[INTRODUCTION]
[0:00:07] DC: Welcome to B2B Marketing B.S.
[0:00:11] GR: Where B.S. stands for behavior and strategy.
[0:00:15] DC: I’m Debra Corn, the founder of Print Media Centr and the Executive Director of Girls Who Print.
[0:00:21] GR: And I’m Gee Ranasinha, founder of KEXINO and a behavioral science and marketing strategy consultant. Most marketing conversations focus on what people do, not why they do it. In this podcast, we’ll explore marketing through the lenses of behavioral science and strategy.
[0:00:40] DC: Each topic unfolds over three conversations examining human behavior, business behavior, and the real-world consequences that follow. Together, we’ll challenge assumptions.
[0:00:52] GR: Question conventional wisdom.
[0:00:54] DC: And explore what actually works in the marketplace, from behavior and strategy to results with no BS.
[EPISODE]
[0:01:04] DC: Hey everybody, welcome to Podcasts From the Printerverse, more specifically the B2B Marketing B.S. Podcast, where B.S. stands for behavior and strategy. This is the first conversation in a three-part series exploring the topic Known Beats New. And hopefully you’ve all listened to the introduction podcast for this series with my co-host, Gee Ranasinha. Gee, how are you doing today?
[0:01:31] GR: I’m doing really well, Deborah. How are you?
[0:01:34] DC: I am pretty good. I’m very excited to get this going. Most people would probably tell you they like new things, new products, new ideas, new technologies, new opportunities. But when it comes to making decisions, that is not always what happens. People often choose what is familiar, what they’ve heard of before, what they’ve seen before, what they recognize. What feels safe? And I’ll add something. Maybe that’s the thing that you’ve always had in your family. So you carry on that tradition by picking it up in the store. In this discussion, we’re looking at the human side of that behavior and the role trust plays in the decisions that people make every day. So Gee, let’s start here. Why do people seem to trust what they already know?
[0:02:28] GR: As an opener, what I think this episode is going to be about is why the phrase “I like new things” and the phrase “I choose known things” are both true. So if you ask someone directly whether they value new ideas, new products, new ways of doing things, whatever, almost everybody says without hesitation, yes, okay? Nobody wants to think of themselves as being closed-minded or stuck in their ways.
But if we watch what the same person actually does when the real decision is in front of them, new usually loses to known. So what’s happening here isn’t that the people are lying. They’re telling us what they think is true. There are two different systems in the brain answering two slightly different questions. So when you have a question saying, do you value newness, novelty? It’s a question about us. It’s a question about our identity, who we are as people, and more importantly, who we want to project to others. It’s the story somebody tells about the kind of person they are.
Which one do you pick is a different question? It’s a question that our nervous system answers before any ego identity type stuff gets a chance to be consulted. Okay? New products – I mean, new products succeed all the time, right? But when we look closely at the data, new product success is rarely because somebody evaluated the new thing on its merits from a position of zero, from a standing start. It’s usually because there was already enough exposure, enough borrowed trust, if you like. Something familiar in the way that it was presented, it was packaged, that got attached to this new thing so that for most of us, it stopped registering as being genuinely new by the time the decision got made. Does that make sense?
[0:04:39] DC: It makes sense. I mean, would you categorize that as brand loyalty?
[0:04:44] GR: Not necessarily. I think a lot of brand loyalty is invented, is misplaced. And even the most ardent brand loyalists aren’t buying that brand exclusively. This is just me, maybe you’re different. If I go to a restaurant, a diner, a cafe, and I order a Coca-Cola, and the person, the server tells me, “I’m sorry, we don’t serve Coca-Cola, we serve Pepsi, is that okay?” I’m not going to say, “Oh my God, I’m walking out of this establishment and I’m never going to frequent it again. How dare you?” No, I’m going to say, “Yeah, sure.” Honestly, I don’t care, right? It’s not a big deal. And I think most people are like that.
Nobody is thinking about Coca-Cola 24/7 apart from the brand manager of Coca-Cola. For everybody else, we’re only thinking about Coca-Cola when we’re in the drinks aisle at the supermarket. And we’re thinking, “Oh, we need to get some cola-flavoured effervescent beverage. Which one are we going to get?” At which point you may get, like an offer in place, “Oh, look, there’s 12 cans for the price of six,” or whatever else. And that may tip you over the edge. The performance level, the demand generation, what they call it nowadays, side of marketing.
But the brand has been built up before. But the loyalty to that brand, even people who say that they’re vehemently loyal to a particular brand, whether it’s Coca-Cola, or Crest, or Nikon, it doesn’t actually matter. Most of these buyers, firstly, they buy infrequently. And when they do buy, they’re quite easily persuaded away to buy something else. It’s not the be-all and end-all. Now, of course, there are exceptions. There are the – I wouldn’t call them loyalists. I’ll call them freaks. The people who used to queue up at Apple stores on the day an iPhone was launched and they’d get up at like three in the morning. Those guys.
