The Jordan Philips Marketing Blog - Internal Branding - Employee Engagement

An example for leaders

I want to inspire you in a deeply profound way by showing you a video, but before I do I want to make a comment about what you are about to see. This is a clip from the television series "The West Wing", where Toby Zeigler (the communications director for the White House) addresses his team after one of them leaked a devastating quote to the press. What I find so profound in this clip is this...it's an absolutely perfect example of how leaders can and should be leading people today. It's inspirational, real, and grounds everyone is a single belief, a single value system and engages everyone of his staff members to become part of something bigger than themselves. At the end of the clip, Sam Seaborn (the Deputy Communications Director) says "that was completely unexpected" as if to be surprised that he didn't rip someone's head off. It's so easy as a leader to take the "iron fist" route but truth be told, it might get results, it might satisfy your inner desires to be the "boss", but at the end of the day its leadership like this that builds Brand Champions. If you are in a leadership position, I would ask that you watch this clip, and ask yourself how you could emulate these words and think about how that might help you build a better team. Ask yourself, if you were working for Toby, how would this have affected you?

Finding the "Buy" button (neuroscience good or bad)

Lately I have been looking at a lot of data on neuroscience. I find it extremely interesting, however, I am not convinced it's completely practical yet. Marketers and scientists are very interested in finding the "buy" button that's inside our brains; for obvious reasons. There is just so much we don't know about how the brain works and why people make the choices they do...but they are getting closer.

I guess my question is what happens when they actually do figure it out. What would that mean? How would that change the way marketers position their products? How would that change the way consumers look at brands, messages and products? Their integrity? Would it create a need for consumers to come up with some anti "buy" button counter-warfare thing-a-magig? I don't know. I imagine, for all of the research and effort marketers and scientists put into finding the "buy"button, at it's best, would only be able to slightly influence us into making an actual purchase. I can't imagine opening up a magazine and looking at an ad and being involuntarily moved to stop what I am doing and go down to the mall and buy a specific item. That's a very scary thought. I just don't think it will ever get to that point...and perhaps that's a good thing. For now I am still in control of my brain.

There is a recent interview with Martin Lindstrom (www.martinlindstrom.com) on the Tom Peters blog that many of you might want to check out as well as some other recently published books relating to this topic.

I would also suggest taking a look at True North Performance. They are doing a lot of marketing research into emotions with neuroscience. Created by Dr. Stephen Curtis, his research provides a very unique look into how emotions impact the decision making process from a neuroscientific perspective. www.truenorthperformance.com

Books to look at:

• Buyology - Martin Lindstrom
• Nudge - Richard Thaler
• Predictably Irrational - Dan Ariely