Immersion Active presents Ageless Marketing

How Young and Old Differ in Perceptions

Psychologist Richard Nisbett describes in his book The Geography of Thought how Japanese subjects asked to study an aquarium brought back to mind in recall testing quite different descriptions of what they saw than American subjects given the same instructions did.

The Japanese described the aquarium environment in great detail but had little to say about a quite noticeably big fish. In contrast, the Americans described the big fish in some detail but gave only a sketchy description of the overall environment.

Recall my post last week about how the Japanese lack a word for self and cannot think about self independent of the relationship a self has with other selves. It is not a matter of the Japanese choosing to not think about self, but that they have no cognitive algorithms for doing so in the same manner we do in the West.

While preparing for my first lecture tour in Japan, I learned about the language-based foundations of perceptual differences between Eastern Asians and Westerners. The core language of Eastern Asians is based on kanji, characters that stand for ideas rather than phonemes. Kanji are initially processed and memorized in the brain’s right hemisphere. In contrast, Western alphabetic characters, which stand for sounds rather than ideas, are initially processed and memorized in the left hemisphere.

Unlike the left brain, which parses reality into categorical bits, the right brain only processes units in the context of its relationships – never in terms of specific attributes that define an object of thought as categorically individualistic.

One might say that Eastern Asians have a blind spot that prevents them from seeing individuals as endowed with attributes, independent of those derived from relationships that mark them different from other individuals. But by the same logic, Westerners have a blind spot that prevents them from seeing individuals as most meaningfully defined by their relationships with other individuals.

Tying this discussion into marketing, young people’s perceptions tend to reflect a more left brain-based view of objects than older people’s perceptions do. The latter tend be more Eastern Asian like in their perceptions.

Thus, a 28-year-old ad creative charged with developing an ad that speaks to people in midlife and beyond faces the challenge of stepping outsides his/her left brain box to get in tune with the stronger right brain bias that is generally characteristic of older minds.

Next: How older and younger minds differ in their perceptions.

Letter from Australia via Romania

Reader Stefan Liute of the Grapefruit agency in Romania wanted to bring this article to the attention of readers of this blog but was unable to transmit the URL because of Typepad's antispam filters. 'ray for Typepad!

However, the article – which actually is about Australian markets – is uncommonly good at exposing the idiocy of focusing on the smaller, shrinking younger adult and youth markets at a time of explosive growth in the vastly more affluent older markets. No point is made in the article that does not apply to every one of the world's 16 developed nations containing over a billion consumers.

Thanks, Stefan

When the Brain's Hemispheres Come Together

A New Yorker cartoon shows an elderly man grimacing as he laments to his wife, “Helen – just as I always feared. My hemispheres are drifting apart.”

Actually, advancing years tend to bring the hemispheres closer together. This is especially true for men who in the first half of life tend to be more highly lateralized to the left side of the brain than women. This is why in male-dominated cultures, women’s “intuition” is accorded less value than reasoning. Until the last quarter of the 20^th century, women’s intuition was the but of countless jokes in movies, sitcoms and nightclub routines.

In later life, men as well as women tend to draw in more balanced fashion from both hemispheres in processing information. Men, in fact, become more feminine-like in their dependence on intuition, relying decisively less on reason than in their earlier years.

Given the majority status of men age 40 and older, it stands to reason that intuition is gaining in reputation. In fact, a number of books on the subject have come out in recent years, one of the latest of which is Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink, which both describes and marvels at the frequency of uncanny decisions made in the unconscious regions of the mind through the processes of intuition.

The increased integration of the hemispheres in later life significantly alters how people parse and perceive reality. Young adults tend to categorize or differentiate objects of mental processes, reflecting left brain biased perceptions of reality. This disposes younger minds to place greater stress on quantitatively justifiable reasons for their decisions than do older minds.

In midlife and beyond, people tend to dedifferentiate objects of mental processes – that is, they look more for relational factors rather than categorical factors. This changes how they perceive everything from their relationships with others to the contents of marketing communications.

I can say without fear of error that it is a rare advertising creative who understands the differences in cognitive processes between people in different seasons of life. To most creatives, what a 25-year-old sees in an ad is essentially no different from what a 55-year-old sees in an ad.

