Gordon Hooper — Fears and Fantasies of South Africans: a Research Paper by Bateleur Brand Planning

what's your dream what's your goal what's your motivation what's important to you what's your passion what can you do to change the world this is what's involved conversations with thought leaders and change makers from around the world hear stories of hope and inspiration to help motivate people like you to live your life find your passion passion and live your dream together we could all bring positive change to our world now here's your host David Watts once again it is what's involved and man we get this year I'm telling you this year I got some of the best guests lined up for you why well just because we can and because I love introducing you to new people and new stories and ideas and things like that so today we are chatting to Gordon Hooper and Gordon is from a company called Batterlea brand planning now before we get into all of that welcome Gordon great to have you along with us thank you David good to be with you and your listeners now now let's get into the the important part and the nuts and bolts of this whole thing tell me a little bit about Gordon because I think once we know a bit about you then we'll see how we can transition into how you now around Batterlea brand planning so give us a bit of background certainly David well first of all I'm quite old I'm in my mid 60s I originate from Durban and I'm a family man married I have four children and my original vacation was in engineering but I left that in the 80s I am an amateur musician and I'm an absolutely passionate South African Pro-South Africa deluxe you see now immediately that's where you and I have something to in common I was always saying to a gentleman that I interviewed the other day I'm a I'm a rabid South African I love South Africa I love our country I love our people I don't love what's happening in it but you know I'm the eternal optimist and I believe by sharing good news and then positive stories and uplifting stories we can we can have some small impact on the on the narrative but how do you go from engineering into brand planning because this this sounds incredibly technical and it sounds like it's marketing based so so where did Batterlea brand planning come along certainly it's a good question it's one I get asked often and only people who as old as me can remember the mid 80s in South Africa when we had some very very miserable politics and that caused civil engineering to be put on the back burner for the government and I took the decision along with many of my colleagues to study business as an alternative to the profession I had chosen and three years later I was working for an advertising agency and of course advertising agencies deal with brands and plan how brands should be operating strategically in the marketplace and after a short career in advertising I decided to start my own research company called battler that was 1988 and David what most don't know is that the mathematics involved in making buildings stand up is almost identical in fact it is identical to the mathematics we use in measuring people's perceptions or what we as human beings think about matters okay and and I'm glad that you didn't bow to peer pressure and and change the name Batterlea because I'm assuming it was named after the Batterlea Eagle which subsequently had to get renamed because somebody decided that the Batterlea wasn't a good name for it but if I still remember any of my natural history the reason for the Batterlea Eagle is the name sort of it's reminiscent of somebody standing on a tightrope and balancing is does that have any connotation for you it does in a way that the name battler comes from the French which means a tightrope walker or a juggler and the battler has a short tail and it flies with a swaying motion which is where it got its name from David but for we like the idea of an eagle and the battler eagle is one of the most beautiful because of the strategic analogy eagles fly with a very very big strategic view of a wide landscape using incredibly highly attuned eyesight so our business is like that high degrees of detail required in bits of data to get a large strategic viewpoint of the marketing terrain or the business terrain that we are consulting in now go and give me an idea of the kind of people who would who would need to make use of a company such as yours brand planning it sounds sounds fairly broad so so what is involved and why would one need you okay thank you it's an interesting question too so brands are thought of in particular ways by consumers and a brand could also be the company you work for so they could be thought of in a particular ways by employees so it's all about perceptions what do I think about a brand like Volkswagen or Toyota or BMW what do I think about a brand like Flora or Rama Marjorie what are your thoughts about that and my kids said to me one day dad what do you do for a living we don't understand and I said you know what we do at battlers we find out what people think and that's it in a nutshell finding out what people think so if I if you if we can help you know what your customers think of your product or your brand then you can use that information to help improve your products improve your services improve your advertising the way in which you deliver your product and exactly the same internally if if we can help you understand how your staff members are thinking about your company then that knowledge will help you improve the way in which they think about you and generally speaking create a good link between what the marketplace wants what the company wants and how we are perceived to deliver it finding out what people think David brilliant okay I like that I like that because sometimes you know if you ask people they don't really know what they think so if you're drilling down into that that's fantastic but now who do you appeal to so so you