The Funny Thing with Adcepts says Paul Tidmarsh…

“The funny thing with Adcepts” says B7 founder Paul Tidmarsh, “is that they work in a counter-intuitive way – to get to the detail on brand positioning and communication, you first have to expand your focus to cover any possible angle or way in.”

B7 is the world leader in using Adcepts for brand positioning and communication, with over a decade’s experience working on brands such as Dove, Philips, Flora and Tesco. Paul Tidmarsh and his team developed B7’s Adcept methodology out of frustration with the traditional concept statement/mood board approach to brand development and qualitative research. “With concept statements”, says Tidmarsh, “ you get about six opportunities to strike a chord with consumers in focus groups. So unless you’re truly inspired or a bit lucky, you may not uncover any useful insights at all. Also, if an idea area is interesting to the group, it’s hard to pick-out what is most interesting about that area, and what particular expressions of it are most motivating.”

B7’s approach is different and can seem counter-intuitive. “We spread the net as wide as possible” says Paul Tidmarsh. “We explore every possible idea area and within each area we produce Adcepts with a slightly different angle or tone of voice. Because we show consumers up to 80 different Adcepts, no stone is left unturned. Then when consumers pick out the most motivating areas, we are able to see them from multiple angles, so that the information mined is so much more specific and helpful.”

New clients are sometimes surprised by the volume of Adcepts used in research but quickly come to see the effectiveness and efficiency of the approach. “One client described our approach as having the range of a blunderbuss with the precision of a sniper’s rifle – and that’s what makes our Adcept methodology so unique and powerful” says Paul Tidmarsh.

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