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Ideas with impetus: Applying Nobel Prize-winning thinking to marketing

By Hamish Pringle

April 7, 2014 | 6 min read

Daniel Kahneman was in London recently to promote ‘Thinking, Fast and Slow’. Not that it needed much of a push having sold 1 million copies in the UK since it was published in 2011. He spoke for 20 minutes and then we were treated to a fascinating Q&A with David Baddiel in front of a sell-out audience of over 2,000 convened by 5x15 at Central Hall, Westminster. There was lots of reinforcement for those who believe in ‘ideas with impetus’, as exemplified by brand campaigns such as Nike ‘Just Do It’, Sure ‘Do More’, and Bluewater ‘Yours to Explore’.

Photo: Nick CunardDuring his talk the Nobel Prize-winner reprised the meaning of System 1 and System 2. These terms, describing a key duality in the human mental process, were proposed originally by Keith Stanovitch and Richard West, developed by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, and made famous by ‘Thinking, Fast and Slow’.Kahneman confirmed that the main point of his book is that most of what happens in the mind happens automatically. “We are not aware of the process, but aware of the product, the outcome. I say the word Ukraine and almost instantaneously hundreds of ideas are facilitated – automatically. System 1 produces a continuous evaluation of our world. I call this associative emotional coherence.” The same thing happens with brands – the name and packaging evokes immediate and holistic associations.
By way of example Kahneman then recounted this anecdote at his own expense. “My wife and I were gossiping about the people we just had dinner with and she said: 'He's sexy'. Then she added: 'He does not undress the maid himself'. I expressed some surprise and my wife explained that in fact she had said: 'He does not underestimate himself.' I had invented my version of her comment to fit the context of 'he’s sexy'!"The relevance of all this to commercial communication is profound. The System 1 appraisal of brands is continuous, instantaneous, and automatic. Like Kahneman our customers often ‘mishear’ what we’re trying to say because their System 1 self is framing our messaging in the context of what they already feel and know. We’re familiar with the phenomenon of selective perception and cognitive dissonance and through Kahneman we now have a clearer idea of the underlying mechanisms which cause them.
The problem for challenger brands in particular is that the brand leader is protected by System 1 and so rational System 2 attempts to break through are mostly foiled. Andrew Ehrenberg, and his successors at the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, have shown how hard it is to win share from brand leaders. So is there anything in Kahneman’s thinking which offers any hope? In my opinion, very much so. And the highly engaging Q&A session conducted by David Baddiel revealed it.When asked by Baddiel if he could say something about ‘Econs’ versus ‘Humans’. Kahneman replied: “I think we have two selves – the remembering one and the experiencing one; [we experience] the present in anticipation of it being a memory. Our memories are not necessarily accurate, but yet we put a lot of store by them.” And, as Baddiel pointed out, we see this when people watch pop concerts via their mobile screens: they are collecting memories rather than watching the stage.So the trick is to get customers to have an experience of the brand which becomes a memory, and conditions their future response. We need to get people to do something with the brand which will then lead them to feel and think differently about it. This process is more likely to bring about behavioural change. For example, The Guardian’s ‘Do Something’ editorial feature launched in January and now on its third instalment, is based upon it.
As the Guardian says in its ‘Do Something Manifesto’: “Routine is both a blessing and a curse. Without it, the working world would collapse, along with much of the rest of daily life: you'd never keep the house clean, or get the kids to school on time. But regularity exacts a high price – as the grandfather of modern psychology, William James, understood. 'Each passing year converts some of [our] experience into automatic routine which we hardly note at all,' he observed. Life becomes calcified, until 'the days and weeks smooth themselves out … and the years grow hollow and collapse.'" It’s true, we’re all creatures of habit and that applies to everything we do, including the brands we buy. The challenge is to jolt the customer out of their normal routine, and break the inertia which keeps them from trying an alternative.Traditionally, most academics, marketers, and their agencies have believed that attitude shift was a necessary precursor to behavioural change. Now there’s a considerable body of evidence showing that it’s a two-way street: disrupting a customer’s routine and getting them to do something with the brand can bring about a change in attitude and a reappraisal.This was the mechanism under-pinning the highly successful ‘Pepsi Challenge’ which the challenger used to attack the brand leader, Coca-Cola. Research had shown that Pepsi outperformed Coke in blind taste tests, but frustratingly, once named, the power of the brand leader’s imagery overcame people’s preferences. This despite the millions spent on decades of music-led image advertising. The ‘Pepsi Challenge’ was devised to get people to confront their cognitive dissonance by tasting the two colas side-by-side, preferring one and then being surprised when the brand was revealed as Pepsi, not Coke. This classic ‘do’ campaign was one of the key steps which built Pepsi’s brand share to the point where it outsells Coca-Cola in some key markets.
Thus Kahneman’s work is linked to that of William James and his ‘As If’ theory, popularised by Professor Richard Wiseman in his book ‘Rip It Up’, and illustrated so neatly by Cognitive Media’s video:

The key is to get a customer to behave as if they’re a brand buyer as a precursor to becoming one. This brings back into sharp focus classic activation techniques such as couponing and sampling, and redefines the role of social media which can provide a vicarious brand experience at low cost. We can see that the way to get through to the intuitive automatic pilot that is System 1, is to give the rational and considered co-pilot System 2 something to do. To encourage consumers to do something first, will lead them to feel and then think differently about your brand.

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