Why I painted my fingernails black to learn about consumption
Consumerism is now a hobby - consumers buy because they can; sometimes without any thought. The end result is that brand advertising can lack meaningful emotional engagement, says Adam Ferrier in this guest post.
So a week ago today I painted my fingernails. As well as enjoying a throwback to men’s fashion circa 1996 I did this for a particular reason.
I wanted to create a device that would remind me of every purchase and consumption choice I made for a week. Every time I went online to buy something, every time I put something into my mouth, and every time I went to buy a chocolate bar my gothic black nail polish would encourage me to consider that consumption choice.
So why do this? Because I’m interested in what would happen if we moved from mindless to mindful consumption. Mindful consumption?
In the late ’90s as well as having black fingernails I studied psychology. The dominant paradigm at the time was ‘cognitive behavioural psychology (CBT)’, applied within a ‘scientist-practitioner model’.
At this time, the fringes of psychology emerged an unproven eastern concept called ‘mindfulness’. At first it was seen as very alternative; however, 20 years on mindfulness is now a well established proven therapeutic device used in psychology (Keng, 2011).
I’m wondering if mindfulness, as it applies to consumerism, will follow a similar adoption curve. So for those who cherish data and ‘science’ to back up an argument – it’s not here, yet. So read on if you can tolerate an opinion without a pie-chart.
The situation right now is that over-consumption is rife. Consumerism is now a hobby – we’re eating more food, buying more clothes, filling our houses with more stuff, buying more storage, and inundating our kids with more toys than they can play with.
There are omni-present forces in culture encouraging us to consume, and advertising obviously plays a contributing role in this. Now, I love advertising and believe advertising to be a cornerstone of capitalism, which normally goes hand in hand with strong democracies.
Further, according to the World Bank, around 60% of our GDP is made up of household consumer driven demand – nothing wrong with consumerism.
The issue is that so much consumption today is done mindlessly, or in auto-pilot, or system 1, and an increasing number of advertisers seem to be playing into this. Let me explain, some people who take a scientist practitioner approach to marketing (e.g. Sharpe, 2012) believe that:
- People make category decisions first
- Then they choose the brand that has mental and physical availability, that is the brand that’s easiest for them to recall and reach.
- Therefore it’s important to do wide reaching always on, distinctive advertising to stay top of mind (maintaining mental availability).
- However, as consumers don’t really mind what brand they buy they are not loyal to the brand
- Therefore the marketer must continually advertise for new users with a mass marketing blanket approach.
There is excellent evidence this approach works – and I’m a massive advocate for such evidence based marketing (‘How Brands Grow’ is the best book I have ever read).
However, the end result of such marketing is that the brands advertised may lack meaningful emotional engagement (kind of like the opposite of a Lovemark).
A point readily admitted to by many advocates of this approach. Hence we have people buying what’s easiest (mental availability), they are not overly processing the brands they buy relying instead on distinctive assets, and they have little connection with them. It’s largely mindless consumption.
Another issue with this approach is that it’s expensive for the marketer. You are relying on an advertising budget large enough to blanket the category, and be omni-present in market.
For those who can’t afford, or don’t want to take such an approach, I’d suggest considering moving from a mindless consumption model to a mindful consumption model.
That is, ask yourself what would happen if people truly considered whether they wanted to consume your brand before they purchased it (unweighting system 2 thinking to use BE language).
What if you encouraged people to genuinely consider the purchase they were about to make, it’s positives and negatives, its immediate and longer-term benefits and drawbacks?
Here’s what I think may happen to those brands brave enough to take such an approach:
- They’ll potentially receive less sales
- The people who do consume will value it more
- They’ll be prepared to pay more for the brand
- They’ll stay more loyal to the brand.
Further for brands to withstand that kind of scrutiny the companies who make them will have to be more innovative and clever, relying less on mindless consumption and more on creating truly remarkable things that people consciously decide to seek out.
