Ep. 12 – Marketing with Empathy with Sandeep Dayal.

Transcript

 Intro (00:05):

Welcome to The Elusive Consumer. Today Ellie is speaking with Sandeep Dayal, Managing Director and Executive Vice President at Cerenti Marketing Group. Join us as Sandeep shares in valuable insights into the evolving landscape of brand management, how startups can navigate their brand strategy and the surprising findings he uncovered during research for his book, Branding Between the Ears. Let’s get started right now on The Elusive Consumer.

Ellie (00:33):

I want to kickstart this straight away. I know you’re a busy man, so thank you again for joining us today and welcome to The Elusive Consumer. We’re really excited to have you and to learn more about cognitive science’s role in marketing strategy. we’re going to talk a little bit about the book that you’ve launched and the future of marketing and what that might look like versus the old school way of branding and branding strategy. So without further ado, maybe you could start with talking us through what got you to where you are today in terms of your professional career?

Sandeep Dayal (01:14):

Certainly. So thank you for asking that. Marketing is one of those things which you just have to have a passion for. I mean, especially when you’re talking about consumer marketing, it’s something that you must want to do. It is my thing. And I think in my career, there were many occasions as I was doing work in marketing and branding particularly, that you would be talking to consumers and just getting those insights and just really understanding people can be fascinating.

(01:47):

And I’ve done actually a lot of my work, if you will, in the healthcare segment. So I was often talking to patients, so people that have serious diseases, and many times it was children that would have those diseases. And then talking to them and just really understanding what they were going through their lives and how what we were doing as marketers could really make a difference, help them and so on, was just so much more real than just reading about those types of things in the book. So over the last 20 years, my passion for marketing has only grown, I would say, if that is even possible, and that’s what’s led me to be a marketer, be a brand marketer, so to speak.

Ellie (02:35):

Okay. And what do you think differentiates your organization, Cerenti, from other companies that operate in this space?

Sandeep Dayal (02:45):

Yeah, so we are what I would call a boutique management consulting firm, and that sort of goes with our principle of really being passionate about our work. Because we’re not so focused on being big, we’re not so focused on being known, whichever way you want to define it. We’re just very focused on doing great work and having a good time working with our clients. And so our firm has been very distinctive in the work and the approach that it’s taken. So particularly in the area that my book is about, Branding Between the Ears, it’s very much about getting deep into the understanding of consumer psychology and getting deep into understanding consumer behavior, which sometimes goes in a very different direction than what we have learned in the past in our standard marketing MBA type courses.

Ellie (03:50):

Right. In terms of moving away from that old school, traditional marketing and branding, was there a particular incident that led you to think, actually, I need to research this and I need to write a book about this? Or was it just over the years of experience of working with different companies that led to that?

Sandeep Dayal (04:11):

Yeah, funny you should ask that. And there have been at least one or two incidents that really led me to rethink what the heck was going on in marketing. And one that comes to mind is that… So, just a little bit of background: there’s a lot of work we’ve done in the past in the area of treating patients that have rheumatoid arthritis. Rheumatoid arthritis is arthritis, except you’ve got all this pain and stiffness in your body, and it’s a situation where your immune system is wired wrongly, and it attacks your own body, its joints, and that’s what creates that disease. And it’s a life lifelong disease and people that have it go through this painful disease for their entire lives.

(05:01):

So I remember one incident when I was talking to this woman, Lisa, and we were having this in-depth conversation and I was very excited about having this conversation because I was talking about my client’s new drug, which at the time was revolutionary and it really helped patients, it really worked well. So the drug was called Humira by a company called Abbott at the time now called AbbVie. It’s the biggest drug in the world, it’s like $25 billion in revenues. And so I was talking to Lisa and I was just asking her what she goes through and this and that, and I was telling her how wonderful this drug was and that it would really change her life. And I just felt like she was just not connecting, which was kind of very weird to me, which is like, hey, I’m a marketer, okay. But I’m telling you how my product can be so super beneficial for you, it’ll change your life and you’re not that interested in listening to me.

