Ben Franklin’s Marketing Tip

When you like someone, you do nice things for them, right? Not necessarily. Psychologists tell us that it can work the other way around: we like people more when we’re nice to them. (The reverse is also true: we come to hate those we treat badly.)

This doesn’t seem to make sense until you look at it through the lens of cognitive dissonance, which is the mental discomfort that comes from holding conflicting thoughts. Your subconscious thought process goes something like this: I just did something nice for someone I don’t like. What?! Why would I do that? I guess I do like him.

The phenomenon is called the Ben Franklin Effect. Franklin was a keen observer of human nature (and “master marketer”). The story goes that he once turned a detractor into an ally—“without paying any servile respect to him”—just by writing to the man to ask whether he could borrow a particularly unusual book from his library. Franklin was known to be a book collector, so the rival was flattered. He sent the book, and Franklin returned it a week later with a thank-you note. Subsequently, the two became good friends.

Can we apply the Ben Franklin Effect to marketing? We should of course keep striving to serve our customers and clients, but maybe we should also consider what we can ask them to do for us. I don’t see this magically converting people who just don’t like or want what you have to offer. But I do see it as a way to strengthen engagement with, and positive feelings for, your brand.

How to go about doing this? Typically, we ask customers to do something for us in return for something. But it may be better if you don’t return the favor immediately. That leaves some space for the effect to kick in.

For example, a bread bakery in my town closed for a number of weeks to renovate and expand. The owners made a special appeal to their customers to help them through the income gap by purchasing “bread futures”—to pay them now for bread they would get later, when the bakery reopened. I’m sure this was a purely practical request on the part of the bakers. But it was also good marketing. Anyone who bought bread futures was probably already a regular, but I suspect that they felt even more devoted to the bakery after extending themselves in this way.

What can your customers do for you?

Ignore them only if you have money to spare.

As a consciously documented representation of your company, branding is the foundation of your communications. Marketing, PR, and sales are how you tailor the brand to specific people and groups. Refining your brand is an ongoing process, but in general major changes in brand happen less frequently than changes in marketing, PR, or sales approaches.

As least it should work this way. But when companies don’t develop brand guidelines, their employees are forced to improvise and readdress brand issues with each project. No fun and bad business.That is what makes brand guidelines so important. They articulate the brand, so employees are not forced to do so on their own. This might seem obvious, but our experience shows that many companies don’t feel guidelines are worth the time.

If you want the best from your employees—saving time and resources, and helping ensure success—provide them with corporate brand guidelines.

Guidelines can vary in length and complexity, but at their core they include how to talk about your company, and how to use the visuals associated with the brand, such as the logo, colors, and design elements (See Honeywell’s brand guidelines).

A few years back, we—in association with Lori Cohen and Mavens & Moguls—rebranded Bridgewell, a Boston-area service provider to adults with disabilities. Before the rebrand, the organization had been burdened with:

• An embarrassing and soporific name: The Greater Lynn Mental Health and Retardation Association, or GLMHRA

• A logo of a bird that seemed more fitting for an undertaker

• No specified talking points

• No rules for design

With the rebrand and guidelines, the employees were ecstatic. They said it was the first time they knew how to speak about their organization. It was the first time they felt the brand truly represented who there are and what they do. And it was the first time they didn’t put people to sleep reciting the name.

The Pros of Providing Guidelines

Providing clear goals—and brand guidelines are a set of goals—makes for happier employees, and studies show that happy employees are worth the investment. Goals are important because they are tangible, and accomplishing goals is pleasurable and motivating. On a practical level, they keep people focused on what is important, and away from what isn’t.

The Cons of Casting Away Guidelines

In the last two years, we’ve had two clients drop their brand guidelines. Interestingly enough, in both cases this corresponded with a new marketing hire or hires. This is not a surprise. Organizations often feel a need to start fresh in one fell swoop. It feels decisive, and the new hires are excited because it gives them a chance to “make their mark on a clean slate.”

In our experience, though, the new marketing hires lose focus. They want to please their new employer, but they are confused. What is the brand, and how will their work be measured? How will they know if their marketing is on target? With no clear guidelines, decision-making about messaging, colors, photos, fonts, etc. becomes subjective. When we start to hear, “I’ll know it when I see it,” we know that the new hire is casting about. The focus should always be, “I’ll know it, because we figured it out already.”

