How to Deliver Happiness Through Archetypes and Customer Journey

Prepared by Dave Norton, Ph.D. Founder and Principal Stone Mantel goStoneMantel.com

SLIDESHARE | 7 JAN 2014 © 2014 Stone Mantel LLC

PRODUCING HAPPINESS BY DESIGN

SLIDESHARE | 7 JAN 2014 © 2014 Stone Mantel LLC 2

WHY THIS DECK?

This deck was put together for my friends and fellow Collaborative members to celebrate 2014. In 2013 Stone Mantel launched the Digital Consumer Collaborative. Our aim is to better understand the decision-making processes of digital consumers and apply new strategies and principles to create meaningful brand experiences for them. As a part of our work, several of the Collaborative members began an online dialogue about positive psychology and subjective well-being. It started as a side topic but has become somewhat of an ongoing discussion. This deck reflects on research Stone Mantel has conducted over six years on the subject. It draws from history, field research, positive psychology theory and practice, philosophy, and political studies. The objective: to create principles that organizations could use to keep their promises and help people be happier through experiences. (A warning: I have lost some of the references over the years but would love to quote them if they are still out there.)


IN 2008

In 2008, as the great recession was just getting started, I did a historical review of recessions and branding. I assessed how brand strategy had changed over the years and discovered that major shifts in how businesses think about branding aligned with recessions. During recessions consumer priorities shift and business thinking on branding shifts. The pendulum of brand innovation swings during recessions from ‘promise making’ to ‘promise keeping’ and back again (see next two slides). I wanted to project what the next wave of brand innovation would look like. I came to believe that the next wave of strategic brand thinking would be based on happiness. Consumers, no longer able or wanting to ‘keep up with the Joneses’ would prioritize their spending and align themselves with brands that they felt would actually deliver (not just promise) happiness for them. The goal then of companies was to determine principles for producing experiences that made people happier.


MACRO BRAND STRATEGY TENDS TO EVOLVE DURING RECESSIONS

1980 -1982 1990 -1993 2001 -2003

BRAND IMAGE BRAND EXPERIENCE BRAND TRUTH

PROMISE MAKING PROMISE KEEPING PROMISE MAKING

Brand Leaders

Key Strategic Concept

Formative Years

Type of Innovation

Over the past 30 years, brand strategy has shifted from innovations in how to make a promise to how to keep a promise, and then to how to make a promise again. In 2008 the shift should have moved to how to keep a promise.


BY 2009 MOST BRANDS PROMISED HAPPINESS By 2009 many brands began to emphasize in their promise making that consumers would be happier. Coca Cola and Best Buy were the most obvious. The problem was that consumer sensibility was shifting to brands who could keep a promise, not brands who could make a promise. Happiness is easy to promise but hard to deliver on.


SOME ARGUE THAT HAPPINESS IS AT AN ALL TIME LOW

“Look around you. While happy families were once the norm, more and more often we see parents and children today rushing frenetically from one task to another—children whining, bickering, tantruming, pouting, parents nagging, complaining and trying to ignore their unruly surly offspring. Can you go to any store, restaurant, or library without seeing these joyless children?”

Robert Shaw


AND THAT THERE ARE NEW MALADIES IN SOCIETY

hurry sickness

toxic success syndrome

Reality evasion

over commercialized childhood

pleonexia out of control greed

quick fix

flow

positivism

presentism

habituation


Q Which is easier for an individual to recover his or her happiness after?

Death of a spouse

Divorce from a spouse


A Death of a spouse

Broken relationships are harder to rebound from than death.


Q For your happiness, which is better?

To worry about a global epidemic

To worry about the loss of job


A

Concern about macro events may be associated with greater happiness. The more local or personal the fear, the more unhappy the person is.

To worry about a global epidemic


Q Match the country with the fact

Highest suicide rate

Highest levels of happiness

Sweden

Russia


A

Sweden is the answer for both. Suicide at a national level does not correlate with happiness. High suicide rates nationally correlate with low levels of belief in God and high incomes, not subjective well-being.

Highest suicide rate

Highest levels of happiness

Sweden


THINGS THAT ARE STRONGLY LINKED TO HAPPINESS

Health

Suicide

Income

Belief in God

Family

Neighbors

Workplace

Community

Trustworthiness

Happiness

Education

Gender

Physical Environment

STRONGLY LINKED IT DEPENDS

Things that are strongly linked to happiness tend to be things that are high in cultural capital. Things like education, health, income, gender, and physical environment depend on situational factors.

