At his presentation at The Un-Conference: 360 Degrees of Brand Strategy for a Changing World, Chris Wren included this deceptively simple observation: “Follow the insights,” he suggested, “Wherever they may lead”.
One could argue that marketing has never been less instinctive – and maybe that’s not a bad thing.
Communication is just one tool to convey brand message. Marketers and brand strategists are not employed by companies to create communications – they are employed to create change in consumer behavior. Instead of deluging customers with messages about the point a brand is trying to make, imagine how a brand might let customers experience the point it’s trying to make.
Metrics and big data are on everyone’s minds it seems these days – a symptom of the market’s continuing obsession with quants as measurement of proof, and indeed proof of measurement.
We get it so wrong don’t we? We develop ideas and look to see if they’ll work by intricately studying people’s actions and reactions. We poll them. We survey them. We sample them. We question them exhaustively. Whereas, what we should be doing, according to Dr. Art Markman, is studying our customers’ habits and developing products and services that fit with how people want to behave.
