What we do.

Emotional Context guides respondents in visualizing actual experiences, which we select to place them into personal history settings where they are making decisions or gaining perceptions about the questions we want to understand. These experiences lay the foundation for the broader map of the emotions that motivate these decisions or perceptions.

The methodology involves gently controlling respondents, through relaxation, the repetition of carefully phrased questions, active listening that detects key points, and follow-up questions that persuade respondents to go deeper and more frankly into their perception and decision making process. 

They are re-visiting and, to a degree, re-living experiences they have had, based on our gentle guidance, and viewing “home movies” of those experiences.

We ask them to take us to the “crossroads” of decisions and walk us through what is going through their minds as they consider and then make those decisions. We coax them into relaxing, encourage them to tell us their “stories,” and gently nudge them to go deeper and explain more. And they do.

And they do.

The beauty of the process is that respondents get so caught up in their “mind movies” that they drop pretense, forget trying to figure out why we’re asking them these questions, and give very open answers. When we say “re-living,” it can be very true. Depending on the subject matter, it’s not unusual to see respondents laugh with realizations or cry with remorse, while they “cut” the air with their hands to point out where things are in the scene that they see in their “mind’s eye.”

Did we say “drop pretense?”

Yes, we did.

We have, literally, seen physicians openly discuss what amounts to ‘malpractice,’ or consumers make reference to extramarital affairs, when neither is actually what we have asked them about directly, but were simply part of their decision making process in the story they are retelling.

Such things reveal how honest respondents become during the interview, and, thus, how deeply we are able to uncover and define the factors that motivate them, the product “features” that excite them, and what message takeaways have “stuck” in their memories.

We answer “Why?” questions with great depth and detail, in a process that starts by working with you or your clients to establish what the objectives are and what “questions” need to be answered to achieve those objectives. And then we remind everyone that this list of “questions to be answered” is never “questions that we ask,” because we find those answers indirectly, as described above.

It’s a powerful process that can shape strategy, establish what the key “copy points” should be, and uncover things like unmet needs or consumer expectations that have been frustrated– often unwittingly– by the client.

The methodology can be also be used for direct “message testing…”

…but in a much deeper way than most message testing research is done.

When we test messages (ads, copy, panels, storyboards, etc.), these come very late in the interview. Before that, we use the same visualization techniques to establish a foundation of understanding about respondent emotions and perceptions of the subject (category or brand or both), so that their messaging recall and reactions are “in context.” We can understand WHY they react or remember what they do, and we know how to drill deeper into the messaging elements and anchor points to understand them even more completely.

In short, our work not only answers the Why? questions we establish at the beginning of the project, but can often be used to answer questions that we did not ask at the time, because we have developed a foundational understanding of the minds and hearts of consumers on this subject.

We deliver an Emotional Landscape that functions like a map of respondents’ histories and souls. As we fill in key places on the map, we usually find some unexpected landmarks that provide reference points for other travels.

Bottom line, we give clients clarity about what goes on in the minds and hearts of the people they want to reach, so they can control their communications and strategy with more insights.