Real spend will come late, but we’ll start ‘celebrating’ early

The gloom and fatigue of uncertainty means everyone is ready for some merriment and distraction. Things which enable us to start early, without any guilt. Immersive activities with family and friends will be popular. We’ll seek out the Christmas-mood on Netflix as early as possible, and make a trip to the Cinema for festive movies and traditional films which take us back to cosy, family times like Downton, Dickens’ David Copperfield and Cats. There could also be room for a few affordable buys (advent calendars, festive clothing and Christmassy candles/home fragrance).

We’ll break free of traditional presents and gift time

Indulging in a special activity or celebration will be a popular gift, a friendship group deciding on a meal out, posh cocktails or a theatre evening. Consumers will reject restrictive and impersonal coupons/tickets/vouchers and simply organise the event themselves. Putting pressure on traditional, shoppable present spending but creating opportunity for new players to enter the gifting market. Opening huge potential for restaurants and bars – especially as we know that an immersive dining experience will increase spending (of course we’re having the second bottle of wine… and dessert!)

To be a super-host we’ll need an inclusive offering

It’s not just the main event that needs to be delicious and beautiful, there needs to be something for everyone. Vegan and veggie options will up the ante on previous years making meat-eaters jealous and desperate to try – so will options for guests with special diets who require gluten/lactose/nut free. Plus, there will be extra pressure on the bar too – orange juice and lemonade won’t cut it  by non-drinkers, they’ll be expecting more choice and special options on no/low alcohol. Of course this means there could be many hosts buying as total novices, so visual short-cuts which cue ‘crowd-pleaser’ will win (awards, customer endorsements, show-stopper designs, familiar trends).

Definition of ‘perfect gift’ evolves – it’s personal, not personalised

We’ll start to see through name adornments, a token identity stamp. We’re looking for true personality, uniqueness, a story – something that feels chosen for you, not simply looks like it’s for you. A careful selection of favourite grocery items like breakfast cereal and chocolate spread will say I love you better than an embossed ‘A’ washbag. We’ll see a rise in ‘homemade’ gifts – which could mean crafting, or more likely a curation of the recipients most coveted low-cost products (mindfulness hamper, gaming night-in snacks, ingredients plus recipe for a new bake).

We’ll be conflicted between sustainability and tradition

While we’ll claim to be conscious angels the routine of rituals will mean a lot of mindless spending. We’ll preach that the world doesn’t need more plastic, but we won’t think twice about all the packaging surrounding our party food… until we’re clearing it up and feel pangs of disgust. We’ll nail the convenient switches – we predict Christmas cards to be a big casualty, no unnecessary paper and the effort save of finding all those addresses – win-win! We also predict a few big messages will cut through, we’ll seek out recyclable wrapping paper and forsake Christmas crackers. Simple, achievable and smothered in social pressure.

‘Gimmicks in disguise’ – we’ll cut back unnecessary frills for more wholesome unnecessary frills

Part sustainability driven, but mostly about being spending savvy, we’ll steer away from novelty extras and silly gifts. We’ll tell ourselves it’s all about being smart, but really they’ll be replaced with more immersive, authentic buys… gimmicks in disguise (Christmas bedding/cushions/throws, festive dining ranges, Christmas socks, pet accessories).

Desperate for social proof, we’ll all be drawn to shareable photo-opportunities

The tree might be decorated and the lights switched on, but the house isn’t truly ready for Christmas until the decorations are on Instagram. It’s not just the joy of soaking up the moment – we need a souvenir! With a focus on immersive festive moments and creating magic at home we’ll be desperate to share. Brands which create aspirational, shareable moments will enjoy the buzz of being talked about, and stick in our memories.

Join us for our Christmas predictions webinar

In just 20 minutes you’ll get to hear:

• Our big Christmas predictions and the consumer sentiment/trends driving them
• Who we think will be the winning and losing brands and categories
• Why you should be adapting to evolving sentiment and buying habits over the festive season and how our Christmas Unwrapped insights can help you win

Get our latest Christmas insight report

Quiet voices are being heard amongst the noise, brands like The Ordinary gain huge popularity and chatter by leading with simplicity. There’s something about it that feels so natural. You might think all winners at the moment are intuitive, almost magic, but it’s an illusion! Emerging brands mislead us, it looks natural, when really it’s anything but. They purposely employ tactics to use our cognitive biases against us.

The latest store opening of Neon Sheep got us thinking. The store itself has a lot of energy, lots of buzzing customers…. but look closer and you can see it’s a masterclass in consumer nudging. And it looks to be working! Customers seem to be looking past the extreme use of plastic – very much a feel first, act second environment.

