What we tell ourselves is hooey
We’ve spent a lot of time in some recent podcasts harping on the idea that many traditional means of research – especially surveys and focus groups – fail to provide true insight into consumer motivations because what people say often doesn’t correlate with what they do. One of our favorite sources for this philosophy is Martin Lindstrom, author of the best-seller “Buyology” and consultant to Fortune 500 companies. Lindstrom’s recent work regarding the power of sound to impact consumer behavior was recently featured in Time, with the article titled “Neural Advertising: The Sounds We Can’t Resist.” There’s a lot of great information in the article and we encourage you to read it. But our favorite part was the lead-in, which sums up very nicely our belief that you can’t trust what people tell you:
“If you’re like most people, you’re way too smart for advertising. You flip right past newspaper ads, never click on ads online and leave the room during TV commercials. That, at least, is what we tell ourselves. But what we tell ourselves is hooey. Advertising works, which is why, even in hard economic times, Madison Avenue is a $34 billion–a–year business.”
We’ve covered this ground before in this blog (see posts, “The demise of old marketing: ‘I’m not dead yet!’” and “Truth #4: If you want to know what will work in healthcare marketing, don’t ask your customers.”) But we’re encouraged that this type of thinking has found its way to mainstream media. And we’ll keep beating this drum until we see more hospitals and healthcare systems trying different approaches (such as metaphor-based interviews and ethnography) to better learn how consumers really think and act.
- Published: February 25, 2010
- Filed under: Innovation, Marketing, Trends