Interview with Phil Barden, Author of Decoded: The Science Behind Why We Buy

I've always had a fascination with the area of Behavioural Economics, so jumped at the change to talk to one of the leading practicioners and writers in this area....Phil Barden, is the author of "Decoded: The Science Behind Why We Buy." What follows is a synopsis of an interview with Paul from my Persuaders radio show

Alex Gibson: You know, I brought you back to celebrate the launch of the 2nd edition of "Decoded." The original was first published when, Phil?

Phil Barden: The original was published in 2013, so an updated revised edition is long overdue.

Alex Gibson: Now I know the last time we spoke, you gave us a little potted history of Decoded, and maybe it would be helpful for people who don't know and didn't hear the first podcast. Decoded was a company that was already in existence in Germany. And you were a client of Decoded?

Phil Barden: That's right. Yes, I was at the time. I was VP for the T-Mobile brand.. And I commissioned some very expensive research to look at brand positioning, and the results coming back were frankly annoying in that they didn't make sense to me nor to people in the local markets.

And someone introduced me to the founders of Decoded. It ?(Decoded) was founded 15 years ago in Germany by a neuroscientist and a psychologist who found that the combination of their areas of expertise was in great demand in the commercial world, because they brought a completely new lens through which to understand consumer and customer behaviour.

Because at its heart, marketing is about behaviour change through advertising, through promotions, product and service design, packaging, whatever it might be, it's all about behaviour change. And what they found is that they could draw upon decades of research from different fields, like social and evolutionary psychology, cognitive psychology, various fields of neuroscience, and the newly emerging field of behavioural economics, and combining those, they found that they could answer a lot of hitherto unanswered questions in the commercial world.

Why we choose and use certain brands over others? Why certain ads work and others don't? Why consumers tell us one thing in research and then go and do something completely different in reality? They just blew my mind with what they knew about consumer behaviour. I commissioned them to work on the relaunch, and we did some research that was completely revolutionary to me, having spent a long time in client-side marketing before that with new approaches, new language, new lens through which to look at behaviour. The work we did resulted in a hugely successful relaunch and repositioning, most famously, the first in the UK with a flash mob dance ad at London's Liverpool Street station.

Alex Gibson: I remember seeing this. I remember seeing it at the time on YouTube. And yeah, it got massive exposure.

Phil Barden: Yeah, it did. Well, it became a social thing even before Instagram and Twitter were around. So we had Facebook. And I think I created something like 70 Facebook groups. People started doing flash mobs and filming themselves around the country, and that one ad grew sales by 49% and it doubled footfall into T-Mobile retail stores within 48 hours. And it's had 40-42 million YouTube views to date. It frankly took us all by surprise in the company. And I said to the guys at Decoded, "Look, this is amazing. We didn't think it would work as well as this." And they looked at me very blankly and said, "Well, why are you surprised? This ad is based on everything we've been working on with you. It encodes motivators of behaviour. So why are you surprised that it's worked?" That was a real lightbulb moment for me, and the more I talked to them, the more fascinated I got about this whole behavioural science area. So much so that in the end I quit my client-side career and asked them if they were interested in having an office in London in the UK, which they were. So I set up Decoded 10 years ago in the UK, and we've been growing the business ever since. We had a similar experience in the US, with one of the world's biggest consumer goods companies who read my first book and got in contact and said we'd be interested in working with you. The upshot was that a guy from their behavioural science unit, they actually had such a thing as a behavioural science unit in their head office. He quit to join us and he set up Decoded in the US. About seven years ago now. So yeah, there's a real track record now of working with clients and clients saying, "Can I join? This is just too exciting and too powerful to miss." That's the story of Decoded and how I got into it.

Alex Gibson: It's evident there's been a rising interest in behavioural science and books like "Nudge" or "Influence," which are more oriented towards marketers. Your book is very focused, I suppose because of your background with 20-plus years on the client side. What are your thoughts on that?

Phil Barden: Yeah, I totally agree with that. I was guilty of it when I was client-side. The new thing comes along, a new bit of technology, or a change in the media landscape, whatever it might be, and suddenly there's a headlong rush to experiment and try and put lots of eggs into that particular basket without really knowing its value or how it might develop. In so doing, I think a lot of marketers miss out on focusing on the fundamentals of human behaviour and what motivates us to do what we do and buy what we do and not buy what we don't. If we spent more time focused on that, then we'd come to realize how and if the shiny new stuff works within that mental model. So whether it's a social media site, everyone rushes headlong to say, "I'm now going, it's all about performance marketing or engagement." But take a step back. Why would people want to engage with the site? What makes them come in the first place or keep coming back? Why would they click on your call to action button? What's in it for them? Really focusing on the fundamentals of why humans do what they do would help businesses focus their efforts and make strategic choices.

Alex Gibson: Do you think that, as somebody who's worked in brand marketing myself and agonized over Pantone references and colours on packaging, that sometimes people are so close to the problem that they don't really understand how people process information about products and services in microseconds?

Phil Barden: Absolutely. People get so close to the problem that they don't understand how consumers perceive things. Customers don't read your strategy paper. They have no clue what you're trying to do, and they don't care. All they can deal with are the things they can perceive through their senses. They can't imagine what's in the brief that you wrote. You've got to get into the brain and help the brain decode the messages that you've encoded in your communication or packaging design. If you don't even get into the brain in the first place, then nothing else happens. That person can never decode a message or respond to whether there's something in it for them. Out of sight is out of mind. The stuff that the designers cleverly showed you on their screens might disappear when placed on a store shelf. You have a second or two at most to get people to receive your message. So you need to focus on these basics.

Alex Gibson: Yeah. Well, we're mainly out of time, but I did want to ask you about one dimension that is new in the book this time, which is distinctive brand assets. It's something I've talked about with other marketing professionals such as Paul Dervan here in Ireland, and it's something that's gained importance. Can you give a brief overview of what you found and your conclusions about it?

Phil Barden: Distinctive brand assets are things that can evoke the brand in memory without the brand name being present. They can be visual, sonic, haptic, or even related to smell. We conducted research to measure these assets at an implicit level. We found that they play a significant role in memory and brand recall. Different age groups have different unmet needs, which opens up opportunities for brands to create relevant messaging. For example, during lockdown, younger age groups had unmet needs related to autonomy, while older consumers had unmet needs related to a prevention mindset. Understanding these unmet needs can help brands bridge the gap with their messaging.

Alex Gibson: Time is our enemy on the show, but I'd love to have you back to dive deeper into these themes. Thanks for joining us today, Phil.

Phil Barden: I'd be happy to do that. Thanks, Alex.