(05:59):

And then she turned around to me and said, “Listen, Sandeep, if you don’t understand what I go through in my life, how are you going to help me?” And I was so confused when she said that because I said, “Look, I have this fantastic drug, it’s going to change your life. What do you care whether I understand your life or not?” But it really sort of drove home the message that you’re dealing with humans here, you’re dealing with people here. And people have to have a certain level of connection with you before they can have some level of empathy, some level of connection that you have to have before they will even trust a word of what you’re saying.

(06:42):

So in that sense, it was a big realization for me that it’s not so simple. Because marketing says, well figure out how your product is different from somebody else’s product and take those differences and communicate them, that’s what a value proposition is, that’s what marketing is. But it’s not so simple. You can do that and have nothing happen, you can have a campaign that’s completely ineffective. And the difference is sometimes understanding those behavioral elements and psychological elements. So that was a big moment for me. It was such a small thing, but it was a big moment for me personally.

Ellie (07:17):

Right. And it’s interesting you mentioned that because it touches upon so much of what we discuss in this podcast in terms of being a data-driven organization and what role data plays in really listening to your consumers to be able to better connect with them. I’d like to hear more about how you go about emphasizing that importance to some of these Fortune 500 companies that you work with. What is your core challenge when they approach you and say, “Hey Sandeep, we need your help here with our branding strategy?”

Sandeep Dayal (07:54):

Yeah, yeah. And by the way, it’s not easy. So, really getting some of these ideas and communicating some of these ideas is a challenge. And it’s a challenge because people have historically been trained in a very different way. When people 20 years back or 15 years back, or even now in many cases, when they go through their branding courses and so forth and brand training, they’re not taught a lot about behavioral science and cognitive psychology, for example. So it is a very different framework and people get like, “Ah, what is this? I’ve never heard of this. Is this right? And how does it relate to what I know?” And people tend to be comfortable in their own shoes and what they know. So it’s not an easy thing and it’s better for marketers to realize that it’s not an easy thing.

(08:50):

But at the same time, Ellie, what has happened is that there is so much science behind this stuff now. So this is not stuff we are making up. The only thing that we have done, which is different in my company, is that we have taken all the advances that have taken place in, for example, behavioral science or behavioral economics. I mean, there are people like Taylor Kahneman Schiller who won Nobel Prizes for this thing. So this is very solid stuff. However, it’s science that has been applied to public policy, it’s science that’s been applied to things like investments and finance and so forth, but it’s science that has not been applied to marketing as much. But it is science nonetheless. So there’s very compelling data and there’s very compelling proof of effectiveness, if you will, behind this thinking, which is what has made us so confident in applying this with our clients who are really betting hundreds of millions of dollars on the success of their brands. So it’s very high impact, very big. And the innovation really is coming from the application of hard science now to the area of branding.

Ellie (10:14):

Could you give us some examples of clients you’ve helped with your brand positioning, maybe in the financial or healthcare sector?

Sandeep Dayal (10:25):

Yeah, I mean, we worked in many different sectors, healthcare sector, financial services sector, and consumer products. The one example that I would pick if you want to talk about financial services is, again, a lot of financial services are very consumer-oriented, and you have to realize that it’s not just a game of numbers. So we worked a lot with, for example, credit card companies, which is about as much of a consumer product as anything else. You’ve seen wonderful brand strategies and campaigns around American Express, around MasterCard and so on. And you have to realize that people are people, and they think of these things, even though you would think they would be very numbers-oriented. So if you have a credit card, you would think that people would just look at, hey, what’s the interest rate? What are the benefits? And you can pretty much do a pros and cons of different cards and they select that way.

(11:37):

But people manage their finances in many different ways. For example, people may sometimes have a particular card for just certain types of expenses and another card for another type of expenses just to do the accounting. An economist would say that makes no sense, you can sort through the thing. And you don’t need to have so many different cards. But we realize, for example, that people do, in fact, have that kind of behavior. And therefore if you’re sitting there as a credit card marketer and you are thinking about what are the different types of cards you’re going to have and which ones are actually going to get into a customer’s wallet? That’s the number one question. There are so many cards, many of them never make it to the wallet. So how can you make your card very useful for that person?

(12:26):

So that’s one of the things that we did. We would sort of position certain cards for being certain types of expenses, use this card for your school expenses and so on or whatever, or use this card for your wedding celebration or something and come up with some programs. And so those are the times when people are spending a lot of money and you want to be able to capture those events, and by creating certain types of products and brand positioning for those products tied to those behaviors, you can have a lot of success. So financial services is a very common area where these types of marketing is used.

