"It is only at the first encounter that a face makes its full impression on us."
Voters often make sweeping judgments based on a split-second reaction to their appearance, a new study found. Princeton psychologist Alexander Todorov has demonstrated that quick facial judgments can accurately predict real-world election returns. His tests show that a rapid appraisal of the relative competence of two candidates' faces was all it took to predict the winner in about 70 percent of the races for U.S. senator and state governor in the 2006 elections.
"This means that with a quick look at two photos, you have a great chance of predicting who will win," Todorov said. "Voters are not that rational, after all. So maybe we have to consider that when we elect our politicians." Perhaps we should. In the meantime, business leaders should certainly not assume that the people choosing their brands are rational. They're the same people!
Rational man (and woman) is a myth. Consider the word "rational." It's from the Latin rationalis "of or belonging to reason, reasonable," and that from ratio "reckoning, calculation, reason." Ratio is the relation between two quantities when compared mathematically with one another. For example, the most frequently used ratio among business people is the cost-benefit ratio. So then, here's the rub. What one customer views as beneficial in a product or service, another may discount completely. And so that makes their "ratios" incomparable and irrelevant.
For example, my friend refers to Starbucks as "four bucks." For him, the benefits clearly do not outweigh the costs. However, for many others they clearly do ($8.97 billion in annual revenues). Now, you may be thinking that all you have to do is narrow down the market and identify a group of people who have a similar view of your cost-benefit ratio, thus creating a rational niche or "position." Good luck. Politicians can't even nichefy the masses into party lines today. Instead, do what all great brands do: appeal to people's emotions in a masterful way, and then let the audience self-select.
Posted November 14, 2007
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Tom is timely, thought provoking and all about the new brand vision packaged as a Seinfeld stand up. I went to school on his ideas.
Jeff Taylor, Founder, Monster.com and CEO, Eons.
When Tom Asacker writes, I read. Opportunity Screams is the right message for the right time.
Tom Peters
Tom, a big problem in marketing is that despite a bounty of evidence showing emotions to be the most powerful factor in decision making -- even among Wall Street's financial analysts -- marketers in general continue to stress quantitatively framed reasons why consumers should buy this or that brand.
All one needs to do to understand this is to read Antonio Damasio's "Descartes' Error." According to his research no reliable decision cn be made sans an emotional response to the matter at hand.
In your previous post you said, "A few months ago, BusinessWeek analyzed the results of the least forwarded ads on TV based on Tivo’s data on 20,000 households. They reported that the one lesson from the Tivo ratings is that "relevancy outweighs creativity in TV commercials - by a lot."
Emotions are the touchstone of relevance. With literally trillions of bits of information streaming into the brain from the senses, unconsciously operating processors in the brain must narrow the flow of information to a level that can be processed by the conscious mind through a process I call "information triage." For information (such as a marketing message) to survive the processes of information triage and assuredly reach the conscious mind, it has to have some degree of relevance. It is through emotional arousal that the unconscious brain alerts the conscious mind of the importance of incoming information.
Thus, it is more the "clutter in the brain" that is the barrier that challenges marketers more than ad clutter in media.
David
Posted by: David Wolfe | November 15, 2007 at 09:43 AM
Great comment David! So then, how do we get this "message" across? :)
Posted by: Tom Asacker | November 16, 2007 at 10:19 AM
First impressions are huge as many of our decisions are made below the conscious level. However I hypothesize that for long drawn out decisions, like deciding who to vote for, or which car to buy, people involve more logical criteria into their final decision. I heard some poll mentioned in Meet the Press where a good portion of voters say they might change their mind about who to support. I really appreciate your great work.
Posted by: Chuck | November 22, 2007 at 03:55 AM
Hi Chuck,
Thanks for stopping by and for the kind words!
I agree with you that "drawn out decisions" tend to involve more "logical" criteria; e.g. comparisons. However, I read the Meet the Press report differently.
In my view, most people have not had their emotions positively aroused by any of the candidates, in a way that creates strong preference. And so, they are sitting on the fence waiting for an emotionally relevant leader to emerge.
Posted by: Tom Asacker | November 22, 2007 at 11:10 AM
It is so hard to definite a real consumer’s reason to make a purchase. Cause it depends of sort of thing that we want to buy. If I open my favorite magazine and see six or seven ads of car, my decision will depends of its design, advantage, advice of my friends and more. Emotion is just only one of the main factors. It is so expansive to buy a car if I would often make a purchase based on my emotions.
It is clear with politic voting, may be I can only choose a candidate and it is my irrational act , cause I not should pay money for good.
Posted by: Fashad | December 03, 2007 at 04:51 AM