On Monday, I posted about how what appears to be irrational behavior may actually make complete sense from a different perspective. Or, more specifically, people don't think just in terms of self-interest, but also in terms of the group they identify with.

This got edited out of the final version of Monday's post, but Godin also has an argument about apparently irrational behavior. It can be summarized as 'if you want to understand someone, walk a mile in their shoes.'

In it he's arguing against the assumption that someone else is displaying bad judgment just because you don't like how they're behaving. Or to put it another way, just because someone's reaction seems to be irrational doesn't mean that it is; you may just not have all the facts.

I don't have a direct tie in to why this is important for marketers other than the one Godin cites; the more marketers think about what motivates people, the more likely they'll know how to reach customers.

With luck, this type of thinking may also make us slightly nicer, more understanding people, which is never a bad thing.

Marketing Profs put together an article about customer surveys and how they can be totally misleading. The crux of the argument is that surveys are fairly useless because people do not behave in predictable ways.

The article is worth a read, but they overstated their case a bit when they wrote:

"Customers are sensitive, emotional, and, let's face it, irrational beings. ... Shockingly, 95% of our brain activity centers on the irrational or subconscious, leaving a meager 5% busy trying to explain why we act or feel certain ways. And we do this not by tapping into our subconscious, but by making inferences based on our behavior. In essence, we make things up.

"So if we can't even tell ourselves the truth, why should we expect customers to provide truthful feedback on satisfaction?"

I don't actually buy into the idea that people are that irrational. People not behaving as we wish or expect them to does not make them irrational and unpredictable. What it really means is that we're not properly accounting for what motivates them (even if it is on a subconscious level).

In Made to Stick, the authors cite research that people behave as they expect other people in their self-identified group to behave. In the book they use the example that people will vote for candidates that do not necessarily support the voter's own self-interest.

I find this idea of social thinking persuasive. Based on what I've observed, this is the best model I've seen as it explains apparently irrational behavior.

While there tends to be a lot of emphasis on the individual (which is a good first approximation), looking only at the individual won't fully explain how people behave. By nature, humans are social creatures and we're stronger in groups than as lone individuals. It's hardly surprising, then, that social thinking influences human behavior.

This is one of the reasons that developing communities is potentially powerful. I am talking here about communities that foster a sense of interconnectedness between people, and communities in which the self-identity of the group is somehow wound up with the product. (I am not talking about a simple, flat community, e.g. an online forum.)

It also means that the community cannot be bogus and the product can't be shoddy. This has to be something people feel makes their lives richer and can serve as a positive connection between people.

Not an easy task, but potentially very powerful and positive. Certainly not achievable if, when people don't behave as expected, they are simply dismissed as irrational.

Influential Marketing Blog put up a post this past week with a partial theory about how information is being spread through MicroSharing.

What the argument boils down to is that there is a lot of content out there, and people need a way to deal with that content and find relevant information. So niche groups share content they're interested in among themselves (MicroSharing), with the effect that they promote some content while ignoring others. This has obvious implications for marketers who want to spread information.

It's a very interesting article (as they tend to be from Influential Marketing Blog) and worth reading. I wish it had had a few more details to flesh out the theory, though.

I came across an idea that one of the best ways to convince people and get them on your side is to tell them a story. The story would, of course, be topical and get people thinking in the right direction.

The advantage of telling a story over stating a position outright is that a story invites sympathy, whereas making a point outright invites debate. Ideally, people end up thinking about the idea behind the story and how to apply it, rather than judging the point you just made and trying to find the flaws.

I liked this as an idea, and it made sense, but I wasn't completely convinced it would work. I couldn't think of an example that had fallen in my own range of experience that worked quite this way.

I recently picked up The Tipping Point again, and realized that the author is a master of this use of stories. In fact, I think that it's safe to say that without the stories he includes — if he had just drily discussed the merits of his idea with facts and figures — it would never have been such an influential book. The approach draws the reader in and helps to dissipate hostility to his take on the world.

I'd missed this the first time I had read the book; I was too involved in the message to give much thought to how it was being delivered. I'm doubly impressed on re-reading the book.

Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, put up a pretty interesting post on Friday.

In it, he asked readers to come up with a one-word description of different people that they knew, e.g. jerk, kind, stylish, sloppy, etc. Then he asked them to do the same for themselves. Coming up with a one-word description of yourself, of course, is tough.

Why I find this so interesting is what it's saying about how the human brain works. We're fundamentally social creatures, and have to sort out a lot of complex social interactions. We're also pretty well optimized. So while we understand and acknowledge our own complexity, we tend to break other people down into labels that indicate their emotional relationship to us.

It's easier to tag people with a label (e.g. jerk or kind) which acts as a sort of short hand about how we should interact with them. Most of us would want to avoid the jerk and hang out with the kind person. From a social point of view, this has obvious problems; it means we miss complexities in other people's behavior. What it does do, though, is make it easier to map our social relationship with other people quickly.

