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The Power of Perception, Permission and Choice in Society and Government Branding
The psychological branding techniques of managing behavior during and after transformative cultural moments
Jasmine Bina
April 23, 2020
A lot has been said about branding and behavior at the individual or tribal level, but perhaps even more interesting is how these concepts work at the government level.
Different branding techniques can (and do) change behaviors around work, life, and crisis situations like the one we’re living in now with COVID-19, and they're revealing the irrational human underpinnings of our very rational economic models.
How can choice, perception and permission be leveraged for cohesion today, and a more fruitful society after a crisis has passed?
Not too many people are qualified to answer a big question like this, but Rory Sutherland is a unique person.
He’s the Vice Chairman of Ogilvy, a respected thinker, prolific writer and author of Alchemy, one of the most popular brand strategy books around right now. His TED Talks have been viewed over 6 and a half million times and much of his thinking has literally shaped the world around us.
In this week's podcast episode, he talks to us about the psychology that is often missing from economic models, and how behavior can be profoundly changed not by punitive enforcement, but by speaking to our very human inclinations.
Rory’s work has boldly explored human psychology and behavior for global airlines, international conglomerates and of course, governments.
He calls himself an anarchist, some have called him a contrarian, and NPR has labeled him one of the leading minds in the world of branding.
In our conversation with him, we explore models of human behavior, social norms, belief systems and the nuance of what he calls America’s “gloriously optimistic consumer base”.
If you could have dinner with one strategist in the world, it would probably be him.
In lieu of that, this episode is the next best thing. Enjoy.
You can also listen and subscribe on Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher and Simplecast.
Links to interesting things mentioned in this episode:
Doom-scrolling through the highlights.
Here's what we've been consuming.
COVID and forced experiments (Benedict Evans): "Tens of thousands of software engineers are cooped up at home getting frustrated with their current tools and wondering if they can spot some pain point, and solve some opportunity that no-one ever quite realized was there. Those insights let Zoom carve out 200m users in a space where all of the incumbent tech giants thought they had established, mature products. A lot of companies will be born in nine months, and more of them will be the next Slack or Dropbox than the next Zoom."
How to Persuade People to Change Their Behavior (Harvard Business Review): "Directives aren’t particularly effective in driving sustained behavior change because we all like to feel as if we are in control of our choices. So when others try to influence our decisions, we don’t just go along, we push back against the persuasive attempt. If telling people to do doesn’t work, what does? Rather than trying to persuade people, getting them to persuade themselves is often more effective. Here are three ways to do that."
Living a Lie: We Deceive Ourselves to Better Deceive Others (Scientific American): If you need to convince somebody of something, if your career or social success depends on persuasion, then the first person who needs to be [convinced] is yourself... Whenever anyone tries to convince you of something, think about what might be motivating that person. Even if he is not lying to you, he may be deceiving both you and himself.
The End of Economics? (Foreign Policy): In the three decades since the end of the Cold War, economics has enjoyed a kind of intellectual hegemony. It has become first among equals in the social sciences and has dominated most policy agendas as well. Economists have been much sought after by businesses, governments, and society at large, their insights seen as useful in every sphere of life. Popularized economics and economic-type thinking have produced an entire genre of best-selling books. At the root of all this influence is the notion that economics provides the most powerful lens through which to understand the modern world. That hegemony is now over.
(A coronnial pain in the neck.)
Strategy in the wild.
Brand news you can learn from right now.
Boris Johnson is a contentious figure, but last week he gave a short speech that captured the attention of the world. The former journalist-turned-Prime Minister won his seat on a pro-Brexit promise, has been accused of manipulating media, and has faced heat for the UK's COVID-19 response.
His reputation thrives on controversy, but his #stayhomesavelives speech was a masterful example of using identity to to shift a public's focus.
You'll notice two things:
He called out the nurses who saved his life by name, and he made a point of also naming the countries that they were from
He used his experience to remind everyone of the UK's national pride: the NHS system
Boris Johnson thanks NHS for 'saving his life' after hospital discharge
With those two devices, and in a short 5 minutes, he evoked a powerful sense of destiny through identity.
I talk about this kind of strategic political messaging in my video on War Stories & Survival Narratives.
When an enemy is ambiguous - like a virus, an epidemic (think the War on Cancer), a social ill (think the War on Drugs), a systemic fault (think the War on Poverty) and so on - war stories and survival narratives help us remember who we are, and tell us why we are destined to win. They create a right and a wrong when the truth of the matter lives in a grey area.
The real power of war stories, however, is that they defy logic. No matter how many times they are disproven or fail to fit a changing society, we still hold onto them.
It's very much a part of our American heritage, that we see in US politics today as well as around the world, and a topic I dive into in the video. You can also read the write up here.
