Why marketers need to look sideways, not forwards

“The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys.”

William Preece, Post Office. 1876

Last month 40,000 marketers trekked to Dmexco, one of the world’s biggest digital advertising conferences, to hear predictions about the long-term future of advertising.

Most long-term predictions were interesting but undoubtedly inaccurate. We simply can’t predict new technology with accuracy, the unfolding of the future involves too complex an interplay of factors.

If our interest is in improving our work then it’s more informative to stop peering into the distant future and instead look sideways to other disciplines. By scouring the best practice of other fields we can accelerate our performance.

The practice of looking sideways has already begun tentatively. Many advertisers have been inspired by the work of behavioural scientists, such as Daniel Kahneman and Dan Ariely.

However, there are a number of other disciplines that advertisers can learn from. One of the most interesting areas is biology, and in particular the work of the Nobel Laureate, Konrad Lorenz, on imprinting. In his most famous study he split a batch of Greylag geese eggs into two. One set, the control, was raised by their mother while the experimental set was exposed to no-one else but Lorenz.

The goslings in the experimental set became deeply attached to Lorenz and when, after a few days, they were introduced to their mother they showed no sign of recognition. Lorenz hypothesised that there was a short window of open-ness, roughly 32 hours for geese, in which basic behaviours could be shaped. Outside of that window habits became solidified and no amount of hectoring could change them.

In many ways consumers are like those geese. There are short windows of opportunity in which brands have a good chance of influencing behaviour.

Consumers are bombarded with so much information that they either make decisions subconsciously or ruthlessly edit out commercial messages. This makes influencing them a hard task.

One solution is to identify the rare moments when consumers are open to persuasion. Our research suggests that the short period after undergoing a life event is one such opportunity. By life events I mean major changes such as, amongst others, going to university, moving house, getting married, changing job or retiring.

Life events cause disruption to consumers’ routines and environments. This destabilisation means that consumers are shaken out of their habits causing them to consciously weigh up their decisions, including purchasing ones.

At ZenithOptimedia we quantified the effect by asking 1,121 consumers two simple questions. First, which of nine life events had they undergone in the last year and second, had they tried a new brand in any of eight categories.

The results were striking. In every category people were much more likely to have tried new brands if they had undergone a life event. For all product categories, bar one, the probability of trying new brands increased by at least 75% after a life event. If brands target these moments they are more likely to be able to change customer behaviour. Marketers can learn more from existing disciplines than speculation about what new technology may, or may not, be invented.

As William Gibson said the “the future is already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed”.

Richard Shotton, head of insight at ZenithOptimedia

Originally published at wallblog.co.uk on September 14, 2015.