New You Resolution
Are we destined to fail and should brands be helping us succeed?
By now too many of us have tried and failed to keep our New Year’s resolutions. Whether it is losing weight, getting more organised, keeping fit or something a tad less generic, a measly 8% of us will actually stick to it. So how do we help turn a fleeting fad into a habit and what role can brands play in this?
New Year’s resolutions are the perfect opportunity to make that healthier and happier change we know we really should have made already. And whilst we are perfectly happy to make the promise of change, we are all too willing to break that promise too.
But it’s important to remember that New Year’s Resolutions are just an opportunity to make a change. It’s a trigger to kick-start a behavioural change we didn’t get round to in the 365 days leading up to the New Year.
All year we have that nagging feeling, I really should get to the gym more, I really should make more time to write or spend time with my family. And all year we delay and delay. There’s a reason we didn’t make the change a day, a week or even a month ago. Why, because even if we know we should make a change, most of the time we don’t really want to.
We like living slightly unhealthy lives and despite what people say — if we secretly don’t want to make the change, then we probably are not going to and to be honest, there is very little brands can do about that! But for every resolution that is hollow, there are a hundred that are based in the best intentions and soon fade to failing. This is where brands can help and this is what I will come on to in just a minute.
Beyond New Year’s resolutions there are plenty of ‘triggers’ that set us on the path to behaviour change with varying degrees of success:
The Wake Up Call
The doctors appointment that changed your life. The car crash that almost ended it. Every now and then we are reminded just how terribly fragile life is and that whilst we can’t necessarily control our expiry date we can at least take a punt at living as many of these days as we can. Whether we go cold turkey on chocolate; or start making small steps by choosing Coke Zero instead of full fat, we begin to become more responsible with our life.
These are probably the most effective triggers — albeit the triggers we would least like to occur! We suddenly realise everything we should be doing with our lives and are just that bit more inclined to actually change.
The Guilty Change
The media, your spouse, your doctor, your mum. Whoever it is, they keep telling you that what you’re doing is unhealthy. So, begrudgingly, you put down the doughnut, pick up the dumbbell and start making a colour-coded calendar of exercise routines.
These are by far the easiest changes to break — guilt can spur us to do something we don’t want to do once, maybe even a week or so. But in the long run, it must be us who wants to make the change.
The Special Events
At certain points in the year and in our lives we have a few special events we will happily change for. The gym routine for the perfect summer beach body, the regular library visits in the run up to Finals, the 1000 words a day for a writing competition, or the bursting piggy bank as you save money for the perfect wedding.
And whilst at points we will hate it, underneath our distaste, we relish the change, because we know at the end of it all is a brilliant reward for us. Rewards are incredibly important in achieving a behaviour change — I touch on this in slightly more detail in my last blog. But the problem with these ‘special’ events is that there’s an end point. For every summer body, there’s an October belly.
If we are to really kick a behaviour into a habit, we must find a reward that is continuous and one we really believe in. This is an intrinsic motivator rather than the more fleeting reward/punishment balance. There are some interesting points in here about intrinsic motivation.
The Fake Events
These are your New Year’s resolutions and your Lents of the year. Periods of time, where traditionally we have attempted at making a positive change, so we feel obliged to carry on trying and failing. We’ve stored up a whole years’ worth of behavioural changes to make and are ready to wheel one out on that blossoming first day of January.
The problem is, by the 9th January we really want a gin and tonic (or whatever our vice may be)…well at least there’s always next year!
For brands, each of these fake events provides succulent marketing opportunities. Opportunities that are seized hungrily and greedily. This does not apply to just a small handful of brands; we could be trainers, scales, medicines, cars, computers, food, theme parks, pens, calendars, wearables. We could be a lot of brands.
But whatever the brand, we tempt you into changing the behaviours that suit us. We’re waiting for that wonderful time of year for you to buy all our products. And worse, sometimes we’re also bursting with excitement when you give it up again — because then you have to buy it all over again next year. Sorry.
