Hair Style - New way to Influence

The word 'Influence' is becoming relevant and apt for every action in our life be it personal or professional. How can we influence somebody to achieve our goals or how can I persuade somebody for mutual benefit seems to be the perennial thought.

Dr.Robert Cialdini is a seminal expert in the rapidly expanding field of influence and persuasion.In his book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (Collins Business Essentials), he refers to 6 distinct ways through which one can influence to acheive his goals. One of the ways is "Liking".Without getting into details on this technique, just wanted to highlight one key consumer insight - " Although it is generally acknowledged that good looking people have an advantage in social interaction, recent findings indicate that we have sorely underestimated this advantage. A halo effect occurs when one characteristic of the person dominates as a result of which we would automatically assign favorable traits such as talent, Kindness, intelligence, street smart to the good looking person".Looks like "looking good" will be  a useful influence/persuasion technique.

Scene change. Traffic is one of the biggest problems we face in our daily life.Traffic on the road is a bane due bad infrastructure and indisciple of motorists. Thats not what I was referring to.. Driving relevant traffic to the physical store or to the online store is one of the biggest challenges business face..Some of the metrics that businesses track includes footfalls, store productivity, week day traffic, week-end traffic,ticket size per customer, repeat visits,store utilization to name a few..

Will try and use this insight " looking good to Influence" and address a business problem-TRAFFIC for one of the business which is going through a huge transformation, atleast in India..

Hair Salon Business

From a mere neighborhood shop with no branding, they have moved to become hair stylist to beauty salons to beauty salon chains focusing on hair care,skin care and have become lifestyle brand.A lifestyle brand is a  brand that attempts to embody the values and aspirations of a group or culture for purposes of marketing.

 Why are salons going through this transformation? It's mostly market driven.

 According to the Census of India, 2001, we have almost 20% of our population in the age group of 15 to 24 — that’s what actually ought to be considered the core youth target group — and around 27% in the age group of 15 to 29. 

Opportunity:

• The group with the good propensity to spend..  
• The group which is always on look out for every opportunity to look good or  to differentiate themselves in the crowd to gain acceptance or influence. Some examples
• Street smart salesman trying to influence his prospect
• Job seeker trying to impress the potential employer
• Guy try to impress a girl or the other way around
• Looking good to gain acceptance in a peer group

Challenges:

I had a chance to speak to few people in the salon industry and some of the stated problems:

• Weekend is always full house but week days have minimal footfalls.How to get visits during off peak hours?
• With many stores coming in each neighborhood, what does the salon need to do retain its customers?
• With significant investment on branding and new stores, how to get their return on investment?
• How to generate new traffic to the store?

Insight:  " looking good to Influence"

Trigger feature:How many times have you walked out of the salon with a wonderful hairstyle after the hair cut but not able  reproduce the same style the next day 

Solution: Salon should use this insight  & trigger feature and create a new promo.Instead of just focusing on haircuts and related service to generate business, how about "Hair Style for the day".. 

• The program will be run from Mon -Friday between 9am - 5pm ( only during off peak hours)
• To any customer, walk into the store and get a new hair style done in just 15 mins for just Rs.50... just before your interview or before your date or before your crucial meeting and look good
• The salon can run daily/weekly theme promos like SPIKES for men, Curls for woman
• Flavor of the month:Popular  Hair styles of hero and heroine from latest movies
• Benefit for the customer/visitor - an opportunity to look good which will inturn help to influence or atleast feel good.
• Benefit to the business: additional traffic during off peak, new customers, start new relationships by starting small
• Extension could be mobile hair style salon in the popular hangouts like mall,multiplex, office complex etc.

This will generate significant buzz for the salon especially with  the right Target Audience. If this promo is a success , then all the above business challenges will potentially have answers

Remember, everybody is looking for an opportunity to impress or influence.Do it in Style!!!!