How Advertising Changes Behaviour: Ease versus Motivation
All marketers and advertisers are in the businessof behavior change. There is not amarketer in the world paid to keep things as they are. As long as business growthin a given then every brief will end in someones behaviour needing tochange. As a result of nearly all marketing activity people are ‘required’ to change brands, paymore, consume more often, or have more people consume.
In order to change peoples behaviour thereare two key factors we can influence; Motivation and Ease. The higher the motivation, and the Easier itis, then the more likely that behaviour will occur.
Historically, the advertising industry has beenobsessed with just 50% of this equation -building motivation. The products were available in store, the advertisers job was to increase motivation to get people to go and buy it. Themain weapon advertisers have had to build motivation is ‘creativity’. The issuewith being ‘creative’ is it’s as much luck as it is skill. So even though it’s been the area of focusfor most advertising agencies, none I know have a robust model on how to buildmotivation – they just have a creative department that comes up with ‘ideas’.Sometimes these ideas are brilliant, sometimes average, and often worse thanordinary. If you ever talk to someone in advertising ask them how their agency builds motivation – at best you’ll get a corny metaphor about ‘falling in love with brands’. Watch Madmen and you’ll learn more about how to build motivation than you will from most agencies. It’s not that they can’t do it (build motivation), they just don’t know how they are doing it – it’s often luck.
However, something exciting is happening inadvertising. Some are taking a broader view of how to change behavior ratherthan just building motivation. Making thedesired behavior ‘easier’ to complete is just, and often a significantly moreeffective way to get the result you are after.
The advent of social media and smart phones,means that the race is on to making things easier for consumers (us). A Grand Prix winner at Cannes this yearbought a virtual supermarket (Tesco) to train stations in South Korea, everything you ordered was delivered by the time you got the train home. If the desired behaviour change was get more people shopping at Tesco versus competitors this was a brilliant way to do it. They didn’t build motivation, they just made it easier.
My prediction for 2012will be that agencies change of focus as they rejoice not in increasing consumermotivation, but in making things easier for people.