So what does this have to do with marketing? People tend to think about companies in the same, flat way. They're unlikely to worry about the complexities of everything the company does and instead break it down into a simple tag. For instance, depending on the person, some possible tags: Apple=cool; Microsoft=monopoly; Google=smart; Chevron=oil spill; etc.

So what word do you want associated with your company? is it the one most people think of?

I've been thinking about communities and how to build communities as a marketer recently. I'm still mulling, but it seems to me that the easiest way to build a community is to leverage already existing groups.

In this post, a group is a collection of people with common interests who are not connected to each other. A community is a more organized and aware group of people. They feel a connection that differentiates them in a significant way from the rest of the population.

(To take a frivolous example, I've recently been reading Shakespeare plays. I don't know anyone else who reads Shakespeare plays recreationally, but I'm willing to bet there are others out there. So I am part of a group that reads Shakespeare plays recreationally. In order for a community to form I'd have to find other people with this same interest and behavior pattern, and feel that we had a connection.)

It seems to me that the easiest way to set up a community as a marketer is to find a sentiment that is already in the population that can be tapped into. People think in terms of groups and other people that they can relate to. So a product that seems to relate naturally to the group can serve as a focal point for a community.

(To carry on the example above, a book publisher could produce special Shakespeare plays for the recreational reader, as well as provide ways to connect readers. A motivated publisher could host speakers to talk about Shakespeare and set up events where people could form connections with each other. The goal, of course, would be to grow the readership, generate loyalty and sell more books.)

Trying to force a community to form around a product is often going to be a losing proposition. But tapping into a group of people with common interests and pitching the product so it meshes well with that group has great potential.

There's been a bit of a fashion for titles like this one (and I have to admit, it got me to read the article).

The other day I wrote about a word of mouth sequence that I'd witnessed (and participated in).

So I was interested to see Seth Godin's post about how hard it is to get word of mouth marketing going.

This made me think about why the people I know talk about products (the story from the previous post is certainly not an isolated example).

My friends talk about the products they like and enjoy recommending exceptional products to each other. It's a way of pooling knowledge and, honestly, people bond around this.

To take a trivial example, if your friend can tell you where the good hand lotion is, you don't have to try six different brands and waste time and money. This generates a certain amount of gratitude, and, if the hand lotion is good, then it's more likely you'll trust your friend's recommendation in future.

It does take an exceptional product, though, to generate this sort of discussion. To take an example at random, tooth floss is almost never a source of conversation. The product itself has to be worth talking about.

And this may be Godin's point. Give people a reason to talk about your product, whether it's because it's an exceptional product, it's promoted by brilliant marketing, or has some other remarkable quality, and your marketing will be that much easier.

I was doing some research and I came across an article from Marketing Professionals by a specialist in marketing to older women.

She had previously done some research, talking to women in their 40s, 50s and 60s, examining how to market to these age groups. In this article, she looks at the success behind the Real Beauty campaign from Dove.

She argues that older women aren't interested in looking younger or looking like supermodels and are, in general, okay with their appearance. How she interprets women's reaction to the campaign is:

"... women's explosive reaction to The Campaign for Real Beauty feels more like "Finally! Someone understands!" than "Really? You think I'm pretty? Honest?""

Two reasons this caught my attention.

The first is the obvious one; Dove has put together a successful marketing campaign that has a different feel and a different message, targets older women and is presumably successful (it's certainly getting a lot of attention). Examining a campaign like that will always be worthwhile for a marketer.

The second reason, though, is that the article on Marketing Professionals is all about interpretation. The follow up campaign for "Finally! Someone understands!" would look very different from "Really? You think I'm pretty? Honest?"

Interpretation of campaign results determines what is tested in the future. Asking the right questions when interpreting data may be what sets apart good marketers from great ones.

Lush is a popular shop over the holidays. They sell body products ranging from soaps to scented body powder.

The marketing is great. Every product comes with an entertaining write up, and slightly saucy name (e.g. Silky Underwear for scented body powder). Lush also has a personal, hand-crafted feel; each batch of product has a sticker that identifies who made the product and when it should be used by.

Lush has a store in downtown San Francisco. Three of us visited the store one day, one of whom is a big Lush fan. She stocked up and her enthusiasm convinced me and the third person to buy some products. (Two more customers for Lush.)

I am not a huge user of beauty products, so my purchases there tend to be minimal. But I know someone who is a big fan of such things. On a subsequent trip, I picked up some body powder for her as a gift and introduced her to Lush.

She loved it. In fact, she loved it so much that she receives Lush products every birthday and Christmas, and makes an effort to visit the store whenever she's in the city. (One more devoted customer for Lush.)

Recently, when stuck for a gift idea, she bought five friends in a writing group Lush products for Christmas. (Five more potential customers for Lush.)

By my count, this one friend has introduced at least three new customers to Lush, and potentially as many as eight (or more) with no extra marketing dollars spent. (I've joked with my friend that she should get a commission on all of this.)

While I'm pretty sure that this chain of events is untrackable by a marketer, it's a concrete, though small, example of how effective word-of-mouth marketing can be for a distinctive high-quality product.

It's also worth noting that if Lush's quality slips, the loss of customers through this same network would occur just as efficiently.