[0:06:57] DC: And the news crews were interviewing them waiting online.
[0:07:00] GR: Right. Yeah.
[0:07:02] DC: I can’t wait for the new iPhone so I could get a new accessories again, everybody.
[0:07:06] GR: Yeah. Or you can order it online and get it a day later.
[0:07:10] DC: Right. Yeah.
[0:07:12] GR: What does it change? But forgetting about those guys. And there are mega brands which have those kinds of aficionados, sure. But the rest of us, we’re not thinking about this stuff. We don’t give a shit. We really don’t. And there are too many brands who think we do.
[0:07:29] DC: Well, there are some brands that their branding is based on that, don’t you think?
[0:07:34] GR: Yes.
[0:07:34] DC: I mean, I don’t know if you have a mayonnaise debate going on in France or in Europe, but there’s certainly one that goes on in the United States about Hellmann’s and Duke’s mayonnaise. And you are a Hellmann’s or Duke’s family. That’s what was in your house. There’s also some regional stuff to it, but you can get both anywhere. But I don’t buy Duke’s. I’m not a Duke’s person. I’m also a Heinz ketchup, not a Hunt’s ketchup. I would never, ever buy a Hunt’s ketchup. And even in the situation where that was the only ketchup on the shelf, I would not buy it.
[0:08:16] GR: So you would rather go without?
[0:08:18] DC: I would go somewhere else to get it because I don’t know what’s in that bottle of Hunt’s ketchup. You know what I’m saying? I’ve never had it before. So that goes back to what I already know.
[BREAK]
[0:08:29] DC: Get ready to turn up the volume on print. PrintFM is a global internet radio station dedicated exclusively to print and graphic communications, accessible around the clock in every time zone. No more searching across channels and apps. PrintFM brings relevant topical programming from Print Media Centr, Girls Who Print, and an array of industry contributors who bring their own perspectives, guests, and conversations to the mix. PrintFM also broadcasts from industry events, with live shows being scheduled throughout the year. Visit printfm.com to explore our daily programming, event schedules, and opportunities to share your content or sponsor our shows. Expert discussions, real-world insight, and industry voices are just a click away. Listen long and prosper.
[EPISODE CONTINUED]
[0:09:28] DC: So we’re talking about behavior in this episode, and I think that there is something to that is what you grew up seeing in your house. That is what you grew up seeing on your television. That is what you grew up every holiday. That was the brand of thing that was there. And somehow, we carry this on in a pattern or it’s a tradition. Now we’ve made it a tradition.
[0:09:56] GR: It’s the known versus new, right? So it’s reconfirming the hypothesis of even if you want to say that you’re open to new experiences, what you actually buy.
[0:10:09] DC: Right. But I’m saying I am, except for certain things. There’s no way. Duke’s mayonnaise is not coming in my house. No offense, Duke’s people. I know you love your mayonnaise. It’s all good.
[0:10:23] GR: I mean, clearly you have a preference. For me, it’s a commodity. Well, in France, most people make their own mayonnaise.
[0:10:30] DC: There’s nothing that that’s the only thing you will buy, like a brand. There’s nothing, not a shoes, not a way a shirt fits, nothing. Your preference, nothing.
[0:10:38] GR: I have a preference, but not to the point where I wouldn’t buy anything because my preference wasn’t available.
[0:10:45] DC: Wow. Okay.
[0:10:47] GR: But maybe that’s just me.
[0:10:48] DC: Interesting.
[0:10:48] GR: Maybe that’s just me.
[0:10:49] DC: No, I’m just saying very interesting. I worked in advertising for over 25 years and I am possibly one of the most brand loyal people I know. And it’s because I’m just following a pattern. I’m telling you right now, it’s the easiest choice because I know it. I can trust it.
[0:11:07] GR: Yeah, for that, I totally agree. This is what the essence of brand is, right? It’s a shortcut. It’s to stop us having to think. You go to the supermarket aisle and you see the ketchup, and you see the ketchup that you already have in your pantry, on your shelf.
[0:11:24] DC: That you grew up with. That was in everyone’s houses. Right.
[0:11:28] GR: And that’s the one you got. You don’t have to consider anything else to go through the pros and cons. Okay, with ketchup, you’re not going through pros and cons, but you get the point. If you’re comparing a new brand to an established category brand, you’re not having to go through like a huge, big evaluation of new versus old, because you’re using heuristics, you’re using familiarity. This is the one that we always get. When we go to the washing powder, we get this washing powder and not the other washing powder.
