[MUSIC] Lesson four, Where It All Begins. Five things that we'll talk about in this lesson, that you'll leave this lesson learning. One is that the consumer's digital life is a very complicated series of events. A meaningful story, any kind of story that you're going to be able to tell based on that consumer digital life requires a framework. A framework to make sense of it and to make it easier to understand. We'll see how McKinsey's consumer decision journey, CDJ, is one such framework that does work very well. We'll see how each step of that journey triggers new questions that brands can ask, and can find the answer to using data. Data can provide answers to those questions. That's another thing that we'll see in this lesson. The zero moment of truth, that time between when a consumer has some stimulus recognition of need for a product, that trigger, through to the first time that they stand at a shelf and have to choose a product. In that zero moment of truth, there is a great deal of information going on and that is a very rich and robust time for data collection. Very important to analyst's, but it's messy. There's a lot of things going around at that point. The consumer is being bombarded by all sorts of information from all sorts of sources. That consumer is creating their own information, and throwing it out there, stuff that brands would love to learn more about. And as you can see from that visual and that graphic there's a lot going on. To make sense of that time, to be able to turn the data that's flying around in that moment into a useful set of information for analysis, you need a framework. The McKenzie consumer decision journey is a great framework that I've found in my experience to work very well. Let me walk through this quickly for you. So the consumer decision journey basically has a number of different times that consumers are, points that consumers are walking along as they make a decision a product. And then they experience that they have afterwards. It begins right here with a trigger, that trigger is some kind of recognition of need. It's saying, I need a new car, or I've just seen an ad that makes me realize that I want to go out and buy that pizza. That trigger is then followed immediately by what is called the initial consideration set. These are the number of brands that immediately pop into a consumer's head. After the realize they want some product, they immediately will think, well who could provide that for me. That list is a very important place to be for a brand for sure. And that list is what we call the initial consideration set. Follow then with a period of time called active evaluation. This is really for all intents and purposes, ZMOT. This is the time that a consumer now has experienced that stimulus, that trigger, and is now doing the evaluation on what product to buy, what brand to invest in and purchase. There's a lot of information, as we've seen, going on and flowing to a consumer and out from a consumer in that point. It's a very important part of the decision journey, certainly a very important battle ground, if you will, for brands. Next comes the moment approaches. This is the time that a consumer will actually make the decision. This is effectively what PNG has called the first moment of truth, and it is that period of time again. Between the trigger and then ZMOT, to the point that a consumer must make a decision. After they make that decision comes what's called the post purchase experience. Where consumers will take that product home, the second moment of truth, and begin to experience it and see if it lives up to expectations. And then, where every brand wants to be is something called the loyalty loop. And it's basically when a consumer experiences a trigger, rather than going through an initial consideration set. And through the whole process of active evaluation, they simply go from the trigger, through the loyalty loop, to then moment of purchase for a single brand. So think about the brand affinity that a company like Apple has created. Next time my Mac laptop burns out, I will most likely enter this loyalty loop, go and buy a Mac right away. I don't have to think more about it, I don't have to consider other brands, I don't have to go through any kind of evaluation process. Because that brand has become very trusted by me and a very important part of me, in my life as a consumer.
