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Market research supplement
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Animal instincts
Independent research consultant Mark Earls on why B2B marketers and researchers are better
placed to understand and benefit from the new ‘hyperconnected’ world than their B2C cousins
O
ne of my favourite marketing to all markets – and by consumers who trust behaviour’. As it happens, I’m convinced
academics recently identified each other more than us, is not difficult to that B2B marketers are in a much better
more than 60 of what he called fathom. place than their consumer equivalent.
‘marketing panaceas’ The point about these ideas that I call Many of these insights are already
pronounced in the last 10 years. ‘herd’ insights (after our herd nature of embedded in B2B practice (for example, the
We seem to have got into the habit of course) is how much easier they make it for idea that decisions are made by a number of
declaring a new age every few months, us to understand what we see: to explain individuals acting together rather than by
declaring ‘everything changed, changed how these technologies spread and get the independent agents as in consumer
utterly’ before proposing a new form of adopted (eg. through peer-emulation), what markets is a fundamental of B2B targeting).
marketing. While popular with the they offer the user (eg. social interaction Many of the tools and techniques that
publishing industry and conference and a sense of belonging) and how we consumer marketing research is now
organisers, the ‘revelation’ model of should navigate our way through them as grabbing at with wild and greedy hands are
marketing seems to have worn a bit thin. marketers. This explanatory power is a big from B2B manuals – even the social
That said, there is a new way of thinking part of the reason they’ve been so readily influence methodologies that are shaping
about human beings that is spreading adopted (the other part is that we are seeing their thinking are. Even large scale
rapidly through the behavioural sciences, other folk find them useful and we emulate marketing phenomena like CRM are best
and is now spilling over rapidly into our what we see). Either way, without this new suited to the world of B2B for which they
world with widespread and rapid uptake. map, it’s much harder to live in this new were originally developed and – as is
This new approach seems to merit more world… increasingly being learned – not at all to
consideration than these ‘marketing What we’re seeing here is more than FMCG marketing.
panaceas’ do. additional media opportunities or ways to
At the heart of this way of thinking – a play games or listen to music; hyper B2B is closer to the coal face
‘school’ is too concrete and high falutin’ to connectivity is changing the landscape for Moreover, B2B marketers have none of the
describe the varied collection of thinkers us marketers. Some important things have legacy ideas and practices that so inhibit
and practitioners in different fields – lie changed for ever: this is no passing phase. their consumer marketing cousins: no hiding
simple assertions: that human beings are behind the big TV ad or the fancy research
social animals; that we do what we do New rules technique to make things better. There are
largely because of the influence of those Thankfully, a handful of enterprising rarely millions of B2B customers to ignore
around us and not because of our individual research folk have already gone about (the more there are, the harder it is to really
volition; and – probably hardest of all to building navigational tools to help. By this I get inside their heads) and B2B marketing
swallow – that thinking plays very little role mean more than the digital research folk are normally closer to both
in what we do (at least until after the fact). firejumpers who have developed new ways to manufacturing and sales than their FMCG or
As Dan Kahnemann, a recent Nobel laureate describe online behaviour – but also those consumer services equivalents.
has put it, humans are to thinking as cats who have started to use the herd insights The only question now is whether B2B
are to swimming – we can do it if we really into human behaviour together with new marketers want to claim their rightful
have to. And as his contemporary, the technology; people like John Kearon at inheritance: that is, to create a new kind of
American social psychologist Eliot Aronson Brainjuicer for example, who has worked out marketing that really brings this new
puts it, we are the “rationalizing (sic) rather how to harness the wisdom of crowds to consensus of behavioural sciences to bear
than reasoning ape”. enhance early product concept screening. on the business problems and challenges
Equally, Stephen Phillipps at Spring has done that arise from the new landscape.
Following the herd great stuff in understanding social influence. Or will we just leave the consumer
As I’ve suggested, the origin of these ideas More importantly, it is marketing itself marketers to work out what the future looks
lies beyond the world of marketing and that is having to move away from tired old like for us? It’d be a shame, wouldn’t it?
media – there seems to be an emerging certainties, like ‘changing minds to change markearls@hotmail.com
consensus in fields as diverse as
primatology, cognitive neuroscience,
anthropology and behavioural economics.
“Hyperconnectivity is actually changing the
But the appeal of them to a marketing
community overrun with social media sites
landscape for us marketers. Some important
like Facebook (no, I don’t want to be a
things have changed forever: this is no
ninjavampirewerewolf footsoldier, thank you
very much) by confident consumers – passing phase”
thanks to the inescapable transparency that
internet and hyperconnectivity have brought
Mark Earls, market research consultant
B2BM SEPTEMBER 08 – www.b2bm.biz
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