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Nice article here by Rosabeth Moss Kanter in HBR which restates much of what we wrote about nearly a decade ago in Creative Age and again half a decade ago in HERD. Also, Hugh has written even more thoroughly and compellingly about the same stuff over the whole of that period [just have a good wade through his back catalogue].
Nice to see that more folk at HBR are finally joining the party....
Hat tip Eoan Pritchard
Pic Herdmeister's own (from kiosk at Weybridge Station)
One of the oddest things about doing the work that I do is the reactions people have to the core idea: many of the behaviours and choices which we think we do independently turn out to be shaped by the choices of others. Looking at some car market data this week is a great example: even I was surprised to see how clearly the kind of social signatures we describe in our latest book fall out of the sales data.
But not everyone finds it so easy to embrace the social thing. For example, I have been involved this week in a long debate on a LinkedIn BE group (I know I shouldn't) about smoking and smoking cessation - actually it's ended up being a debate about thinking and not thinking. It's striking there how some people really do feel that they are active authors of their own lives - making independent "decisions" left, right and centre, like this decisive kinda guy, maybe?
These kinds of people find it really hard to accept that their experience (or recalled experience, most commonly) of highly conscious executive decision-making is largely illusory (or even that they might be an exception to the cognitive rule): in general terms, our conscious minds are (as Kahnemann points out) more Press Office than Oval Office, more sense-maker than decision-maker. And much of the time (in our oversupplied modern world), the popularity heuristic - what she's having - seems to work just dandy; that and recency "what we did last time".
Im sure I'll be trying IHWSH in a moment, when we head off to the pub. Somebody tell me what I want - maybe I'll just have what she's having.
Have a nice weekend, all. Wherever you are.
So now you've got the book - you have got one, haven't you? Everyone else has - and you've dipped into it a few times and maybe pondered what it says and what it means.
Here are some thoughts on what I think it means for marketers that I wrote for Market Leader, the organ of the UK's Marketing Society.
Let us know what you think - about the book and what you think the implications are....
Pic c/o mccanexposure.com
Was lucky enough to be sitting in the audience for yesterday's webcast at Unilever's HQ to hear UL CEO Paul Polman (and some others) talk about their Sustainable Living plan
As regular readers will know, we've been talking purpose here for a decade or more (as my buddy Hugh reiterated recently), long before it became popular (in churches, business schools or in blogs and coaches or consultants who have drunk the coolaid, too). For a long time, senior (aka "sensible") business folk have treated this notion as if it were for the Fancy Dans of this world - the kooky and the crazy.
So it was genuinely affecting to hear the leader of the world's second biggest advertiser talking about their social purpose as the only way to growth - not as a risk or a by-product but the thing the whole organisation has to focus on - and to see the leadership trying to work with organisations that know more about the impacts it makes on the world than it does.
You'll know - for good or ill - the Dove story as one of Unilever's previous attempts to embrace purpose, but this is genuinely something different. The level of senior engagement with this, the degree to which they've made it structurally possible to travel this way and - once more - the clarity and conviction of the leader's voice made this more than a step change. And the acknowledgement that there is a long way to travel before the real benefits are clear to all was remarkably refreshing and honest.
I think this is a genuinely bold move and one which, whatever false steps they take (and they will take them), we should credit the corporation and its leaders with.
However, I was slightly disappointed to read the 5 levers for change document they have produced. Like so many other behaviour change manuals, it is still primarily construes behaviour as an "I thing", an individual phenomenon; still imagines that what we do to individuals is what matters in shaping their behaviour; still focuses on the "p" and not the "q" of diffusion.
As for the calls from NGOs on the panel and in the audience - however admirable and amazing the people were - who want us to "make conscious choices", the less said the better. If our future depends on getting people to think, we're really screwed.
Looks like we still have work to do here...I'm ready.
pic c/o Protein.os
This morning - in a rage at the latest Klout bollox, I stumbled over this great briefing by the Protein guys on the thorny subject on measuring influence.
Smart, pithy and concluding with words of bleedin' obvious/wisdom (delete as appropriate) from yours truly (think about it in terms of the real world first).
Enjoy!
Walked past this today - a memorial to fashion student Min Joo Lee who was killed last month.
