The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Desire by Design: What Data-Driven Marketers Should Know About Driving Desire for Their Brands by Jean-Pierre LaCroix

Episode Date: November 27, 2024

Desire by Design: What Data-Driven Marketers Should Know About Driving Desire for Their Brands by Jean-Pierre LaCroix Amazon.com Conventional thinking has brands trying to give customers what they want. But what if wanting is no longer enough? A customer may want a great mobile phone, for example, and there are many options. But a huge majority will choose the now iconic iPhone, even waiting long hours in lines to purchase the latest model. This is not simply about wanting. Its about desire. The question for brand marketers is how to make that elusive magic happen. In Desire by Design, Jean-Pierre Lacroix unravels the irrational element of desire and explains how brands, designers, and marketers can tap into the emotional high that elicits such passion for certain brands. Jean-Pierre shapes high-level ideas and insights from neuroscience, cult fanaticism, and behavioral psychology into practical worksheets that explain the how-to in creating desire for a brand. Using design philosophies he has developed through his thirty years of experience, Jean-Pierre offers interesting history, insights from scientific research, and actionable advice to lead brands from a want category to the much-coveted desire space in the marketplace. About the author Innovator, designer, strategist, futurist, transformer of brands for growth, Jean-Pierre Lacroix is President of Shikatani Lacroix Design (SLD). Jean-Pierre Lacroix is strongly committed to design innovation. JP as his clients call him was the first to coin the term Blink Factor more than thirty years ago about how brands needed to connect emotionally in the blink of an eye. He pioneered also the use of neuroscience and Virtual Reality to gain insights about branded invironments and was one of the first individuals to use in-store digital signing and gester motion UX to engage with consumers. In addition to pioneering the successful firm, Jean-Pierre is also Past President of The Association of Registered Graphic Designers of Ontario, Past President of DIAC (Design Industry Advisory Committee), board member of SEGD (Society of Environmental Graphic Designers), as well as former Director of the Packaging Association of Canada. An accomplished dynamic speaker, he has lectured at numerous conferences across Canada, the US, Asia and South America on the subjects of branding and design trends. His presentations have always received high appraisals for content, energy, and take-away actionable information. Mr. Lacroix also co-authored a best selling book, which was launched in January 2002, titled The Business of Graphic Design: A Professional’s Handbook. Most recently he has released his third book “Desire by Design” culminating more than 35 years of helping Fortune 500 brands remain relevant.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. This is Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com.

Ladies and gentlemen, for 16 years and over, 21 episodes of the Chris Voss Show. Going on our 17th year, and we bring you the most smartest minds I'll see you tomorrow. about his insights and brilliance and how it can be translated into your life and make you smarter and probably do better business, build better brands, et cetera, et cetera. We have Jean-Pierre LeCroy on the show with us today. His newest book came out April 17th, 2018. It's called Desire by Design. What data-driven marketers should know about driving desire for their brands. And you can pick up his book. We're going to be talking about how brands work, some of the things they do to help give customers what they want, something that a lot of people need, or if you're an aspiring entrepreneur, it's going to be great data for you.

With over three decades of experience in the branding and design interest. Let's hit that. With over three decades of experience in the branding and design industry, J.P. LaCroix is the president, chief strategy officer, and founder of SLD. The international design firm specializes in creating immersive brand experiences that connect in the blink of an eye. As a visionary leader, he's helped Fortune 500 companies transform their brands and organizations through his unique ThinkBlink process, which combines strategic foresight, design innovation,

and consumer experience engineering. He's also an accomplished speaker, author, and educator who has shared his insights and expertise on global stages, best-selling books, and prestigious institutions. His mission is to evaluate the role and value of design in business and society and inspire others to achieve design excellence. Welcome to the show, JP. How are you?

Fantastic, Chris. Thank you for having me on the show. I'm looking forward to having this great conversation. Thanks for coming. We really appreciate it. Give us your dot-coms. Where do you want people to get to know you better on the interwebs? Simple. It's www.sld.com. That's S like love, or sorry, Sam, L like love, D like dog.com.