Next: Why consumers in different seasons of life often fail to see the same things in an ad.

East Meets West at the Corpus Collosum

In his remarkable book, The Geography of Thought, University of Michigan psychologist Richard Nisbett describes decisive differences between people in Westerner and East Asian cultures in how they mentally process reality, even in childhood. For example, Western children learn nouns more rapidly than East Asian children while the latter learn verbs more quickly.

The Western mind examines people, objects and matters generally in discreet detail, assigning objects attributes that determine their placement in some evaluative category.

The Eastern mind finds it more difficult to reduce reality to categories. Instead, reality is perceived as a web of relationships in which objects – including people – have no independent identity, but rather are only fully identified by their relationships with other objects.

I discovered this in my first lecture tour of Japan years ago while struggling with translators to find the Japanese equivalent of “self.” Not only do the Japanese lack a word comparable to the English “self”, they have no clear-cut term for “identity.” In Japan, you’re not so much independently defined by “who you are” as by your relationships.

While in the West “self” is a freestanding concept, in the East “self” is like the facet of a diamond: it cannot be removed from its host and examined independently.

The first order of business when two Japanese business executives get together for the first time is typically for the parties to learn about one another in a variety of contextual relationships from that of husband and father to one as golf partner and drinking buddy. This often distresses Americans who want to get down to business right away: I’m Joe Driver, CEO of Apex Whatever. Glad to meet you. Here’s my idea about what we should talk about.”  Joe sees the discussion as independent of who he is. His Japanese counterpart feels he can understand what Joe says only if he understands Joe as a person.

In his remarkable book, The Geography of Thought, University of Michigan psychologist Richard Nisbett describes decisive differences between people in Westerner and East Asian cultures in how they mentally process reality, even in childhood. For example, Western children learn nouns more rapidly than East Asian children while the latter learn verbs more quickly.

The Western mind examines people, objects and matters generally in discreet detail, assigning objects attributes that determine their placement in some evaluative category.

The Eastern mind finds it more difficult to reduce reality to categories. Instead, reality is perceived as a web of relationships in which objects – including people – have no independent identity, but rather are only fully identified by their relationships with other objects.

I discovered this in my first lecture tour of Japan years ago while struggling with translators to find the Japanese equivalent of “self.” Not only do the Japanese lack a word comparable to the English “self”, they have no clear-cut term for “identity.” In Japan, you’re not so much independently defined by “who you are” as by your relationships.

While in the West “self” is a freestanding concept, in the East “self” is like the facet of a diamond: it cannot be removed from its host and examined independently.

The first order of business when two Japanese business executives get together for the first time is typically for the parties to learn about one another in a variety of contextual relationships from that of husband and father to one as golf partner and drinking buddy. This practice often distresses American executives who want to get down to business right away: I’m Joe Driver, CEO of Apex Whatever. Glad to meet you. Here’s my idea about what we should talk about.”  Joe sees the discussion as independent of who he is. His Japanese counterpart feels he can understand what Joe proposes in a business sense only if he understands Joe as a person.

The East Asian concept of reality is colored by a worldview that reflects the more holistic relational tilt of the right brain. The Western worldview reflects a left brain-based categorically distributed perception of reality in which relationships are secondary to the definition of anything.

In a sense, East meets West in the brain at the corpus callosum, the network of fibrous tissue that divides the two hemispheres, but also transmits information between the hemispheres – a fact with particular salience in understanding female consumers, even in the West. I’ll get into that in more detail few postings from now.

(The lovely painting above, East meets West, is lifted from Katherine Lash's website, which I encourage all to visit. Also, if you haven’t done so already, please read the previous posting for a contextual understanding of the origins of this thread. Finally, if you’re not already enjoying the convenience of getting automatic notices of my newest postings, please type your email address in the “Subscribe” box in the left column.)

Go Right, Young Men and Women, Go Right

For some 3,000 years left-brainers have held dominion over the course of human affairs. Now, says author Daniel Pink in a new book, right-brainers will be moving stage center front to take a commanding role in the future of humankind.

Pink develops this idea, which is outlined in the February issue of Wired, in his new book, A Whole New Mind: Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Stage, to be released in March.

