Marketers must leap the action-intention gap

Rachel Macey

Rachel Macey, managing director for TGI & Insight, UK and Ireland, Kantar Media, explains how marketers can overcome contradictions in consumer attitudes and behaviour.

 

To paraphrase the father of modern advertising, David Ogilvy, the trouble with understanding people is that their intentions and actions are often at odds with each other.

This gap certainly feels true when it comes to our health and wellbeing.  We all indulge in treats and struggle to kick habits that we know are bad for us.

At Kantar Media TGI, we like to go beyond anecdotal experience and so we took a deep dive into the health and beauty sector to understand how consumers’ actions stack up against their intentions.

The results are eye-opening. Our insight shows that older people worry about their weight but are reluctant to do anything about it.  Middle aged people think true beauty comes from within but still spend more than average on trying to look fit and young.  And younger adults struggle more with their mental health but are more likely to turn to pampering than effective medical support.

These contradictions present a challenge for marketers in health and beauty: how do you identify, track, and target the right audience with appropriate messaging when their actions are often misaligned with intentions?

For example, how does a health insurance brand target older people – typically more affluent and concerned with their health – when they’re often reluctant to engage with the topic?

The solution is to work with the wide range of data and insight tools available today to develop a more granular understanding of who your business is targeting and what makes them tick.

 

Consumer attitudes on health and beauty

Let’s start with some insights from TGI data about consumer attitudes and behaviour towards health and beauty.

Older adults aged 55+ score highly for personal wellbeing (58% rate their personal sense of wellbeing 7/10 of more).  However, they also struggle with their weight but do not necessarily address it (48% claim they have felt overweight in the past year, but only 36% claim to be trying to lose weight).

Only 15% of women aged 55+ believe skincare products help them look younger, but they are still 22% more likely than the average woman to buy anti-aging products.

Among women aged 35-54, in total 69% believe true beauty comes from within.  However, 41% still think it is important to keep looking young.  In fact, 35-54 year old women are 25% more likely than the average woman to use anti-wrinkle face creams.

Younger adults aged 16-34 are quick fix seekers who claim to be too busy and stressed to address their health needs.  Nearly half (47%) are more likely to agree that mental wellbeing is less important than physical health.  They are less engaged with exercise as a route to health and more than 28% agree that busy lifestyles don’t allow them to look after themselves.

And for young people, self-care often means indulgence rather than directly addressing issues: 50% say that they like being pampered compared to 43% of adults generally.

Surprisingly, private health insurance is more popular with younger adults than any other age group. Younger adults claiming to have private health cover rose from 11% in 2015 to 14% in 2024, while the numbers for adults aged 55+ fell from 14% to 9% in the same time period.

 

Using data to identify, track, and target

Marketers need to be aware of these attitudes and behaviours – including these unpredictable contradictions – when evaluating how best to engage their target market.

There’s no easy solution to pinpoint consumers on these prickly and personal issues, however there is an arsenal of tools available to design campaigns for success. The starting point is to track your audience’s habits, attitudes, and circumstances, using both first- and third-party data sources to develop a detailed understanding of your audience – contradictions and all.

When analysing this data, the key is to identify the most useful nuggets of information which can help your strategy to overcome the inherent bias of assumptions and stereotypes.

The next step is to develop the best way to present new products or services to pinpoint the best messaging, format, channels and creative ideas that will resonate most effectively.

This information can also inform the design and development of a product or service – businesses can ‘work backwards’ to create a more customer-centric offering.

In a crowded marketplace, with fierce competition for eyeballs on content, the depth of insight available on your target audience will be the difference between success and failure.  Get that right and your marketing stands a stronger chance of cutting through the noise.

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