Being direct... AdVantage Mar 2002
The Other Side of Marketing ...
Understanding How People Make their Choices.
One of the many 'curses' of my journey through this life is my seemingly insatiable need to learn the how and why of the things that interest me - particularly issues relating to my chosen field of marketing communication. This has sometimes resulted in positive spin-off, in the sense that it makes me seek out and read lots of seemingly unrelated material - some of which occasionally and often unexpectedly, provides meaningful illumination to my journey of understanding. One such recent experience is a book by Professors Paul R Lawrence and Nitin Nohria of Harvard Business School, called 'Driven - How Human Nature Shapes Our Choices'.
I have long questioned the idea that people are simply pliant 'victims' of the marketing communication process, consuming their various media with passionate abandonment, just waiting for the advertising triggers contained therein to motivate their very existence. Well, this book debunks that theory for once and for all, and in fact, explains that while human beings are indeed a complex combination of their genetic past as well as their environmental conditioning - the manner by which we humans assimilate and process information is rather intricate, and cannot be explained away by suggesting that we are merely the ultimate suppliant.
To begin with, according to Lawrence and Nohria, all humans have a persistent drive to acquire… objects, experiences, money, and so on to improve their status relative to others. This is genetically induced, and is based upon our evolutionary survival instinct. In addition, we need to understand that there are three other equally important and equally innate human drives: the need to BOND with others in long-term caring committed relationships; the need to LEARN and make sense of the world around us; and finally, the need to DEFEND one's loved ones and resources from harm. In summary, Four Drives: Getting, Loving, Learning, Defending.
The authors start out by challenging one of the time-honored assumptions of economics: that people are PRIMARILY maximizers of their own self-interest. They say that they had long been uncomfortable with the (economists) simplistic view of self-interest, rather accepting that most human motivation begins as subconscious drives - drives that then become manifested as conscious emotions and then are later influenced by rational calculations. They suggest that there is much evidence that pure self-interest, whilst itself a powerful drive, could not alone account for all human behavior.
It is not my purpose here to discuss the evidence or detailed motivation for their thesis. So, I invite you to order the book from publisher Jossey-Bass - available here in SA through Exclusive Books, which is where I got my copy - and read it all for yourself. All I can tell you is that it makes a great deal of sense to me, particularly when it comes to understanding the need to Bond and the need to Learn. What I would like to propose however is how the four-drive concept helps us to understand the broader issue of making choices.
The book schematically describes the process of how the mind works, and those of us in marketing communication should pay particular attention to this process, as I have no doubt that an understanding of how people make choices can help us produce much more effective communication. Information passes to the brain through the sense organs. This information may be in the form of cultural cues (such as the raised eyebrow of an elder), observation of well-known things, or observations of a new situation. Though our example deals with visual information processed through the eyes, the model applies equally to information processed through the nose, the ears, the skin and so on.
The signals the brain receives from the sense organs are processed through the limbic system, where the four drives reside. Here these signals are loaded with emotional markers depending on which of the four drives they trigger. Of course any signal may be loaded with more than one emotion, as when the drive to acquire a coveted sports car competes with the bonded obligation to save money and be safe for one's family.
These emotionally loaded signals are next processed in the pre-frontal cortex, the home of the working memory and the cognitive capacities that help individuals choose courses of action that would satisfy the drives. This process is mediated by relevant inputs from the long-term memory - the home of representations of skill-sets and of cultural learning. Once a tentative action (for example, to postpone buying the sports car) is chosen through the exercise of human will, this signal feeds back through the limbic center to pick up the emotional energy provided by the drives. These energized signals are then relayed to motor centers that control the muscles and other bodily parts. These actions are what we recognise as human behavior (such as walking away from the showroom in which the tempting car is being displayed). These behaviors in turn generate environmental responses with survival consequences (such as a spouse's loving appreciation) - a new situation with which the individual must now deal. All of this happens very quickly, and such cycles are repeated over and over and over in our every day lives.
It is not difficult therefore to see that the so-called rational (or comparative) balancing of 'needs' with 'obligations' as well as for example, comparing 'new information' about a brand with what is already 'known' or 'experienced' in the context of that brand - has an important role to play in assessing whether or not we react or respond to brand-related stimuli. This suggests that continuity may play a vitally important role in successful marketing communication.
A fascinating subject for sure. One that will probably raise the ire of people who believe that it is too complex to pay much attention to. It's far easier to believe that all we have to do is expose an ad…and like Pavlov's dog, the marketplace will begin salivating…