Depuis bien longtemps, une entreprise ne vend pas du détergent à lessive, elle vend de la fraicheur. L’assurance, c’est de la tranquillité d’esprit. Une voiture, c’est la chance de faire bonne impression ou de séduire. Des chaussures de sports, de la liberté. Les exemples s’étendent à l’infini. Il suffit de regarder autour de vous.

Malheureusement, la popularité de ces raccourcis publicitaires et communicationnels a mené les entreprises à une impasse. Comme tout le monde vend de la fraîcheur, de la tranquillité d’esprit ou de la liberté, personne ne se démarque véritablement.

Apple n’est certainement pas la première compagnie à s’intéresser à votre poignet. C’est possiblement par désir de capitaliser sur cette fascination répandue pour les bracelets futuristes que des compagnies comme Fitbit, Polar, Nike et Samsung, pour ne nommer que celles-ci, ont voulu allier d’une part la mise en forme et d’autre part la continuité du téléphone intelligent à la bonne vieille activité de regarder l’heure.

Le poignet, semblerait-t-il, n’est pas si facilement conquis. En février 2014, un rappel massif frappe la dernière innovation de Fitbit, le bracelet Force suivi par Nike qui discontinue son Fuelband en avril 2014. En ce qui concerne la Galaxy Gear de Samsung, elle en est maintenant à sa deuxième itération et connaît un succès mitigé. Est-ce qu’Apple saura vous convaincre que son interprétation d’un produit qui est loin de faire l’unanimité est celle que vous attendiez pour vêtir vos poignets?

My wife and I recently purchased a new car. On the whole, I would call the process uneventful. We had done our research and quickly identified the car we wanted to buy. It was just a matter of going to the dealership and closing the deal.

What really struck me about the process was what happened after we bought our car, more specifically the day we went to pick up the car at the dealer.

As we were getting ready to leave with our brand new car, our salesperson approached us and politely asked to speak to us privately. We gladly obliged and followed him to his desk.

What ensued was a classic case of marketing research losing its way.

The Influence of Marketing on Brand Image

As a semi-recent immigrant – coming up on five years now; Go Habs Go! – I find myself having different perceptions of certain brands than those around me.

Take the beer Stella Artois, for example. Even after all of this time, it still makes me giggle when I see it advertised as “Premium” Belgian Beer.

Back home, in the land of beer, chocolate and waffles (or Belgium, as some like to call it), Stella Artois has been around for centuries. But in Belgium, there is nothing premium about it. It’s one of the five mass-produced lager brands and is, quite frankly, perceived on the lower-end side of the quality spectrum (think Colt 45).

Imagine if sending an email would require as much thought and mental preparation as sky diving.  Imagine that if every time you came across a piece of information – be it familiar or new - you would have to start from scratch. Talk about a waste of brain power! 

Thanks to Cognitive Schemas, a set of processes defined by psychologist Jean Piaget in 1926, you can save precious brain power for other endeavors.

Cognitive schemas in action

The idea behind cognitive schemas is that the manner with which we receive, interpret, integrate and judge the value of new information is fundamentally automated to accelerate the whole process. If you’ve learned to hate a certain type of music, you’ll need only a second to recognize its first notes and get away from the shop playing it – this without even being conscious of it.