HEAD TRIPS

Deadheads, we’re not (though we admit to loving that music).

But how to figure out what’s in consumer (or stakeholder) brains when they buy?

Some of our recent op-eds have dealt with sub-sets of the new ‘neuromarketing,’ from eye scans to facial coding.

That’s only part of understanding how we make decisions.  What our advertising and marketing colleagues are advocating is a holistic take on uncovering the reasons behind our behaviors.  In fact, they’re doing more than talking about it; they’re actively looking at subconscious perceptions, studying real-life actions, and field testing, in addition to ferreting out physiological clues.

Obama’s academic consultants are credited with the ‘gotta delve deeper’ movement.  Yet way back in 1915, J.Walter Thompson hired John B. Watson for market research (the U of Chicago co-founder of behavioral psych). 

Back to decisions:  Choosing A over B, say the scientists, is complicated.  Especially since 90 percent of our thinking occurs way below awareness levels.  It’s a meld of feelings versus thought, with our minds working at cross purposes during decision time.

But why can’t those of us in communications develop messages that appeal to the different parts of the brain (which is what our colleagues do, in absence of large budgets and loads of time)?  It’s the intuitive versus the deliberate, the fast versus slow, the effortless versus the planful.  No question, most of us are masterful in internal and external wordsmithing.  Isn’t it way past time we plot the appropriate ways to capture minds and hearts?

AN HOMAGE TO AWARENESS

Everyone’s doing it.

E-bookstores overflow with Mindful Work, Mindful Teen, even Mindful Birthing.  Participants at the Davos’ World Economic Forum could opt to sit in on a session.  Phil Jackson of the Knicks credits it with promoting general well-being.  Even Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini, having introduced yoga and meditation throughout the healthcare giant, says those practices have reduced stress levels and pain while improving sleep levels and productivity.

With its origins in the Buddhist concept of sati, or the memory of the present, mindfulness was appropriated by a savvy scientist in the 1970s, who then parlayed it into a worldwide movement.

Is it mainstream yet?  Well, sorta.  Ellen Langer, a researcher into this topic for more than four decades, explains that, bottom line, mindfulness simply helps you appreciate why people behave the way they do.  Her perspective:  That life consists of moments – and if you make the moment matter, everything will matter. 

It reminds us of the reason many of us started in this business:  To make things matter and, by extension, to make ourselves matter.  By starting with awareness, the foundation for all of advertising and marketing and communications work, or so our thoughts went, we can awaken people to new things, new philosophies, new ways of being.  The challenge today (other than mastering the chaos around us):  To ensure that we’re mindful of what truly matters. 

THE YEAR OF LINEAR THINKING. OR NOT.

For years, we’ve had an on-and-off debate with our change colleagues.  [Mostly off, to tell the truth.]

These disagreements center on the nature of change:  Is it linear?  And more, can we superimpose different change frameworks (whether Prosci or Kotter or Bridges or you-fill-in-the-blank) on a human process that, quite frankly, doesn’t always respond to a one-step-at-a-time logic?

Case in point:  One of our clients was incredibly frustrated when a project went AWOL, primarily because executive sponsors had to tend to other burning platforms.   Not ours, obviously.   We went back to start, analyzed, compared it to other shifts in the business, and found that, yes, human ADD simply pushed it away.  Over-multi-tasking was the culprit.

Solving change problems, to us, must consider the human element.  Any number of managers and leaders can nod and give lip service to a specific effort, say, around the supply chain.  The business case, the sense of urgency, the executive sponsors, and the project team might be in play.  But it’s human:  Managers might forget.  Allocate their time elsewhere.  Be called into work on a different initiative.  Or simply resist in a passive-aggressive way, and stymie progress.

Or, another scenario:  Everyone nods, and buys in.  They agree, this IT or HR or cost-saving change must happen for the business to grow.  Change chugs along until – yup – a pocket of the population isn’t motivated or willing to shift attitudes, behaviors, roles, or whatever they’re being asked to do.  Back to the business case, then.

Bottom line:  Thinking linearly doesn’t work for us when driving change.  Sure, frameworks are handy, if only to remind you what needs to be done.  Instead, we prefer moving in a non-straightforward manner, making the connections we need to make at the times we need to make them, and in the ways they need to be made.  Definitely messy, but it works. 

Is this your year to break out and through change?

READY, SET ... DRAW!

There’s something to be said for doodling during meetings.

According to Presidential biographers, our nation’s leaders indulged – a lot.  JFK drew sailboats; Reagan, cowboys and hats.  And Eisenhower, pictures of himself as a younger, stronger citizen.

The growing presence of whiteboards in the office, not to mention the increased number of virtual meetings, begs for white paper and pen (or pencil) to illustrate.   Drawing while otherwise occupied might, for sure, be a symptom of boredom; at the same time, it allows us to focus on what’s being said.

That kind of child’s play appears in other parts of work life:  mainly, in those corporations where imagination and innovation seem to be treasured.  HP devoted Friday post-lunch afternoons to thinking and tinkering, while 3M’s famous 15 percent “to do your own thing” came up with such hits as Post-it notes.  Today, Apple, LinkedIn, and Fusenet, among others, allow techies specific amounts of time to dream, develop, and create products or initiatives that will further the business’ goals.

Wait, though:  True experimentation, very often, results in failure after failure after failure … before netting any type of success.  How lenient are companies in allowing their best and brightest to continue to think after a series of no-gos?  Will goals and structured space generate great ideas that turn into worthwhile and revenue-producing products?   Are the innovators among us seduced by the 9-to-5 and accompanying benefits?

Or what we’d suggest:  Let’s decamp to a nursery school or kindergarten and watch, for a few hours, how children play.  What they do in terms of toys, space, and each other to create an environment in which they are genuinely happy, expressive, and, yes, inventive.  

It’s something we’ve lost.  But we – and our employers - can regain it. 

How?  Your answers more than welcome at cbyd.co.