Please don’t come to MSIX
The more marketers can understand, explain and even predict the types of ideas that consumers will be influenced by, the more they’ll be believed. This is the crux of MSiX, explains Adam Ferrier in this guest post.
Occasionally I get really excited when I read advertising articles. The ones I enjoy the most are the ones that say marketing can’t be a science – it’s all about art, intuition, and magic. 
Why do I get excited – because it makes my job as a manager of a competitive agency easier? Why? Because all of these things are a part of the creative process but not all of it.
Indeed agencies that rely purely on the magic, with the concerned yet authoritarian ECD saying ‘trust me’, are at risk of being usurped by the myriad businesses finding new ways to get a better balance between art and science.
On the other hand I also get excited (okay, I’m easily excited) when I read articles such as this one from two executive creative directors based in Asia. Although not endorsing marketing sciences, they have attempted to codify their craft of creativity and are sharing their knowledge with the world.
Here I see ‘creatives’ attempt to move the conversation forwards – they are trying to build a language and an understanding around their ideas. They are trying to have more than ‘trust me’ or ‘be brave’ as the yardstick from which people should assess the ideas emanating from their agency. These creatives are on the right path.
The more people can understand, codify, explain and even predict how humans work, and the types of ideas that they’ll be influenced by, then the more they’ll be right, and the more they’ll be believed. This really is the benefit of marketing sciences.
At the very least an understanding of marketing science helps people feel more comfortable with the recommendations made. Why should marketing be any different from any other profession?
If a doctor told you to take a pill and didn’t have any idea how it worked would you trust her? If she knew how the pill worked and could explain it to you, would you trust her more? Would you be more likely to comply? Of course you would.
In ascending order of importance, the advantages of embracing marketing sciences are:
- You have confidence in your own ideas / solutions because you know why it will or will not work
- You have a language to communicate that to others, and can help explain to them why it will or won’t work
- You have the skills to better understand who to communicate with
- You have the skills to better understand how to communicate with them
- You’ll have a greater predictive understanding, and more evidence of what works and doesn’t for next time
- It gives you an excuse to go to MSiX.
So it’s with mixed feelings that I write an article about the benefits of MSiX. The more people who stay ignorant (and ignorance is an active not a passive state) on the world of marketing sciences the more of an advantage those who believe in, and study it have.
At my agency we’ve embraced marketing sciences and continue to find ways to make it integrate into what we do as an agency.
We’re doing this as we appreciate the need for everyone to better understand and be better able to communicate the underlying principles of human behaviour and its relationship with ideas. We are obviously not the only ones.
In my opinion, all agencies would be better if they understood and embraced marketing sciences, as would all client-side marketers.
As a final point: most clients are already on board and heading in this direction, and many are dragging their agencies along. A few clients are still wrestling without marketing sciences as a core discipline – but from what I can see they are thick in the process of solving that.
Will I see you at MSiX? Hope so. Hope not.
If you’d like to join us – click here.
P.S. If you do come along please stay for the MSIX Awards later that night where the best work in marketing sciences will be celebrated.
Adam Ferrier is a consumer psychologist and CSO at Cummins & Partners. He is also the curator of MSiX.
Keep up to date with MSIX
That’s one way to get attention.
User ID not verified.
Looks like a good conference – and an argument well made. Marketing Science needs a re-brand though. Doesnt feel like I relate to the term. May go anyway though.
User ID not verified.
Let me be the contrarian here Adam since I know you like a good argument. The marketing profession has used psychologists since the 1920s (cue Edward Bernays or Ernest Dichter) so if behavioral psychology is indeed a marketing “science”, everybody has been on board, including clients, for ages.
And I understand how the marketing profession may want to legitimize itself through the fetish of ‘big data’ and ‘data driven insights’. It’s a scary world out there. I also understand how the same professionals may feel threatened by companies with access to amazing data (cue Google and Facebook).
And I agree that most of that data is still untapped / unused / underutilized.
But please give me an iconic brand that has been built on the back of such ‘data-driven insights’…..In his book ‘how brands become icons’ Doug Holt makes a pretty compelling case that most iconic brands were built on cultural insights, not on the fact that fathers shop for beer when they shop for diapers at night (however interesting that ‘insight’ may be for Coles).
So I’d say what bothers me in this push for ‘marketing sciences’ (and I am not sure how you would define it) is the idea that mixing psychologists and quantitatively trained researchers is bound to lead to great results. I am not saying they are useless either, but neither will get you an understanding of culture.
User ID not verified.
Hi Julian
I agree many brands are created by a ‘cultural’ tension / gap / big resolve that rarely has marketing science at its core (what would Elon Musk or Steve Jobs know about marketing sciences right?) However how to build that brand (as opposed to create) may benefit immensely from marketing sciences. You’re right in many ways some brands have been doing it for years – others not so much. There’s no right, or one way of doing things. We’re just exploring what we think is a brilliant opportunity for marketers and agencies,
User ID not verified.
Decent argument until you play the Holt card. Alongside Stengel (and Peters, Jim Collins et al before them) these writings, while thoroughly entertaining, are highly theoretical at best or simply a study of halo effects at worst.
User ID not verified.
The guidance that marketing science should provide is identifying the drivers of consumption behaviour. What is the single most important rational reasons to believe and what is the dominant emotion that will provide the behavioural detonation? Marketing science should provide this guidance and then should stand back and allow creative brilliance to work within those constraints. The best creative arises when it is born from solving constraints.
The guidance that marketing science should provide is in identifying the drivers of consumption behaviour. What is the single most important rational reasons to believe and what is the dominant emotion that will provide the behavioural detonation?
Marketing science should provide this guidance and then stand back and allow creative brilliance to work within those constraints. The best creative arises when it is born from solving constraints.