Primed to fall in love

Intention or coincidence, I’m not sure…but many Neon Sheep have opened next to brands like Oliver Bonas, Paperchase and card stores, where we are already primed to seek uniqueness and little impulse buys. So we can’t help but be drawn inside.

Attention seeking disruption

Neon colours strike from a distance, a giant pink sheep welcomes customers in and a family of lambs graze on the ceiling grass. There are lots of memorable, fun elements which both disrupt and provide us with something new for the gram.

Irresistible at arms reach

The layout places nearly all product at touching distance. It feels fun, we feel compelled to pick things up. But we know, once we physically hold something, it increases our attachment to it and we’re far more likely to buy.

Prices that feel almost consequence free

Simple, low price points on design-led and desirable product is a recipe for temptation. Blanket price points also help accelerate your need to buy – £2 all their greetings cards, a category renowned for quickly tipping into a little too expensive. The magic of the single-price point is that suddenly the only choice is ‘which design?’.

Chiming with millennials desire to ‘shelfie’

As the generation who boomerang to parents homes or rent for what feels like forever – it’s hard to create hygge escapes at home. We rely on accessories, no-nails-needed decorations to lift our spaces and give them our own stamp. Neon Sheep is bursting with products to create an enviable shelfie.

See why balance is bingeworthy for consumers

Healthy lifestyle, digital usage, self-care, career, relationships – it’s all about balance. Everywhere we look there are articles and supposed inspiring quotes about achieving an equilibrium. In a world where we seek limitless possibilities, where everything moves just a little too fast and we can all have almost as much as we want, traditional balance is nearly impossible. Instead – on/off binging is our way to achieve harmony.

We see this most in our consumption of television. Rather than an hour of TV a day, we watch none all week then a lazy Sunday sees us guzzling an entire series in an afternoon. Binging is the only way to watch the latest series of Stranger Things. The days of watching one episode of a drama a week feel pre-historic. We make crazy choices. Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said their biggest competitor is sleep.

It’s no longer just Netflix, we’ll binge on anything

For more and more of us social media is feast or famine – we end up on Facebook looking at a school friends posts from 2014 or find ourselves lost in an Instagram rabbit warren. Then suddenly, we take a stand – rule it out of our lives, make pledges to put our phone away, delete the app or even our accounts entirely. So much content consumption seems to be like this – YouTube, Podcasts, favourite bloggers or journalists, it’s all or nothing.

Over the years, our travel has become a much more obsessive affair too. Of course the birth of the gap year was one of our first tastes – an intense 3 months binging on new sights and cultures. But now, even with just one week of holiday, we seek to pack in as much adventure, exploration and wild experiences as possible, then ignore this side of ourselves and hide away behind coffee dates, Friday night drinks and of course Netflix, for the rest of the year.

We even binge calm! Yoga retreats, digital detoxes, self-care weekends. For a few short days they are all-encompassing, honeymoons to recuperate after burning the candle at both ends. True moments of serenity are few and far between and for most absent from our daily routines.

Immersion will help brands get a slice of the action

Immersion calls to us, most of us love the sense of escape – we’re drawn to engaging experiences, things that envelop our senses, and moments like this make us want to stay. Here are 3 things you should think about:

1. Showcase the allure – covetable experiences are all encompassing. Be single minded in the feeling you’re looking to elicit – be it empowerment, togetherness or simply something cosy and welcoming, make it powerful.
2. Create a whole new world – there’s a reason why Stranger Things and Game of Thrones are some of our favourite binges, they transport us to somewhere completely different. It doesn’t have to be make-believe, we see this same quality in Ted Talks where it’s easy to get lost in a loop of great tips. Brands can also achieve it with physical experiences, just look at Lush.
3. Make it easy – we’ll happily be swept along and won’t question it if it feels comfortable. So avoid anything that awakens us and invent new ways of keeping experiences seamless. What’s your equivalent to ‘the next episode will start in 7 seconds’ feature?

The explosive truth about consumer emotions – download our thought piece now

Supercharge your brain cells in 20 minutes with our new live webinar series

Webinar 4: immersion is power

Kokoro’s 5Drivers model reveals the feelings we’ve established as being routes to happiness, which brands can to play to. The most impactful of our 5Drivers is Immersion – feels intuitively right as we watch consumers chase experiences. We examine why and what makes it so powerful.

What will you learn?