Now, I want to imagine another scenario. Imagine, instead of the easy pickings, we helped people really stick to that change (whether it’s a resolution or any other type of trigger) and did everything we could to support people live healthier and happier lives. What if instead of focusing on getting people to just start making a change, we actually help them achieve it! And I am now talking about all brands, which is quite a statement I suppose, why should a bank care how healthy we are, or a gravy brand care about how happy we are?
Why? Because if nothing else, customers are starting to expect more from brands, and we either hit these expectations, or they stop buying us. 70% of people in the UK think companies and brands should play a role in improving our quality of life and well-being. So yes, brands should care.
But how can brands meaningfully help when a huge part of making a habit is down to the individual, they will or they won’t? Well, in between those two extremes, are a huge number of variables that can help sway the balance towards one end or the other. This is where brands can play. We can’t stand next to them on a treadmill urging them on, but we can build an app that will. We can’t slap a slice of pizza out of their hands, but we can offer alternatives. But to do this, we must allow ourselves to step away from just focusing on variables that directly impact on our brand. We must consider the customers variables as important (all of them), not just our own.
A simple example is this — if I work for a sports brand I can’t just provide sports advice. Nike has a wonderful service in the Nike Training Club. I use their app frequently to get some inspirations for exercises to include into my gym routine. As a direct result of this campaign, I have maintained a more regular gym routine and I have started buying more Nike products. Great work! But what if they did more than just sport advice, what if they considered other aspects of health? Now, Nike might be experts in sports but what do they know about the best diet for me, or how I could sleep better? Well the simple answer is probably nothing and I don’t expect them too. What I do expect them to do is consider that all of the variables that affect my goal of ‘living a healthier life’ and find a way to meet them.
To keep healthy, I need more than just exercise routines and a progress bar. I need to think about my diet, my sleep and if I was on a treatment, my adherence. So, along with NTC, in my ‘health’ folder on my iPhone I also have MyFitnessPal to track my diet which is linked to my Misfit wearable, which I also have the app for to track my sleep and get a better breakdown of my exercise. This means on a daily basis, I must check into three different apps from three different brands to manage my health. What if, I had one app that was built in collaboration between the three brands?
Now there’s a simple argument against this — we’re used to downloading different apps for doing different jobs. Or, we’re used to different brands providing different services. They focus on what they are good and it is up to us to pull in the brands we like. But this, for me, is a very brand-centred approach. This focuses on what they are about, not what I am about. And whilst it might be inconvenient for them to work together, it is so much more convenient for me to press one button instead of three.
A better argument is that maybe instead of NTC, I want Under Armor Record, or instead of Misfit Shine, I used Fitbit? What then? Not every brand can work in collaboration with every other brand, right? Well, hardly any brand works together with other brands — so rather than being a bad point, I see it as a selling point. If I am faced between three different inconvenient services, or one convenient service, I’m going to choose the latter. And so will your customers. By moving beyond our brand’s boundaries and into our customer’s world, we actually create a more valuable service and a more engaging experience.
If we stick with this healthier living concept, think about the incredible experiences we could build between brands like Nike, Virgin Gyms and a health restaurant, such as Leon. If I could use Nike points towards a gym reward or discount at Virgin, would I switch gyms? Well, yes! And if I could use my gym points towards a reward at Leon, would I switch lunch places? Again, yes. There are benefits here for both brands and customers.
I have used apps as an example, but the concept really applies across every aspect of a brand experience and could translate to almost any industry. Once we start playing with three simple rules: 1. Whatever brand I am, I should strive to help my customers life happier, healthier lives, 2. We want to build habits not fads and 3. We are not restricted to our own brand; we really become limitless in our possibilities of providing a better, and more integrated service and building our brand’s loyalty at the same time.
Currently, there is a huge opportunity for brands to really care about the quality of customers lives and to use this as a way to build brand loyalty, advocacy — and to be honest, profit. But to do this, we must think beyond our own brand’s experience and begin to build a more holistic service by working in collaboration with other brands and sometimes, even our competitors.