In short creating businesses that focus on creating value (mindful), more than volume (mindless).
So how did my little experiment with the nail polish go? Apart from the corporate gothic remarks, and the considerable force of confirmation bias (finding exactly what I set out to find) I found the process interesting and self-reflective.
It’s been a constant reminder of both the consumption decisions I’m making, but also some of the subtler forces at play. Including upon reflection how much of my consumption (social media, and food) was to fill in time. I doubt the effect will last much longer than the nail polish, but it’s a start.
If brands are interested in creating a business that takes a more mindful approach to consumption, I’d encourage the following:
- Attention: Ensure consumers attend to your brand – not just the category. The strongest way to do this is innovate to the extent you create your own category, a category of one.
- Acceptance: Encourage consumers to understand your brand as holistically as possible. Ensure consumers are aware of shorter and longer-term benefits (and costs) of consumption. They understand and accept the entire offer
- Action: Encourage interactivity, and co-creation of your brand. Get consumer input wherever possible. Have people invested into your brand (from market research to product design).
Both mindful and mindless consumption potentially offer avenues to growth. Thoughts?
References
Keng, S.L., Smoski, M. J., & Robins, C.J. (2011). Effects of Mindfulness on Psychological Health: A Review of Empirical Studies. Clinical Psychology Review, 31(6) 1041-1056
Sharp, B. (2012). How Brands Grow. Oxford.
Adam Ferrier is global chief strategy officer at Cummins & Partners, curator and founder of Marketing Science Ideas Xchange (MSIX) and author of The Advertising Effect: How to Change Behaviour
I like the concept of getting people to care more before they buy. How?
User ID not verified.
Long but interesting. Would love to know if B Sharp thinks this is an affront or just gobblygook. Lots to consider me thinks.
User ID not verified.
Great piece. Have a browse on Life Edited and see brands being pitched to people willing to pay premiums for quality who seek out a more mindful lifestyle or look at blogs like The Minimalists to see a global movement toward conscious consumption. These are people not afraid to consume, just determined to not do so mindlessly. Huge potential in a growing trend.
User ID not verified.
Adam. Nice, well articulated thinking. A pie chart would have spoiled it. I wonder if the issue is category specific. I do get a little bit tired of people (not you by the way) talking about marketing and advertising like selling banking, cars, chocolate bars and Amazon prime is fundamentally the same thing. It’s hard to make me mindful of low involvement, high frequency categories. Easier, the higher up the involvement curve we go. Hard to make me mindful about chocolate bars (70% bought on impulse last I checked). Easier to do around my car? What do you think?
User ID not verified.
Yesterday the AFR ran a piece on JB HiFi et al. thriving off the back of the property boom – the essential point being people upgrade their TV etc not out of necessity but triggered by the irrational exuberance of the rise in the value of their property (I think ‘smugness’ was the term used). If we were to consider every purchase we made purely on the basis of necessity, we would require only a fraction of the goods presently available. Our society is not geared for such scaling, and I don’t think even a universal wage could remedy the subsequent catastrophic loss of jobs.
Thought-provoking nonetheless. Thank you Adam.
User ID not verified.
@Jon. You make a very good point about category specificity.
User ID not verified.
Hi Jon. People who write the laws of marketing insist they apply across category. I find it v hard to accept.
Thx for your contribution.
User ID not verified.
Will mark ritson or Byron Sharp reply. Take cover if they do. Great article I think. Interesting to ponder
User ID not verified.
Mental availably and emotional connection are not mutually exclusive. Quite the opposite. An ad that creates deeper emotional engagement (e.g. John Lewis) will cause far greater ‘mental availability’ or salience than a wallpaper campaign with heavy branding cues and high media weights.
User ID not verified.
Also of consideration could be the FCB Grid (think/feel vs high/low involvement).
User ID not verified.
@I think you misunderstood….. I never said or inferred that emotional connection and mental availability are mutually exclusive. One can absolutely feed the other.
