Brand Messaging for Real Human Connection: "The Harvey Hierarchy of Needs"

Enter Bill Harvey and his research company Research Measurement Technologies RMT which analyzed data from trillions of browser visits to websites provided by partner Semasio and millions of tuning events on settop boxes courtesy of predecessor Next Century Media to arrive at a 21stcentury version of Maslow39s hierarchyMotivator MethodologyUsing a sample base of 276 million Americans and with guidance by RMT Semasio mapped each person39s online content consumption tastes and captured keywords that were then appended to the content consumed by a specific browser The result is an individual word cloud around each person that was then collected into 15 Motivational Type scoresquotEach unique individual has a personal motivational mix of the 15 typesquot Harvey explains adding that a specific person may be most strongly motivated by altruism and the pursuit of selfknowledge for example while another may be most motivated by heroism and leadership and a third may be most motivated by the good life and powerThe 15 Motivational Types are1 Security amp8211 Feeling safe rather than insecure to no longer feel fear2 Belonging amp8211 Being part of a group know that one is not alone in the world to have support3 Achievement amp8211 A sense of accomplishment to do something significant in one39s life4 AspirationLearning amp8211 Wanting to know more to reach a higher level of understanding5 Competency amp8211 Wanting to be really good at something6 Fitness amp8211 Wanting to have a strong and attractive healthy body7 StatusPrestige amp8211 Recognition from others consensus validation of one39s own importance8 WealthSuccess amp8211 Affluence freedom to spend on whatever one wants ignore others39 criticism9 HeroismLeadership amp8211 Acting heroically anytime to speak up and take responsibility for situations10 ExperienceSexGood LifeHedonismEpicureanism amp8211 Wanting interesting and fun experiences to have a good time enjoy the best of life and see the world11 Power amp8211 Being able to control other people and situations to one39s liking12 Love amp8211 Wanting to love someone and be loved by the same person13 Creativity amp8211 Being creative in arts business crafts nonprofits sciences technologies or any field14 SelfKnowledge amp8211 Knowing oneself amp8212 who you are deep inside mastery of one39s mind and emotions15 SelfTranscendenceService to HumanityEnlightenmentSpiritual AwakeningNobility amp8211 Making a positive difference in the world to take care of other peopleIn addition to the 15 Motivational Types RMT further parses the results down into 86 Need States and then into 265 quotDriverTagsquot amp8212 psychological attributes that include human values character and personality traits emotional and mood states human situations and content descriptors Harvey notes These behavioral clusters add further nuance to the motivational clusters The Need States and then the Motivational Types were derived from the DriverTags which were attained from settopbox data a census of psychological words and machine learningMotivator ApplicationsAll of the data insights are privacycompliant while enabling brands to adapt their messages for maximum relevancy to specific anonymous individuals quotBecause most of the 15 motivations are perennial higher human values and ideals using these insights in this way will tend to raise the conversation level of brand communications to cover more of the most important things in life and less of the more trivial aspectsquot Harvey says quotThis inspirational and socially relevant flavor has already emerged as a trend in the most successful recent advertising and branded contentquotFadi Karam chief marketing officer of Yup concurs quotWhen I was vice president of marketing at Nestle people would come to me every day promising me better media plans but none of them ever asked to see my actual ads before recommending mediaquot Karam says quotWhen Bill Harvey came to me he would not recommend media until he could analyze my ads This recognition that the ad and the media must be looked at holistically in retrospect seems obvious yet many of us are still locked into the old ways and think that the ads make no difference amp8212 that the same media campaign can be optimal for two brands whose ads are as different as they could possibly bequotThe early RMT results helped studios and networks develop new programs But now with addressable advertising the ability to better curate resonant messages to viewer households makes the 15 Motivational Types invaluable to advertisers as well Turner under the leadership of Howard Shimmel was one of the first network groups to seize the opportunity for their clients According to Harvey Turner now WarnerMedia proved that when a network places ads in programs with psychological attributes that match viewers39 motivations the commercials work betterquotNielsen Catalina and TV measurement firm 605 provided thirdparty validation that these contextual methods actually resulted in doubledigit lifts in sales and branding effectsquot Harvey says quotAnd Simmons provided thirdparty validation that the DriverTags added to the ability to predict adoption of each of 3830 brands in the Simmons questionnairequotMotivator Next StepsRMT and Semasio plan to roll out the 15 Motivational Types in 2020 for use as targeting variables for individual campaigns enabling agency and media DMPs to append the psychological characteristics to a company39s own databasequotIt39s interesting to me that our 39memeology39 work has led us back to something very similar to Maslow39s Hierarchy of Needsquot Harvey says quotMaslow used his own selfreflection and studies of the lives of selfactualized individuals such as Einstein to form his theory His work was more qualitative Ours is fully quantitative and based on passive measurementsquotThe path to the 15 Motivational Types was a more datadriven calculated process RMT and Semasio started with every word in the Oxford Unabridged Dictionary found more than 13000 words of a psychological nature reduced them by attitude scaling and factor analysis to 1562 words and then down to 265 based on machine learning from the personalized program recommender based on settopbox viewing data Harvey explainsquotWe then created a semantic ladder up to 86 Need States and the 15 Motivation Typesquot he says quotThe 15 types look a lot like Maslow39s five types except that our 15 types are obviously more granular and we do not claim that every human being follows the same sequence in development of personal motivations Yet we both came out in similar placesquotquotThe thirdparty validations by Nielsen Catalina 605 and Simmons show that our system is not merely tautological amp8212 it actually predicts behavior which also reflects positively on Maslow39s visionary groundworkquotClick the social buttons to share this story with your friends and colleaguesThe opinions and points of view expressed in this content are exclusively the views of the author andor subjects and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNet Inc management or associated writers

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Brand Messaging for Real Human Connection: "The Harvey Hierarchy of Needs"

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Charlene Weisler

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