know like a small mom-and-pop business may not be able to come to you or may not be able to afford you do you talk to larger corporates the answer is largely it's bigger corporates but we have done work for all kinds of companies and we also do work for you know academic people people are doing master's degrees and PhD degrees which we usually do on a pro bono for free basis but typically David our clients are large companies private and listed companies many of them are global brand names such as for example some of the automotive brands that I mentioned to you but yes it is typically organizations with big marketing spins that spend money on the kind of research and brand planning that ourselves and our colleagues in the marketplace provide okay now this leads me to the next question of what what was the catalyst for you going and saying okay let's do a whole white paper and dive into South African fears fantasies and how it correlates to whether we are happy or unhappy what made you decide on that okay so once again I'm going to take us back to the 1980s when I was much much younger and my first job for an advertising agency was a multinational advertising agency a well-known one and then New York office issued a piece of research that they conducted globally called fears and fantasies of consumers and I found it fascinating at the time and in particular what I found fascinating was that in a list of 52 fears experienced by American citizens compared to South African systems assistant citizens excuse me the fear for one's personal safety was at the bottom of the list for Americans but at the top of the list for South Africans 52 items on the list and of course you know the world has evolved since then and I'm sure that many Americans fear a lot of things these days and I'm sure we still have the similar fears although perhaps off a different platform than we had back then so I've always had the idea of fears and fantasies in my mind and given that we've come through covered and given we've got so many issues to deal with globally and in our lovely country my co-directors and I decided late last year it would be a good time to assess how South Africans are feeling about things just general things in life out there and somebody told me once and I'm not sure if it's true but they told me David that there are some 3,000 words in the Oxford dictionary to do with how us human beings feel and 3,000 feeling words that's a lot and then this author went on to say that all those words cascade or boil down into one of two feelings only that is joy or pain and that's yin or yam or fears and fantasies and I've always found it fascinating that we've become so good at being refined and how we talk about our fears our fantasies our joys our pains in such nuances but actually it boils down to there are two human motivations avoiding fear avoiding pain and trying to achieve some form of Nirvana or pleasure that's fascinated me and I thought let's double click on that and see how South Africans are feeling right now as we speak I think it's fantastic because one of the things and as part of my little portfolio that I've created for myself is we do a lot of facilitate a lot of sales training and in my training I am very much involved with neuro linguistic programming or neuro linguistic psychology as it's called these days and one of the tenants there is that we do things for two reasons we're moving you know away from pain or towards pleasure and it fits into exactly to to what you were saying so now the 20 million dollar question I'm gonna save until when we come back and then I want us to dive in to how do we feel this is what's involved my special guest is Gordon Hooper from Batterley a brand planning they've just recently released a research-based white paper talking about South Africans fears and fantasies and if and how this correlates to our happiness or unhappiness back in a bit hey like what you're hearing share the podcast with your family and friends and spread the word this is what's involved and we're back my special guest is Gordon Hooper of Batterley a brand planning and we're talking about their research paper that they recently released and we're finding about our fears our fantasies and does this relate to happiness or unhappiness so Gordon let's kick off right at the very beginning you know when you do research like this you can't sort of you know go and hand out a paper to your neighbors or the people on your block because I'm assuming you need a larger sample size so how do you go about finding a sample size that that's going to be an effective representation of our country yes thank you very much for the question obviously to go and interview people on a random basis using paper and pen as we used to is extremely expensive and time consuming and it is still done but it was not how the survey was done this survey was done using online methods so it is absolutely true that some people in South Africa do not have access to the internet and therefore were not able to participate regret regretably however you know the way the cell phone has evolved today it's amazing how many South Africans of all classes and types have got access to the internet so using our databases of South African consumers and using social media we campaigned and advertised participation in the survey and acquired a very nice sample of almost 1,600 South Africans across all different types across the entire country that have completed our survey which gives us a result that we can we believe is a good reliable picture of how South Africans are feeling in respect of fears and fantasies those South Africans who can answer a survey online okay so let's dive in because it's always in the forefront of our minds these days because I don't think people can can have a paragraph of a discussion without talking about the government or ASCOM all this all that or you know in my days young man we did we had electricity