So give us a 30,000 overview. What's inside your book, Desire by Design? You know, a lot of marketers spend an enormous amount of time exploring features for their products. You know, this does better, it cleans faster, it's brighter, it does this, it does that. And the reality is that consumers don't buy products that way. The reality is consumers buy emotionally these products. They buy them by how those products make them feel, how they reflect their self-image. And marketers spend so much time focusing on features when they should be focusing on how those brands emotionally connect them. What are those emotions that they need to pull to drive that brand loyalty for the consumer? And it's something, how did you get into this

business where you're studying brands, advising brands and all that good stuff? for the, for the consumer. And you know, it's, it's something, how did you get into this business where you're studying brands, advising brands and all that good stuff? Tell us what inspired you. Yeah. I started as a designer, you know, close to 40 years ago. And then I slowly evolved to play a bigger role in strategy because what we're discovering is, you know, design can be very subjective, but if you tie it to business metrics, if you tie it to solving business problems, it becomes significantly less subjective. And then I started my firm 35 years ago, SLD, and now we do work globally. We have an office in Shanghai. We do a considerable amount of assignments in the U.S, Canada, Europe. And about 33 years ago, we were doing consulting

work for Pizza Hut US. We were actually launching a new concept called Pizza Hut Cafe, and we were doing focus groups. Focus groups are, you know, invite eight or nine consumers, and you present ideas and have discussions. And during those discussions, consumers were calling Pizza Hut red roof. I said, well, that's interesting. You're calling them red roof. Why aren't you calling it Pizza Hut or Pizza Hut Cafe? They said, because when I'm driving down the road and I'm looking for Pizza Hut, I'm looking for the red roof. And that really caught our attention. And so we started doing research on, you know, what does that mean? And what we found out was that 40% of all communication is visual. 80% of that is color and shape. And that's where

BlinkFactor was born. It was born based on the fact of creating these shortcuts in brand selection, giving consumers cues that they can notice miles away on the brand preference and making it easier for them to select that brand. If you think of McDonald's, you know, my daughter who was two years old, she knew what McDonald's was. She recognized the Arches as a place for getting chips or fries and also being able to play in the jungle gym environment. And so that's the power when you do it effectively, you're creating a shortcut in the consumer's memory, an emotional shortcut that connects the brand with the consumer. And when they're making that buying decision,

you're making it easier for them to, to make that decision because when you start looking at the brain and how the brain operates, asking the brain to do complex things like reading making tough decisions use a lot of calories and the brain doesn't want to do that they're looking for shortcuts in making those decisions and that's where emotional connection plays an important role because it it drives that decision in in the split second that would explain why in the logo for for pizza they have that they have their roof

on there the red roof is in exactly it wasn't there at the beginning yeah it became part of the element you know golden arches for mcdonald's but you know when you think of emotional connections all you have to do is point at the last elections in the u.s so i'm not taking sides you know we're big canadians We have our own challenges with our politicians. But we had predicted that Trump was going to win, not because of who Trump was, but the message he was saying. When you looked at Harris, and we did a whole analysis of what are the themes that Harris was communicating versus Trump. Harris was all about protection, security, you know, very basic things on the

Maslow's hierarchy of needs, whereas Trump was talking about aspiration, making America great again, talking about growth and success and elevating. And so you can see how that message connected emotionally. And so you can do all kinds of silly things on stage, say silly things on stage. But people forgave him for that, because the message he was delivering resonated with them on a very deep emotional side. And so when we look at politics, if we look at, you know, making a decision on your partner for life, you know, you're going to make those decisions emotionally. And you're going to talk yourself out of the rational factors. And that's where con artists do so well in convincing consumers to make decisions that they normally wouldn't do. They allow the consumer to connect with them on an emotional level so that their security guard on the rational side goes away. You know, this is interesting.

I think you just solved a riddle I've always wondered about through my life. So one of the problems I've had is I'll meet people, and there are certain people that will have a high, they'll have tried to put up a high wall of resistance to salespeople. They'll have a thing on their door. It's kind of an old joke from the door-knocking, door-to-door salesman days, where the person who has the, I don't accept cold calls or knocks on my door, door-to-door salesman, don't knock on my door. Anybody who knows sales knows that that's the door you knock on.

Regardless of the warning. Because they're the ones who will buy, who can buy and will buy. And it's kind of like a signal. One of the problems I used to have in my mortgage business for two decades was we would have people come in and they would usually have, this was usually a case of someone who had bad credit because most people that had good credit, you just rubber stamp their loans and whatever. But if they had bad credit, you had to search for a lender, you had to try and massage their credit and present it, PR spin it to the lender and be like,

they missed a couple of payments, but they had some of the extraneous happen and yada, yada, yada. And some people had some really bad credit. And we go to work to try and find a loan buyer for them. And we run a good company. We never tried to rip anybody off. We tried to, you know, we did hundreds of loans a month. We weren't interested in losing our license.

