Advertising and Awareness

There is this story Gordon Livingstone tells in his book about Vietnam. As a young luitanant in the 82d Airborne he tried to determine the position of his platoon. His platoon sargeant walked up and asked if he knew where they were.

Livingstone answered: "according to this map, there should be a hill around here. Yet I don't see it." To which the sargeant said: "If the map doesn't agree with the the ground, the map doesn't work".

Our minds work quite the same way. They do not make sense of reality. 

They create reality. They create patterns out of incidents and give weight to events that just "are".

Because humans are irrational. We know this. And as marketers we try to exploit this. Only in order for that to work, we have to be able to step back and as Chuck D said: "Dont believe the hype".

Bob Hoffman once pointed out something about car commercials. We know that the buyers of cars are older. Yet the ads are created for an different audience. Because the map we (as irrational humans) have hinders us from agreeing with the ground.

Now having a wrong map is not always the problem. Daniel Kanheman tells the story of people who were lost in the Alps.

There is a group of Swiss soldiers who set out on a long navigation exercise in the Alps. The weather was severe and they got lost. After several days, with their desperation mounting, one of the men suddenly realized he had a map of the region. They followed the map and managed to reach a town.

When they returned to base and their commanding officer asked how they had made their way back. They replied, "We suddenly found a map." The officer looked at the map and said, "You found a map all right, but it's not of the Alps, it's of the Pyrenees."

The map, however wrong, gave them confidence to seek out a path down the mountains. In many ways this is what entrepreneurs and marketerts do. 

They seek out new ways of doing stuff. But much like the soldiers coming down the Alps (and mind you, these are people trained to make good decisions under pressure) if we look at how many campaings and products fail, it seems the time it does work has more to do with luck then skill.

The singles most important, and I would argue most difficult, skill is being able to see what is there. To just observe and notice, without starting to make assumptions. Without connecting or to letting your mind create reality.

It is something Zen Buddishm calles shoshin, beginners mind. But it would be more than just having no preconceptions or judgments. Being able to see what is there requires you to be able to focus and to be aware.

Whether it is the Account Manager talking to the client, without his mind wondering. Planners and Creatives needing to be able to look at what is actually being done and lived by consumers and not only to follow the brief or rely on research.

Focus, awareness and absense of judgement are the starting points to doing work that is, unexpected, capturing and effective.

Rob talked about investing in stressmamangement to help employees become better at their work. 

What I would suggest as a supplement is that, especially adland, industries that need imagination to thrive; we also invest in training our people to see past the personal frames, blockades and point of views. Having a resident psychologist to train with staff should be standard practice for an industry that uses them and other social scientists to see what other people are doing.

To actively start training the mind, not to learn, but to be able to shut down the constant stream of thought it generates. 

To become aware of wondering thoughts, lazy thinking and the kicking in of heuristics and mental models.

In order to capture the imagination of others we have to become masters of reality again, not of rationale.

how human nature can change consumption habits

The above commercial shows us a bias that can help producers and consumers change their habits to more eco friendly ways without less consumption.

It is called the Diderot effect

If you buy a bigger washingmachine, you of course need a better detergent to help with the bigger loads.

So if we want to change habits on a macro scale , look outside the category and see what social and cultural cohesion the item provides. Link to it and get the consumer to be consious of the link.

Want to sell more items as a retailer, well if you sell clothes, get your local hairsalon and shoeshop to have a sale to. New haircut leads to new manicure and pedicure leads to new shoes, new bag, new clothes, new person (well untill next season that is).

At the beginning I stated that it can be used to change habits to more eco friendly ways, but it can be, and has been, used for any number of goals. That depends on the intentions you have.

Show, don't tell

Above three pictures taken in the Rotterdam subway this morning.

1) Advertising space in the wagon I was sitting in.

2) An ad announcing the sale of seasontickets for local Premiership Football club Sparta. 

For the season 2008-2009

3) The media company that sells the space, trying to convince potential advertisers for this medium.

If you are going to tell somebody, that doing business with you is a good idea, it might help to show it with more than words alone.

social norms, people and marketers

A couple of things caught my attention last week. And both got me thinking about social norms and biases.

First of, several people around caught a light bout of flu. Nothing serious or Mexican, just a bit of a temperture and some chills and coughing. However after asking them how seriously they were treating this (given the context), I was surprised to find out that they in fact did not see it as something serious. 

Reason being, they said that they most likely got it from a colleague or family member and that "it was doing the rounds". So they were not worried about it. It would pass.

The second thing is the ad you see at the top there. It is an ad for a Dutch electricity company. On it you see Maurice de Hond, a well known opinion poller in Holland. 

The tag line reads:"94% of Dutch Households pay to much". Which struck me as something odd to communicate. 

From research conducted by dr Robert Cialdini and by the work of Mark Earls we know that people copy behaviour of other people and that when told of a social norm, people tend to adher to it.

So saying that 94% pays to much, seems to me to generate the same effect as those I asked about their flu: "everybody is doing/having it, so I am not really worried or going to change my behaviour".

Now of course making people aware of the dangers of having a serious, and hugely viral strain of flu is important, as is letting people know that they are paying to much for utilities. 

I have no data to doubt the success of the ad campaign, but I am left wondering if, pointing out the possible fact that your neighbour is most likely the only one on the block not losing money by paying to much, could have a bigger impact on converting sales. 

As would getting one or two people to wear flu-masks could do more for awereness of the possible pandemic and get people to take it more serious.

The way we allow people to absorb and proces our information, is at least as important as the information itself, if we hope to inlfuence any change and action in human beings out in the real world. 

