Nice piece here with Dave Brailsford, the "architect" of British Cyclng success
2 interesting thoughts emerge :
1. he uses the "chimp" metaphor (like "Monkey Brain") to denote the non-human bit of ruminating consciousness which distracts us from the "flow" states that athletic performance depends on (i.e. by denigrating the human bit to animal).
2. he talks about the way doping spread through cycling but without pathologising individual dopers (quite hard given the hullabaloo surrounding it recently) or - if I understand him correctly - in blaming the thing thing.
So it is 10 years ago this week that I first formally presented what I called the HERD hypothesis in written form (see above) at the Market Research Society in Birmingham (for which incidentally I shared the Best New Thinking Prize). Since then - together with a number of brilliant folk - we've managed to evolve and "operationalise" the basic insight at the heart of this paper, with 2 more books, prizes from the nice people at WPP, ESOMAR and Emerald Insight along the way, a host of well-liked articles and some fascinating conversations and experiences with people I'm not sure I'd have met otherwise.
It hasn't all been plain sailing - I have endured any number of pats on the head ("interesting but not really mainstream"), some strange challenges ("OK for kids marketing & poor people - maybe abroad?") and occasionally some hostile responses ("we don't believe that monkey shit round here" being my favourite).
But gradually, over those 10 years things have changed: not least thanks to the explosion of "social media" which has made arguing for the importance of social influence in shaping human (and consumer behaviour) so much easier (praise the Lord for Mr Z for this at least).
And collaborating with brilliant people - especially Professor Alex Bentley - to turn the analytic techniques developed across the social sciences into practical tool for marketers and decision-makers has been an unexpected but wholly positive pleasure. Back in 2007, we first developed a 4 box map based on patterns to be found in
And now 10 years on, a number of folk have picked up and recycled
the work we've been doing (which is exactly how things work and spread),
mostly (but not always) attributing sources. So if for example you find someone presenting one of these* over the next few days and weeks,...
...you'll know what to think, won't you?
Yes, the HERD effect is at play...
Thank you all - Alex, Mike O'B, Hugh, Jason, Ray P, Gareth K, Kevin K, Kevin D, Nick K, John K, Alex B, Susan G, Tom E, Audrey, John W, Graeme W, Wendy, Angela, Sair, Mark B, Mark H, John, Fiona, Stephen, Giles, Ben, Geoff, Paul, Liz, Judie, Colin, Chris, Roddy, Peter M, Gemma, David, Bob B, Bob P, Claire, Anne & Merry.
Sorry I can't be at MRS to celebrate the 10 years anniversary but I'm sure it'll be fabulous!
*BTW the version here first developed by Alex & I in 2010 with Anomaly & Sony Europe
I've had a number of messages from folk over the last couple of days asking for my take on the terrible recent events in Connecticut.
Til now I've refrained from commmenting because it's incredibly hard to say anything without seeming crass or exploitative of the grief and sadness of those closer connected to the shootings than I am
And this difficulty is exacerbated by the broo-haha in both mainstream and social media.
So I wanted to make just a couple of points:
1. It's well documented that these kinds of massacres spread through copying (hence "copycat") rather than independent choice.
So, my American friends, if you want to stop this kind of thing happening again there are at least 2 kinds of thing you need to do together:
i. stop lionising the individuals who commit these kinds of acts in media coverage (both MSM and online)
ii. change the environment to make it harder for individuals to have access to the tools that make it easy to commit such crimes (and, yes, this means regulating the availability of automatic and semi-automatic weaponry - the kind of weapons that make it easier to kill lots of people at once...)
As is so often the case, being clear what kind of thing you're dealing with helps develop better responses to it...
Nice piece by the always excellent Victoria Coren in GQ this month exploring (for a male audience) the whole 50 Shades of Grey phenomenon. Here she discusses why women are reading it...
"You can shelve the idea of awkward
mimicry; women are not necessarily reading Fifty Shades
because they find it sexy anyway.They are reading it for two reasons. First: because everyone
else is. There comes a point when one simply has to join in for
fear of being left out. But I was the same about getting a
recycling bin, and that didn't turn me on much either"
Here's a piece I did for the CASRO 2012-13 Journal
(based on my keynote at their annual gathering in Scotssdale (page
42ff) based on an idea that the brilliant Grant McCracken gave me when I
last had lunch with him:
"TV chat show host David Letterman used to
play a game with his audience as he sifted the day’s ephemera, asking this
simple question of the things he (and his researchers) found to point and laugh
at: is this anything? Or, is it nothing? In other words, is the
object, behaviour or utterance significant and suggestive of an important
trend? Or, is it merely junk? Should we be paying attention to it or should we
smile and nod at contemporary culture’s richness as it sweeps past our noses"
So let's ask ourselves before we start "...what
kind of thing is the phenomenon we are studying and
seeking to explain [or change]? Is it something shaped by the agency of individuals acting
independently of their peers or is it something that’s shaped primarily by
social means – by the influence of others other than the individual?"
