Following a fabulous evening courtesy of Febelmar – beer tasting, chocolate sampling, a wonderful selection of speeches, and ending up with a really “gezellig” dinner – the chairman for the opening session of Day 2 : Alexander Linder of Swarovski (a Swiss) started the session with a tongue-in-cheek admission that while Belgians made great beer, the Swiss made better chocolate!! A lovely humorous start to the morning!
First up, Alexander introduced Corinne Sandler & Lana Novikova, from Fresh Intelligence, Canada. Entitled: “Research 3.0”, their first slide was called “Head or Heart?”, and this was a neat summary of their presentation, echoing the Headroom vs Heartroom theme from Debra & Stephen, yesterday. Using cartoons, video and lots of neuroscience, Corinne & Lana combined humour and science to prove that… “We are not thinking machines that feel, we are feeling machines that think”. Utilising 7 emotional command systems, their model – combining emotional and rational metrics – proves that it is not Head OR Heart…It’s BOTH!
The “scientists” were then followed by the “endocrinologist”, Diana Derval, from DervalResearch. A Frenchwoman, based in the Netherlands, Diana employed the archetypical caricatures of Western European nationalities to present a wonderfully entertaining account of how the right sensory mix (taste, touch, smell and hormones) can be utilized to identify retail opportunities.
Finishing with a lesson in how to determine your hormonal quotient, Diana disappointed us all by telling us that the result would have no impact whatsoever on our sexual prowess! Now THAT ensured that the audience were all wide awake…
A great start to the morning!
