IIeX NA 2019 Conference Series – Hannibal Brooks - Olson Zaltman

Welcome to the 2019 IIEX North America Conference Series. Recorded live in Austin, this series is bringing interviews straight to you from exhibitors and speakers at this year’s event. In this interview, host Jamin Brazil interviews Hannibal Brooks, Insight Associate at Olson Zaltman. Contact Hannibal Online: LinkedIn Olson Zaltman [00:00] Hannibal Brooks is the name of my guest; Olson Zaltman is the name of his company or the company that he works for.  Olson Zaltman is a founder of the System 1, or one involved in the System 1 framework, as I understand it. So, they’ve got a ton of pedigree and knowledge, deep understanding of consumer purchase behavior at a System 1 level, at a habitual-type level.  And they have a really interesting marketing research approach, which goes beyond just traditional research to reveal deeper insights. Enjoy. [00:35]   I’m with Hannibal Brooks, which is the coolest name on the podcast in the history so far.  And he is with Olson... [00:45]   Zaltman. [00:47] Zaltman.  Thank you very much.  Sorry about that. So, we are live at IIeX, and I’m super excited to have you on the show.   [00:56] I’m super excited to be here.   [00:56] What do you think? [00:57]    You know I have loved the presentations I’ve seen so far:  tons of new application for AI, market research, people getting into the quant of things.  I saw a really great presentation on the AI analysis of CPG packages that I thought was just great among other things.  Tons of great presentations. [01:13] So a lot of value.  Have you been to many market research conferences?   [01:16]   No, this is my first one. [01:17] So, tell me a little bit about what you guys do.        [01:20] Yeah, so at Olson Zaltman, we’re all about understanding the unconscious mind.  A lot of people refer to it now as System 1, but our founder, Gerald Zaltman, or one of our co-founders, actually developed the concept and founded Harvard’s Mind of the Market Lab.  So that’s where these ideas were explored. He decided to do some consulting, patented our technique – the Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique – and ultimately became hugely popular.  So now we basically investigate the unconscious, and we look at a few different areas. One thing that’s kind of unique is... Laddering has definitely been popular, but really it’s using images and metaphors to explore the unconscious.  And a lot of that is also built around laddering. If you show someone a picture of a whale, you know you could give them huge scientific description or you can just show an image, and it’s, honestly, worth more than as 1,000 words. That sort of thing.              [02:14] So, talk to me a little bit more about laddering. [02:15] Right, so laddering is about looking at the attributes of a product first.  And so, that’s one thing that’s at the surface-level details, but, ultimately,