- Jul 22, 2021

Why DO they do that?

A few months back, I came up with the simplest brand model I could imagine. Two concentric circles - ‘how you stand out’ on the outside, ‘what you stand for’ on the inside.

Now I’m wondering if I can do the same for consumers. It would really help if it's two concentric circles again.

Let’s start there.

Of course, for consumers in a category it all comes down to the brand choices we make.

So some would say focus on the evidence. That means people’s behaviour and, to some extent, their attitudes. Take measurements, find patterns, make laws. Stay on the surface.

But that ignores what’s going on underneath.

We could go the other way, full-blown Kahneman. System 1 on the inside, System 2 outside. Intuition wrapped in reason.

But that would make the inner circle Pick-A-Bias. And there are bloody hundreds of them. How would you ever settle on one?

Still, I like the idea of making the outer circle about behaviour. Observed behaviour. ‘What they do.’

But what would be on the inside?

‘Why they do it’, presumably.

So I could go all the way back to Jung. Not as in Pick-An-Archetype. His concepts. Introversion/extroversion, personal/collective unconscious. Basically, Need Maps.

And marketing is still about satisfying consumers' needs, isn’t it?

And people’s deeper needs tend not to change. Which is why they’re the best place to lay your brand’s foundations.

But making the inner circle simply the deeper need to be met…that’s too simple.

Firstly, is it a need or a want or a drive or a bias or a motivation or a motive?

Secondly, is it smart to make the inner circle all about the unconscious? Lots of people don’t like thinking about the unconscious. Makes them nervous.

And thirdly, where’s the tension? Where’s the problem to be solved?

So maybe for a consumer model you can have ‘what people do’ on the outside. The facts of the matter.