(13:06):

The other one that I mentioned, of course, which I’m sure all of your listeners are familiar with is the MasterCard priceless campaign. Now, what was wonderful about that campaign and the strength of the brand strategy was that it ran for many, many decades, and is still in many ways an inspiration for their current campaigns also. That shows you the strength of a campaign. It’s not the brand positioning, oh, today we have this campaign and tomorrow or next year we have another campaign. It’s this priceless campaign ran for decades and worked really well. And it was really tied to this whole idea that rather than let the credit card be something that you think of as, hey, this is just a different way of spending cash, to really make you think that by using that particular card, you were creating special moments in people’s lives. It wasn’t so much that you were spending money, but that the result of your spending money was creating these special moments.

(14:09):

So for their first campaign featured a dad who goes out to with his son for the very first time to a baseball game. And then they show the things that you’re very familiar with that, oh, tickets, $15, hot dog, whatever, $3 and souvenir t-shirt, whatever, $25 and so on. So they go through this list of things, but then saying that first moment with your son at the baseball game, priceless. Something like that. So it really takes away from the idea that, oh, you spent whatever it is, $7 or $8 on an outrageously priced hotdog to say, hey, no, that’s not the point. The point is having this priceless moment with your son and MasterCard makes it possible every time you use it.

(15:02):

So that relies on a very special kind of psychology, which has been shown to be what is called intrinsic motivation, which means that when people do things because they’re motivated to those things, not because somebody’s forcing them or bribing them to do those things, like extrinsic motivation is essentially bribes or forcing somebody to do something. Intrinsic is when you want to do something all by yourself. And one of the principles of intrinsic that has been discovered, which is by Deci and Ryan, two very famous psychologists who have said something called the self-determination theory at the University of Rochester, but it says, one of the ways in which you create intrinsic motivation is by enhancing your relationships When you do anything, if you use any brand or anything, and if that’s going to help expand your social relationship, that’s going to have intrinsic motivation behind it.

(16:02):

So this priceless campaign was about enhancing your relationships with your friends, with your family, with whoever. And in that sense it is intrinsically motivating. So there’s a lot of science now that says that works, so we shouldn’t be surprised that the priceless campaign works so well because it really relied on this whole arena of self-determination theory.

Ellie (16:26):

Right. And that leads me to questions that I have about your book. You talk about the five types of brands in your book, and I’d love to hear some examples of those. But in the MasterCard example, is that one more related to a values type or empathy or what do you think there?

Sandeep Dayal (16:48):

So that’s a brand which is about, what I call brand with resolve.

Ellie (16:54):

Resolve.

Sandeep Dayal (16:55):

And I relate to the whole idea of intrinsic motivation.

Ellie (16:57):

Okay. Talk to us about those five types.

Sandeep Dayal (17:00):

These are kind of five very, in some ways new or different. So just going back to the theory of branding, just so that we can compare it, theory of branding has really been a theory about product differentiation. So if tomorrow, Ellie, you launch a company and you come out with a product, you’re basically going to say, “Hey, how’s my product different from somebody else’s product?” And then you will take those differences and turn them into some kind of a brand campaign or a brand message and so on and say, “Hey, this is what my brand is about.” So that’s about product differentiation.

(17:35):

And then marketers discovered emotions. Maybe that was 30 years back or something, and they said, “Hey, it’s not just that my car is faster or more luxurious or more powerful or something, but yeah, let’s put some emotion on it. Yeah, it’s powerful so it’s going to be more exhilarating.” So that type. “Well, I’ve got softer leather, so it’s going to be more luxurious and you’re going to be in love.” That type of… So they started attaching those emotions, and nothing wrong with it that actually works to a certain degree.

(18:07):

At the same time, the brain doesn’t quite work like that. The brain doesn’t say, hey, if you just put a emotion on any kind of functional difference, then that creates a great brand. No, the brain really works in a way different way on around certain thoughts and so forth, around connections, around thoughts. And so the different types of brands in my book that I describe, and we’ve already talked about a couple of them, one is brands with empathy. Then there’s another one which is brands with values. Then brands with wisdom, brands with reasoning and brands with Resolve. So there are these five different kinds of brands which are very different and much more powerful, if you will, than just the concepts of product differentiation.

