You never wake up with quite the
same brain you woke up with yesterday. The brain, the theater in which your reality
plays out in your mind, is in a constant state of change. This never-ending
process began in utero when new neurons
formed in your fetal brain at the lightning speed of 250,000 cells a minute.
Ultimately you ended up with about 100
billion neurons. Neurons are very social beings. They connect with and talk with
each other via vast numbers of dendrites, root-like structures that form in
response to the brain’s experiences. Each neuron has between 5,000 and 50,000 links
with other neurons. Incredibly, those neuronal connections exceed in number all
the atoms in the universe.
The brain is a complex adaptive system without equal. That term refers to complex
systems that are capable of learning and changing in response to experience.
From infancy through old age the brain’s number one objective is to promote a safe,
comfortable and pleasurable existence for its owner. To stay ahead of the curve
and keep its owner whole it must constantly change in order to adapt to changing
conditions, both internally and externally.
What it takes to secure a safe,
comfortable and pleasurable existence differs by season of life. Different measures are required to assure a
satisfying life for a teen than required for a toddler. And what it takes to yield
a satisfying life for a twentysomething is quite different from what it takes for
a newly minted middle-ager.
Many changes in the brain’s
structure and operations over time are developmental rather than
circumstantial. A critically important category of developmental change that scarcely
gets any attention in the marketing community is how we think. Marketers easily see that teens think differently than
toddlers do, but few appear to recognize differences between adults of varying
ages in their thinking styles.
Question: Who
is likelier to have the better mind for detail? A fortysomething who has gained
in patience over the years or a twentysomething whose energy and multi-tasking
makes him or her seem poorly suited to concentrating on detail?
Answer: The
highly energetic twentysomething.
The human brain reaches its peak
capacity for parsing reality into fine detail in the twenties. It processes information
through differentiated thinking, a
term referring to reducing reality to absolute definitions and categorically organizing
matters by their defining properties. This is the cognitive foundation of certainty
that is commonly heard in the conversations of young adults. Black-and-white
certainty is less a matter of experience than commonly claimed and more a
matter of how the brain works during the young adult years. This thinking style
not well-suited to getting the whole picture, but its ability to get the
details can be awesomely impressive.
Differentiated thinking largely accounts
for the fact that twentysomethings are disproportionately represented among
people making great breakthroughs in science. Isaac Newton was 24 when he
invented differential calculus. Einstein published his seminal paper on special
relativity at 26. Michael Faraday was only 20 when he laid the foundation for
the modern study of electromagnetism and built the world’s first electric motor.
Darwin was in his early twenties as he began
developing his first ideas on the evolutionary origins of species.
In very later 20s and early 30s, our
thinking processes begin evolving toward a de-differentiated
style. We begin to parse reality less in terms of categories and more in
terms of relationships. Our ability to see how things are connected to one another
gets better. The whole picture becomes more complete.
The fact that great breakthroughs in
the humanities are made disproportionately by people in the second half of life
is largely due to advancing skills in dedifferentiated thinking. Artists, musicians,
philosophers, architects, statesmen, etc., generally reach their peak
performance well after their twenties.
Ponder thinking styles in terms of left brain and right brain thinking. Differentiated thinking is strongly dominated
by left brain processes involving reason, logic, categorization and
quantitative analysis. Dedifferentiated thinking brings more emotional,
relational and qualitative input from the right brain into the total thinking
process.
The strong left brain bias of the
young mind leads toward a worldview that is more deeply rooted in consensus and
objective in orientation. In contrast, the older person’s dedifferentiated
thinking supports more right brain input leads toward a more subjective worldview
that is deeply connected to one’s own experiences.
Whether a person’s preferred
thinking style is objectively grounded or subjectively grounded matters a great
deal from a marketing perspective: each position represents a different voice. Despite
this, however, there is little awareness of this in the marketing community. As
a result, marketing messages intended for people over 40 often fail to connect because
they are delivered in a more objective voice than a subjective voice.
This is a matter of overarching
importance to consumer business companies. The fact that 142 million adults are
40 and older versus 91 million under 40 means the mind of the market today
shows a decided bias toward the subjective voice. Failure to reflect this in
marketing messages will automatically reduce message effectiveness.
Thus, while everyone blames falling advertising
effectiveness on the Internet and on the steady flood of ads consumers see
everywhere on daily basis, one of the biggest reasons of all is totally
ignored: few marketers are aware of the voice they must speak in to restore
effectiveness to market messages.
Next: How the Subjective Voice in
Market Messaging Differs from the Objective Voice
And also don't the senses need to be considered in marketing? For example some people are auditory while others visual. . .
Posted by: Tom Troughton | September 28, 2009 at 10:46 PM
David,
It's been too long since I've stopped by and thanked you for your terrific thinking and writing. I quote you in presentations and thoroughly enjoy your work.
As I cruise toward 50, this story rings true.
I've often created different marketing personae that are similar in personality type, but at different ages. I've known intuitively that these differences exist, but lacked the vocabulary to explain why.
Thanks for filling in the blanks!
Posted by: Dave Young | September 29, 2009 at 12:27 AM
David, great advice. Speak to the customer in the language of the customer about what matters to the customer.
Posted by: Tom Wanek | September 29, 2009 at 07:54 AM
Great information that points out why we should involve both older and younger people in our marketing teams, in addition to developing different messages for different markets.
(Is the word "ever" in the title supposed to be "never"? Or is it just me? Please edit this out.)
Posted by: Sid Raisch | September 29, 2009 at 09:05 AM
Thanks to all for your supportive comments, especially to you, Dave Young, You've obviously discovered the relationship between human development in the adult years and marketing by advancing in your own understanding of yourself. This is key to self-actualization and what Jung called self-realization.
DBW
Posted by: David Wolfe | October 03, 2009 at 04:17 PM
David, excellent article and daunting dilemma the "forty something" and "twenty something", loads to think about
Posted by: Lex | November 20, 2009 at 05:28 PM
Nice post... nowadays, age is not a big factor, in marketing we are always concern of what to do... and not who would do it... or who suggested it...
Posted by: Dale Anderson | February 11, 2010 at 02:54 AM