All systems go …
“Thinking is to humans as swimming is to cats; they can do it but they’d prefer not to.” – Daniel Kahneman
Along with “How Brands Grow,” “Thinking Fast and Slow” got us started on our empirical marketing journey. Yes, part of the book has been debunked, and some of Kahneman’s experiments aren’t replicable.
Still … it introduced us to the idea that the human brain actually has two decision-making systems — System 1 and System 2 — which has been profoundly important to marketing.
System 1 is fast, intuitive, emotional, associative and unconscious.?
System 2 is slow, methodical, rational, calculating and conscious.
And 95% of the time, people intuitively choose the convenient, the familiar, the path of least resistance.?
People make around 35,000 decisions — big and small — each day. If we went on a step-by-step, rational journey for every one of them, we’d never get anything done.
As marketers, we have to put 95% of our efforts into building convenient mental shortcuts to lead buyers to our brands.
Dual-system thinking allows us to design more effective strategies.
How do we disrupt expectations to even get noticed in the first place?
How do we make it easy for people to remember our brand in a buying situation when it’s actually relevant?
How do we appeal to that instinctive drive for safety, certainty, comfort and convenience?
That’s what makes this job so much fun.