Which one should come first: the claim or the clinical study?

Do you wonder why your fancy 300% improvement claim is not capturing followers, adopters or converting into purchase? The number is sky-high, the study rock-solid, the end-point interesting, the mechanism of action novel. Why is this claim not compelling?

Powerful claims are built upon a scaffold of questions that help define the ‘hook”: 

Strategic questions What do you want the consumer to believe about your product? Who is your target?  Who do you need to persuade? What does the consumer think and feel about what she is currently doing in your category?

Brand questions How will brand equity be integrated into your concept? Does the claim fit in and build your brand equity? What is the core POD? Is the expression as persuasive as possible?

Consumer questions What is the key consumer benefit that underpins your claim? What is the key support and substantiation for your claim? And most importantly, what consumer insight underpins your claim?

Effective claims are insight-based: they express a deep understanding of the target consumer’s feelings and experiences related to a specific area of her life. They connect at an emotional level with the consumer and elicit a clear response. Most of all, they have the power to change consumer behavior. 

This entire claim scaffold implies that insight mining, and therefore claim development, precedes clinical study set up. This configuration allows for the most powerful claims, but it is costly and time-consuming. 

For many brands in the Consumer space, claims language has become the subject of increasing regulatory scrutiny and NPD cycles have dramatically accelerated; the safe and expeditious choice of claim often ends up coming directly from clinical result numbers. In this configuration, claims follow the clinical study, leading to impressive numerical statements but little insight. 

The latter has been historically more characteristic of the Aesthetic space, where the emotion lives with the brand rather than the product. However, the more recent pursuit of medical-grade claims in the Consumer space has blurred this boundary and created a proliferation of numerical post-study claims without insight that often fail to convert consumers.

Whether you plan to launch a product for an indie natural consumer brand or a medical-grade product for a dermatologist-distributed brand, a compelling consumer insight-based claim is a powerful engine that takes benefits to the next level and is capable of driving significant market share gain. So, spend a little time on insight mining before you get going, it is well worth it!