SLIDESHARE | 7 JAN 2014 © 2014 Stone Mantel LLC

HOW TO DELIVER HAPPINESS THROUGH ARCHETYPES AND CUSTOMER JOURNEY REQUIREMENTS


ABOUT THIS SECTION

This section is based on primary research conducted by Stone Mantel and a review of the history of happiness. It describes four fundamental dispositions that people throughout history have described when they are happy or are talking about happiness. The dispositions (transformative, altruistic, utilitarian, and perceptive) are the basis for important experience design archetypes that have a demonstrable ability to help people feel happier. Each archetype includes customer journey requirements. When the requirements for the journey are present in the experience, the consumer is very likely to be happier. Stone Mantel has applied these frameworks to client work in travel, pharma, banking, and other industries and affected significant lift in customer happiness. This is a few of the slides for our workshop, Producing Happiness by Design. Two articles based on this work are: David W. Norton, Experience Myopia in the Age of Digital Solutions, 2013 (white paper, gostonemantel.com) and Norton, Durgee, and VanDeVelde, Producing Customer Happiness: The Job to Do for Brand Innovation, 2010 (The Design Management Institute, dmi.org).


A SHORT HISTORY OF HAPPINESS

Physical (Sensorial)

Higher Purposed

Through Others

Within Self

Socrates

Socrates

Epicurus

Epicurus

Vibia Perpetua

Perpetua and Felicitas

Charles Darwin Marquise du Chatelet

Karl Marx

Marx

Jeremy Bentham

Bentham

Julien Offray de La Mettrie

de La Mettrie

du Chatelet

Darwin

Friedrich Nietzsche

Nietzsche

Happiness is not a new research topic. Since Socrates (at least) people have been thinking about what makes humans happy. Socrates thought philosophy itself brought people to a higher purpose and gave them a powerful internal life. Nietzsche wasn’t so sure that the contemplated life need to have a higher purpose but he located happiness within the self.

Epicurus reflected on meaning associated with the sensory life. Darwin came at meaning from a physical/evolutionary stance but located happiness in a similar type of experience as Epicurus. Du Chatelet, her heart broken, felt that happiness was a façade and a lie caused by the self and biology. Marx said that people could not be happy unless they were a part of the worker’s movement. Jeremy Bentham came up with a theory of happiness based on utility. Most economists use it today. Perpetua and her slave, Felicitas, converts to Christianity, died happy because they believed a loving God who prepared a better place for them.


A SHORT HISTORY OF HAPPINESS


Higher Purposed

Through Others

Within Self

Aim

Locus

Socrates, Plato, Aristotle

Epicurus

Vibia Perpetua Augustine

Thomas Aquinas

Giovanni Pico

Thomas More

Martin Luther

John Locke

Marquise du Chatelet

Jeremy Bentham

Julien Offray de La Mettrie

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Samuel Coleridge Benjamin Franklin

Thomas Jefferson

David Hume

John Stuart Mill

Alexis de Tocqueville Karl Marx

Charles Darwin

Friedrich Nietzsche

Sigmund Freud

All philosophers and even modern researchers make assumptions regarding how to locate happiness and what the aim of happiness is. In fact, these are the only common threads throughout history. By plotting their approaches to happiness based on locus (or where they situate happiness) and aim, we see four distinct patterns emerge.


FOUR HAPPINESS ARCHETYPES


Higher Purposed

Through Others

Within Self

Aim

Locus

Altruistic

Utilitarian Perceptive

Transformative Helps improve the self/org through goal attainment and epiphany

Helps the individual connect with and help

others

Helps the individual/org think/feel positive emotions

Maximizes pleasure from a staged

experience

Brands can dramatically increase the likelihood of delivering happiness to consumers when they develop expertise in one of these four archetypes.


MAPPING SELIGMAN’S PERMA MODEL


Higher Purposed

Through Others

Within Self

Aim

Locus

Altruistic


Transformative

Martin Seligman has recently updated his theory of well-being. It’s a holistic model that addresses all four types of happiness. It leans somewhat toward activity within the self, as do most positive psychology models.