Perhaps common sense, but well worth remembering.  

what we can learn from pick up artists

Seeing as I am based in Holland, I thought it time to write a bit in Dutch, and for a Dutch blog.

As of today I will be blogging for Molblog, one of Holland's most read blogs about marketing.

My first piece of writing is here, but since some of you may not be fluent in Dutch, below is a translation.

What we can learn from pick up artists

There is a crisis. Not that economic one. No. There is crisis in the world of pick-up gurus. Yes, pick-up gurus. Men who can get every woman an teach followers how they can get laid as well.

It all started with a book several years ago. Called "The Game". It describes journalist Neil Strauss, on his quest to become PUA, Pick Up Artist. The book was a bestseller. But also ensured that women got insight into the workings of these PUA's. 

Because, despite all the shits and giggles, these gentlemen had a process. Their practices were secretly shared on forums and message boards. 

From opening sentences, to routines and field reports, PUA's were constantly trying to improve efficiency and speed up the scoring. 

Yet suddenly opening phrases were known, routines (a fixed linguistic pattern to achieve a positive result, think AIDA, but in the pub) were spotted and PUA's were ridiculed. This led to a number of the gurus proclaiming that they found a new way.

Method vs. Natural 
This new group was a response to the way it had been up till now. Until now, PU's were a series of steps and mechanics. First there was the opening, then the routine, then increasing the tension and finally .. action. Hence the name Method. 

But by now the audience knew how it worked, the effect became less strong. This led to even crazier openings, increasingly complex routines. But this did not lead to improvement in outcome. Only more noise and ridicule.

Group two said that a pick-up (PU) was a spontaneous, natural thing, and that you as a PUA attracted women by being yourself. The best self you can be, but still yourself. 

No script, no story,just a spontaneous interaction that had an open ending. If there is no script, then you could get caught, and if they liked you because of you, you do not need to worry about fullfilling the image what you portraying with your routines (self-insured and cocky, etc. 

For followers and gurus, this is a more difficult path. It requires self-improvement of personality, appearance and self-confidence before you proceed to chase. But if we believe the feedback the Natural way is beating Method. 

Not in the least because the practitioners are at least feeling better about themselves and are no longer stressed out memorizing routines. 

Action speaks louder than words

Yeah ... .. so what you're think. This is a marketing blog. Correct. And from a marketing standpoint there are some interesting observations. 

Google, Hyves, Facebook, HBO, Skype, show us that many of the strongest brands over the last 10 years were built by attracting customers through a disproportionate focus on product and service innovation. Not product and service communications (which still plays a role, but a lesser one). 

Research of the University of South London shows us the same. In a study of purchases over time, researcher Charles Graham discovered that despite large amounts of money brands spend, market shares remaines stable. He saw that the market shares of most brands in the study increased or decreased by 3 percent, but always within that margin. 

Only six brands increased their market shares by more than 6%. These changes were "not achieved by changes in promotional mix" but by "exceptional, strategic and structural innovation." 

So ... 
Like PU gurus we are in a crisis. Consumers are more aware of our practices, trust the advice their friends more than our commercials and many businessowners and CFO's can't get a good answer to the question of "what that budget is contributing to the bottom line".

But therein lies the opportunity for our industry to show our value. Not by better creation of campaigns, but by challenging our customers and clients to learn, innovate and be of real value to the lives of consumers in those moments when they need us. 

Only we will have to look at ourselves first. For an industry that brags about innovation and creation, we have only played a modest role in the creation of the above mentioned brands or the many other innovations that we know. 

Not that there is no place for advertising agencies, but decades ago an agency developed the idea of the soapseries, now we fill the few minutes between content blocks. 

For just as women do not mind a talking to fun, spontaneous guy who, in addition to humor and self-confidence, actually has something to say, consumers have nothing against seduction by advertising, products and services, or spending money. 

Only the umpteenth variation on "Don't I know you from somewhere ..." will not get us of the list of "things which can be cut", just as it won't help PUA's get dates...

the power of culture and social norms

Ovens "big enough for a Christmas turkey". 

Freezers "with enough room so you always have food for unexpected guests".

Just two examples of clever marketing, using extreme events (once a year Christmas and let's say twice a year unexpected dinner guests) with latent cultural and social stigma's that still work on the (post)modern human beings decision making proces.

In each case they were used to sell us more. But the principle can also be used to change behaviour towards sustainability.

So ask yourself: what extreme situations with cultural resonance, and the possibility for social failure do you have within your particular business? 

These types of situations and this type of approach will allow you to change behaviour by make the unlikely (yet when it happens very socialy uncomfortable) become a focus point, thus making acceptance of the new behaviour seem obvious.

Perhaps a bit evil, but given the fact it worked the first time around, I am betting it would work again. 

the era of High Concept returns

"High concept often has themes based on an existing area of popular fascination—such as sharks, dinosaurs, flying saucers, the Titanic, and so on— thus having a ready-built foundation of subsidiary issues and ever-ramifying facts that can feed the machine, on levels ranging from the superficial to the intellectually or factually exhaustive".wikipedia

Better go and read this. Now that (at breakneck speed) technology enables us to belong to, and interact with likeminded people from around the world, the art of doing stuff that is: 

"easy (flows naturaly with needs and wants, instead of creating them artificialy) to sell (cash is king again) to a wide audience(facebook being an example: more and more oldies instead of just kids) because it delivers upon an easy to grasp idea that is original, interesting, colorful and sometimes humorous (pull people together and give them something to do)", is a skill marketers need to get reacquainted with.