The Bob Experiment was conducted to prove that people care more about themselves than they do about you. And that if you want to get their attention, you’re going to need something other than a bullhorn. To prove it, we sent an actor out to the sidewalks of downtown Milwaukee. We told him to pretend he was an advertising agency. “Bob” is the only actor. Everyone else just happened to be passing by. Watch what happens as the cameras roll.
Marketing’s love affair with research often leads to a language that no one speaks and concepts that no one cares about. If you ask the wrong questions, it doesn’t matter what the answers are. Do you like clean rest rooms? Yes! Do you like cold soft drinks? Yes! Do we need research to tell us these things? No! Getting the right answers to the wrong questions doesn’t help you create good communication. Research should be used to find consumer insights, not confirm product attributes.
Ivan Pavlov won the Nobel prize in 1904 for proving that you could create an associative memory. For instance, if we said “A spoonful of sugar” you’d say, “Helps the medicine go down,” or Mary Poppins. Pavlov proved you could get a desired response (salivating) by following three simple rules: 1.) Consistency. 2.) Frequency. 3.)Tie your message (bell) to an anchoring emotion (the love of the taste of meat). Pavlov was successful because he knew that dogs love meat. Do you know what your customers love?
Can selling exist where trust does not? In this experiment, Bob tries his hand at the cold call. There are no buyers because there is no trust. Too many times we look for the quick fix, the fast sale, and try to outsmart the transactional mindset. But helping consumers learn how to trust your brand is where the real dollars are. Are you willing to invest the time to understand what needs your brand can fulfill? Watch what happens when Bob tries to seal the deal before he does his homework.
There are no statues of committees. While compromises are easily justified, they rarely are successful. It seems obvious, that in order to keep things sharp, we must avoid the things that make them dull. But in trying to be all things to all people, we dull the edge of communication and relevance. Strive to be a brand that some people love, rather than a brand no one can hate.
Transformational marketing begins where the status quo ends. If you really are looking to change things in your company you have to be prepared to kill some things off. And when you do, you have to be prepared to take an emotional journey that will get you to the other side. It’ll be like a roller coaster. But like a roller coaster, it will have a beginning and an end and you will exit by feeling more alive for having taken the ride.
Focus groups can’t tell you what the next big idea is. They can only confirm things that they are already comfortable with and talk about things they already have seen. If they could invent, they’d have our jobs and wouldn’t be spending 2 hours with a group of strangers for $25 and a can of soda. It’s the job of creative, not the consumer, to invent.
Most people think the name Nonbox is a nod to thinking outside of the box. Well, they’re close. But that approach defaults to recognizing the box as the starting point. Instead, we like to ask, “What if there was no box, then where would you start?” We learned that little trick from Wilbur Wright, who didn’t start where everyone else began, but got to the answer long before anyone else even got off the ground.
