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Mastering the Second Moment of Truth
What is the Second Moment of Truth (SMOT)?
The first use of a product is paramount. Consumers with high brand engagement are “five times more likely to choose [that] brand in the future,” reports Signal, a TransUnion company. The only way you ensure high brand engagement is by having a satisfied consumer experience the first time, and every time, they use your product.
The good news, brand loyalty is likely hard-wired in us. In an AdWeek article, Jim McNeal, a retired professor of marketing at Texas A&M University, says children become “brand-conscious” as early as 24 months. This makes sense in the respect that we need to quickly identify those things, or people, that can readily and reliably give us what we need/want (in the case of toddlers, most likely a tasty treat).
As a result of this favorable association in our mind, we quickly form attachments to those products that meet or exceed our expectations and help us achieve our desired outcome(s). The Second Moment of Truth (SMOT), then, is the first time the consumer experiences a product after they have purchased it. Monash University describes this crucial moment: “[It] will determine the consumer’s brand perception and future buying decisions. A good usage experience will most likely result in the consumer choosing the same brand when it comes time to [repurchase] and speak favorably of the product or service in conversation or online reviews.”
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What is the Science behind the SMOT?
When thinking about the SMOT, it is important to not think about consumers buying a product, but buying the benefits that your product provides for them when they use it and how it makes them feel about themselves when owning/ using it. After all, that is how the consumer will ultimately form an opinion about your product.
But, before we continue looking at first use, we must remember that before they even use it, they have already begun to form opinions about the performance/desirability of your product based on what they can judge — the packaging.
From the moment the consumer first sees your product on the retailer’s shelf (or online), they start to form a value judgement on how it will meet their needs. They take in all available cues and clues embedded within the packaging and select the product that most closely matches their desired outcome, notes Martin Löfgren.
Once purchased, the consumer will again absorb the needed information from the packaging on how to best use your product. If they are able to successfully use your product to achieve their desired outcome, their first experience will have been a success and will, on the whole, help them form a favorable opinion.
Löfgren goes on to highlight the value of looking at the point of purchase and first use as a total customer experience in which a brand should orchestrate the clues and cues that are embedded within your packaging. If done correctly, it will guide the consumer to the best use and storage of the product and toward a favorable experience.
Crucial point: Imagine your packaging is a spokesperson for your brand, placed in the consumer’s home. They are there, 24/7, giving the consumer the correct visual cues and information they need to both use and store the product, making their user experience as easy and satisfying as possible.
How Can You Best Design for the SMOT?
How, then, do you design your packaging to be notably superior in SMOT scenarios? A typical workflow will include these four steps:
- One: Identify the emotions you want the consumer to feel when they first use the product.
- Depending on what you are selling they could feel indulgent, satisfied, successful, capable, smart, trendy, etc.
- Two: Identify the benefit that your product will provide the consumer when they first use it (and every time afterward).
- Depending on your product it could be streak-free clean windows, flawless-looking skin, clean and conditioned hair, etc.
- Three: Determine what visual cues you will need to give the consumer in order for them to arrive at the emotional state and use outcome.
- What “visual language” will you need to deploy in order for them to successfully use your product and feel satisfied with their purchase?
- Four: Test your designs in actual SMOT scenarios and iterate on them to ensure your cues are received appropriately.
- In order to know if your proposed design will work, you must test it in real-world situations to ensure it performs well.
In order to flesh these steps out, let’s take, as an example, a fictional brand selling a 24-hour eye cream. Their motto is selling “affordable luxury” in that they offer high-end products at a mid- market price. So, their packaging must convey distinctive luxury while also being accessible and easy to use.
With this in mind, they are aiming for the consumer to feel elite and savvy when first using their product (and every time afterward). In order to achieve this emotional target, they have decided on these visual cues:
- Molded glass jar: Highly reflective, eye-catching, and more luxuriant than their competitors’ plastic containers.
- Color of cream: Distinctive iridescent purple that is superior to the typical nude color of their competitors’ products.
- Lid: Their lid will need to be plastic (to keep in the price-point) but will be a highly reflective pewter color that will stand out among the more typical gold or chrome-colored lids of competitors’ products.
- Instructions: Affixed on the bottom of the jar with white label and are clear and legible.
Here is the results of their packaging test, placed in a typical SMOT scenario: As you can see, the packaging with it’s visual cues, hits the mark on all counts:
- The pewter-colored lid is distinctive and is more luxuriant than regular chrome or gold finishes on plastic lids.
- The glass catches the eye with the base especially playing with the light.
- The color of the cream plays with the light and adds a rich, visual texture.
- Finally, the instructions label is easily seen.
The best news: Instead of this being a time intensive physical prototype, it’s a virtual sample placed in a virtual environment. It was produced in a fraction of the time it takes to create a physical prototype. On top of that, the design team can rapidly iterate on design so that dozens of virtual samples can be created in a matter of minutes for the needed stakeholders to review.
With typical design workflows, most packaging designs take multiple rounds of iteration. Producing physical prototypes of each iterations and placing them in real-world scenarios to judge performance is impractical at best.
- Now with Foundry’s Colorway and Modo, you can:
- Iterate on your designs with photo-realistic renders.
- Place virtual prototypes in any context imaginable.
- Conduct consumer studies and incorporate feedback in real-time.
- Seamlessly work with 2D and 3D designers to find your final design, faster.
With Colorway and Modo, you can truly see what your final design will look like before it rolls off the production line. What’s more, once it comes off the line, you can be confident that it will be notably superior when it is placed on the shelf, helping aid you and your organization in the share gains you are striving towards.