Remember, the dark side of “leaving your mark on a clean slate” is the wasteful “reinventing the wheel.”

Tips

• Assign a brand cop who is responsible for brand adherence.

• Don’t change brand guidelines at the same time as making important new hires. Let the new folk settle in first.

• As an employee, be wary of leadership that doesn’t respect branding. This will make your job more difficult.

Everybody Needs Guidelines

The beauty of guidelines is that they allow your employees to focus on more important details than figuring out your brand on a whim. They also give everybody a common set of goals, introducing a healthy degree of objectivity into decisions. Creating guidelines involves an initial investment, but in the long run they save time, money, and frustration. Your employees want to be happy and succeed—it is your job as a manager to provide the right goals to make that happen.

Chime in: How have you handled a change in brand guidelines?

Neuromarketing works best when cross-referenced with other research.

When I was in the Peace Corps, our bible, so to speak,was Where There is No Doctor, the most widely used health-education book in tropical and subtropical countries. (It’s been translated into more than 100 languages!)

This testament to better health provides valuable advice, such as: if a variety of people give the same indigenous cure for something, the cure works. But if a variety of people provide different cures, nobody knows the answer.

I love this and believe that it applies to everything. What is God? (No agreement) What happens after death? (No agreement) What is the best way to package soup? (Agreement! Read below.)

This approach actually has a name in research, where it is referred to as triangulation. Triangulation is the idea that you can be more confident about a result if different research methods lead to the same result.

And triangulation provides the best way to apply neuroscience to marketing.

About a month ago, Campbell’s made neuromarketing news with an article in the Wall Street Journal (note: readers can see only the lead two graphs without subscribing). The piece chronicled how Campbell’s had employed neuromarketing research in redesigning their iconic soup-can labels. It was reported that Campbell’s made major marketing decisions based on biometrics—measuring where subjects’ eyes focused, changes in their heart rates, skin moisture, and so on.

The article itself became a news story—at least in the Twitter and blogging world—because of what it implied. Critics decried the firm’s supposed reliance on neuromarketing, which some called pseudoscience, and the study’s small sample-group size: forty. Was Campbell’s insane to make such major marketing decisions based on such limited research?

A week later, neuromarketing blogger Jennifer Williams provided an intelligent analysis of the situation in Fast Company. Williams spent time digging a little deeper into the work that Campbell’s had done over the past two years, revealing that the company was not as suicidal as it might have first appeared.

Campbell’s research was actually quite extensive. It involved more than 1,500 subjects, and they brought in several companies to conduct different types of analysis at various points in the process. Campbell’s was not insane, unless by insane you mean insanely smart. Williams’s article cooled the debate, and helped put neuromarketing in perspective.

Specifically, I mean that neuromarketing is best used as one of several research methods, whose results can be compared to one another. This is what Campbell’s did when they “triangulated” their research, as Williams noted.

Neuromarketing may be the most remarkable tool to grace marketing’s toolbox in generations, but it is not a magic bullet (well, not yet). Use it wisely: cross-reference it.

Stop your fawning, and invest in process as much as in people.

A few weeks back at a CIA base in Afghanistan,  a lone Jordanian doctor/double agent managed to blow up seven highly trained CIA operatives, including the base chief. How did he get so close to so many important people? There appear to be several reasons, but one of the most critical is that the CIA fell victim to thinking the doctor would be a superstar operative for them against Al-Qaida. In their exuberance, protective protocol was skipped.

Humans want superstars. We look for war heroes, industry wonders, and sports titans. Their images grace bedroom walls, peer at us from magazine covers, and demand large sums of money to be watched or heard. Marketing superstars are no different. A quick Google search unleashes a stream of ways to find (or better yet, become) a marketing superstar. This “star quest” might not be so bad if it meant only that we buried our noses in Us and People, but as we know, obsessing over stars can lead to all sorts of problems. What’s behind this?

The Halo Effect
When somebody is really good at one thing, we are more likely to believe that person will be better at everything. We believe that Tiger Woods’ unfailing golf skills, for example, mean that he also will be more intelligent, more moral, and a better husband. We translate one type of triumph into others until … voilà … über-success!