and you know in 1967 Victoria Central had a power failure for 15 minutes and it nearly caused riots those kind of things so what are our biggest fears and I'm assuming the biggest fear is corruption government or am I wrong actually it would seem that way at first glance but because that's the type of conversations we hear around the bry and the dinner table and in the queues but in fact it goes beyond that it's not the government it's not about corruption it's so easy to bash the government and a quick anecdote you know I was told on a recent trip to kzden fly rather than drive because the roads are so bad and the tolls are so unfriendly and I deliberately drove David and it was exactly the opposite the roads were beautiful the toll operators were friendly the the trucks were not badly behaved and they were full of new cars being sold the economy was vibrant it's so easy to bash the government but really what the fear is is not the government the fear is poor quality of life now unfortunately the government does come into play there because we vote for a government to bring us a better life to bring this quality of life so the biggest fear that us South Africans have is generally speaking not achieving a quality of life that is acceptable to us and I can double-click on that one the first the biggest component David is money matters inflation a full 62% of the sample said I'm worried that I can't make ends meet at the end of the month now of course this is a global thing inflation it's not our government it's the whole world is talking about inflation and money matters and the cost of living and I think we can all feel it then the next one has got to do with safety now you could argue that this is government related but certainly 44% of our sample are expressing fears about their personal safety which naturally is crime related and of course load shedding is causing us to eat cold meals not being able to study properly at night not being able to run our businesses and so on and so forth with a massive 55% of us complaining about load shedding and you could argue that that is also a component of government but ultimately it's quality of life unemployment at 45% and is an important fear people all can see it with your own eyes you can drive around the country and see so much poverty and so much suffering as a consequence and yes ultimately maybe government is involved in that in or in the solution but it's the quality of those people's lives and how it impacts on every others other people's lives that counts financial stability which really means David a long-term outlook will I have enough to look after myself and my family when I'm old so once again we talking financial and linked into that my ability to save so I'm going to answer your question or your hypothesis on the government is to blame with actually it's a bigger picture the fear is about overall inadequate quality of life involving the factors I've just mentioned okay yeah no I'm with you there corruption obviously falls into into that mix in terms of our fears doesn't it it does the corruption is on the list it's medium-weight in the list I think to be honest that we have had such a gutful of it for so long but perhaps it's it's receding into the background it comes back with great vengeance every now and again as it did recently late last year but once again ultimately the fear extends to fears about quality of life and corruption is one of the ingredients now we're talking fears now so Gordon do do these fears that we as a society exhibit do they then translate into unhappiness yes they do I think I should quickly button down for us David some measurements of unhappiness amongst our sample only 15 percent declare themselves to be unhappy people you could argue that's a lot you know 15 percent is a reasonable amount of people who are saying putting their hands up and saying I'm unhappy and we know that they are big issues with mental health and lots of difficulty out there in society but it's only 15 percent when you compare that to 54 percent of putting their hands up into carrying themselves as being happy that's more than half or saying they're happy so what about the 31 percent I haven't mentioned well these are people who's claimed to be neither happy nor unhappy they're neutral and I don't know what's the worst place to be in I think that possibly it's worse to be one of those 31 percent David who are feeling this they don't know whether they are waking up happy or unhappy or maybe one day it's happy in the next day it's unhappy at least if you wake up like the 15 percent miserable every day you know what you're dealing with or like the 54 percent who wake up feeling yes I'm positive but yes we are not as unhappy as I expected with most people declaring themselves to be happy but we did do some very interesting analysis on fears to answer your question David on what are the fears of the happy versus the fears of the unhappy and the fears of the unhappy are lack of purpose the unhappy or the people who say you know what I can't see a future I don't have any purpose for my life I don't have any plan for the future David I'm worrying about money matters I have failed relationships I'm lonely and I don't like my body and I don't like my hairstyle and I don't like me so this is so interesting that there's a strong relationship between being unhappy and lacking a vision of the future and lacking self-confidence and lack and fearing worrying about things that have to do with me my body my money my relationships understandably so conversely David when we look at the happy people this is so interesting what drives their happiness is the overall sorry the fears that they harbor I've already talked about this overall quality of life and yes the government's inability to perhaps participate in helping us live a good life people who are happy tend to worry about education matters this is an interesting one overall education