1. Positive Emotion

2. Engagement

3. Meaning 5. Accomplishment

4. Relationships


YOUR BRAND PREDISPOSES YOUR CUSTOMERS TO EXPERIENCE A TYPE OF HAPPINESS


Higher Purposed

Through Others

Within Self

Aim

Locus

McDonalds Verizon

Ernst & Young

Facebook

Pandora

Haliburton

Frito Lay

Newmans Own

Best Buy

Harvard

Coca Cola Apple

Google

Disney

Hyundai

Philips

SAP Société Générale

Shell

Siemens

Lenovo

Canadian Tire

Nintendo

Novartis

Archer Daniels Midland

Amway

Bath & Body Works

Hallmark

Microsoft

Sodexo

Royal Caribbean International

Weight Watchers

Altruistic


Transformative

Bellagio


CUSTOMER JOURNEY REQUIREMENTS DIFFER BASED ON ARCHETYPE


Higher Purposed

Through Others

Within Self

Altruistic


Transformative Helps improve the self/org through goal attainment and epiphany

Helps the individual connect with and help

others


Maximizes pleasure from a staged

experience


PERCEPTIVE JOURNEY REQUIREMENTS To deliver on Perceptive happiness, companies develop expertise in producing stimulus that causes the consumer to reflect and remember positive experience. Then develop something new or adaptive for the experience. This journey is repeated regularly to prompt positive emotions.

1. Strong stimulus Ability to create things that evoke the right emotion.

1. Stimulus

2. Reflection

3. Newness/Adaptation

3. Newness/Adaptation Ability to create new emotions or different emotions.

2. Reflection Triggers that encourage the customer to reflect on feelings or thoughts and make meaning

DESIGN OBJECTIVE Help people to think/feel positive emotions


PERCEPTIVE JOURNEY EXAMPLES Books, cereal boxes, billboards, logos, and Pandora often have the same journey structure and can produce the same perceptive type of happiness. People value the experience based on their ability to think/feel deeply.


UTILITARIAN JOURNEY REQUIREMENTS To deliver on Utilitarian happiness, companies invent tools that create dramatic action so that the consumer feels a lift. The company continually creates better tools and better experiences based on those tools that maximize pleasure.

DESIGN OBJECTIVE Maximizes pleasure from a staged experience 1. Tools Simple but robust tools that reduce unwanted activity. 2. Dramatic Action Experience builds for customer to a climatic moment.

3. Newness/Adaptation Ability to add on new and make customer feel that next time will be even better.

1. Tools

2. Dramatic Action

3. Newness/ Adaptation


UTILITARIAN JOURNEY EXAMPLES A Google search, a roller coaster, and a CAT scan have the same journey structure and can produce the same functional type of happiness. Consumers value the experience based on pleasure or lack thereof associated with the experience.


TRANSFORMATIVE JOURNEY REQUIREMENTS To deliver on Transformative happiness, companies identify goals that elevate consumers or organizations. They provide tools to review current state of the individual, guide individuals, share knowledge, and create flow.

Current state review

1. Goal that elevates

New knowledge

3. Guides

5. Flow

2. 4.

5. Flow Producing the feeling of ‘flow’ during the transformation

1. A Goal that Elevates The ability to define a goal that stretches and elevates the customer

2. Current State Review A diagnostic that effectively assesses the customer’s current state.

3. Guides Guides that help the customer progress toward the goal.

4. New Knowledge The ability to share new knowledge that builds on what was known.

DESIGN OBJECTIVE Helps the individual/org improve the self/org through goal attainment and epiphany


TRANSFORMATIVE JOURNEY EXAMPLES Weight Watchers, a consulting engagement, a technology upgrade, and a physician visit have the same journey structure and can produce the same, transformative type of happiness. People value the experience based on their ability to achieve unstated and stated goals.


ALTRUISTIC JOURNEY REQUIREMENTS To deliver on Altruistic happiness, companies become expert at identifying common causes that people care about, creating opportunities for individual to prepare, give a gift, and reconnect. The company must be able to facilitate the encounter.

DESIGN OBJECTIVE Helps the individual/org help others accomplish something important 1. A Shared Common Cause Ability to produce a common cause that others share. 2. Personal Preparation Help participants to be part of the group. 3. A Facilitated Encounter A forum or venue for gathering. 4. Gift Giving The ability to facilitate a gift between two participants. 5. Reconnection Ability to help participants reconnect.

2. Personal preparation

1. Common Cause

3. A facilitated encounter

4. Gift giving

5. Reconnection


ALTRUISTIC JOURNEY EXAMPLES Facebook and a cruise have the same journey structure and can produce the same, altruistic type of happiness. People value the experience based on their ability to find a common purpose and to relate and connect with others.


FOR EXAMPLE

Pandora delivers Perceptive Spotify delivers Altruistic

The archetype you deliver for can significantly change the types of innovations you produce and that you pre-dispose your customers to expect from you. Spotify can do things that Pandora does not have permission to do because the experience predisposes the customer differently.