Rankism
Humans naturally create hierarchies. Everybody wants to be a “somebody.” A good way to do this is by associating yourself with the superstars that we help create. Following the famous on Twitter, going to book signings, or reading star tabloids, are perfect examples of this. Of course, the shadow side of manufacturing “somebodies” is that others have to be “nobodies.”

Inspiration
Many people hope they will move up the ranks and become superstars like their heroes. Superstars can be very motivating. “They were once like me,” we say, “So I have a chance at stardom too.”

Fear of Death
The assumption is that people don’t want to die, which leads to behaviors such as investing in things that live on after our death. These legacy investments include spiritual beliefs, and cultural beliefs such as “rags to riches” stories that are made incarnate in celebrities including Bill Gates and Oprah Winfrey. We “worship” these ideas and people. In several studies, people were more positive toward celebrities when they were first reminded of death, suggesting that we cope with the awareness of death by loving superstars whose fame appears to bring them immortality.

In recent years, the biggest opponent of superstardom has been Malcolm Gladwell, who has made it a hallmark of his populist books. Gladwell fights against the Horatio Alger myth—the falsehood that people move up through the ranks only through Olympian rugged individualism. This quote from his best-selling Outliers is typical:

“Superstar lawyers and math whizzes and software entrepreneurs appear at first blush to lie outside ordinary experience. But they don’t. They are products of history and community, of opportunity and legacy. Their success is not exceptional or mysterious. It is grounded in a web of advantages and inheritances, some deserved, some not, some earned, some just plain lucky—but all critical to making them who they are.”

The “superstar,” such as Horatio, is a myth, and a dangerous one. If you are hiring a superstar in marketing or creative, he or she is more likely to:

• Be more expensive (and not worth it)

• Be less loyal to you (and more loyal to self-success)

• Piss off other employees (because he/she is treated differently)

• Reach too far and fumble. The halo effect doesn’t just affect fans, it also means superstars themselves are more likely to believe their powers are greater, and more far-reaching, than they are.

• Fail more spectacularly than others when they do fall. (The higher you go…)

If marketing and creative superstars are not all they are cracked up to be, what can you do when it comes to hiring?

• Institute trial periods, or try to hire half time before you fully commit. Of course, you can let workers go at any time and workers can leave at any time, but acknowledging this aligns expectations between employee and employer.

• Hire for those things that are impossible to learn, such as personal skills, temperament, and motivation. Many technical skills are actually easier to learn than personality traits, given the right motivation.

• Hire people who believe that intelligence can be fostered. People generally fall into two camps concerning intelligence: they believe either that it is a fixed trait, or that it can be developed over time. You want employees who believe intelligence can be fostered, which studies show is true. These are the employees who will learn and grow.

• Praise employees for effort and not intelligence. In studies, those praised for their intelligence were reluctant to tackle difficult tasks—for fear of failure—and their performance on subsequent tests soon began to suffer.

• Organizations that are most successful are the ones where the system is the star. Good examples of this approach include some of America’s most successful companies, such as Procter & Gamble and Southwest Airlines. As Boris Groysberg, an associate professor at Harvard Business School, says, “It’s so prevalent in our society that people think they become stars because of who they are. We downplay the role of institutions in creating those stars. If you look at what happens when these people leave a firm or organization, they often do not become stars elsewhere.”

Build it and they will pay attention

Scientists have discovered the “trust molecule”: oxytocin. One whiff of this hormone and even people you were specifically told aren’t trustworthy will suddenly seem like Boy Scouts. But until the day we can purchase Parfum de Confiance, we are left inducing trust the old-fashioned way: we have to earn it.

This is no small challenge, especially for companies with no track record, such as start-ups or companies moving into new markets. I believe that trust is the most important thing you can cultivate as a business owner. Who cares if you sell the best widget if nobody trusts you? As Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said in the October 2009 issue of Fast Company:

The message you get, in a lot of ways, is actually less important than whom you get it from. If you get it from someone you trust, you’ll listen to it. Whereas if you get it from someone you don’t trust, you might actually believe the opposite of what is said. I think that’s the basis of the value that people get on the site [Facebook].

So how do you encourage trust?

