Sentient Insight: the business blog for consumer psychology and consumer marketing

Words of advice from the American Marketing Association’s M-Planet conference 2009 keynote speakers Anne Mulcahy of Xerox, John Hayes of American Express, Mary Dillon, McDonald’s, RK Krishna Kumar, Tata Brands, and Larry Grisolano, Obama Presidential Campaign. Key themes echoed by many of the speakers include the need to use customer insight more effectively, the need for marketers to be bold and experiment in these times of uncertainty, to resist the urge to cutback and hunker down, nurture brands, and to constantly be innovating their products and services. A back-to-basics approach was advised, and speakers called for new products and services to address current human truths (e.g. the need for affordability and value), for companies to exhibit social responsibility, and to build...

Integrity. We know our brands need it, but as marketers we haven’t necessarily been trained how to deal with it. This is one of the themes echoed in the keynote presentations on the first day of the AMA’s M-Planet 2009.  As marketers, we have incredible power to shape the culture, to give hope to the collective consciousness, and to bring real change to the world, ensuring a bright future for generations coming after us.  As we’ve used our power in the past to sell, sell, sell – now is the time for us to use it to ally with the customer and add real value to his lifestyle.

Predictably Irrational, Dan Ariely ***** / 5 of 5 stars Enjoyable Reading: 5/5 Applicable to Business: 5/5 Behavioral Insight: 5/5 Consumers will drive 20 minutes across town to save $7 on a $20 pen, but won’t drive 20 minutes across town to save $7 on a $500 suit. Isn’t seven dollars, seven dollars? Restaurant patrons will be less satisfied with their dinners if they’ve ordered aloud within a group of friends than if they place their orders privately. Why do we sacrifice a sensual experience for the projection of our image to our friends? Consumers will spend an additional $20 on a second book that they weren’t going to buy in order to get free shipping, but won’t spend that extra $20 if the shipping cost is reduced to $0.20 instead of being completely free....

Groundswell, Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff **** / 4 of 5 stars Enjoyable Reading: 4/5 Applicable to Business: 5/5 Behavioral Insight: 5/5 In the book, the “groundswell” is defined as “a social trend in which people use technologies to get the things they need from each other, rather than from traditional institutions like corporations.” For example, on eBay consumers buy from each other without needing a store; Craigslist lets you find a job or apartment without searching through the newspaper, Rotten Tomatoes lets users read movie reviews from other regular people, and BitTorrent lets users get music from each other- similar to Napster- without going to a store. Very simply, the “groundswell” is about social networking on web 2.0 – and this book will help you understand...

Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell *** / 3 of 5 stars Enjoyable Reading: 4/5 Applicable to Business: 2/5 Behavioral Insight: 2/5 At Sentient, we refer to some of the books we review as “airport books”: the books prominently displayed in the business section of the wood-paneled faux bookstores at every airport, big and small, across the country and beyond. They appeal to business travelers (myself included), promising a quick read and perhaps new information acquired in the sky between JFK and ORD. The books’ availability isn’t limited to airports, but because we often pick them up there, it’s become our shorthand term for such books. We certainly don’t use the phrase disparagingly – in fact, some of our favorite books are “airport books” – Outliers being the newest favorite...