What kind of thing is this?
WHO IS HERD?
Originally, HERD was just me, Mark Earls, recovering account planner and all-round opinionator. But increasingly, as I’ve discovered more and (importantly), learned from others, the community has grown.
Working with a range of collaborators and clients, we developed tools to give these HERD ideas practical application. Collaborating with likeminded folk such as Dr. Alex Bentley (deputy Director of the Leverhulme Tipping Points grant at Durham University) and Grant McCracken (anthropologist and author of Chief Culture Officer), we’ve attacked differents kinds of problem and found different kinds of solution, thanks to the power of the social perspective on humanity.
We’ve also worked with some fantastic partners – Anomaly London, Brainjuicer, Modernista!, Naked , Protein, People Ideas & Culture and Hide & Seek to adapt our thinking to specific client problems. We’ve advised large corporations (such as Unilever, Bacardi-Martini, Channel 4 Television, The Edrington Group, Sony), UK government departments (HM Department of Health and Central Office of Information) and not-for-profits such as the Gates Foundation, Greenpeace & The School of Life.
WHAT IS HERD?
HERD started as a label for everything social about human behaviour - a research “bucket” if you like - for the “hidden truths“* of fundamentally social nature of our curious species and the fundamentally social context that shapes our behaviour.
In essence, HERD is a synthesis of the work of social scientists in a number of different fields (primatology, anthropology, archaeology, network theory, sociology, economics & cultural evolution) mixed together with management and marketing science and my own professional experience of more than two decades, trying to understand and shape mass behaviour.
I first used the term HERD publically in March 2003 in an award-winning conference paper which challenged many of the core assumptions of advertising, marketing and market research professionals way of seeing the world and proposed a realignment of these disciplines around the idea of humans being fundamentally social creatures.
Soon enough, HERD was a book (John Wiley & Sons 2007/2009) which a lot of people read (and many said nice things about) then more articles, more speeches and more prizes. But in the last few years, it has become both a consulting business and a mainstream way of thinking about human behaviour for many marketing, advertising and research professionals as well as for those working in politics, public policy and security.
HERD started in the pre-Facebook world (Mark Zuckerberg was still in High School) but has only become more relevant in our attempts to make sense of the human behaviour in the modern post-Facebook world.
There are three main ways in which clients tend to engage us
Speeches , workshops and seminars
In the last year, we’ve spoken at many major events in the UK, continental Europe, China and North America.
Better Marketing Strategy
We’ve developed a range of specific analytic tools (with Dr Alex Bentley) that help you understand whether social influence drives your market or not and how to shape strategies that are appropriate.
Change management programmes
We’ve also been led significant C-level change programmes using both our knowledge of human behaviour (and its social roots) and current landscape for business. We often find in this context that the idea of purpose (as discussed in HERD) is a powerful lever for generating change.
About Me
I am a recovering advertising and marketing professional who has held Senior posts at big comms agencies (Ogilvy) and radical ones (St Luke’s) on some of the trickiest strategy challenges in behaviour change. I have long been committed to the industry bodies (I’m a Business Leader of the Marketing Society & I’ve sat on committees for the APG & IPA in the UK and taught for both these and the AAAA in the US) and society in general (I’ve helped organisations such as Arts & Business and The School of Life). I am a longstanding Fellow of the RSA.
The path to HERD is not hard to trace. Ironically, for someone who now preaches the ubiquity of social learning rather than independent choice, I was taught (at home, at school, at uni, at everywhere) to "think it through": in other words, not to accept what others told me to accept but to challenge everything until a more compelling, better-evidenced and more workable descriptions of how things work emerges.
It doesn’t always you popular or terribly rich but it is the most exciting thing – as my friend Russell Davies put it, standing at the front of the train with the wind in your hair, it’s such a thrill!
WHAT ARE WE READING
HERD: Mark Earls
How to change mass behaviour by harnessing our true nature
