Herd

"Herd" is a significant book for anyone in the marketing profession. Although I am glad that I did not read it when it first came out, instead having gotten caught up in other human behavior concepts like "Buyology" and other how the brain works reading, it was the book that validate my new thinking...we are not as unique as we are being told we are!. I remember being enthralled by the idea that we could/should dissect human behavior down to a 1:1 level. Along with anyone who has worked in the CRM world, you have come to realize that the execution on such a level is impossible, if for no other reason then the fact that your corporate infrastructure is not set up to care about people that much. Herd provides an excellent orientation to getting marketing folks back to capturing the true essence of human behavior and providing a better foundation from which to build effective customer services. A foundation that is more readily executable, therefore making relationships more attainable.

I really enjoyed this book. Mark Earls combines a light, at times playful style of writing with good ideas and a refreshingly well researched investigation. In this way, Herd is as Russell Davies suggests, a pleasant change from the many marketing books that are little more than "very long business cards". Earls investigates market behavior from the position that we humans are first and foremost social beings. He does this by drawing on a wide range of well referenced resources stemming from ethology, biology, anthropology, marketing studies and so on. On the background of this data Earls suggests that if marketers want to be truly effective they will need to start thinking about how people naturally influence one another. This rather than how marketers have tended to think that they are able to exert influence over those they narrowly think of as consumers. He proposes that this implies a shift from direct relationship marketing (where the lines of communication exist between company and customer) to citizen to citizen marketing (where the company creates opportunities for people to interact with one another). You need only consider the popularity of social media like myspace and facebook to realize why this approach makes sense. In addition, Earls' work provides a good counter position to the current buzz around neuromarketing, which claims to be able to understand more about consumer behavior by examining individual brains. As Earls suggests, while this is all good and well - it may miss the point by neglecting to consider the influence of others on our behavior. Thoroughly enjoyable!

I've just finished reading Herd. Actually, I devoured it in two sittings. And I urge you to go and read it if you want to think about how to better trigger changes in mass behaviour. Unlike most business or marketing books it's not a set of case studies or a 'how to' process guide to mechanistic thinking. Rather, it's an excellently written analysis of the new thinking (and the forgotten old thinking) about how people think, act and behave. It doesn't give you answers or tell you what to do, but rather raises questions in your mind about the principles on which most communications thinking is built. Already, it's made me question a lot of the assumptions I have been taking for granted, made me think differently about some of the problems I'm trying to solve and helped me ground some of the different thinking I've been doing over the last couple of years. Whether you agree with all the conclusions or not, we need more stuff like this that brings fresh, challenging, provocative thinking into the far too conservative world of marketing and communications.

Recently, books like The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell or the Influentials by Jon Berry and Ed Keller, have captured the imagination of marketers and the public alike. It's easy to see why. They propose a tidy and believable model of influence. 1.) There are some people who are more influential. 2.) If we can just reach them, we can influence large numbers of people. Accepted as gospel, these two ideas have spawned entirely new industries and companies devoted towards creating "viral marketing." Happily for all of us, things just don't work that way. Brand spanking new research from P & G and Duncan Watts is serving as confirmation of Mark's thesis: it is our innate nature as "herd" animals that causes mass movements, not the influence of a handful of individuals. This simple little insight overturns much of what we currently think about and how we approach marketing. If you're serious about creating real movements in the new marketing landscape you simply have to read this book.