didn't come through as being a big fear yet it should be because think about it good education creates a plan for your future it creates ability to solve your money problems but yes those people are happy tend to be people who are more concerned about matters like education and here's the interesting one the the happy people tend not to be griping about social media and technology and fake news they live with it as part of life it's part of the modern way of life so quite interesting we did do a whole double-click on the role of social media in happiness versus unhappiness but we won't go into that in detail today because it's not about fears and fantasies but just to say yeah carry on no I'm just as I'm sitting here I'm thinking back I was involved with a company many many years ago and they were tasked by one of the big insurance companies to go out and do AIDS awareness AIDS education and to present all of this at schools and when we did you know we thought okay this there's enough now of the bad news of this shock and horror and and having a look at real life situations of people living with HIV and AIDS what can happen to them and we thought right this is this is gonna have an impact and then when we went back and asked some further questions the kids were laughing at us the kids are going you are telling me that I must worry about a disease that might kill me in 15 or 20 years when I could get knifed going home today and a lot of them had this this we we termed it in those days is this given up complex where they were like we just don't care we don't have and it boiled down to they didn't have a compelling vision for their future so if there was no vision for the future why why worry about any of this other stuff and I find that fascinating that that's still largely at the core of people feeling unhappy and not belonging etc etc is this lack of purpose and lack of vision it is amazing and and it's something that hopefully people that get hold of your research paper will actually take cognizance of and go okay well this is something we need to we need to look at I want to move on though to fantasies because just reading the headline got me all excited so we're gonna move on to that when we come back this is what's involved my special guest is Gordon Hooper of battle ear brand planning we talking about their research paper all about happiness and unhappiness and their fears and fantasies getting onto fantasies as I said when we come back we'll be right back with more what's involved David would love to hear from you to leave a voice message visit what's involved calm and click drop me a voice note and we're back with Gordon Hooper my special guest he's from battle ear brand planning talking about the recently released white paper we discussed fears now what I think should be the fun parts what are the fantasies what are some of the biggest fantasies that we as South Africans have okay so thank you David we were onto the the the what I think is the important message here because it doesn't help to dwell on the negative drilling on the positive this research has shown is what is going to bring happiness anyway and that purpose that you're talking about so when I was very young as a boy we used to have a card game called happy families is a very trite and silly card game that we played as a family and funny enough the the biggest driver of biggest fantasy I should say David is to have a happy family a happy family and that makes so much sense and it's so simple there's nothing worse than having problems in a family and the reason why we create families in the first place is to create purpose in life for our families to continue for humankind to continue so it makes sense to me that this is at the core of human beings fantasies now I do want to say that let me never say that money doesn't buy happiness although we can show that that's largely true when you have so little money that you are suffering from hunger and suffering from discomfort and cold it's an unhappy state of affairs one does need money to alleviate the basic problems of food clothing shelter things that really do make us miserable and unhappy so providing we've got enough money to be physically looked after from there onwards David the research shows that money brings financial security to a family and therefore happy families being able to support one's family financially is a large fantasy to spend more time with loved ones which is becoming so much more difficult these days as so many people have to work to put butter on the table so and being a good parent these are the core fantasies that top the list from our research David Wow okay all right I was I was thinking top of the list would be people going I fantasize about getting the hell out of this country because that's what we hear a lot I'm definitely not of that mindset I believe that you know it's those of us who choose to stay and believe in the brighter tomorrow we are the ones that are going to make the change so I'm surprised that that's not at the top of the list does it does it feature though it does feature I can give you the stats on it and thank you for asking the question the escapism is what I call it it's the second biggest fantasy after happy families so you're almost on the money there David escapism but escapism to while immigrating it is actually quite low on the list let me unpack this for you quickly the single biggest form of escapism at 46% is to travel the world and it's not only the young folk who are keen to go out there and experience other countries and how other people live and other cultures it's also older folk who are looking you know in their latter years to go and have a bit of fun and excitement over there so 46% are fantasizing about traveling the world then there's an interesting form of escapism David it is called winning the lottery at 41% so many people are still fantasizing about getting a large check and then of course