Here are some slides (in Swedish) from a seminar that my psychologist friend Samuel Hugosson held a couple of weeks ago. The brief was simple: How can we improve the conditions under which creative work takes place?

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The slideshow does of course not tell the whole story, but there are some interesting bits in there. If you’re interested in hearing more about creativity at the workplace, let me know!

Neuromarketing as the potential to be an interesting tool for understanding human brain activity and behavior. There’s a significant bottleneck in application, however: performing brain scans (fMRI) is incredibly expensive. As an example, Omnicom, a global marketing coms network, bases its global neuro-based media planning on a sample of 16 people. So, for neuromarketing to grow as a concept, research needs to be cheaper, and more convenient.

Neuroscientist Christopher deCharms shows how fMRI can be conducted in real time. Maybe this will lead the way to the next gen neuromarketing research.

What: What is neuroplanning?
Where: Reklamförbundet
When: February 20th @ 18.00

APG Sweden

An old friend of mine, Samuel, is a cognitive behavioural psychologist and a goldmine for insights into human behaviour. As a planner I have been compelled to learn about the key principles of cognitive behavioural psychology or CBT.

The interesting part about CBT practioners is that they treat the human mind as a black box, downplaying the analysis of feelings or thoughts. The logic here is that the mind is so dynamic that trying to predict behaviour through attitude change is meaningless. Instead, the focus is on analysing inputs and outputs: if we change A in the environment of the subject, what will be the resulting behaviour B?

In short, a persons behaviour sequence looks something like this:

1. Antecedents (something that triggers behaviour) > 2. Behaviour (the action itself) > 3. Consequence (the reward).

I have tried to make sense of this from a branding and communications perspective. Here’s a summary of my findings.

Modify or die
According to the behavioural line of thought, the core principle of branding and communications should always be about modifying or reinforcing behaviour. Thoughts and feelings are nice to change, but when it comes to business, action speaks louder than words.

Hasn’t advertising always been about stimulating behaviour?
Both yes and no. Advertising, in its broadest definition, stimulates feelings or thoughts which in turn might (or might not) change behaviour. Since seeing a newspaper ad or watching a TV ad is quite far from the actual behaviour (e.g. the buying), its role can not be any other than generating positive thoughts about a brand or product. But nobody runs down to the store to try a new product straight away after watching an ad.

Following this argument, there some implications for how we design branding and communications:

1. Communications should guide behaviour by rewarding it. The best example of behaviour-guiding communications are in-store promotions or coupons where the behaviour is directly rewarded through a monetary incentive.

2. Communications should make sure the consequences of the behaviour at hand are clear. Trial marketing is an example of this, as it lets people experience the consequence of the product for free. Experience marketing takes this one step further by incorporating the promise with the actual delivery.

One could argue that there’s nothing new here. Companies like Procter & Gamble have been practising this for decades. Yet, if advertising ultimately is about stimulating behaviour, why does it focus so much on stimulating the black box, the thoughts and feelings? Maybe because most advertising and consumer behaviour theories and models taught at business schools are over 50 years old.

Solution: be more precise about examining the consumer behaviour in each specific case and be more flexible about the design of integrated communications and the role of each media. Channels should be seen as complements rather than substitutes. Ideally, this should result in a smart combination of highly creative and inspiring “above-the-line” ads with effective point-of-purchase comms in one integrated package. More Gorillas and less tactical advertising (“cheap bananas”) on TV!

Branded action, not branded words
3. Employer branding should be behaviour-driven, not value-driven. A large Swedish bank boats core values like Commitment, Continuity, Mutual respect and Professionalism. From a behaviour perspective, abstract words like these are hard to decode into action and therefore rather useless. What does “professionalism” imply for the day-to-day behaviour of most employees? Probably not a lot.

Solution: break every brand principle down to tangible instructions for action.

What do you think about this?

This answers the old question “If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich?”. ‘Cause I spent it all on women and booze!

Science Blog

According to a small survey done by Cognitive Daily, humans can identify faces from non-faces with very little information. As little as 6 by 7 pixels is needed to identify faces. That’s amazing.

Can you recognize the face above? If not, click here.