Apologies readers - I actually wrote this last year, but forgot to publish. Sorry. Toby.
I'm no fan of advertising fads. I didn't like neuro-marketing, though I will concede that it was a worthwhile attempt to add some scientific respectability to what we do, even if sticking people in MRI scanners seemed a little far-fetched.
After this hoopla died down (too much like hard work), we moved onto 'engagement' and 'conversations'. I liked these even less. Though some interesting ideas did emerge, everything became a bit slippery and notional, and I couldn't help but feel we were basically talking to each other in ever more elaborate ways, whilst everyone else, just ignored us. I think Rory Sutherland summed it up perfectly when he said marketing's like astrology - all the stuff we talk about sounds very impressive to 'believers', but to everyone else just sounds like bollocks. Try explaining 'engagement' as a big idea to someone who doesn't work in marketing and they'll just stare at you, slightly bemused, and smiling and nodding politely. (I know, I've tried).
Last year, though, this started to change. Rory Sutherland became IPA President and set out his agenda to 'promote the value of agencies' by linking what we do to behavioural economics.
So, what do we think of this? Have we been here before? Is behavioual economics this year's neuromarketing?
I believe the answer is no. This approach is hugely promising and deserves to work. For the following reasons.
First, unlike the nascent neuro-science, behavioural economics is actually pretty well established. Notwithstanding it's current popularity (ref. Freakonomics, Predictably Irrational, The Logic of Life et al.), the foundations of the approach were outlined in the 1970s, by academics like Daniel Kahneman and Gary Becker (the latter's The Economic Approach to Human Behaviour of 1976 is something of a fonudational work, and well worth a look).
Second, the basic principle that underpins the field, that people don't behave as 'neo-classical' economics says they should, is in large part, the same premise that underpins advertising and communication - if everyone's buying behaviour was completely considered and rational, then a huge proportion of what we do is a total waste of money (though of course, this may still be true). Daniel Kahneman's Nobel citation congratulated him on 'integrating insights from psychological research into economic science, especially concerning human judgement and decision under uncertainty'. This, to me, sounds like a pretty accurate description of what we try to do.
This leads me nicely to my third point. Whilst in theory we may claim to do the same as Kahneman, the reality is we don't. Not really. I think it's pretty unlikely any of our research projects (with apologies to our fabulous insight team) will be on the radar of the Nobel committee. This, of course, does not stop us drawing on the last 30 years of accumulated research to help in our planning. In fact, this is something smart planners, agencies and marketers have been doing anyway.
Whilst, unlike classical economics, there aren't a set of behavioural economics 'rules', there are a set of well-researched, well-documented theories that provide great insight into human behaviour. Try the following as a taster - Loss Aversion, the Endowment Effect, Time-delay choice, Option-paralysis. Anyone reading this stuff will immediately, I hope, be able to see how it can be applied to what we do.
(For those of you who work at OMD, Alex and I have saved a series of articles and research papers on the Exchange, that deal with all of these theories, and a load more besides, in much more detail. Go read them - they're really interesting.)
So, after clutching at straws for the last few years, it feels like we really might be onto something with this approach - finally we've got the research and the langauge to provide a really robust intellectual framework for what we do. This is one industry initative we should get behind and wholeheartedly support.
And, if nothing else, we'll get more great talks like this:
-- Toby
Comments