Why I painted my fingernails black to learn about consumption

I like the concept of getting people to care more before they buy. How?

Long but interesting. Would love to know if B Sharp thinks this is an affront or just gobblygook. Lots to consider me thinks.

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.

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?

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.

@Jon. You make a very good point about category specificity.

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.

Will mark ritson or Byron Sharp reply. Take cover if they do. Great article I think. Interesting to ponder

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.

Also of consideration could be the FCB Grid (think/feel vs high/low involvement).

@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.

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.

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.

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/

“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.

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.

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?

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.

“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.

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 🙂