The marketing task is a vital one, but each of us carries limitations inherent in our evolution-trained human brains that get in the way of our success. This book points out how our own minds can sabotage our work, getting in the way of better marketing decisions. Understanding this better means you can take action to mitigate the risks, to the benefit of your business results and career.
The biggest barrier to marketing success that no one talks about: your own brain
About the Book
The Nursery Rhyme Conundrum is named after a famous psychology experiment that showed how we all overestimate how well we communicate to others. But this is but one of the biases and blind spots that harm our marketing work. The human brain is not simply a computer that responds based on what it sees and hears. Rather it has its own agenda, one which we are hardly aware of.
Amongst other matters, we are constrained by “myside bias”, the tendency to want to agree with the existing way of thinking and stay comfy in our tribe ie fall in with the dominant view of our own group, and by confirmation bias (the way we are all reluctant to change our minds about anything). This book explains these limitations, and many more.
Doing great marketing presents unique challenges – our task in a company first and foremost is to represent the outside world, which means taking on board and championing alternative or even uncomfortable (and risky) points of view. Moreover our task is to be creatively challenging to disrupt the status quo. This is exceptionally hard to do because all our instincts are to ‘play safe’ and propose what’s readily acceptable. And as AI takes over some of the work it places ever more empahasis on the human decision maker – the human mind – which has to put in extra effort to avoid the AI led mediocre.
Once the book exposes the challenges and the risks, it goes on to suggest practical and achievable ways to overcome them and do our jobs better than ever.
Table of Contents
CHAPTER 1
What is the Nursery Rhyme Conundrum?
CHAPTER 2
Why Marketing Matters
CHAPTER 3
The Danger of Immersion
CHAPTER 4
The Pitfalls of Marketers Working in a Bubble
CHAPTER 5
Why Your Emotions Matter In Marketing
CHAPTER 6
The Importance of Risk-Taking in Marketing
CHAPTER 7
How to Ensure That AI Is A Tool, Not A Rival
CHAPTER 8
Nine Solutions For Today's Marketer
Who is it for?
The book is aimed at practitioners, those folk doing marketing in their day to day lives, wrestling with the many challenges. This could be experienced marketers working in larger companies, lone marketers in small business, and/or business owners/leaders focussed on marketing matters themselves. It will be of interest to agency personnel and marketing advisors to help them understand the forces at play when they make proposals, and will be of equal help to marketing students and new recruits, as you put in the ground work to build a successful career in this field. The ideas are universal (this is about human brains, after all) so it will apply to you whatever type of business you are working in, and whatever level you are at.
About the Authors
Dr Tim Holmes
Independent Neuroscientist, Researcher & Educator
BBC Radio 4 once described Tim as a "neuroscientist gone rogue" due to his extensive experience applying academic research on perception and attention to real-world decision-making. He has worked with a wide range of commercial clients—including P&G, Unilever, Coca-Cola, The Guardian, Google, Disney, and more—to enhance packaging design, digital media, marketing strategy, and product development.
Tim is a highly regarded public speaker, award-winning educator and researcher, and has written numerous papers, articles, and blog posts on the application of neuroscience in marketing and design. He lives in Cumbria with his partner and their two cats, Zeus and Pusseidon.
Roger Jackson
Marketer, Business Owner and Research Expert
Before founding his global market research firm, Shopper Intelligence, Roger had a varied career in blue-chip marketing, sales, and consulting, beginning as a brand manager at Unilever.
Now, decades into running his own business - as well as advising many others - he has experienced the thorny challenges of marketing from all angles. As he says, “You only truly understand the difficulties of our profession when you are spending your own hard-earned cash!”
Travelling around the world much of the time these days, Roger is an avid rugby watcher, whisky collector, and enthusiastic visitor to any and all supermarkets.