Mark Earls has been acclaimed as “one of the advertising scene’s foremost contrarians”. He has held seniorpositions at Ogilvy and St Luke’s, and his first book, Welcome to the Creative Age, was widely-read and discussed.
His latest, Herd, challenges some popular theories about targeting and influencing mass behavior and is likely to be most relevant to planners, strategists and indeed anyone interested in motivating groups.
The key premise of the book is that “We are a we-species who do individually what we do largely because of each other”.
People think they act as individuals mainly because their memories are unreliable. In fact, they do not behave in a rational manner, especially when it comes to purchase decisions.
Earls however contends that “We are not a collection of discrete, idiosyncratic individuals but a herd animal acting under the influence of others. We are the super social ape”.
In the book’s theory of Herd Marketing, there are seven principles: Interaction, Influence, Us-talk, Just Believe, (Re-)lighting the fire, Cocreating and Letting go.
Some of the key tenets of this system are:
- The views of individuals are unreliable so marketers should not focus on them alone. Instead, they should understand how consumers interact and remember that consumer to consumer communications is the key.
- Theories of the “most valuable customers” are wrong. Rather, marketers must seek out the most influential customers.
- Communication is behavior and needs to be recognized as such. Word of mouth can be a company’s most powerful sales tool.
- Successful companies are built on sound, authentic founding beliefs about which they are passionate. These beliefs are expressed in all forms of communication and apparent at any consumer/staff touch point. Because consumers find these types of companies more interesting they are more prepared to engage with them.
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