December 2009

Vol. 10  Issue 12

Advertising is an interesting concept; prepare a message for a target audience and then wait for that audience to respond to the message. Ideally 'response' means buying something, or transacting a business relationship with the sender. This newsletter is a form of advertising, because it's branded to the Egret identity, although it never asks for business, just recognition that Egret is providing content for thought. 

On average each of us receives over 3,000 advertising messages a week. Beyond those messages of direct solicitation, we receive hundreds of messages that are vying for attention: employees, family, customers, charities, friends, etc. Above the noise of that deluge of requests, we selectively decide which ones to attend to. How do we actually do that?  It's possible that the attention mechanism is innate.

In an interesting book, " Neuromarketing", authors Patrick Renvoise and  Christophe Morin contend that we analyze information using our developed rational brain (new brain) to make careful assessments of the facts, but we 'decide' based upon our old brain (defined as the core brain which controls our basic fundamentals: heart rate, respiration, emotion, fight/flight, etc.).*

Most advertising is addressed to the new brain: logical, reasoned value propositions of price, value, color, size, speed, etc. While these details are important and registered, the actual decision process relates to that 'gut feel' we employ after being faced with too many facts and figures. Advertising that is delivered to the old brain is far more impactful and probable to render a decision. Examples of marketing to the old brain include print ads that tie in emotions such as fear; fast action and multiple modalities of print, sound, color, and smell are also very impactful. As an example, the baby in the e-trading advertisement appeals to our senses of child-rearing, plus humor.

Neuromarketing delivers a solid case that traditional marketing of more and louder is no longer effective. Now think about 'marketing' yourself; as a recently downsized employee or as an outside salesman or consultant. How do you create an impactful presentation of  'you' at a time when the sheer quantity of messages inundates the senses?

I think a lot about the people who send me resumes with well-written cover letters and detailed career summaries. I empathize with them and try to read them through an eye of not only a professional assessor of talent, but also as a human being, reacting to a plea for help from another economic statistic. I try to help as best as possible, but I too am inundated with hundreds of requests a week, so receiving a message for me requires some sensitivity to benefiting me; which for me means benefiting my clients. 

How does someone get noticed in a sea of over-information?  The highest probability of recognition is to ensure the message is pertinent to the intended receiver. This means researching your target audience before you market to them. Spending money promoting variable speed drives to a service company isn't going to work, sending a resume to a company that is totally unrelated to your career skills will also fail.

Our culture has sadly become more polarized, less tolerant of different ideas or solutions. We've weathered a serious financial implosion and are on a recovery path, albeit still a shaky one. Recovery for many companies will require listening to different solutions. Our labor force is rapidly evolving into an educated labor force, where unskilled laborers may no longer see perpetual manufacturing employment opportunities of the past. New technologies are entering the electrical industry at an astounding pace, unprecedented in its history. Wind and solar power generation, smart grid, smart buildings, LED light sources, biomass, OLED, etc. All are technologies less than ten years old; all are technologies growing in demand, in investment capital and in technological improvements. And yet the core operational structure for most of our manufacturing and distribution clients remain largely unchanged. The messages are all there, but we need to listen to them.

My 'message'  for 2010 is simple: the best things in life aren't 'things' at all. As Will Rogers once said: "a stranger is simply a friend we've not yet met".

Be thankful for what we have, make some room for those new 'friends' yet to be met and make time to pay more attention to those messages that are truly important.

Egret thanks each of you for helping us to continue to provide quality service and dedication to our clients. 10 years. 2 recessions. Still #1. Thank you for that honor.

*Renvoise, Patrick and Morin, Christophe. Neuromarketing: Understanding the "Buy Buttons" in Your Customer’s Brain.  Nashville: Thomas Nelson.