And there were certain loans we wouldn't do. And so we become an offer. And so we'd make them an offer. And so I'll just throw an example out there. I think during most of our time, the interest rates were about 7%, 6%, something like that. And we'd make them an offer like 9%, something like that. They'd be paying an extra premium because they were high risk. And we'd present them, and usually the fees would be a little bit higher because whoever the bank was we were selling the paper to you know they would they would be like this is high risk we need a little bit

more money for this very common in the in the credit industry and so we would present that to them and they would flip the fuck out they would be like you're a rip and me off you guys are a scam organization you know and we might $5,000 I think think, in closing costs. Now, that's not all money to us. That includes titling and title fees and mortgage and appraisal and all that shit that gets done. And interest per diem and all that stuff. But it would be about $5,000 in closing costs with the back credit.

And so they would flip out would you know flip out oh you know you promised us six percent seven percent we actually got sued one time his small claims court by some crazy lady who was like it was like you promise you in the application when I took it you is a contract you know you promised me good credit rates and we're like you have bad credit so you didn't get good credit rates and they're like i'll enforce this contract she lost evidently but so they would they would do that and then they would come back to us maybe a year or two later they come to us to refinance or sometimes they they just i don't know the loan officer would have followed up with them and they'd given them

the data and they would always you know these are people like i will not get ripped off i always get ripped off and i will not get ripped off there was those people right and later we'd find out that they'd paid instead of nine percent five thousand dollars in closing costs ten to fifteen thousand dollars in closing costs and eleven fourteen percent i mean they got railroaded and i would call them up and i'd be like, you know, I don't really understand what's going on. Like how we offered you an incredible deal. Have you read the paperwork that you signed? Oh no. They, I really trust these people. I'm these people were really trustable on like your company. And I really believed in them and I'd be stumped. I mean, for 20 years. So I think you've solved a riddle for me of why

people do what they do. And it's that emotional content. Somehow those people with the silverest tongues and the biggest scam artists were able to get into them emotionally and make that conversion. Yeah. And that's a, it's unfortunate, but that's the reality. And, and today with, you know, technology sentiment analysis, I mean, the banks use it now. So most of the large institutions, if you call on their service line, they call it the assistant channel. The odds are that AI is doing sentiment analysis to understand, are you an upset customer? Are you anxious?

Are you anxious? Are you fearful? And that helps the other person, the representative on the other line to really understand where the customer is coming from, from an emotional standpoint. And that's very helpful so that you can kind of put their mind at ease or, you know, deflate a situation, you know, and be able to plan that before you even have the call, like within minutes of a conversation to be able to diffuse the issue because you've understood where they're coming from, from an emotional standpoint. And you see more and more of that. You know, the other thing that I've, you know, dealt with in life that this probably really solves, and maybe I kind of knew that, but, I've had I've had girlfriends that have dated me and I like to think I'm a good masculine

healthy male who has good relationships and I and I do have good relationships but you know sometimes I've seen my exes they get with guys who went to jail for grape and were criminals or they were stalkers or violent or abusive. I've seen people that I've dated where I'm like, hey, you know, you treat them well, you take them on wonderful dates and they get with, you know, some bad Chad who beats them and is abusive and just a horrible person. And you're like, what the fuck? Like you, for me, a logical reason male male i can look at two different things and compare them and go clearly one is safer than the other for someone's thing but clearly you know whatever

emotional manipulation that other person can do or another company can do can get into people and it's funny how passive they are about and comfortable they are about being railroaded okay i would talk to these people and you would show them on paper with the mortgage side by side here's our closing costs here's the closing cost you end up paying here's the interest rate you end up paying and they just be like man and you're just like serious yeah i mean if i paid if i paid four or five percent above, you know, I mean we saw people that got railroaded just just turn out by some other mortgage company that

Specialized in railroading people and I would just and they would just be happy with it. They probably went back to him for refinance I was just and and so I think you've solved the riddle for me that it really is that emotional connection to people yeah and it's understanding where that consumer is coming from you know so they your your ex-girlfriends they probably lacked a lot of self-confidence they had a low self-image and you know and that that makes them vulnerable and you know too but you know when you think of the blink factor and you think of making those emotional connections, the positive side of that is that it's helping the consumer make buying decisions or make big decisions in their lives, right? But also, if marketers understand what drives those emotions, you take a car purchase.