Thanks though for taking the time to respond.
User ID not verified.
Adam. Well said, as always.
But I believe brand marketers often make the mistake of operating as though they were alone in a room with a potential customer. They tell the person why they should purchase their brand. The customer considers the argument (whether rational or emotional or a combination) and makes a decision. Of course the marketer hopes the decision is to purchase their brand.
All very neat and clean. But very isolated from real life.
My father once told me; “you won’t be so concerned about what people think of you, when you realise how seldom they do”. I think the same applies to brands.
Mindful Consumption is laudable, but except in rare cases (home, car, computer) unmanageable. Even with nail polish 🙂
A decision to buy this brand or the other is one of thousands of little decisions people make each week. The brand’s message that attempts to engender a “mindful purchase” is one of thousands they see every DAY. So the consumer isn’t being “mindless” so much as being pragmatic.
Breaking through the clutter is, of course, an old axiom. But if a brand hopes to establish a mindful connection with a customer (and enjoy the benefits you outline), they must first be noticed. And that job is getting more and more difficult.
User ID not verified.
Good piece Adman … oops … Adam, and as per usual I’m in pretty strong agreement with you.
While I consider ‘How Brands Grow’ as one of the more confronting books I have read – I went from tut-tutting and muttering ‘that can’t be right then immediately re-read it and was saying ‘of course he is right’ – but I wouldn’t call it the best book I have ever read. Put it this way, Byron Sharp sure knows his stuff but he ain’t not Tolkien.
I agree that the ‘laws’ of marketing rarely if ever apply across category. But one thing that stood out to me was that re-purchase interval tended to be a factor that can be considered a cohort or cluster in the strategic planning.
Cheers.
User ID not verified.
I found Adams advice for creating a business that takes a more mindful approach to consumption, particularly interesting because I’m listening to podcasts from Russ Harris about ACT.
This is very much the path I see brands like Patagonia taking and it’s working very well for them. http://www.adweek.com/files/ad.....et-308.jpg
It’s part of a growing trend which I’ve been writing about called “Conscious Branding” and how to use it to drive business results. Research show that the Brands that care most, perform best, partly because we buy from Brands that believe in the same things as us. By acknowledging the Guilt we are feeling about overconsumption and responding to it in various ways brands become more meaningful to us.
http://trendwatching.com/trend.....nsumption/
User ID not verified.
“However, the end result of such marketing is that the brands advertised may lack meaningful emotional engagement… Hence we have people buying what’s easiest (mental availability), they are not overly processing the brands they buy relying instead on distinctive assets, and they have little connection with them.”
Maybe I’m being obtuse.
User ID not verified.
Not obtuse but you’ve taken my point ‘may lack meaningful….’ and turned it into an absolute ‘mutually exclusive’ It’s just not as clear cut as that.
User ID not verified.
Yes, that’s possible too. What I think needs to be established is some sort of threshold. At what point does the mindfulness become relevant? For example, is a more mindful purchase of a chocolate bar the decision to not purchase, to purchase a smaller portion, to purchase a bar of higher quality or to purchase a bar of better nutrition? Or is a chocolate bar purchase outside the purview of this behavioural change program?
User ID not verified.
I LOVE THIS
“My father once told me; “you won’t be so concerned about what people think of you, when you realise how seldom they do”. I think the same applies to brands.”
Agree most of the time it feels this may well be a relevant model for people and brands to adopt. But what about if you’re small and trying to get noticed, or you’ve got something amazing to say and you want to really get people on board with what you are about?
Make them care.
User ID not verified.
“Make them care”
Couldn’t agree more. But before I care, I have to be aware. If you have their attention, even for a moment, and can make them care, you’re way ahead of most other brands. Big or small.
User ID not verified.
Find out what proportion of consumers buy mindlessly and what buy mindfully and then cater to the largest group.
And be mindful not to over analyze stuff too much.
Metta 🙂
User ID not verified.