Now, at the end of the day, there are plenty of – unless you’ve got 51% of the market, more people are buying the other washing powder than they’re buying your washing powder. And clearly they’re happy with their choice of washing powder. I mean, all the washing powders work.
[0:12:14] DC: But you know what? That’s what’s interesting about this. Because am I happy with my mayonnaise? I think I am. Because Duke’s has a little tang to it, right? But I’m predisposition to already have that, that that is my choice. So I’m not necessarily even willing to try something else with certain things.
[0:12:37] GR: Can I tell you a secret?
[0:12:38] DC: Oh, yes.
[0:12:39] GR: Kewpie.
[0:12:41] DC: What’s that?
[0:12:42] GR: Japanese mayonnaise.
[0:12:44] DC: Oh, I actually get that every once in a while from my Asian market.
[0:12:46] GR: Okay, so hang on. I thought you only bought Hellmann’s?
[0:12:50] DC: Let me specify. I don’t use it for what I use Hellmann’s mayonnaise for. I use it for special things.
[0:12:57] GR: Right, right, right, right.
[0:13:00] DC: When I want a little tank. But I do love that. And I love the squeezy bottle, how it comes out. I love it for the squeezy bottle. I mean, how crazy is that? Because the lines that come out. But we’ve been talking about this, but let’s really tie it. What is the relationship between recognition and trust?
[0:13:18] GR: The relationship between recognition and trust. I think we need to talk about two different things here and make sure that we’re both understanding the same terms when we talk about recognition and when we talk about trust. Let’s define what I’m talking about. For me, recognition is the price of admission. It’s the price we pay to enter. It’s table stakes, okay? Trust is what gets built on top once the entry free has been paid, right? We have to be recognized, otherwise we’re never get going to get chosen in the first place. We might as well put a close sign on the door and go home. There’s no point.
But it’s important to remember here that nothing else in the relationship gets a chance to happen unless recognition has cleared that initial hurdle because we’re no one. A brand that nobody’s heard of doesn’t get evaluated. One doesn’t get evaluated fairly against a brand that people have heard of, okay? What happens invariably is it gets discounted even before the evaluation starts because the absence of recognition is in of itself a signal that we need to fight against, because that’s the only way we’re going to sell it.
If a buyer can’t find a vendor in their research, a vendor that they already trust, if their colleagues haven’t heard of the name, if their boss hasn’t heard of the name, especially in B2B, the buyer might genuinely believe that the unknown vendor is the better product, yet they’ll still go on and buy the known version. Because in this type of situation, safe, in inverted commas, is doing more work in that decision-making process than best or more suitable. Because you’re buying the aversion to variance. That’s the thing about B2B versus B2C, apart from the fact that, and obviously, there are more people involved in the decision-making process.
When you’re buying from a B2B perspective, you’re not buying the best CRM, or the best digital press, or the best binder, right? You’re buying the one that is least risky, so that if it does all go wrong, it’s defensible. You can make a legitimate argument as to why you chose somebody else apart from what everybody else chose it, right? The old saying from the 60s, nobody ever got fired from buying IBM. It’s still true today.
[BREAK]
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[EPISODE CONTINUED]
[0:16:37] GR: If you look at CRM systems, there are probably 500 CRM systems out there, maybe 1,000 CRM, I don’t know how many, but there’s loads, right? Now, do you think that somebody who’s looking to buy a new CRM system for their company is going to create the mother of all spreadsheets with every single CRM vendor and like a little matrix for feature? No, nobody does that. What they’re going to do is come up with the top three, five, seven CRMs that they know of. Maybe they’ll ask colleagues, or friends, or whatever to get that list. And 99 times out of 100, what they buy will be from that original list.
If you are new, if you are untested, unproven, you need to get on that list. Otherwise, you might as well not exist. Recognition doesn’t just make people more likely to consider something. It changes what the entire decision is actually about. Because it’s not about which is the better product. It’s about which choice will I have to defend if things all go to shit, basically. And it’s also important to recognize that recognition compounds rather than resets. So it builds on top of each other, right?
For example, there was a big thing years ago. If you’re an American Express cardholder, one of the reasons why American Express cardholders renew at such fantastically high rates, and they’ve done research on this, is not about the points, or where it’s being used, or access to the airport lounge, or any of that stuff. You know what it is?
[0:18:23] DC: Status?
[0:18:24] GR: Member since.
[0:18:25] DC: Oh, member since.
[0:18:28] GR: Member since, right? And a few years ago, American Express made a screw up. And when they issued replacement cards, because it expired, the member since was reset to two or three years ago. So all of these people who had said had like member since 2009 or whatever, they got upset. They’re like, “Hang on a minute. It’s a status thing.” Right? Nothing about their card had changed. Nothing about the usability of change. Nothing about the service had changed. What they’re protecting isn’t the benefit; it’s the recorded evidence of the relationship they have with the brand, member since. Now that is recognition operating as a form of, let’s call it trust maintenance, okay? It’s the ongoing, we love you, we remember you, you’re important to us. Sort of real relationship work that happens long after the first sale closed.
