Grant McCracken offered a great post on February 29th on his blog "This Blog Sits at the Intersection of Anthropology and Economics." In the post Grant discusses a recent "argument" about whether Malcom Gladwell's "influencers" from his "Tipping Point" book really influence markets or whether, as Duncan Watts states, that all members in a network are just as likely to transmit information and therefore the impact of "influencers" is much less than Gladwell indicated.
Some good discussion from Grant on his take on both points of view but my "aha" came when I got to this part of the post....
"Many marketers thought that Gladwell's model gave them a way to 'game' the diffusion effect. All we had to do was influence the influencers and entire markets will fall before our approach.
There is always a substantial part of the marketing community looking for that open sesame, the magic formula, the hidden panel, the hot button, the wand and incantation that will allow them to trick the consumer. These marketers are in effect looking for a cheat. In the place of an intimate knowledge of the consumer and the market, in the place of a superlative productive or service, they look for a shortcut. Let's call these people 'mechanistic' marketers. They want to 'operate' the consumer automaton by divining the secret levers within."
Sound familiar? Too many "marketers" are looking for this magic formula - remember "subliminal advertising" - the holy grail of marketing - get people to buy without them even knowing it!
What struck me in this post was the use of "mechanistic marketing" - and it dawned on me that in the reward and incentive industry this is exactly what we've sold to clients (and to ourselves.)
How often have you read an article, white paper, or heard an incentive company say - offer a trip and your sales will go up, offer merchandise as an award and build a loyal employee base. Do a peer-to-peer program and employees will be more satisfied.
In other words - mechanistic motivation.
It doesn't work that way. At least not any more. The audiences we need to influence are more heterogeneous than ever, more demanding, and with the coming labor shortage - more powerful.
I offer this post as a way to alert you to the practice of "mechanistic motivation."
The next time someone says - I've got a program to change X - ask them why they think it will work with YOUR audience. Have they done any research with YOU. Do they have any information about who YOUR company, channel, consumer is? Do they know YOU.
Without some information about where you're starting from - where you're going to and who is involved - all you're doing is mechanistic motivation. And in that case you're not getting engagement - you're not getting a real connection. You're just getting "stimulus - response."
Not what I want from my employees, partners or consumers. Do you?
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