Marketing Lies
Psychiatric Pseudo-Science and Marketing
Welcome to the On Target Research Survey and Marketing Newsletter. A quick review of some key survey and marketing trends for the busy executive.
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Forbes ought to know better.
One of the great bastions of American business journalism, the brand is nothing less than the premier symbol of hard won corporate achievement and personal wealth.
How is it then that this voice of corporate achievement, this icon of entrepreneurial success, can publish a cover story on market research (In Search of the Buy Button, September '03) citing as fact, psychiatrists' bizarre, logic-tortured theories about what makes consumers buy?
According to the article, psychiatrists have convinced some very large corporations to pay obscene amounts of money for them to look at consumers' "...prefrontal cortex, where decision-making takes place." This kind of pseudo-science would be laughable if it didn't soil our profession. It misinforms and misdirects corporate and agency marketing strategists and then sours them on the value of good research.
News flash--the mind and the brain are not the same thing. The brain is a piece of meat--a fancy organ to be sure, laced with an intricate labyrinth of nerves forwarding electrical impulses up and down the body. But think? Meat doesn't think, neither does electricity--you do. The mind is not a bodily organ, it is your ability to think, react, pose problems and solve them.
Are you influenced by advertising, marketing and PR in ways that persuade you to chose one brand over another? Of course you are.
However, this is done in large measure by positioning, as well as the ability of the advertiser to promote attributes about a product or service that you consider valuable--attributes that will motivate you to buy. Determining what is going to make the prospect pick up the phone, go for the plastic or click the mouse is the subject of accomplished market research and skillfully executed surveys.
But what motivates one to buy or choose one brand over another is not determined by molecules bouncing around in your cerebral cortex. It is determined by asking you. How you are asked--the formulation of the survey questions--is a technology in itself. And how your answers are used in media campaigns is critically important. But the idea that "neural activity" is what makes you marvel at a sunset or buy a Lexus instead of a BMW is the same kind pseudo-science that these geniuses use to label kids who fidget in class as mentally disordered and in need of mind-altering drugs.
If you want to find the "Buy Button", you survey your target audience for it--one at a time.
Say you are an independent bank. You want more business from middle market manufacturers. A survey is conducted of 100 CFOs of this target audience. This public is asked, among other things, "What is the single most important quality you would look for when selecting a new banking relationship?"
Seventy-five percent of the respondents say "A personal relationship." Okay, you have your "Buy Button." Use this in your marketing materials (as your prospects said it) and you will get a higher response to your promotional offerings than if you or your agency guessed at it. Why? Because you asked your public and they told you. This isn't neurons and synapses, it's straight forward surveying--and it works.
If you think your marketing efforts should be getting a better response than they are, call us or any reputable market research firm. Consumers' buying preferences are best determined by personal, one-on-one communication. As for psychiatrists... well, they are not called "head-shrinkers" for no reason. Let them loose on your marketing lines and the shrinking will be to your bottom line.
See you next issue.
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On Target Research provides market research, surveys, positioning and branding for clients throughout the United States and abroad. The company's Founder and Chairman, Bruce Wiseman, is an internationally recognized expert in the use of market research and surveys to increase marketing response.
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