FOR EXAMPLE

Pandora


Higher Purposed

Through Others

Within Self

Altruistic


Transformative

Pandora Uses stimulus, reflection, and adaptation to create ongoing emotions Stimulus Sophisticated filtering tool to stream similar songs Reflection Prompts listener to see similarities and differences between artists Adaptation Combine streams to create new similarities



FOR EXAMPLE


Higher Purposed

Through Others

Within Self

Altruistic


Transformative

Spotify Helps the individual/org help others accomplish something important 1. Common cause Great music should be shared 2. Personal preparation Create your own station 3. Facilitated encounter Tools to connect people: find and share 4. Gift giving Feels like something personal 5. Reconnection Ability to develop communities

Spotify



FUNCTIONAL EMOTIONAL SOCIAL ASPIRATIONAL Help me accomplish a task

Help me feel deeply about a moment

Help me relate to others

Help me change something important

UTILITARIAN PERCEPTIVE ALTRUSTIC TRANSFORMATIVE

HAPPINESS ARCHETYPES = JOB ARCHETYPES The four archetypes for happiness translate into four archetypes of jobs to get done for customers (using Clayton Christensen’s vernacular). If your goal is to positively affect the well-being of the consumer, use the happiness definitions. If you need to help your company clarify its innovation priorities, use the job definitions.

Helps improve the self/org through goal attainment and epiphany

Helps the individual connect with and help others


Maximizes pleasure from a staged experience

Job

Def

initi

on

Hap

pine

ss

Def

initi

on


By shifting from one archetype to another, you can change the strategic thrust of your solutions (no pun intended).

a functional vs. a social job archetype


FIVE KEY THINGS FOR MARKETERS TO CARE ABOUT IN

DESIGNING FOR HAPPINESS

FROM POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY AND SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH


MONEY

LOVE

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Rel

ativ

e Im

porta

nce

HIGH

LOW

LOW HIGH Life Satisfaction

1. CONSUMERS PUSH BACK ON CONSPICUOUS CONSUMPTION

For years consumers had been promised by brands a variation of the theme: if you’ve got the car, you’re going to get the girl. As incomes and assets dropped, consumers became aware that more income did not translate to more satisfaction with life or meaningful relationships. At a certain point satisfaction with life goes down when people focus on money. Satisfaction goes up when they focus on love and friendship.


2. THE HEDONIC TREADMILL CAN HURT

Social scientists who study happiness call what consumers were experiencing in 2008 the hedonic treadmill. People accumulate at a faster pace but feel that they running in place when it comes to their sense of well-being. Consuming more does not translate to higher levels of satisfaction. When a major recession hits its like tripping and falling on the treadmill.


3. THE MIND CAN TRIP OVER ANTICIPATION

Prospection

1: the act of anticipating 2: the act of viewing 3: the act of exploring (as for gold)

Foresight

A number of studies have shown that the mind’s ability to to anticipate, called prospection, can trip up a person’s ability to be happy. The longer we anticipate an experience, the more likely we are to not be able to make a decision that will make us happy. Companies that build high expectations through promise making regarding customer happiness can actually negatively impact the consumer’s felt happiness.


4. THE ABILITY TO DEAL WITH REALITY IS IMPERITIVE TO DURABLE HAPPINESS

People who daydream or fantasize too much tend to be unhappy, while people who are positive about their reality are happier. A major critique of advertising is that it facilitates fantasy and the hedonic treadmill and does not help consumers feel positive about their current reality. One could argue that most brands are not in the business of producing happiness. They are in the business of producing dissatisfaction with current.

Nick Baylis “Relationship with reality and the well-being of young adults” 2006


5. MEMBERSHIP PRODUCES GREATER HAPPINESS

Sumatran Children

Research by Kitayama and Markus in the early 1990s asked the question: why are these kids from Sumatra smiling? Answer: because everyone else is smiling. Happiness is contagious. When you are around others who are happy, you are happier. Companies can help to facilitate happiness by helping consumers feel a part of a happy group—as long as it’s based in reality, not fantasy.


THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN LOYALTY AND HAPPINESS

Happiness

Loyalty

Objective Improve the well being of the customer

Keep the customer as long as possible

Effect Extrinsic or intrinsic goal achievement

Satisfaction with a product

Design Strategy Align archetype with customer disposition

Respond to incremental needs

Success Metrics Happiness, Time Well Spent, Goal Achievement

Recommend, Use, Stay

The implications of the positive psychology research on happiness and business practices today suggest that most companies are not really in the business of producing happiness, they are in the business of producing loyalty. To produce happiness requires different strategic objectives, effects on consumers, design strategies, and success metrics.


Thank You!

To go deeper around a concept or apply these principles to your research and strategy, contact: Dave Norton Stone Mantel [email protected]

Business

How to Deliver Happiness Through Archetypes and Customer Journey