis clients, including the media group Bertelsmann, are now using BrandIQ in this way. And it won't be long before d.pole will be applying BrandIQ in other ways - such as to entire databases of customer information, cross-referring personality traits to postcodes, enabling an advertiser to identify areas where like-minded consumers live close together. "Until now, business mostly had to rely on intuition," Scheffer observes. "Now brain science and psychology provide a new way of understanding consumers and better meeting their expectations."
This is just one element within Wired UK's special report on the new hidden persuaders. You can read the introduction to the special report here and a selection of the other articles here: - Data that define your retail options
How the TV watches you
When advertising gets in your face
Mining your mobile phone logs
Your unconscious mind has already voted
Now marketing gets sniffy
Neuromarketing is a go
Eye-tracking adverts
Your secret shopping personality
Want more Wired UK magazine? Make sure you get your copy every month - subscribe online today.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
