Gimme! – Basically, we are all Self-Centered

John Hallward, President of Ipsos ASI, a leading advertising research firm, presented excerpts from his latest book Gimme! to Cheil staff at the NJ office on April 29. Ipsos ASI is a leading global advertising research firm, and is part of the worldwide Ipsos Group. Ipsos ASI offers a full range of advertising research solutions to help clients make the best decisions at all stages of the advertising process: advertising development, advertising pre-testing for qualifying advertising, advertising tracking, and brand equity/brand health evaluation. Ipsos ASI has also recently introduced new holistic integrated advertising assessment. The firm focuses on providing advertisers with the insights to help in the development, evaluation, and improvement of their advertising efforts to help them build stronger marketing performance for healthier brands.

John Hallward is the President of Global Product Management at Ipsos ASI.
In his first book, Gimme! The Human Nature of Successful Marketing,
Hallward explores our evolutionary traits to help marketers, brand managers,
public relations professionals, advertising executives, and even
politicians better tap into primary human motivations for greater success.

Hallward argued that much of what and who we are today is the product of evolutionary processes. Human beings, for example, are genetically wired as such to develop social needs, friendships, morals, habits, emotions, short and long-term memories, among other characteristics. Though we are born with the “gimmes,” we are taught to suppress them as we grow in society. But the “gimmes,” as Hallward observes, do not fade away. They are activated, for instance, when we choose a brand: “How will I be perceived if I choose X instead of Y?” or, “What emotional payoffs do I get for choosing X over Y?” An understanding of how human brains work allows us to become better marketers.

Our brain is largely oriented to our vision. We see in our minds. We judge first impressions with our eyes in a split second. Our brain is constantly engaged in creating basic triggers or memory units – associations, visions, mnemonics and metaphors – for easy future retrieval. Try remembering this:
O T T F F S S E N T

It would require quite an effort to lodge this in our brains and be able to retrieve it at a later point. You likely found no relevant meaning, mnemonic, or cue to recall a random array of characters. But try saving it after understanding the pattern behind the characters.
O T T F F S S E N T
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
One Two Three Four Five Six Seven Eight Nine Ten

In our complex environment, we simplify information units as a way to cope with the huge overload of stimuli. The units of memory are burned into our neural networks by several factors such as duration and intensity of stimuli and extent of neural processing. The latter, in turn, is dependent on quantity of rehearsals, simplicity, relevance and quantity of emotions attached to memory. Any one incoming stimulus fires upon tens of thousands of neurons. This creates a lot of brain activity, neural firing, and complexity.

Humans have habits. We follow routines. We like predictability. Following routines lets us forget the details and “reasoning.” Marketers need to disrupt purchase habits in bold ways to engage the brain.

Consumers feel much more than they think. Consumers do not think in a rational, well-reasoned manner. We judge cars by the sound the car door makes. We are influenced by the “new car” smell. Each and every stimulus that we attend to gets tagged with an emotional evaluation (i.e., good/bad). Thus, “rational” is not the opposite of “emotional.” Rather, they are basically two sides of the same coin. Decision making is about evaluating the emotion associated with every memory unit. An understanding of the memory units and the emotions that come into play helps design a communication strategy.

Marketing, then, has two fundamental roles according to Hallward: 1. Get it in: get the right desired associations into the brain, in a rich, intense manner, as a neat “summary memory unit”. 2. Trigger it: get recalled and activate the attitudes at the right time (i.e., the purchase time).

Sanjeev Bhatt
Strategic Research Architect
Cheil USA