Ellie (18:54):

And in terms of examples of some of those, and I believe you also sometimes talk about a sixth brand with purpose. Can you talk about that one a little bit and examples of brands today that are trying to differentiate themselves by that purpose?

Sandeep Dayal (19:10):

Yeah, so that’s an interesting area because everybody these days has been discussing about, oh my gosh, we need to have some purpose. And when that happens, they start associating themselves with some charity. So buy my product and I’ll give a dollar to this charity and so on. And it’s kind of very, what I would call a very knee-jerk reaction to making their brands, brands with purpose. And that is not how is some of that authenticity around your commitment to purpose. There are clearly brands like Patagonia and so on, which have had very distinct purpose and they’ve lived it in many ways, and therefore you can see how they’re brands with purpose.

(19:55):

But the example that I describe in my book is, and there are a number of examples, one of the examples that I describe is Allbirds, which is a company that makes shoes, as you might know, very comfortable and fantastic shoes. But they started with this whole notion that they were going to have these shoes, which were going to be, if you will, environmentally friendly. They didn’t say that, “Okay, every time you buy my shoe, I’ll give $1 to the environmental fund or something, for climate change.” They really invested a lot of time and money into making sure that every component of that shoe was, whether it’s the shoelaces that are coming from eucalyptus trees or the sole of the shoe, which is from another type of material, and so they just made sure that in every element of their product and element of what they were preaching, that they were actually doing what they were preaching.

(20:55):

And as a result of that, and the fact that their shoes are great, but they could have just had a message that said, “My shoes are great and very comfortable.” But no, it’s all about having that purpose of making the world a better place through using more environmentally friendly materials. And that is how their shoe just took off. Which is amazing because in the world there’s so many shoes, there’s so many shoe brands, how do you come up with a new shoe brand now and make it take share? It’s almost impossible, but they did it and they did a slam bang job of it.

(21:31):

So that’s what I would call a brand with purpose. It is tied to the idea that when you tie any kind of giving or what have you do something, A, it should be on related to what your brand’s core message is. So don’t say your brand is all about environmental materials and then you have a program to give a dollar to a children’s hunger program. Well, what’s that got to do with this? I mean, it’s a worthy cause, but it’s got nothing to do with your brand. So you got to align you with your brand positioning. And then the second thing is you have to have that level of authenticity where people know through your actions that you are really doing it.

(22:14):

And then the third thing I say for brands with purpose, if you’re going to do it well, that do something that you can do… so where the purpose or concern, engage in a purpose that you can do better than anybody else. Or by virtue of your skills. So because you have the skill, you have the knowledge of producing materials that can be used and shoes in an environmentally way, yeah, do that because that’s very much fitting with your purpose and very much fitting with your capabilities. So that’s what brands with purpose are, and we are seeing more and more that the brands that do it well are earning loyalty and premiums over similar products that don’t do that.

Ellie (23:00):

In terms of companies that are just starting up and don’t necessarily have the reputation and heritage of these big corporations, when they’re trying to decide their strategy for their brand and what type of brand they want to be, what advice would you give them?

Sandeep Dayal (23:20):

Right. And by the way, Allbirds was one such startup. They came absolutely out of nowhere and took share away from companies like Nike and these way bigger companies. So firstly, I do want to inject a bit of an air of reality, which is that marketing is expensive. So obviously when you’re a startup company, you want to know if there’s some kind of a hack or some kind of a shortcut that allows you to spend zero but have a multi-billion dollar brand. Yes, of course, but I don’t blame anybody for having that desire, but it is difficult to do that.

(24:03):

Nonetheless, I would say there are brands that have been startup brands that have managed to do that. Allbirds is not the only story there. In my book, I also described, for example, the experience of the Dollar Shave Club, and they did it through building what I would call the brand with empathy. And what they realized was that men were particularly tired of being taken advantage of by the bigger razor blade companies like Gillette and so on, who would give you the razor for free, but then the razor blade itself was outrageously expensive considering what it was. And so they came up with this very simple thing that we’re going to mail you a blade every month for a dollar and this and that, and it’s going to be just a gray and you’ll get a great shave and all that stuff.