You know, that's a large, it's the second largest purchase next to a home. And people say, what's about the features? You know, you ask a friend who's bought a BMW, you know, why did you buy it? Well, resale value is amazing. You know, the performance is amazing. But when you peel it down, we call that hidden need states. You know, when you start peeling down in the conversation why they really purchased that vehicle, it's all emotion. It made me look smarter than my neighbor. It reaffirmed my success in the community. These are all emotional things. And what it also tells you is that you can drive a premium for brands if you have the right blink factor, the right emotional connection, because

they're not going to rationalize the purchase. They'll do that after the fact, but it's going to be emotionally based, that purchase decision. And so that's a powerful insight that most marketers constantly overlook. They focus on the next feature. And the challenge in the marketplace, Chris, is that the competitive advantage of companies now are minuscule. You know, if you come up with a great product, your competition is going to match it within six months, if not three or maybe a couple of weeks, depending on the complexity of that. So trying to compete with your, your, you know, the marketplace based on functional needs and attributes, it's not sustainable. And that's where the blink factor and the emotional connection plays an important role. And something that you talked about with

your about your girlfriends, the other factor, there's a growing level of mental illness in North America, and it's driven by being lonely. And you'd think social media would have made us more accessible, more connected. That's not the reality. The reality is there's a significant problem in society today where young consumers feel lonely, isolated. And understanding those emotional needs and helping solve those emotional needs is a real opportunity for large companies yeah you know you see that in the target and the amazon purchases i mean i have friends that their wives go two times a day to target every day and you're like what the fuck is going on there was a point where i when i became successful and and had money from

growing up poor to where i was out buying stuff and at first it was just to fill the home i bought a home you know i did the big four thousand square foot home three car garage you know all that and and so at first i was buying shit to fill the home you know you know you need curtains you know you need a bed you need all that stuff right you need whatever and so i was on that tour and then i started noticing that there was something going on with me emotionally i had to go every weekend to buy stuff like just i would just go to the mall and search for to buy and i'm like in the back of my head i was going like this is really stupid what i'm doing like what you're just going and looking for stuff to buy to see if there's something you need to buy when you don't really need things you know like one of the great skits of george carlin

is his you know buying more shit and then you got to buy shit to store your shit in that to buy more shit. It's a great bit that he did. If you go back and pull it. But and I realized that I was having some sort of emotional crisis of insecurity. And there was a there was a few things going on with me emotionally. And I was buying stuff to try and fill that void. And I should shut it down. I was like like this is not healthy because i'm just buying stupid shit yeah just because you when you buy you stimulate the dopamine and and that drives

that gives you a positive high when you when you do purchases that explains why people go to starbucks instead of making their own coffee at home. Oh, it's an experience. And that's the other thing is that when you think of emotional connections, a lot of it is driven by memory capture. You know, you don't remember the features and benefits of that coffee maker in the house, but you do remember how that coffee maker made you feel in the morning when you had that cup of coffee. People remember how brands made them feel, how products made them feel, how people made them feel. They forget about all the features and benefits. That's kind of lost in the noise. And so creating these, we call them brand stories, you know, telling that story emotionally to the consumer and creating that experience around that story is

how you really truly connect with the consumer. And I think Apple has done a fantastic job of that. Forget about the physical product. There's a whole unwrapping experience that happens when you buy an Apple product. I mean, the way the packaging was designed, the unboxing experience, it all ties to the product and the sophistication of the product. And it's all part of that experience. And they control that. Another brand, Harley Davidson, they've trademarked the sound of their muffler. Oh, really?

This is part of the experience. Yeah. They've trademarked the sound of their mufflers they don't want any other motorcycle company imitating their sound because it's part of that experience you know you can hear that motorcycle a mile away and you know it's a harley it's not a suzuki or a kawasaki you'll probably feel that sound as they go by. Yeah. Yeah. It tends to, it tends to get inside you. I'm just like, holy crap, man. What the hell? But so this talk to us about some of the services that you offer on your website with SLD and some of the things that you work with. Does, do you only work with companies of a certain size and income or revenue base? Tell us about, you know, if someone's

listening out there on LinkedIn or some of the different platforms that we have, you know, tell us who the customer is for you that would be interested in working with you. Yeah, Chris, our core primary client is what we call transformation aspirers. These are organizations that are going through a major change. They've lost their relevancy in the marketplace. It could be a major drugstore chain through a major change. They've lost their relevance in the marketplace. It could be a major drugstore chain or a major fast food chain. I'll use Dairy Queen, for example.

You know, Dairy Queen came to us. We developed their new identity, their new restaurant experience. This goes back, I think, 12 years ago. And we launched DQ Grill and Chill because we realized that they were selling hot food since the start of their company. But when you ask consumers, when you think of going to a hot food restaurant or fast food chain, where does Dairy Queen fit? And it was way at the bottom, right? It wasn't in what we call the consideration set. And so we took a look at how are we going to deliver hot food?