Together, we’ll explore why immersion is so powerful and the different tactics brands can use to absorb shoppers in their worlds. We’ll focus on three big topics:

Our love for experiences is driven by more than just peak stuff

The rise of our experience economy is often assumed to be down to us owning too many things, but really our desire to be involved and feel for ourselves is routed in something deeper than that.

Brands with an immersive quality win

Apple, Lush and Boohoo come top of all our experience metrics, immersive experiences unite them and other brands top-of the league – we explore their most effective techniques.

Tactics to absorb shoppers in your world

Every day brands are creating more digital content, physical pop-ups or experiential marketing and investing in creating seamless experiences to keep us glued to our mobiles. We explore how brands can maximise impact and create the biggest buzz.

Who should sign up?

Insight professionals, designers, marketers and CX specialists who want inspiration to think about their brand and experiences in a more emotive way

When is it?

Choose one of two slots and simply fill in your details below for free access to the webinar

Slot 1: Wednesday 9th October at 17.30 GMT (18:30 CET, 09:30 San Francisco Time)

Slot 2: Thursday 10th October at 14.30 GMT (15:30 CET, 09:30 New York Time)

This is a live session lasting 20 minutes including 5 minutes Q&A at the end

Who’s providing the thought-provoking thinking?

You’ll be inspired by Laura Gillespie  – leading Kokoro’s powerful work on leveraging emotions

Stop thinking regular, start thinking Visionary. You’ve got the passion to fuel a rocket ship. We can help give you the vision to deliver experiences for extraordinary commercial return. We want to help you see a new future with inspiring talks, practical ideas and immersive workshops from some awesome thinkers and doers. Join Kokoro and TIBCO on 17.10.19 at The Morton Society, 11 South Place, London EC2N 4AY

3 explosive topics, 20 awesome speakers

Topic 1:  From numbers to the heartbeat of a business – how to unite data with emotional intelligence to drive the right action

Panel debate: how well are businesses really doing at putting customers at the heart of their decisions?

Topic 2: Creating the next new possible – how do you connect to how people want to feel to discover the next visionary experiences?

Panel debate: what’s the future of wellbeing?

Topic 3: Making memories – how do you create Visionary stories that create lasting buzz

With a host to remind us about the funny side of this

Immerse yourself in two unique experiences

Sign up now

Supercharge your brain cells in 20 minutes with our new live webinar series

Not all experiences in the customer journey need to be equal

We know amazing Visionary customer experiences across the journey are important – we just wrote a thought piece on the subject! But, a brand can’t always deliver Visionary experiences at every touch point of every journey. It’s not commercially viable and just not necessary for customers to make memories around your brand and keep spending. You must remind yourself of the peak-end rule so you can prioritise investment in the points of the customer journey where you can get the most extraordinary commercial return.

What will you learn?

You’ll see why experiences which ignite emotions get customer attention and get remembered. You’ll get a clear grasp of applications of the peak-end rule so you can see how a little magic at the right point in a journey goes a long way. With practical and inspiring examples of how brands are winning in this space.

Who should sign up?

Insight professionals, designers, marketers and CX specialists who want inspiration to think about their brand and experiences in a more emotive way

When is it?

Choose one of two slots and simply fill in your details below for free access to the webinar

Slot 1:  Tuesday September 10 – 17:30 GMT (18:30 CET, 09:30 San Francisco Time)

Slot 2:  Wednesday September 11 – 14:30 GMT (15:30 CET, 09:30 New York Time)

This is a live session lasting 20 minutes including 5 minutes Q&A at the end

Who’s providing the thought-provoking thinking?

You’ll be inspired by Laura Gillespie  – leading Kokoro’s powerful work on leveraging emotions

Get our highly-regarded report series and get the tactics to win this key Christmas trading period

The biggest and best Christmas insights

Be better prepared for the challenge of growing your revenue and profit in one of the most competitive, ever-changing trading periods.

Our reports ensure you’re armed with the insight to react quickly to evolving consumer sentiment and buying habits so you can adapt successfully.

After all it’s often those small tweaks that can make a big difference between the winners and losers in such a tight market.

Highlights from Christmas 2018

Here’s a taster of the report highlights from 2018 and how understanding these can help you drive better commercial returns this Christmas.

Download pdf version here

Pick and mix your favourites

Just choose the insight reports you’re interested in or get the comprehensive full set and save.

Each report is based on a sample of 2,000 nat rep UK consumers plus qualitative interviews throughout the Christmas period.

Each report is priced at just £3,950 or get all 4 reports for just £11,500 (save over £4,000)

Who is it for?

Any retail and eating-out brand where Christmas is a key trading period for their business.

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Want to buy it? Got some questions? Need to understand more detail? Just pop in a few details and we’ll be in touch to discuss more.

