In the wonderful children’s book, The Snail and The Whale, there’s a seasnail who lives on a rock by the dock with the other snails in the flock.
In a nutshell
- With TRA's MindSets, we set out to measure the innate characteristics that define people.
- We've run the MindSets across many surveys and always get the same distribution.
- This gives us great confidence in using the MindSets to identify how a brand should speak to their target audience.
This snail has an itchy foot and wants to explore the world. The others in the flock tell her to stay put but she ends up catching a lift on the tail of a great big, grey-blue Humpback whale. Together they explore the world, having a wonderful time and the snail ends up saving the whale.
When they return to the flock on the rock in the dock, the other snails exclaim that hasn’t time flown and hasn’t she grown. I can image the snail with the itchy foot is thinking the opposite, “Yes, I’ve been around the world and seen and experienced all sorts of things, but I’m still the same snail with the sense of adventure that led me to leave in the first place.”
With TRA’s MindSets, we set out to measure those innate characteristics that define someone, their deeply ingrained and stable mental operating model – whether you’re the snail who wants to leave the rock or stay put.
We’ve run the MindSets across countless surveys and always get the same distribution of MindSets. This gave us confidence that we were measuring something innate, but we needed a real pressure to understand if they’re stable or not.
The perfect stress test
Enter Covid-19. This has provided us with the perfect stress test. If we are measuring something innate, then it won’t shift under the stresses of Covid-19. Even though the snail had been around the world and saved the whale, she was still the same snail underneath.
As it is with our MindSets. Turns out they have barely budged since Covid. If you had traditional values before, you still have them, if you wanted to get ahead in life before, you still do and so on.
Why should marketers and brands care?
This gives us great confidence in using the MindSets to identify how a brand should speak to their target audience. If you can talk to them in a way they will relate to, about topics that will resonate, with products and services that reflect their tastes and in a tone that acknowledges that you get them, you will win them over. People warm to brands they identify with and we all identify with people like ourselves.
In the end, once the snail with the itchy foot returns to the rock, the other snails hop on the whale’s tail and they all take off on an adventure. Perhaps the other snails deep down knew they wanted to explore, they just didn’t have the idea of asking a whale for a lift.