  Readers may remember my suggesting in postings some months ago, beginning July 2, 2004, that we have entered what I term the Age of Transcendence, an era that reflects increasingly tenuous connections with the traditional left brain objectively defined reality and strengthened connections to a more intuitive based right brain perspective on reality.

I predict that Malcolm Gladstone’s new book, Blink, will materially advance general awareness of the extraordinary transformation in human consciousness culture taking place. Blink exalts the power of the unconscious mind in divining truth without the tedious, plodding processes of conscious left brain reasoning being involved. 

The postmodern transformation at hand is no less in scale than the transformation in human affairs catalyzed by Copernicus’s repudiation of an earthcentric view of reality and Gutenberg’s printing press, which hastened awareness of that new heresy against the human view of God and Universe.

In economics, the world is experiencing unprecedented changes in the calculus of supply and demand with no economic theory in place to understand what is happening much less to provide guidance for navigating new waters.

In marketing, researchers can survey and focus group-test consumers until the cows come home but will unearth no insights to achieve greater marketing effectiveness.

Pink also predicts major changes in what people study and in the career tracks they will be taking, with the more animated, less rigidly structured emotional right brain playing a larger role in an employer’s assessment of a worker’s value than imaginable even today.

Meanwhile, to many in business, Pink’s proposition that our world is turning toward right brain values remains interesting but not actionable information. How wrong they are. I’ll talk about why over the next several postings.

A Prescription for Naming Drugs

Well, it’s happened again. This past week I landed in the hospital for the second time in less than six months. What I thought was my worse cold in memory turned out to be a sturdy case of pneumonia.

While not the kind of retreat I’d like most to have, both of my recent hospital stays have turned into rich opportunities for deep reflection on a cornucopia of subjects – some quite personal, others connected to my professional life.

Yesterday, the medical muses steered my thoughts toward the art of naming drugs. Among other drugs I’ve been introduced to are coumadin (a blood thinner), and several related to various heart functions: metropolol (heartbeat controller), digoxin (for both slowing and strengthening the heart’s pumping action) and altace whose purpose eludes me for the moment.

So I began wondering how each drug came to be named as it is.

In consumer branding, names are chosen that are believed to be attention-getting, memorable and that have easily inferred metaphorical connections with the product like “Tide’s in. Dirt’s out.”

Prescription drug names are obviously chosen to speak more to doctors than to laypersons. But this practice needs rethinking now that pharmas are advertising directly to end users most of whom are laypersons to the field of medicine.

Doctors are more interested in the chemistry of a drug and its medical efficacies than in how it connects emotionally in patients’ minds. On the other hand, the surest way of gaining patient loyalty to one brand over another when both serve the same purpose equally well is for the first brand to more robustly arouse patients’ emotions than the other.

We now know through brain scans and other means that when a brand fails to arouse a consumer’s emotions it is virtually certain that brand loyalty will not develop. A study out of Duke University a few years back bore out that reality.

So not only brand positioning but also brand naming needs to be see different as pharmas more and more conduct direct-to-consumer marketing of prescription drugs.

I’m Not Getting Older – Just More Complex

Mark Ramsey over on the Radio Marketing Nexus blog confesses to his readers that he not only has a degree in biology, but he frequently draws on the lessons of biology for marketing applications.

Mark also references an interesting Fast Company article on the topic that I too think is worth clicking over to.

One of the main tenets of developmental relationship marketing (DRM) (the handle I’ve installed on my kettle of ideas on marketing) also has its origins in biology. It is the biological definition of growth:

growth, the movement of an organism from a lower and simpler state to a higher and more complex state.

This is a notion has unmeasured implications in marketing. Consider this: A 28-year-old copywriter is assigned to a campaign for a brand whose core market is 60 and above. How does the copywriter, who is at least half the age of members of the target market, know how to approach this market?

I recently picked up a tee shirt in a Sonoma Valley vineyard that states, “I’m not getting older. I’m becoming more complex.”

Like good wines that get better with age, the typical 60-year-old has become more complex and gotten better in many regards with age.

To acquit themselves well in speaking to 60-plus markets, it will help 28-year-old copywriters to recognize how much more complex they are at at age 28 than 18, and go on further to recognize that they will be more complex at 38 than at 28, and even more complex at 48 than at 38, and so on.

