CoolMarketingStuff

Tom Asacker is one of the most underrated marketing thought leaders in my opinion. Here's a video of his presentation on marketing trends driven by the social changes that are taking place. Read More

Placebos are a fascinating and incredible phenomenon that demonstrates the power of our minds to shape how we perceive reality. A patient who is given a sugar pill instead of an actual pain reliever can feel the same decrease in pain as if they were to receive a medication with chemicals that block the pain receptors at the cellular level. One explanation of the placebo effect is that we tend to experience what we expect. If you expect to hate a new ... Read More

According to Millward Brown's Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands of 2009 Report, the top 100 global brands have increased in value by 2% to $2 Trillion over the past year. Despite the global financial downturn, the top brands seem to be immune to the economic turmoil, if you trust Millward Brown's analysis. Some top brands seem to be excelling in the downturn like Apple and Amazon, while others have tumbled like Disney and Starbucks. One of the biggest surprises is Apple's success ... Read More

Recessionary consumer behavior is discussed in this video with Professor John Quelch of Harvard Business School. He also talks about 4 types of consumers who are reacting in different ways to the economic environment, whether current consumer behaviors will become permanent, and when you should invest in marketing in a recession. Read More

Buyology is an interesting book because it describes a completely new approach to marketing research. Instead of traditional methods of research such as surveys, or focus groups, Buyology explores a new frontier in marketing research, neuromarketing. Specifically, Martin Lindstrom, describes scientific studies in which subject's brains are scanned to see what parts of their brain lights up when exposed to certain marketing stimuli such as a brand logo or an advertisement. When different regions of our brain are active, the increased energy requirement ... Read More

Buyology explores the question of why we buy and this clip is of Martin Lindstrom explaining some of the things marketers do to persuade people to buy even though the individual might not even realize they are being swayed. ... Read More

Often times positive attitudes lead to behavior that mirrors the attitude. For instance, whether you like Obama or you like McCain, you probably voted for them. However positive attitudes don't always predict behavior accurately. For instance, most American's think it is important to eat a healthy diet, however two out of every three Americans are overweight (1). Most American's think it is important to save for retirement, however our national savings rate was recently below zero, while Europe's savings rate is about ... Read More

Sway by Ori and Rom Brafman is a brilliant book about the forces than lead to irrational decision making. Understanding these forces can have many marketing applications since marketing often involves persuading customers to act irrationally. One very interesting topic from Sway that relates directly to consumer behavior is value attribution. Basically this is when an individual is primed with a signal that forms a strong belief of the value of the item that sticks in the mind. There are several fascinating examples of ... Read More

by Gareth Kay There's a ton of good stuff out there about how people really do things, and how behavior really spreads (Mark clearly has contributed a huge amount to this). And as someone working in advertising, it's often quite depressing learning that it's not what we do that really matters, but what people do to what we do; that advertising hasn't got the strong influence we might like to think it does (shock horror, people don't do what we tell them ... Read More

I just finished reading Predictably Irrational and think it is a must read for all marketers because of all the marketing applications Dan Ariely describes in his book. Here is a list of some of the marketing applications of social psychology that I found most interesting and useful for marketers. The Influence of Free Ariely describes several experiments which show that people are more likely to choose something that is free because of the strong influence free has. In one experiment he discounted a ... Read More