who knows what we do with the money but that's the second biggest escapism related fantasy and then 36% are saying I'd like to live my life with no regrets in other words you know not hold back on fun things that means fun essentially and then the last on my list of escapism fantasies David is to live in another country at 21% so yes one in five of our sample are saying that they are open to immigrating or at least living in another country for a while but it's not the most prevalent fantasy by any manner of mean well that is that is very encouraging I'm so happy to hear that because yeah I mean there's nothing wrong with wanting to go and visit different countries and and explore and learn about our other people live I think that's that's part of our makeup as human beings we want to do that in terms of winning the lottery though I think somebody's marketing paid off way more than it should have because you know when we think about what the chances are they statistically not gonna happen for a lot of us but where do the people and I know I often spout this out and I'm trying to get to a place like this I'm not there yet but we you know we can live a simpler less complicated life for more I don't know in the old days they would have called those hippies but you know at least complicated more kind of eco-friendly sort of life spend time with the family work life balance that's one of the interesting ones I've heard how are we looking there okay so that's a fascinating question and why it's so fascinating is that not only because it's the third most important category of fantasy it's also the one category of fantasy David that directly correlates with happiness directly correlates with happiness so and I've called it the the compassion and empathy set of fantasies I'll quickly run you through them the biggest fantasy within the set of compassion and empathy fantasies is to for a world where people are kinder to each other at 39 percent let's call it 40 percent of our sample are saying I fantasize and wish that people were nicer to each other and I have looked at this hard and repeating on my little trip to KZN I made a point of talking personally just one comment to every single person I met at a toll gate they all looked me in the eye and smiled and made a lovely comment kind comment back again I think that kindness begets kindness and maybe I'm being a little bit optimistic but certainly my personal experience shows that to be true so world where people are kinder to each other at 39 percent the next biggest fantasy within the compassion and empathy bucket David and here it is for you to live a simpler and humble life to live a simpler and more humble life and remember what I said earlier money does alleviate the pain of poverty and that's serious pain but much you've got enough that you're not uncomfortable in terms of food clothing and shelter money doesn't buy you happiness in fact if anything it buys stress so the how do you achieve that happiness if it's not through money well it's through the next fantasy on the list David which is supporting others there's a direct and the strongest correlation in our entire survey is the happiest people are the people that spend their time thinking about how to help other people how to grow other people how to support and nurture other people I think there's a word it's a big word for me called selfless it's the opposite of selfish and the one conclusion we've come to is that the more you try to acquire assets and look after yourself the less likely you are to be happy and conversely the more you try to make other people strong the more likely you are to be happy and then I will go let me just jump in because I would agree with it I read this many many many years ago and I think it was Zig Ziglar who said you can have anything you want in this world if you just help enough other people get what they want and and and this that's always wrong true for me it's it's about being of service it's about showing empathy and compassion and I often talk about this and a friend of mine owns a company called the sales Institute and we actually were having a discussion about this the other day like in just in the field of sales there's no heart anymore there's there's no compassion there's no sort of people actually caring what they do and actually caring about you as an individual all it is it's about the sale close the deal get out of there make the money and to me I'm glad that you brought this up and I hope a lot of people are gonna have a look at this this kind of research anyway I digress let's get back to what what you were saying in terms of the fantasies well I do want to double click on what you said or time of what you said on sales you know Tom Hopkins who's an author of the I think 70s on sales champion salesmanship he puts it down to a salesperson's job is to solve customers problems ie to remove their fears and satisfy their fantasies it's not to sell a product the sale of the product comes because of the efforts of solving the customers problems one of the escapism fantasies that I wanted to share with you that I omitted is creativity it is a form of escapism it's an important one and not enough people in our survey it appears are pursuing creative activities playing a musical instrument cooking gardening doing stuff that takes their mind off the the matters of life but certainly creativity couples David with compassion and empathy as being helping people create that sense of purpose in life which thereby creates ultimately that happiness that our research is showing us to be linked yeah wonderful stuff I mean it's so nice that you've got this all out Gordon when we come back we're gonna wrap up and because I'm sure by now people are going okay David Gordon thank you very much that's great information lovely statistics how do we get our hot little hands on it so when we come back we'll chat a little bit about that this is what's