inertia, noun. Indisposition to motion, exertion, or change.
We have always believed two fundamental things about winning marketers: (1) more so than anyone else in the organization, they are the “behavioralists”; and (2) they must be “idea people.” In keeping with these beliefs, we have also consistently espoused this mantra: “everything we do in marketing is a stimulus to get a desired behavior.” Winning marketers get paid to incite action among their chosen target customers or consumers: adopting a new product class or category for the first time; switching a competitor’s product from theirs to ours; increasing the purchase, consumption or prescribing and using of our product; trading up from one of our products to another in the portfolio; adding our product to some current overall practice. And the very best way to drive the likelihood of getting these behaviors is through the medium of ideas.
Actually, we find that most marketers and their managements agree with the need for ideas as the obvious way to get desired behaviors—at least to some extent. Who doesn’t demand new product or product improvement ideas to bring in new users, keep current users in the fold, or attract competitive users? Likewise, who wouldn’t employ promotion ideas (for example, a special limited-time offer, a digital game or contest) to achieve similar, even short-term, behaviors? But here’s what has never made sense to us: seeing time and again that it takes big, compelling ideas to get the behaviors a brand needs for growth, why is it that so few marketers and their managements demand BIG, COMPELLING ideas from their communications?
We find ourselves asking this question of our clients again and again. And while it’s clear that there isn’t one easy answer to the question, what is clear is this generally prevailing attitude among most marketers--and especially among their senior managers: the goal of most communications is to inform, not to drive a particular behavior. We have important things to tell you about the many features and benefits of our product or about how differently our product works (and, by the way, we don’t have a lot of time or space to tell it all to you), so here’s as much as we can communicate for now.
But it’s this prevailing attitude, this failure to connect the dots between communication and behavior that results, almost always, in information inertia. We don’t even have to be marketers or business people to know this. We have all learned from our own experiences as customers that information alone, while often logical and understandable, rarely drives our decisions to act. Frequently we find ourselves thinking, “I know what all the facts and figures say, but something just doesn’t feel right.” And for sure we have all learned that the more information we get about something, the less we tend to remember…and all too often, the more confused we get. The solution for these “failures in communication?”—making the conscious business decision to demand behavior results from all communications, just as we demand them from the new product launches or promotions we put into the marketplace.
Quite simply, we change our expectation set for our communications. We insist upon a return on our, often significant, investments in communication campaigns and we consistently assess and report on these ROI’s. Changing this expectation set is step one; but the only way to best ensure we actually get the ROI’s we seek is by always centering our communication campaigns on ideas…”switching” from information inertia to idea involvement.
By their very construction, communication ideas are meant to actively involve the intended target because they intrigue and invite the intended target in. Even better, communication ideas dramatize, and that’s something that information alone almost never can do. With active involvement and drama, target customers don’t merely get told something; rather, they realize important benefits or advantages to them because they actually get involved in finding them out for themselves! Information, on the other hand, tends to “lie there” with no real invitation for the intended target to get actively involved. (This emphasis on actively is intentional: seeking to get a behavior from a target, by involving them actively, you already have them doing something.)
To illustrate this dramatic difference in the involvement of ideas versus the inertia of information alone, consider this true story from our own experience:
A woman we’ve known for years, who has always been athletic and attractively slim, sees a new TV campaign for the Lipitor brand (at one time the leading cholesterol-reducing prescription drug in the world). This communication campaign seeks the following two behaviors: (1) to motivate a very large percentage of middle-aged adults who are at risk because of high cholesterol, but don’t know it, to go to their doctor and get a cholesterol screening; and (2) upon learning of their high cholesterol, to request Lipitor.
The TV campaign employs a very simple idea to engage such a target (you could call such a target—and our friend—“oblivious at-risk patients”). The idea features a number of slim, in-shape, athletic people with many “right numbers” such as their underweight pounds, small dress sizes, and how many push-ups each can do daily. But then it “surprises” with their one, unknown “wrong number,” their high cholesterol…which, as the ads point out, often has nothing to do with how great one looks in the mirror.
A few mornings after seeing the Lipitor TV ad, our friend says to her husband at breakfast, “You know, I haven’t had my cholesterol checked in a long time. I think I’m going to schedule a screening.” She proceeds with the screening and (surprise!) her overall cholesterol is well over the healthy standard. Consider: our friend has for years had all the information about what a good total cholesterol number should be and about the cardiovascular risks associated with high cholesterol—but she has taken no action. But then, with the simple idea featuring “beautiful people with all the right numbers save one,” she finally gets involved and realizes for herself that you can’t gauge your total health on looks alone. She turns to action; she behaves.
As we said at the start, we have been passionately advocating for the involvement and engagement of ideas over the inertia of mere information for years—so brand communications can actually cause the behaviors our brands require to grow. But, just to be clear, merely having an idea guarantees nothing; that idea must fit the Communication Strategy we have chosen very well. Our one “best hope” that more and more marketers—especially in the healthcare fields—will demand ideas in their communications is simply this: at heart, the very best marketers are “idea people.”
Richard Czerniawski & Mike Maloney
Richard D. Czerniawski
430 Abbotsford Road
Kenilworth, IL 60043
847-256-8820
Fax: 847-256-8847 richardcz@bdn-intl.com
Michael W. Maloney
1506 West 13th Street, #17
Austin, TX 78703
512-236-0971
