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I once read about a psychological study designed to see how people would react to flawed reasoning, even when it flew in the face of their own very sensible judgment. It was quite revealing. In the study two people, A and B, were seated on opposite sides of a dividing wall, looking at a screen. Each person was instructed to learn by trial and error how to recognize the difference between slides of healthy cells and sick cells. For each slide, they had to push one of two buttons in front of them, “Healthy” or “Sick,” at which point one of two lamps, labeled “Right” and “Wrong,” would light up.
Person A received true feedback, meaning that his “Right” lamp would light up when he was correct and his “Wrong” lamp would light up when he was incorrect. These people—the A’s—learned to tell the difference between healthy and sick cells with a high level of accuracy. Person B’s situation was quite different. His right or wrong lamps lit up based not on his own guesses but on Person A’s guesses. He didn’t know it, but he was searching for an order where none could possibly exist.
A and B were then asked to work together to establish the rules for determining healthy vs. sick cells. The A’s told the B’s what they had learned and what simple characteristics they had looked for to tell the difference. Bs’ explanations, by necessity, were subtle and quite complex—and completely bogus.
Here’s the amazing part. After their collaboration, all B’s and nearly all A’s came to believe that the delusional B had a much better understanding of healthy vs. sick cells. In fact, A’s were impressed with B’s sophisticated brilliance, and felt inferior because of the pedestrian simplicity of their assumptions. In a follow-up test, the B’s showed almost no improvement, but the A’s scores dropped because the A’s had incorporated some of B’s completely baseless ideas.
This study teaches us two important aspects with regards to branding or, for that matter, any business concept. First, once an explanation for something has taken hold of our minds, information that should refute that explanation may produce not an appropriate change of mind but rather an elaboration of the flawed explanation. It also teaches us to beware (be aware) of abstruse ideas, no matter how convincing the presentation or how brilliant the so-called expert.
The signal-to-noise ratio in the fields of branding and marketing is becoming dangerously low as the level of background noise becomes more and more obtrusive, enabled by platforms like blogging and Twitter and amplified by traditional publishers desperately searching for an audience for their rapidly shrinking businesses. If you're an A in this environment, you should be very, very careful. And try like hell to stay away from the B's.
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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.
Fascinating study. I've heard of similar, but this is possibly the most applicable I've heard of. I would caution readers who are business people to keep in mind that this not only symbolizes the false logic that can cause multiple "Brand A's and B's" to go astray in their marketing, but also how a provider of services and/or goods (being "A") can fall prey to bogus logic on the part of a lot of advertising executives (being "B.")
In some cases the ad executive is not just trying to sell you ineffective advertising in order to earn a profit for his company or a commission for himself: he actually believes he has found "order" when all he has done is randomly pluck methods out of the air and mentally associate them with outcomes. In simpler terms, he's telling you that certain advertising methods will increase your business based on logic that is either false or is now obsolete. But he actually thinks he's right and YOU think he's right, deferring to his seemingly "superior intellect" in the advertising game.
The truth is, if you REALLY understand what business you are in (far beyond "making a profit"), get to know your customers and what they think will make their lives better today and in the long run, and actually seek to engage in an ongoing relationship with them, you stand a chance to actually foster loyalty (assuming your products and/or goods really are of sufficient quality and and value to them.) And you will gain a better feel -- possibly a strong visceral sense -- of how and where to better get the word out about your brand. You might well discover that a lot of what you are told by ad execs and agents is false.
A related rhetorical question:
If you know ad agencies will work to promote brands that are "no good" in your mind, is it possible that they might be trying to convince YOU to buy THEIR brand of bad advice?
A little piece of advice I would offer is that if an ad sales rep or so-called "marketing expert" is working with you and never talks about ideas such as those Tom Asacker shares, you owe it to yourself to explore why they are not. Perhaps you need to do your homework as a consumer of marketing services. It might be time for you to "shop around" a bit more.
There are some very good marketing and branding consultants out there. It is up to you as a wise consumer of those service to choose wisely. It also pays to have a consultant/advisor in this area that is not directly tied to one advertising venue (in other words, find someone who wants to work for YOU, and not for a particular magazine, newspaper, cable company, etc.) Seek the advice of someone who can truly help you find the right methods and the right venues for getting the word out. Someone who gets paid for helping you accomplish your goals instead of the goals of some publication, network, website, etc.
Posted by: Dan Gunter | June 29, 2009 at 07:55 AM
This is what happened to me when posting video. At first it was not producing favorable results. I was only achieving views. Everyone was saying it doesn't work. All of that changed when I posted my videos free to http://www.Adwido.com and they targeted specific keywords for business to boost search engine traffic.
Posted by: Seh | June 29, 2009 at 11:33 PM