“Tell me and I’ll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I’ll understand.”  - Chinese proverb

Connecting the dots

The tremendous advances in brain science (along with changes in the media landscape) mean we need to rethink how we engage customers, taking on board some of the lessons of neuroscience and behavioural economics, and sometimes going back to ancient wisdoms which preceded the rise of rational approaches to consumer behaviour, especially in the West.  The truth is that most of our decision making is unconscious, emotional and highly context dependent (especially social context). Read more »

Questions, questions

After watching the world go by for a while, you may still have some unanswered questions which means it may be time to start a conversation with your customers.  Although more than 90% of communication is non-verbal, there is a huge amount to be learnt from listening to consumers (and asking the occasional question), especially when this is done in the right way. Read more »

Getting started in research

Last week I was asked to facilitate a workshop for marketing and communication professionals to empower them to build their understanding of consumers through their own investigations.  The workshop covered some of the key psychological insights, but focused on practical ways to help them observe, listen and ask questions in a more structured way.  The session was great fun, and over the next two articles I can share some of the practical tips I gave them.  Today I will focus on observation, which should always come before asking and listening. Read more »

“There comes a time in the affairs of man when he must take the bull by the tail and face the situation.”  - W.C. Fields

Fundamentally flawed

In What the Dog Saw, Malcolm Gladwell discusses the effects of the fundamental attribution error (FAE) in several different articles.  For example, in one chapter he discusses the Challenger disaster and the impossibility of having complete control of complex technologies and systems, arguing that attempts to find causes and scapegoats in such situations are futile.  Without acknowledging the FAE, his argument in the chapter touches on the desire of all of us to attribute outcomes, and especially bad outcomes, to specific traits of the people involved rather than the situation they are in. Read more »

Learning the research alphabet

There are clear lessons for market research (and marketing which I will explore in separate posts) from the importance of affect, behaviour and context in understanding ourselves and our customers.  I am writing this listening to Bill Evans and Tony Bennett, so it seems appropriate to argue that research needs to become more VOCAL. Read more »

Over the past two weeks we have learnt 12 key insights into what makes us who we are, based on the latest understanding from neuroscience, behavioural economics, psychology, biology and the social sciences.  They can be summarised in three (or perhaps four) key themes, but first let’s review the 12 lessons of human behaviour. Read more »

Context in mind

We have already talked about social bias, and the human tendency to follow the herd as one of the mental shortcuts we all use to guide our decisions more quickly and efficiently.  We have also seen how context is a critical trigger of memory, and how different contexts can lead to very different behaviours even when our basic needs or goals are the same.

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Sensory thinking

The senses inform much of our language, as the dominant source of our experiences.  We all use words related to different senses to express ourselves (I can see your point, I hear you, I was touched by a thought), and some theories (eg NLP) claim that we have different preferences for the sensory modalities (I hear what you’re saying vs I see what you’re saying).  Thus, the senses truly help us to create our everyday expressions. Read more »

On autopilot

Imagine a busy housewife, with impatient kids in tow, walking through the supermarket to find fishcakes and chips (or perhaps noodles and vegetables) for the evening meal.  Her mind is focused on the task in hand and finding the right items, along with trying to listen to descriptions of the school day just gone.  All of us do many things (arguably most things) in our day via an internal autopilot. Whether it’s brushing our teeth, driving to work, or buying our evening meal, much of our behaviour is learnt and unconscious. Read more »

The growing brain

As we have learnt, the brain didn’t spring into being but emerged over time.  The most obvious evidence for the evolution of the brain is its structure. Firstly, our brain is quite large, but not as large as some other animals.  However, relative to our body mass, the brain outweighs all our fellow creatures! Interestingly, one of the common threads between those animals with relatively larger brain sizes is that they are all very social animals. Read more »