The fun begins

By Niniane Veldhoen on 9 June 2009

The research on mentality has lasted for a year now. After reading lots of papers, trying to find out what mentality really is and trying to determine six basic mentalities to come up with a segmentation tool to name one’s mentality, for me the fun part really begins now. We’re going to do some experiments. The gut feeling we have is that the mentality of a person is kind of similar to the mentality of the brand he or she prefers. So now we’re going to put that gut feeling to the test with a few experiments.

For the past few weeks we have asked students to make a list of their 10 favourite brands. For every brand they had to give three words, which they associate with the brand. Not only will it give us an insight in the world of brands of youngsters, it will also give us input for the next experiment. With this input we’re going to make a little game. In Holland it is called ‘kwartetten’ abroad it is also known as ‘happy families’ or ‘old maid’.

We’re going to let students play the game so we will find out which brands they think fit in the same categories, based on values or as we would like to see, based on ‘brand mentalities’. With this information we can have a look if the words they associate with these brands in the same categories are somewhat alike. We also want to know which brands of the game they prefer or use, and why. If we put these experiments next to each other we’ll get a first impression if the gut feeling we have is correct or not. And we can make some very important steps forward in our research on mentalities.

While searching for lists of brands youngsters surround themselves with, I came across the coolest brand awards from MTV. Unfortunately this list refers to Belgium youngsters. A similar list for Holland doesn’t exist, or is hidden really well!
In Belgium Apple is the big winner. If we look at the brands our students filled in, Apple is also mentioned the most. So Apple must do something really well.

A colleague of mine once mentioned that when students need to pick a target group for projects, they like to choose the target group we call ‘yuppies’, or young urban professionals. They al refer to this target group as hip, trendy and exclusive. They often use Apple as an example of an exclusive product, branded for this target group. However, is Apple still exclusive and only used by yuppies? I mean when you sit in the bus or the train, look around you and count all the white earplugs. Doesn’t everyone own an IPod or IPhone nowadays? So can you say that the big power behind Apple is that it makes you feel exclusive when you own an Apple product, while actually it’s not exclusive at all? And what does this say about the brand mentality of Apple?

I’m looking forward to playing the game with the students, and I’m very curious with what other brands Apple will be placed and why. In a few weeks I can tell you more.

tagged with: mentalities, research, branding