The first thing we found out was what are the barriers for consumers going to Derequin buying hot food? The number one barrier is consumers don't want that staff to be touching the ice cream and touching the burgers. They want those areas separated, hence DQ Grill and Chill. And we created that experience where we leveraged nostalgia, the history of the brand and where it stood in the communities. And then we separated the grill and the chill. Those units tripled in sales and continues to drive growth for Dairy Queen because we captured

the emotional needs of the consumer. We overcome those emotional barriers that they had. And it's turned to be a very successful program for them. And so what we do is we do major transformations. So we'll look at, are they positioned properly in the marketplace? Who are their core target group? Well, we'll find, you know, because again, competitive advantage now, it's slim. You know, when you look at the difference in customer satisfaction between the top brand and the fifth brand, It's slim. When you look at the difference in customer satisfaction between the top brand and the fifth brand, it's marginal. But how those brands make their customers feel isn't. And so we get involved in understanding what are the emotional triggers. And then we look at that customer journey across all those purchase moments to develop the ideal

experience through the identity, the physical experience, retailers, for example, their signage, their e-commerce platform, their training for their staff. That's what we do. We look at holistically. And give your advice. So do the companies need to be a certain size or we work with small, medium to large? We work with small, medium to large. I mean, you know, the reality for us it's

not so much the size of the company but the integration of the services that they're looking for we're looking for clients startups to large global organizations that are looking for an integrated holistic approach versus just being tactical or incremental. And there's a big disease happening now in the global economy. And that's this incremental mindset. You know, we want to minimize risk. So we're just going to add another flavor to our lineup. Or we're just going to decorate the store. We're not going to revamp our business model.

And that incrementalism is killing business it doesn't work anymore consumers are expecting a lot more from from brands definitely it's kind of interesting how it really has developed but you give me some ideas on on i'm going to read your book and and you give me some ideas on on why these things because i mean for for a lot of years i've been wandering around this stuff and i i kind of knew it was emotional but what kind of manipulator do you have and what's funny about these people that they have these high resistance and walls oh i oh you know you always hear it it's it's the person who goes i always get ripped off so i don't trust anybody and then they always still get ripped off and it's because the silver tongue you you know, sweet talkers that, you know, they have that,

they have a way of getting emotionally into people's heads. They, they are the ones who can get over that wall. And so like the good people can't get over the wall. The people who have integrity and good business sense can't get over the wall because they've erected this wall and they're like oh you you must be but somehow those those silver tongue scammers and people that whatever they make that emotional connection like you talk about and there it lies and and it's a double-edged sword you know on the on the positive side if you're a trustworthy brand and trust is at the bottom of of the maslowarkey of needs it's the foundation you know you're either trusted or not if you're not you're not you're not going to be purchased

by the consumer but it's about moving up that to a sense of belonging which is the middle of that and giving that consumer a sense of belonging that they belong to the tribe that buys this brand and that's really important because that's the doorway. I wrote a book called The Belonging Experience about 15 years ago. And it was about, hey, if you want to aspire, you need to have a sense of belonging. You need to feel like you're part of a tribe. Because we, as human beings, we're social animals. We don't live alone. We live within groups and we tell stories and that's how we aspire. And so successful brands, people who are brands that have created strong trust with their customers have allowed them to participate as part of the brand,

the sense of belonging to allow them to aspire. And so the messaging these brands are communicating, think of Nike, just do it. You know, it's aspirational. It's about achievement. It's not about the functional benefits of the running shoe. It's about allowing you to achieve your best. Yeah. And that's why these brands are like Apple, you know, think different. You know, you have Lego, Pandagonia, Amazon. These are all brands that connect emotionally

with consumers because they allow the consumer to aspire to a better place. Another great brand is Costco. Costco is the only retailer in the world that if they're out of stock, you blame yourself. You go to any other retailer and if you want to buy that box of cereal and it's not on the shelf, you're going to be really upset but at costco you're going to blame yourself because costco has sold the experience of discovery you go there thinking you're going to buy three or four products you walk out having spent a thousand dollars because they create this experience where you're constantly discovering new things. Yeah. It's buying things in bulk. Yeah.

So this has been very insightful. Give people a pitch out as we go out on how to reach out to you, how to inquire about working with you, where to order your book, all that good stuff. Yeah. So just come to www.sldsamlovedog.com. dot s l d sam love dog dot com and we have in the insight section of our website we have books you can download ebooks there's studies and white papers we also have a linkedin blog called think blank please take a look at it and and that's the easiest place you'll find all of our contact information there thank you very much jp, for coming to the show. We really appreciate it. You've really opened my eyes to some things I need to refocus on when

it comes to emotional connection. What's that old line? They won't remember what you do. They'll remember how you made them feel. Thanks for tuning in order up the book, wherever fine books are sold folks desire by design, what data driven marketers should know about driving desire for their brands out April 17, 2018. Be good to each other.

Stay safe. We'll see you next time.