1. Commit to a promise. Define what you do, and don’t do. Branding helps, because it defines what customers can expect from you. An unclear brand sends mixed messages, and is inherently harder to trust.
2. Put your money where your mouth is. If you say that you are part of a community, follow through with that. Trident’s support of the Smiles Across America campaign to improve kids’ dental health is a good example.
3. Don’t expect social media to offer an easy way to build trust. There is a lot of talk about how social media can enhance trust, and there are advantages, but it is no panacea. If you try to pull the wool over others’ eyes, no matter the medium, it will come back to haunt you in the end. Who you are offline will come through online.
4. Network the old-fashioned way. Get out and spend time with others, and remember to look outside your community (market, geographic, et al). As Robert Menschel, who has had a successful career at Goldman Sachs for over a half century, says about personal networking with people from other professions, “It helped me to understand why other people do what they do—which is important in life and in business. You don’t learn anything from talking to sameness.” And he has built remarkable fruitful friendships—an ultimate definition of trust.
5. Show off your triumphs; practice shameless self-promotion.
6. If you are a start-up, take a token salary to start with. That shows commitment to the business, and reflects well on you and your commitment to something bigger than yourself.
7. Keep up appearances. Humans make snap judgments, so your first impression had better be the best it can be. Pay attention to your dress and demeanor, as well as your office’s location and décor. This is not to say you have to go over the top—not financially wise choice with a start-up—but everything about your operation should look professional.

Why we say we can predict anything … after the fact

Creativity needs room to breathe. There is no faster way to suffocate imagination than negative comments such as “I’ve seen that before” and “That’s not new.” Likewise, when a project doesn’t go well, somebody usually chimes in with “You should have seen that coming,” implying that they did but didn’t want to say anything.

Where exactly do these comments come from? No, “jerks” is not exactly the source I’m referring to. They are the result of “hindsight bias,” our human tendency to view things as much more predictable than they actually are—when considering events after they happened. In other words, it is Monday morning quarterbacking.

The hindsight bias is scarily powerful. In a classic study, subjects responded with “I would have predicted that” to comments that directly contradicted one another. Also, people will incorrectly remember their own predictions depending on the outcome of an event. For example, before an ad campaign, a manager may have anticipated an 80 percent success rate. But if the campaign fails, he is likely to recall having given it a lower chance of success.

Lastly, we are more likely to exhibit hindsight bias when it works in our favor, and less likely to show it when it works in favor of others. In other words, you always knew you would succeed, and you always knew that others wouldn’t. As the saying goes, hindsight is 20/20.

What possible good could come from such a bias? We evolved to learn from our mistakes, even if that means rewriting history. Hindsight is how we update previous assumptions. Despite being told that assuming “only makes an ass out of you and me,” we are built to do it. At least our assumptions can become more nuanced and refined over time/as we age. Unfortunately, the cost may involve ignoring the truth and stepping on others’ toes.

An understanding of the hindsight bias can help you plan marketing. Remember these points:

1.    Be suspicious of post hoc (after the fact) explanations of why, for example, your campaign was or was not successful. They are usually examples of hindsight bias rather than accurate assessments.
2.    Work with your marketing team to gauge the probable success of different marketing scenarios, both good and bad. Pretend it is the end of your campaign, and assume that the campaign did not work. Then explain why it failed. Next, assume that it did was successful, and work backwards to create the campaign that will lead to those precise results. This is using hindsight before the fact. This helps deflate later hindsight bias, and makes assessment more objective. The best part is that you are actually creating foresight out of hindsight. This is a great way to predict potential trouble spots before you launch a campaign/before you make a decision.
3.    Acknowledge that you are susceptible to hindsight bias. To counteract this, get outside advice before making decisions. The hindsight bias favors us responding to areas in which we previously have been successful. For example, if you’ve had a lot of luck with radio, you are less likely to consider other ad venues, even if they show success. Or the bias can cause interviewers to reject job applicants who have succeeded in areas new to the interviewers.
4.    Employees benefit from constant and continual feedback. Don’t expect them to self-correct. Studies show that knowledge can remain unchanged without feedback. Employees might not give you credit for their growth—hindsight bias will make them believe they improved themselves—but who cares? The important thing is that they will become better employees.
5.    Don’t let hindsight bias get in the way of creative thinking. Don’t allow others to pooh-pooh ideas as “obvious” or “unoriginal.” All ideas should be on the table until proven unworkable.

