Monthly Archives: August 2013

You spend all that money on marketing because you want people to notice you, right? If you had the choice between knowing that 50% of your target market had seen your ad and 10% had seen it you’d be crazy not to want the higher figure, wouldn’t you? Well, perhaps not. Consider two people. One walks into the room, taps you on the shoulder and says, “Hi. I’m the new accountant and I’m the best accountant you’ve ever met. I do everything better than other accountants. In surveys I came top every time. Nice to meet you.” The second is in the room before you arrive and you don’t really notice him. He’s quietly going about his business. You don’t pay any attention, but there’s a constant stream of people headed his way and they seem happy. You’re vaguely aware that he’s sitting where the accountants sit. When you need […]

I’d love to be able to tell you that I’m going to write this article about focus groups and I don’t care what you think, but that wouldn’t be true. If you think back over the conversations you’ve initiated recently with people – particularly if you were speaking to someone whose opinion you valued, who you thought of as something of an expert on the matter – what was really at the heart of those exchanges? When you choose to talk about your thoughts on your team’s performance last night, the film you’ve seen, or the new coat you’ve purchased, what are you getting out of such an exchange? It’s likely that, neurologically-speaking, what you’re getting – or at least what you’re hoping and expecting to get – is the pleasure of that expert agreeing with you. Recent research has shown that what other people think, particularly people whose opinions […]