This is the ninth in Motista’s series of cartoons by award-winning cartoonist Tom Fishburne, titled “Moments of Truth.” We’re looking forward to your input on this cartoon. To say thanks for your input, we will send the first five folks who comment a print of this “Marketoon” signed by Tom (U.S. addresses only).
The brain, more specifically the “right brain,” (more accurately the amygdala), carries in it the powerful emotions that drive people’s decisions. As marketers, we intuitively feel that if we could only unlock “why” someone does something—their true motivations—then we could turn our marketing program into the next rave.
The “what” is easy. There’s no shortage of consumer opinion about our products and services. Through social media and our own websites, consumers have outlets to share a steady stream of consciousness about their likes and dislikes.
But the “why” is hard. Unlocking the “unconscious” motivators that lie beneath the surface requires time, money, expertise and “brilliant” insight. We look at our latest Marketoon from Tom Fishburne and empathize with the marketer hero. Her eager disposition hints at the enormous pressure she’s under to get the next campaign into the market fast to impact next quarter results. She impatiently waits for the moment when the consumer “reveals all.”
If probing the right brain of consumers wasn’t hard enough, her next challenge is the “left brain.” Not of the consumer, but of the management team. Soon, she’ll be presenting her findings and implications to executives, most of whom put their intuitive thinking on hold during business hours. Buying into “emotion” threatens their credibility within the business-minded social context they care about. Can you imagine the divisional president telling his directors that the “hypnotist” findings will drive performance?
While connecting with consumers on an emotional level is clearly good for business (even essential as it becomes harder and harder to differentiate) bridging the consumer’s right brain with management’s left brain is no easy task.
No wonder there’s a “connection gap” between companies and consumers.
Motista is here for the marketer, to give her critical intelligence on the “why” that she can act on to inform campaign development and motivate consumers. And, it gives the company the internal language—the data and analytics—to help left-brained executives understand and buy into emotion. In the process, our marketer transforms from helpless and hopeful to successful and persuasive.
That’s a moment of truth.
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As marketers, we want to know why they will buy, what will make them pull the trigger, how to get them to buy us over them…. but often we must make sure we have a quality product to begin with. Consumers are getting savvy to that fact… will it last? will it do at it claims? will something else better come out next week?
What I like best about this cartoon is the way that Market Research is approached. We know what we want, but the person doing the testing may not be going about it the right way to get the right answer. In our place we just had a 2 hour debate about the value of monadic versus sequential monadic testing. Absolutely brutal. The worst part was that the marketer was arguing with the market researcher. If the researcher is the expert, let them make the call.
I think with my left brain, but it feels so right.
Tom’s cartoons are the best. I’ll be working on an idea for a cartoon.
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