Each report is priced at just £3,950 or get all 4 reports for just £11,500 (save over £4,000)

In half an hour you can totally change the way you think about customer experience

Boom! packed into 30 minutes

Book your place to hear our new report brought to life in just 30 minutes. You get the powerful truth why brands like Monzo, Boohoo and Emirates thrive whilst others fall short. It’s a completely new outlook on how you should measure and leverage customer emotions to build your CX strategy and deliver extraordinary commercial return

Key takeaways

Hear about what inspired us to create Boom! and get your powerful takeaways:

• Why you need to get serious about emotions – the workings of the subconscious brain and the role of emotions in creating memories
• FeelFactor – a completely new way of understanding if your brand connects with customers and why leaders are gravitating to it versus NPS
• A completely new way to think about experiences – we show you four types of brand experience, the strategic role of each, and how to optimise them to grow revenue/profit

Why listen?

We promise to fill your 30 minutes with engaging and thought-provoking content so you can be part of something that might just change the way you think…..forever!

Where and when?

Choose one of two slots and simply fill in your details below for free access to the webinar

Slot 1: Thursday August 22 – 14:30 GMT (15:30 CET, 09:30 New York Time)

Slot 2: Tuesday September 3 – 17:30 GMT (18:30 CET, 09:30 San Francisco Time)

This is a live session lasting 30 minutes including 5 minutes Q&A at the end

Who should attend?

Anyone who is interested in challenging their thinking about the future of brand and customer experience. From entrepreneurs, to brand managers, UX designers to researchers. If you work in marketing, buying, design, CX, UX, retail, fashion, beauty, travel, grocery, banking or eating out this event is made for you

Supercharge your brain cells in 20 minutes with our new live webinar series

Webinar 2 – unlocking emotions

We know consumers feel first, act second and think later. Our job is to appeal to their irrational desires. We must understand their deep-rooted needs. Our webinar shares the secret to understanding consumer emotions with an explanation of our 5Drivers model

What will you learn?

We like to think we’re rational, but really we go with our gut. Brands can win by making customers feel happy – but that’s vague, how do you spark happiness? And how can you make sure your way is unique? Our 5Drivers model reveals the feelings we’ve identified as most important in building happiness with a brand. Our model allows you to pinpoint the feelings your customers experience when using you, and the Drivers which, if played to, will open up most opportunities for your brand

In this webinar, we reveal our 5Drivers model and how brands can connect on a deeper level to achieve commercial success

Who should sign up?

Insight professionals, designers, marketers and CX specialists who want inspiration to think about their brand and experiences in a more emotive way

When is it?

Choose one of two slots and simply fill in your details below for free access to the webinar

Slot 1:  Tuesday August 6 – 17:30 GMT (17:30 CET, 09:30 San Francisco Time)

Slot 2:  Wednesday August 7 – 14:30 GMT (14:30 CET, 09:30 New York Time)

This is a live session lasting 20 minutes including 5 minutes Q&A at the end

Who’s providing the thought-provoking thinking?

You’ll be inspired by Laura Gillespie  – leading Kokoro’s powerful work on leveraging emotions

Join one of our events and totally change the way you think about customer experience

See Boom! brought to life

Rejig your diary and make space for one hour of learning, debating and great conversation-making with people who genuinely want to challenge their thinking on the future of brand and customer experience. This is your opportunity to see Boom! brought to life and get access to exclusive content that isn’t in the report.

Why attend?

We promise to fill your hour with fun, engaging and thought-provoking content so you can be part of something that might just change the way you think…..forever!

We know you absorb and learn so much more when you immerse yourself in a topic and debate it – not through tweets and likes, but through human conversation. The type of conversation that results in sparking all kinds of exciting stuff.

Hear ideas from inspiring thinkers and doers in your industry and share your own personal challenges

Where and when?

Boom! breakfast – 8:30am-9:30am, Thursday 15th August. Kings Cross, GridIron Building, One Pancras Square London N1C 4AG. Only 30 seconds from King’s Cross! Grab a coffee and croissant and expand your mind before your day job

Boom! over the hump – 3pm-4pm, Wednesday 14th August. 33 Oldham St, Manchester M1 1JG. Get over your mid week hump with a glass of gin and some real pick-me-ups!

Who should attend?

Anyone who is interested in challenging their thinking about the future of brand and customer experience. From entrepreneurs, to brand managers, UX designers to researchers. If you work in marketing, buying, design, CX, UX, retail, fashion, beauty, travel, grocery, banking or eating out this event is made for you