(25:02):

But the entrepreneur who came up with that, his main success was he put up this video in which he did such a great job of articulating and made this video, and he kind of did it spontaneously. He just had a friend come over and said, “Hey, take my video.” And he goes through this whole thing and say, this rant, really, it’s almost a three-minute rant where he talks about how men are being taken advantage of and how it’s simply really all you need is this good shave and there you should be able to do it for a dollar and so on. And then he puts it up on YouTube and it goes viral. I mean, there’s like 30 million people that have watched this video. That is because he was, either instinctively or by virtue of having talked to other people, he was able to connect with people into that angst that people feel, right? And that’s what a brand with empathy does well, that it is able to really step into your shoes and see the world through your eyes.

(26:09):

That’s what empathy is, when you can go into somebody else’s shoes and see how they see the world. And this is something that he uncovered. And maybe instinctively, but he made this video and then people who watched that, they thought it was just such a great video, it captured how they were feeling and they would forward it to the next person and so on and how marketing goes.

(26:31):

So I think what I would advise people starting their business is that, look, there is no replacement, even though we are in an era of data science and machine learning and all of that stuff, which certainly would be elusive for most entrepreneur, but there is really no substitute for one human talking to another. So really go talk to your consumers, try to understand what is the deep angst that you can focus on. Because you can, then you will have some natural avenues for connecting with people and so on. So that’s just one way. But I would say the five different ways or the six different types of brands that I describe in my book are all avenues for ideas around how you can do this differently than what has been done in the past and that can be a hope for doing it more efficiently and break some of the rules.

Ellie (27:22):

Before we move on from your book, could you give us any examples of some findings that surprised you during your research stage?

Sandeep Dayal (27:32):

In some ways, the best findings are the findings that actually surprise you. So we worked a lot with Abbott on a brand called PediaSure, which is basically like a milkshake type of a drink, which can be given to children in the age groups of one to 10. And if they drink this thing, they get all the vitamins and minerals and all the nutrition that they need. This particular product had been sold by this company forever in hospitals, and it was used for kids that were really sick who could not swallow. So this was something that was just fed through a tube. And even if those kids couldn’t eat anything else, just by having this milkshake drink, they could get all the nutrition that they needed to survive. And then Abbott sort of started saying, “Hey, wait a minute, “And we worked with them on this. They said, “Well, this is such a great nutritional drink, maybe all the consumers would want it, all children could benefit from it.”

(28:37):

And now this is by the way, it went from being a few hundred million dollars in hospitals to now being a big brand, which is in excess of $5 billion I think at this point, or maybe $3 billion or $5 billion, but some huge number around the world. The real insight that came, and we were kind of in Indonesia and looking at, look, what’s going on, what would motivate moms and kids? And we did some focus groups and in those focus groups, the key insight that came out was, and this also came through the doctors that had been prescribing this product, that came was that most moms think that their kids are picky eaters, which was very interesting. It’s like especially young moms that are first time moms and so on, they have kids and so on, and they see kids and they’re eating all kinds of junk food. They’ll eat french fries, they’ll eat chocolates, they’ll eat candies and this, but they won’t eat broccoli. I mean, we see that all the time.

(29:35):

But it’s not a US problem all over the world. We talk to moms in Mexico, we talk to moms in Vietnam and Indonesia, Malaysia, and every time this one little thread would emerge, which was that my kid’s a picky eater. And that gave us the line that made all the difference to this product for which was that for kids that are picky eaters, PediaSure is the product that gives you balanced and complete nutrition. And there were lots of ad campaigns and so on that were done around those things. But that really connected with people and it was such an interesting thing that emerged. It was, again, one of those examples of having that empathetic connection because moms would feel guilty about this. If your kid’s not eating well, if you’re a mom, you feel like maybe I’m a terrible cook, which many young moms was possibly the case, and they would feel that or they would feel like I’m just not being a good mother to my child.