A sad thing in marketing in these days when sales growth in many product lines depends on sales in older age groups is the paucity of training of young marketers in the higher and more complex ways of perceiving, thinking and making decisions that are characteristic of older people.

A marketing group that fails to train its younger staff in the ways of older consumers is shortchanging the company behind a product or campaign. It is also not doing a good job of shifting into the customer centric kind of mindset that a higher and more complex operating consumer population has made increasingly important to sales success.

Exactly What Is "Experiential Marketing?"

I recently joined a discussion group, Adrants, to learn more about what’s going on in marketers’ minds around the country.

This morning I got into a thread devoted to defining “experiential marketing.” I was inspired to respond to one person’s definition of “experiential marketing” that left me a bit wanting:

With due respect, Brad, when I read experiential marketing defined as "a fusion of non-traditional modern marketing practices integrated to enhance a consumer's personal and emotional association with a brand," even as I thought the definition read a bit like bureaucratic prose, I wondered what you meant by "non-traditional modern marketing practices."

It seems to me that XM is a particular mindset rather than a system of marketing practices. After all, direct mail, point-of-sale promotions, programmatic product placement, broadcast communications, etc. are as applicable to XM as to any other approach to marketing.

By my lights, "experiential marketing" is the antonym of "product centric marketing," which makes "customer centric marketing" somewhat synonymous with "experiential marketing."

Importantly, the idea of experiential marketing reflects a right brain bias because it is about fulfilling consumers’ aspirations to experience certain feelings – comfort and pleasure on one hand, and avoidance of discomfort and displeasure on the other.

In contrast, traditional product centric marketing reflects a left brain bias because it generally seeks to persuade consumers by invoking rational factors that position the advertised brand as better than competing brands. Product centric marketing presumes a degree of rationality in consumers’ decision-making that contemporary brain science refutes. Consumers’ decisions are much more influenced by emotionally generated feelings than by their rationally derived thoughts.

I may have been the first person to talk about experiential marketing when I wrote about "products as gateways to experiences" in my book Serving the Ageless Market, written going on 17 years ago. 

Just as Serving the Ageless Market was going to press in 1989, for the first time in history people 40 and older became the adult majority. My prediction concerning the coming of a time when the customer experience would generally transcend product attributes in importance was based on a well-established tenet in adult development psychology.

Generally speaking, as people move through the second half of life they become less influenced by materialistic or physical values (such as heavily promoted in product marketing) and increasingly more influenced by experiential or metaphysical values. Thus a marketplace dominated by adults in the second half of life naturally more heavily reflects the worldviews, values and behavior of consumers in this age group than the worldviews, values and behavior of the young.

In essence, then, experiential marketing is not an innovative creation of marketers so much as a response to the more mature “mind of the market” that exists today.

It Is Not By Awards Alone that Ad Agencies Shall Live

Ad agencies are often criticized for putting more effort into winning awards than in winning customers for clients. But, now, winning awards could be more important that ever.

According to the Jan 3, 2005 issue of Advertising Age, Procter & Gamble is now doing computerized analyses of ad agencies to determine their CQ – creativity quotient.

The program was created by a gaggle of mostly former P & G executives who formed a new consortium with the handle, Cincinnati Consulting Consortium.

Not surprisingly, perhaps, the person behind the “scientific” approach to assessing agency creativity is a P & G’s Kim Kraus, a purchasing executive whose numbers-based worldview encompasses an illusion that creativity can be reduced to numbers. I wonder what Picasso would have to say about that.

Ad Age shot this nonsense down in an editorial when it said, “It’s obvious to any industry-watcher which agencies and holding companies are highly awarded and which consistently produce excellent creative—no computer program is necessary for that.”

Creativity is assessable in many ways but all to often awards for creativity in the ad business are based more on novel executions than on persuasive effectiveness. One of the reasons so many members of the New Customer Majority –consumers 40 and older who now outnumber the formerly much-coveted 18 – 39 age cohort – feel marginalized by Madison Avenue is that they often view novel presentations as silly, meaningless or insulting to consumers’ intelligence.

Novelty may be great for winning awards but often has less persuasive effectiveness in older age groups whose members tend to want “just the facts, ma’am,” sans hyperbolic fancifying. Advertising presentations that reflect authenticity, simplicity and empathy generally work better in second half markets.

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