The Reptilian always wins

PT cruiser: Voted 2001 North American car of the year

(click on car for detail of the imprinting sessions)

The team studying the design of the PT Cruiser read through hundreds of similar stories, looking for clues they could translate into action, said Dave Bostwick, DaimlerChrysler director of corporate market research. But rather than relying on focus groups, as they might have in the past, the team used the"Archetype" research developed by Clotaire Rapaille. Dr. Rapaille, has advised the company on brand issues in the past, but it was the first time they had decided to use his unusual system of brand psychoanalysis on a product. Using this methodology, consumers meet for three hours and look at the vehicle, discuss it and then write stories. Indeed, the process began with a series of free-wheeling, 3-hour sessions in the US and Europe. Participants were asked, with lights dimmed and mood music playing, to drift back to their childhoods and jot down the memories invoked by the prototype PT Cruiser parked in the room.The environment is actually more relaxed than a "standard" focus group and the goal is not to get people to recommend changes but to get them to tap into less tangible feelings via their creative writing. "Sometimes people just don't know how to say what they really think about a vehicle". Creative writing often draws it out. After the session, Dr. Rapaille and the team from Chrysler poured over the stories with orange and yellow highlighter pens, sleuthing for the emotion sparked by the vehicle. Dr. Rapaille calls it "the reptilian hot button". "Everyone was skeptical" recalls the principal designer of the vehicle's exterior. The results seemed so vague".Yet the research led to major design changes that made the car look more outlandish and the company more confident it would sell.

The group also used a gadget Chrysler has used in the past but which turned out to be well suited for the PT: a computerized, touch-screen version of the car that allowed consumers to specifically mark sections they really liked, or really hated; thus creating a computerized map of vehicle hot spots that were used to hone the vehicle. "We're looking for a concept of tensions". "It's a fine line you have to tread here. You have to have a certain number of people dislike it intensely." The fenders were hot spots. So were the shapes implying fenders in the doors--details that took a nifty bit of engineering to keep in, including a whole new design for door hinges. The front end was another high point. In fact, initial reactions to the pieces of the car were, overall, highly negative. But from the Rapaille method and the computer hot spots, the group had a clear understanding of how to put the parts together to overcome most of the objections, said Dave Bostwick.