(30:37):

So it was tied into all of that angst around being a good mom, being a good cook, and so on. And when we said, “No, no, no, this picky eater thing is a condition.” In our campaigns, we sort of implied the look, you’re not at fault. This is a condition. It just happens to all the kids, like 90% of them, and there’s a way to deal with it. So that kind of insight is tough, that when it emerges, it’s just very satisfying, as a marketer, it’s just so satisfying to see that. And it is the ultimate thing that led that brand to go from wherever it was, $200 million to over $3 billion and sold within 70 plus countries with essentially that same idea. So that’s one example, but there are many.

Ellie (31:28):

That actually leads me to a question about global brands and how to build a global brand. What advice or what sort of key points would you say to a brand that’s currently in variety of different markets or are looking to enter new markets in terms of building the brands?

Sandeep Dayal (31:48):

Yeah. So I think the mistake that I think brands often make is that they feel like every country that they go into needs a whole different strategy. And if you go talk to people in those countries, they’ll tell you exactly the same, “Oh, my country is completely different. Yeah, that’s fantastic that you did all that in the United States. Oh, now you’re in Malaysia. This is a completely different thing.” What in fact we find is that the things that are common are actually common, are widespread and endemic because consumers, just like I highlighted in this example, moms are moms and they feel very similarly about their children, their relationship with their children. The MasterCard priceless campaign, that was a global campaign. Again, because that whole idea of enhancing your relationships through building these special moments for people is something that we all want to do.

(32:51):

So there are more commonalities than what one would think, but nonetheless, you do have to spend the time to understand what are those universal insights. In my book, I talk about brands with wisdom, and then the basic idea there is that there are certain kinds of universal wisdoms that people acquire through their experiences then have a very dominant effect on how they think, for example. So one example of a wisdom which is very common is associated around the loss aversion bias, which essentially says that be happy with what you have, which is people don’t like to lose what they have. And why do we have that wisdom in our mind? Because from the time that we grew up, we are taught, don’t be so greedy. Don’t they say something like a burdened hand is better than two in the bush? That’s kind of an example of a wisdom, many different examples like that.

(33:48):

But you can and use those types of things to then align your brand with that type of wisdom. Because if people have a certain rule in their mind, then you want to make sure that you’re not trying to contradict that rule because it takes a long time for people to have these experiences and form those rules. Another rule, which is common, which is called the Occam’s razor, is something that says, given any particular situation, the simpler answer is the better answer. Which is not always true by the way, but nonetheless, most people say, don’t overcomplicate things. The simpler answer is the better answer. And so for example, if you remember Staples did this whole campaign for their office products around the easy button, and essentially they said, “Hey, when you’re buying paperclips and hanging file folders, why do you want to complicate your life and do a spreadsheet and this and that? Just come to staples and we’ll make it easy.” So they say, life is complicated enough. Don’t wish there was an easy button for life? Well, there isn’t, but there’s an easy button for your office supplies. So that was kind of just make it simple, make choice simple. And it’s based on that Occam’s razor bias where people already believe that there is intrinsic value in keeping things simple or intrinsic wisdom in keeping things simple.

(35:06):

When you go globally, back to your question, you will find, and what psychologists have found that there’s a whole set of cognitive biases, and I call them cognitive wisdom, but they call them cognitive biases. So Occam’s razor, they will say is a cognitive bias. I say it’s cognitive wisdom. And what they’ve found is that these biases are universal. So in that sense, and they’ve identified, you can Google it, and you’ll identify that there are like 150 plus cognitive biases that have been researched and found to be endemic in the human population. So if you’re building a global brand, look at some of these things because these are pieces of wisdom, you can call them bias, but these are pieces of wisdom that people have universally. And if you align your brands to that, A, you’ll be following one of the strategies that I articulate in my book, which is brands with wisdom, but you will find that you are already building a platform for a global brand.

Ellie (36:12):

I want to move towards the future of brand management. For years in our industries, whether it’s marketing or market research, we’ve been advising our clients to leverage data to boost brand loyalty or to create more personalized campaigns. With the rise of AI and big data, what role will data play in brand management?

Sandeep Dayal (36:38):

So that’s the million dollar question, isn’t it? And one, certainly with things like ChatGPT, OpenAI and all this stuff coming in, I would hope that we humans are going to find a way to use that as yet another tool to take our own thinking to a different level. I mean, just because calculators came out didn’t mean that humans became irrelevant in such a way. Yeah, it became irrelevant to try and do math in your head maybe, but you found other things to do. So those types of things have happened.

