I SECOND THAT EMOTION

How Neuroscience Is Re-Igniting Marketing

Technology has changed the face of marketing so dramatically and permanently that no one considers it noteworthy anymore.  From personalization software to wireless communication to web advertising, there’s no aspect of direct-to-consumer marketing that hasn’t been changed by new information management tools.   Rumor is that some of it may even be contributing to improved business results.

Let’s be honest.   From the standpoint of a marketing executive, technology has done more to change marketing activities than it has marketing results.  Market shares and ROI are still too low. Customer defection and acquisition costs are still too high.  CEOs of major corporations are being sacrificed like so many vestal virgins.

Why haven’t we done better? The sad reason is that technology has done relatively little to improve a marketer’s understanding of what’s really valuable to people, and its connection to human behavior.  Show me a loyalty program database, and I’ll show you an excellent capture of past consumer behavior - and a poor predictor of future behavior.

We’re not indicting marketing software and hardware developers for this massive underachievement.  For the purposes that information tools are designed for, they are reasonable implements.   But frankly, these tools are overmatched by the unrelenting fickleness of your customers.  We think it’s analogous to going into a gunfight with a knife in your hand; to come out alive, you need a better weapon.

Emotions First

To make it a fair fight, you'd need to know all aspects of what your customers are thinking - and more importantly, what they’re feeling.  Neuroscientists have gained tremendous understanding of how the human mind works over the past decade with specific illumination on how decisions are made.  The breakthrough discovery is that emotions are the key to what motivates people, in virtually any human endeavor.

Emotions are housed in the limbic system, the source of your instincts and habits, as well as your fears and secrets.  Emotions are also the way that your brain tells you what to pay attention to, amidst the incessant barrage of stimuli you are hit with everyday.

Emotions are processed in the brain faster than logical thought, and actually have the final say in moments of indecision.  The gap between emotional feeling and rational thinking creates the High Say, Low Do phenomenon that plagues consumer researchers and marketers.

Where Science Meets Art

At Gang & Gang we contend that without sophisticated tools to understand emotions you cannot expect to accurately predict human behavior, and hence will have difficulty achieving your goals.

Our company was founded over five years ago to bring fresh insights from neuroscience into the marketing arena, and to help client companies understand and overcome "High Say, Low Do" behavior.

Our Resonance® technology process is built on a self-administered survey instrument that is modeled exactly like how the brain works, starting with spontaneous emotions, and combining them with rational reasons.  The result: startling insights that catapult marketers past consumer intentions (the "should do") and directly to true motivations and inhibitions (the "will do").

Resonance quantifies emotions (previously thought to be impossible) and is the only statistically valid process for understanding human emotions and motivations.  It is Six Sigma certified for statistical stability and reliability.

Resonance findings are then converted into marketing solutions that act like wonder drugs on mainstream business problems.  Gang & Gang uses a four-step process: Understand, Segment, Execute, and Track that uses Motivational Intelligence^TM (MI) to achieve superior results.  We address four aspects of your business - offerings, customers, communications, and management systems that impact the customer relationship continuum.

Re-Inventing Marketing

Managing and measuring your business using emotion-based tools is analogous to playing golf with metal woods, you immediately notice a positive difference, and you'd never consider going back to wooden woods.  If marketing is essentially the art of getting closer to your customers, using emotion tools gets you so close you need a breath mint.

To call this a competitive advantage would be a raving understatement.  Our Motivational Intelligence approach impacts all traditional marketing arenas: brand positioning, loyalty marketing, customer acquisition and retention, advertising effectiveness, and sales targeting as a partial list.  One Gang & Gang client said of Resonance, "I feel like a caveman who was just handed a laser gun."

If you had the ability to know exactly what motivates your customers to behave the way you want, you would change all your marketing and sales strategies and tactics to capitalize on that knowledge.  You'd have higher strike rates, lower costs (due to less waste associated with shotgun efforts), and much higher customer loyalty.

One Gang & Gang client (a top health care company) used Motivational Intelligence tools to turn a failing new product launch into a $1 billion powerhouse brand.   The turning point decision was to segment customers based on emotions (segmenting on demographics provided no insights).  They were able to target the 25% of early adopters with full focus and not waste time and money on unmotivated buyers.

Raising the Bar

As with scientific contributions in other arenas, neuroscience has provided a better way to understand consumer behavior, and Resonance has advanced both the art and science of marketing to a radically higher level of effectiveness.  If someone were to come to you and say, "I'm going to show you a way to get better results through less effort," you’d probably feel ecstatic, joyful, energized, right?  

We’d second that emotion.

This article was written by Tim Guen, Senior Vice President at Gang & Gang, Inc.

Companies such as General Electric, Procter & Gamble, Kraft Foods, BellSouth, and Eli Lilly are all using Resonance to understand customer motivations. Click here to learn more about our marketing solutions for these and other clients.

Click here for more information on Resonance.

Back to Top