Rocking the boat actually brings smoother sailing

You may be surprised, but I’ve often felt that consultants are overrated. What they give—a binder of good suggestions—doesn’t always  justify the fee. But often consultants can provide something no insider can: a new perspective. A consultant’s success may have less to do with their product than their simple presence. This is because newcomers, studies show, shake up an organization’s harmony just enough to introduce a greater level of productivity.

Groups—such as those in your company, school, or nonprofit—naturally steer toward harmony. It may not always feel harmonious, but maintaining group harmony is a human tendency we all share. That is usually all well and good, but it can become a liability.

A recent issue of Scientific American Mind reports that researchers at Northwestern University found that newcomers do far more than introduce new ideas. They also foster more and better thinking from employees. This is especially true when the outsider agrees with some, but not all, existing group members.

Success happens because outsiders force insiders to use our brains more. We must analyze what we believe, articulate what we mean, and question what we assume. We can’t simply fall back on group dynamics, such as doing whatever the leader says. Can interaction with outsiders be seen as a threat to the group? Yes, but it also facilitates better decision-making.

What’s true of consultants and other outsiders applies to new hires as well. Research coauthored at Brigham Young University found that better decisions come from teams that include a “socially distinct newcomer. That’s psychology-speak for someone who is different enough to bump other team members out of their comfort zones.” Study coauthor Katie Liljenquist of BYU’s Marriott School of Management says “the mere presence of a newcomer who is socially distinct can really shake up the group dynamic. That leads to discomfort, but also to a better process that ultimately yields superior outcomes.”

Tips

• Remind your group that newcomers and outsiders are an asset. You may think this is obvious, but it isn’t. Liljenquist reminds us that most people believe harmonious groups are more effective than they really are. The first step toward success is getting group members to rethink this false assumption.

• An outsider can be an insider to your organization, but from a different department.

• Discuss this “shake-’em-up to produce new ideas” dynamic with a consultant before hiring; then use it to your advantage. Have the consultant prod and encourage dissent, where appropriate.

Remember, creating a homogenous group might be comforting to the group, but it will not make the best decisions about serving clients, customers, and students. Rocking the boat a bit will actually lead to smoother sailing.

Podcast: Synaptic Branding 003: A World of Inspiration

The 10,000 hour rule, dating other cultures, and creativity

I grew up drawing and painting. With my grandmother’s intervention, I even had the opportunity to have my work critiqued by Andrew Wyeth. Andy’s advice: if you want to be good, you just have to put in your time. He was so right. Studies have resulted in the 10,000-hour rule, which has been heavily promoted by Malcolm Gladwell. Researchers now tell us that regardless of innate intelligence or talent, the most critical factor to success is putting in time—10,000 hours of time to be specific.

But when it comes to boosting your creative powers, place is as important as time, and from my own experience place means living abroad. Studies have shown that living overseas—not just traveling—improves creative thinking. The truth was that my artwork waned in the few years after spending time with Andy. And then I left for the Peace Corps. I had tossed some art supplies into my duffle as an afterthought. For months they sat untouched. Then I picked up the pencil and brushes and I couldn’t stop.

What happened?

William W. Maddux, of INSEAD and Adam D. Galinsky of Northwestern University conducted the studies that showed a direct correlation between living abroad and being creative. Their lead hypothesis is that adaption is the key to sparking creativity. They write:

“Because culture is such a pervasive force, impacting and shaping every aspect of one’s life, adapting oneself to a new culture—learning how to behave and think in different way [sic]—may make individuals chronically aware of multiple perspectives and approaches when dealing with mundane and novel situations and, thus, may be associated with increased creativity.”

What is not clear is how long this creative shot-in-the-arm lasts. That will be the focus of Maddux and Galinsky’s next work. My artwork of Mali has sustained me for two decades.

Nevertheless, if you believe that creativity can help your organization, you could do well to think international. My experience has been that ANY experience that gets you out of your environment and thinking a different way is helpful. The key is that it takes time, and is not a product of a few exercises. This can include learning a language. Find a new topic to study, and take night classes. Volunteer. Imagination requires that you get out of your routine, and our culture is about the biggest routine going. You can love your culture, but when it comes to fostering creativity, it helps to date around. Investigate hiring people from outside of the US, or people who grew up in two cultures (i.e., immigrants and children of immigrants) for creative positions. Lastly, if you ever get the chance outside our culture—go for it. Take it from Maddux, Galinsky and me, you and your business will never regret it.