Fans of HERD will recognise the phemonenon as a combination of a cellotaph (a floral tribute to a road accident) and a Ghost Bike - which kicked off the introduction of the HERD book
While familiar as an idea, I am still moved to see one in real life.
It's still a memorial to someone who's died unnecessarily.
And a mark of the feelings of those who knew the dead person.
Interesting dialogue in one of the LinkedIn Behavioural Economics groups about how little (or otherwise) the BE movement has embraced the social insights.
We've talked about this here before but one of my dialogue partners has drawn my attention to the New Economics Forum equivalent of HMG's Mindspace which puts "Other people's behaviour..." as principle #1.
However...by my count, that still makes 6/7 of the "principles" about individual minds...improving the odds slightly (down from 7/8)
..just more of the same, then
Pic of the Monolith in Vigeland Park, Oslo
Nice piece here about how certain earthworm species can use social learning and generate something like social intelligence through their interactions (although it appears that touch is essential to this). Not in a scary way of course...
And this piece (HT @socialphysicist) has some interesting speculation about how we got to be more social - the shift to daylight living creating more need for shared security.
Can't help but think of the trouble so many of the folk I've spoken to recently have accepting the truth of our fundamental social nature - of course, we CAN act independently of others but mostly we don't.
Nice piece by Lucy Kellaway in the FT last week about our new book.
Makes the central point really clearly - copying is the mainstay of most human lives. Copying, not independent and heroic individualism, is what makes much of our world the way it is.
While the work of the Greats might on the shoulders of giants, the rest of us rely on the efforts of the ordinary Joes that surround us, too. Me and you and everyone we know (and lots of others we don't) as Miranda July's first movie had it.
Nice!
Last week in Chicago had the good fortune to catch up again with the delightful Tom Fishburne AKA Marketoonist
Regular readers will know how much I love the wit and insight of that other marketing top toonist, Hugh Macleod but am chuffed that Tom had been led to do an I'll Have What She's Having toon since we last met down in West Wales
And lovely it is, too.
Do yourself a favour, go sign up for their regular toon mail-outs. You'll see the world differently through Tom and Hugh's eyes
Great day in Chicago today with the folks from Brainjuicer, Microsoft and Ogilvy exploring BE and marketing from lots of different angles.
Great to see old friends, not least the Chief Juicer himself (who managed to keep his trousers/pants on all day which the link reveals is a novelty nowadays), my co-author Alex who's over here at Northwestern hanging out with the NICO guys, Carol Oman from Kraft and Graceann Bennett (who's running the Ogilvy planning thing here).
We shared some stuff from the new book which seemed to go down really well - the simplicity of the model at the heart of the book really seems to engage people.
Couple of things struck me: first, how radically the conversation has shifted here in just a few years: when I first presented on it in the city way back in 2005-6, few folk were prepared to give it the time of day but now the BE agenda is no longer wierd and marginal; it's something worth enough for 100 execs tospend the day thinking and arguing about and examining what the insights bring to our practices and techniques. Of course, you'll find me qvetching about the fact that too much of the conversation is still around individual cognitive quirks and not enough about the social stuff that really makes the world go round, but that doesn't mean I'm not big supporter.
Second, that events like this that are gold-dust - the fact that Brainjuicer keep putting them on around the world, collaborating with different clients and creative agencies is an enormous credit to them. The events are free to attend and nobody gets paid - we're all here for the conversation and the stimulation.
Third, that one of my dreams has now been realised: we have now cloned Rory Sutherland. Not only can he exist in two timezones (a live Rorcast sufficed today)...
...as you can see, we had to blow him up to giant size in order to make the matter-transporter work (or has he just been down to the Cinnamon Club a few times recently?)
But why settle for one Rory when you can 3 supersized Rory's as here
3 times the fabulousness, indeed.
All hail the chubby Welshmen! Nobody has done more to promote the new behavioural and cognitive sciences that our man Rory.
Pic c/o @willsh
Our new book is finally here and last night we premiered content at the RSA (many thanks to Matthew Taylor who mc'd and Mairi who put on the show)
Don't listen to what we say about it, listen to what John, Gareth And Eoghan say (and perhaps not what this lady whom we seem to have upset - actually maybe it's good to make someone want to "throw your book across the room")
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