involved my special guest Gordon Hooper of Batterley brand cleaning back in a bit this is what's involved don't forget to subscribe and leave a review more next and we're back wrapping it up with my guest Gordon Hooper of Batterley a brand planning so Gordon you've done all the research you've you've collated all the daughter and you've got this white paper on whether people are happy not happy what drives them etc etc where with how would people go about getting their hands on this research and why should they get their hands on it well let's deal with the last question first why should they because hopefully you will find it an interesting read that gives you a lot more detail than what we've done today David but it will help you in your business and in your family life because hopefully my mission is to help people understand that accentuating the positive having purpose creating energy that has is a positive vibe is going to create happier families happier businesses and happier marketplaces leadership is all about inspiration not instruction I heard that from a wonderful leader called Brent victorious only last week and I'm quoting him on it now when you are making messages for a radio station or a television station for your brand put positive messages out there positive feelings don't rule by fear when you are sitting at your dining table and talking to your family bring out the positive conversations don't admonish because it's not going to help it just makes people feel bad and we need a planet where there is better communication and we know that people only communicate off a positive platform not through a basis of fear they latch on to fantasies and they react badly to fears on how to get the paper well first of all the paper is free it's there's no charge and all you have to do is go to battler brand planning's website or our Facebook page or a LinkedIn page and you'll find it downloadable at no cost you've said it twice so let me just reiterate and make sure I understand you've gone through all of this expense all of this time you've done it you've collated it you've put it together and you are making it available for free so this is not something that just the big corporates can get their hands on a mom-and-pop organization that wants to find out a little bit more about how to fine-tune their message people that are in the media wanting to find out listen how do we better relate to our audiences this anybody can get it anybody can get it David and anybody who gets it is welcome to share it with anybody they like we hope that this positive message helps our culture and our society you see this is this is fantastic news and this is why I like talking to people who are doing great things in our country you know who doing positive things in our country and this is is a prime example Gordon to you is the MD of battle a brand planning and to your team attack my hat off well done to you guys I've have some small idea of how much work actually goes into research like this and putting it all together and the fact that you have decided to make it available thank you from all of us who are listening thank you before I let you go though because now you've you've now finished this particular research paper what's next for Gordon and for Bataleo brand planning gosh no you're putting me on the spot David we do fairly regular white papers possibly two to three a year we do invest a portion of our income in researching a wide topic of matters we have got quite a large survey that's just being published now on load shedding and what people are doing to overcome load shedding the alternative energy side which again is a positive outcome we've got a very interesting survey that I'm busy writing up at the moment on the differences between the the centennial's the millennials the gen X's the baby boomers and how we all relate to each other and how we perceive each other and hopefully that'll help the dinner table conversations for many family I need that one because I promise we are battle to keep it all separate in my mind yet my best guess being born in the late 60s I'm a baby boomer and then from there on in it gets very murky for me so definitely something yeah well with finding out about if somebody's listening and and we do have quite a large listenership that are that are sort of involved in various large corporates and they go hang on a second this could help the marketing department but we also need to speak to these guys and maybe get them involved in in us fine-tuning some of our processes are they able to do that absolutely my my personal details are available online again via LinkedIn Facebook and I'm very very happy to take emails personal telephone calls we're not shy at all to converse with anybody who wants to talk to us okay and then the single best point of contact I'm assuming would be the website is it just bataliabrandplanning.co.za that's correct and battle is B-A-T-E-L-E-U-R bataliab-A-T-E-L-E-U-R brandplanning.co.za that is the place that you can go you can get the paper that we've just spoken about and also contact details they wouldn't thank you once again for doing what you've done and for taking the time out to have a chat to us I really do appreciate it my pleasure David and thank you to you and your listeners there we go wraps it up for this edition of what's involved my special guest there Gordon Hooper MD of Bataliabrandplanning once again that website address bataliabrandplanning.co.za go there check it out get that white paper and wrapping it up as I said to each and every one of you look after yourselves take care and thank you for listening thanks for listening to what's involved we hope this episode inspires you to find your passion and live your dream don't forget to rate review and share the podcast and to see what's happening what's going on and what's coming follow what's involved on Facebook and Twitter at what's involved thanks again for listening