(37:15):

Now, data, I mean, in the world today, you can’t really do marketing without being very proficient with data. I mean, certainly with big brands and so on, because there’s so much data. And my financial services clients where you can imagine those credit card companies I mentioned, they have data on every single thing you bought. Every time you swiped the card, they got that data. And then in addition to that, they can also buy other data and they do buy other data. So you’re sitting on these terabytes of data which are going to give you different insights and are already in use by most companies are using that. So if you are planning to be a marketer, that’s what you want, being analytically savvy, knowing what machine learning is about, that’s all very important.

(38:07):

At the same time, I would say there is no substitute for one human talking to another. So there are many instances in which you can go as deep as you want into the data and you won’t find certain insights. And sometimes those are tactical insights. For example, when we were working with some of these credit card companies, they did a campaign. And normally what you do is when you do campaigns in credit cards, you’ll just do that, you look at the campaign response and if the campaign didn’t meet all the parameters, you just change some of the parameters a little and try another segment and so on until you get a segment that is optimized. And you can do that and you never need to talk to anybody. But what we did a little differently was we did a campaign and then we actually took some of the people that responded to the campaign or didn’t respond to the campaign, and we called them into a focus group and said, let’s talk to them and see what happened.

(39:01):

And one of the things we found in this instance was that the ad agency had created this collateral, this mailing that would go out, which is kind of like this three-dimensional piece. So it’s sort of assembled into a three-dimensional, I mean, it was really a sexy piece and it looked really good and people could open it and they would notice it in the mail and then they could see the offer. So we were very excited about it. But what we found was that people said that when they opened this darn thing, it was really hard to open it and it would tear apart and it would look lousy after it was torn apart. So then they would lose interest in it. And if it was an interesting campaign, they wanted to be able to put it on the refrigerator and put it with a magnet. If this thing looked like something that had been attacked by an animal or something, then they were not going to put it up on their refrigerator because it’ll make the refrigerator look terrible.

(39:58):

So how are you going to discover that in data? How are you going to do that in data? You can analyze terabytes of data and you will never know that they didn’t like the look of it and they threw it away. Or your piece didn’t open that easily. So that is why you have to mix data science with human science. So that’s a very important point. And I think though the whole OpenAI thing and artificial intelligence is going to be a big challenge for marketers because unlike machine learning, it works in a very different way. And the way that it works very differently is that it replicates a human’s way of thinking. That is why it seems so scary and sometimes so outrageously real. So in that sense, I think ChatGPT and OpenAI, it’s going to fundamentally change how not just marketers work, but humans work. And humans will have to find new ways to keep raising the bar because some of the human thinking processes are going to get fundamentally replicated over the next 20 years.

Ellie (41:12):

And I want to touch upon that a little bit in terms of your thoughts on ethical considerations for using consumer data in branding purposes and how companies can navigate those challenges?

Sandeep Dayal (41:26):

So what is happening, particularly in the field that I work in, Ellie, which is applying this behavioral science and this cognitive psychology and so on, that we’re learning a lot about how the human brain works. And in that sense, marketers every day are going to know more and more about how your brain works, not just consciously, but also subconsciously. So imagine what that does, because if I can subconsciously influence you, and there’s nothing wrong, I mean, marketers do that all the time, by the way. You find that, for example, if you go to a Mexican restaurant and if you play Mexican music, people are going to think that Mexican food is more authentic. So you subconsciously influence them. But in that scenario you’re just creating and adding to the experience, that’s harmless.

(42:21):

There are other scenarios in which you can subconsciously use tactics against the interest of the consumer. And you see that often on the web. There have been lots of papers and particularly a paper written by the University of Chicago on what they call dark patterns. So this is where websites are using these less than ethical techniques, if you will, to make consumers act in what might be not their best interest. Like for example, a simple example might be when you are trying to opt out of something, they will shame you into it. “Oh, Ellie, are you sure you want to opt out of enhancing your own education or your own knowledge?” They’re trying to shame you into not, and they need to leave you alone.

(43:12):

So I think marketers have to be very conscious of not using my book to do things that they’re not supposed to. So in my book, I have a chapter on ethics where I give people three different ways to apply or test of whether if they’re in a moral dilemma and trying to figure out whether they should do something or not, then I give them three different rules. And one is what I call the canonical imperative, which is do unto others as you would they do unto you, which we all understand. The second one is something that comes from Immanuel Kant, who was a German philosopher, very famous one. And he basically said, don’t do anything that if everyone else also started doing that would be against societal good. And what that means is that sometimes you might say, you know what? The problem with the canonical principle is that you’re saying do unto others what you would do unto to unto you. But you might say, you know what? Sometimes I do tell lies, so I guess it’s okay for me to tell lies also because I do it also.

(44:33):

So what Immanuel Kant said is that, look, if everybody started telling lies, then would that be a good society? We wouldn’t be able to trust anybody on anything. So that’s why he said that’s the categorical principle that don’t do something that if everybody else also started doing would lead to a net deterioration of the society.

(44:54):

And then the last one is of course the sunshine imperative, which is don’t do anything, which if published in the front page of the New York Times is going to embarrass you. So if marketers follow these three principles, canonical, categorical, and sunshine, then they’re not going to make those ethical mistakes. And that is a very, very important point that you bring up, Ellie,

Ellie (45:19):

Right. You talk about ethical mistakes. Could you describe some other big mistakes that you’ve seen some companies make when it comes to marketing and strategy and how some of those mistakes could have been avoided?

Sandeep Dayal (45:32):

Yes. I mean, unfortunately marketers often make mistakes. Some of those mistakes are, I guess marketing mistakes. Some of those can have societal impact as when marketers unwittingly do certain things, maybe they’re not doing it deliberately, but they do certain things where they don’t realize the impact of their actions. So for example, Prada had put all these Pradamalia, which is just these collections of these chachkies that they put out there. But one of them happened to, if you remember, there was a big ruckus about this, that it happened to resemble blackface. Now they did many different Pradamalia, some of them looked like flying saucers and some of them looked like animals and this and that. But one of them, unfortunately, out of the five, 10 that they introduced, looked like blackface. And that had a very negative messaging for people, African Americans who saw that as a celebration of blackface. So Pradamalia didn’t intend that, but they did it anyways. And it was a mistake that they should have avoided.

(46:51):

And there are many examples like that. Balenciaga very recently ended up doing this campaign, which almost seemed to be celebrating child bondage, for example, and they had to pull that one. And these are very good marketers we are talking about, these are very celebrated marketers we are talking about. But sometimes when they forget that empathy piece that you and I talked about earlier where you have to put yourself in the shoes of another person and see the world through their lens. When you don’t do that well, when you don’t do that particular psychological piece well, you sometimes launch these… And these people that we’re talking about, these experienced marketers spent tens of millions of dollars before realizing that what they were doing was so offensive to certain people. So those are some extreme examples, but unfortunately there’s just so many of them. We could have a whole session of one mistake after another by very seasoned and talented marketers who wasted a lot of money. In fact, in one of my recent blogs, I touch on many of these mistakes.

Ellie (48:14):

Yes. And before we wrap up our session today, I actually want to return to that building that connection and empathy with the consumers. In a few words, what advice would you give to companies, whether startups or large corporations, to better understand and connect with their customers?

Sandeep Dayal (48:33):

So it goes back to some of the things that we talked about, which is number one, do the data science for sure, because that’s a requirement, but there is no substitute for one human talking to another. So that’s one piece of advice. Second piece of advice is don’t be arrogant. You’d think everything there is to know in branding just because you’ve been doing branding for the last 20 years, but it is entirely possible that what you know is substantially flawed and therefore go back and learn these new things. Whether these things like behavioral branding, behavioral science, cognitive science, so what I call cognitive brands or behavioral brands, these are things that are new and different and marketers need to accept that they don’t know everything before they can learn new things. So that’s the other second piece of advice that I would give marketers.

Ellie (49:38):

Brilliant. Sandeep, thank you so much for your time today. Really appreciate it. And it’s been a pleasure.

Sandeep Dayal (49:45):

I enjoyed talking to you, Ellie. And I would just mention also in addition that for people that are interested, I have a website, SandeepDayal.com, where I publish more articles around exactly the kinds of topics and questions that you were asking. And of course, the book, Branding Between the Ears, if they’re interested in it, that’s available on Amazon and other online sites.

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