What happens many times when you get a customer complaint, right? When you complain to a brand, often the first sentence is, “I’ve been a customer of yours since X.” It’s that relationship stuff working.
[0:19:38] DC: Yeah, no, 100%. And the other thing is I don’t look at it as you want to be able to defend if something happens and defend your choice. I look at it more of it being a peace of mind strategy. If I choose this, I can trust that it will go the way it needs to go. If I choose a printer, I trust that they will print what I want them to print, the way I expect to see it. If I go to a bank, I trust that they will have my money ready for me when I’m there to withdraw it. So there’s peace of mind built into that.
[0:20:17] DC: I think that whole sphere changes the odds – and it works with marketing output. Any given piece of marketing output is governed by this recognition, right? It’s a counter to this false choice between brand awareness and demand generation. It shows that recognition is in effect, a multiplier sitting underneath performance marketing rather than some kind of separate competing budget line.
I think it’s important to understand what marketers call something called mental availability. Okay? Which all it really means is when I’m looking to buy X, I think of your brand as well as your competitors. But you are one of the ones that I think of. Okay? It’s mental availability The ease at how a brand comes to mind in a buying situation is a very, very strong predictor of market share. And it has nothing to do with the perceived quality of the product or indeed price, right?
The ones who are winning at this aren’t necessarily the ones who are best in a review, or they get five stars and the other guys get four. It’s the ones who are simply already present in the buyer’s head when the comparison started. Because like I said, once that comparison list is there, trying to break into that comparison list is almost impossible.
[BREAK]
[0:21:51] DC: News from the Printerverse delivers topical sales and marketing insight, along with plenty of printspiration, one time a month to inboxes everywhere. Our contributors cover the industry and the future of print media and marketing with strategy for strengthening your customer relationships, better targeting of your prospects, and practical advice for helping your business grow. Printspiration is just a click away. Subscribe to News from the Printerverse at printmediacentr.com. Print long and prosper.
[EPISODE CONTINUED]
[0:22:27] DC: So taking this to the next step, we look at are people more likely to trust what they remember or what they understand? And I want to pull back to your CRM example. There could be five CRMs that do everything I need them to do and then all this other stuff they can do, but I’ve never done that before. I don’t know how to do that. Then there’s one you’ve never heard of, maybe. Pops up in a search. It does everything you want it to do in a very simple way. There is some self-preservation in choosing that one, right?
[0:23:02] GR: Big time. Yes.
[0:23:04] DC: How does that get balanced?
[0:23:05] GR: Well, like I said, if you are a category outsider, the most important thing you need to do from your marketing is look like you are not the risky choice, right? People in a B2B environment, people want that assurance, right? Because if you’re a consumer and you buy the wrong thing, you slap yourself on the risk and you say, “Okay, put it down to experience, not going to do that again.” And you move on. But if you buy the wrong thing for your company, it could cost you a promotion. It could cost you your job. You could be the one in the canteen that everybody points to and say, “You know that piece of shit CRM system that we’re using now? It’s because of that person there. And we can’t do anything for the next four years because that’s how long the ROI is for this thing.”
[0:23:51] DC: Or you could be the one in the company who ordered a 12-inch instead of a 12-foot ice sculpture for their company’s 75th anniversary. Thank you very much.
[0:23:59] GR: There you go.
[0:24:01] DC: Luckily, the company called and they’re like, “Are you sure?” Because I put the quotations instead of the one thing for foot and I had a typo. Yes, I understand that.
[0:24:13] DC: So to answer your question, are people more likely to trust what they remember or what they understand? Remembering usually wins. And the reason why is because it doesn’t require understanding to function. It’s lighter on the brain. A lot of trust gets extended to things that people can’t explain or justify if they’re pushed. They’re just there.
There’s two different mental operations at work here. Now, we think they’re identical, but one of them is recognition. I’ve encountered this before, which is fast, automatic, intuitive, and requires no real content or context, right? Just the fact of having prior familiarity. Understanding is slower, it’s more effortful, and requires us to actually hold information and reason with that information. These two cognitive perceptions of the brain, behavioral scientists call these two modes as system one thinking and system two thinking, which we will talk about in more depth in a future episode, because I think it’s very important to know about this sort of thing.
[0:25:20] DC: Excellent. So at the end of our episodes, we’re going to provide what we’re calling the BS breakdown. And Gee is going to share three things that you can do right now to put today’s discussion into practice. Take it away, Gee.
[0:25:36] GR: Right. So number one, we should stop trying to win the argument before we’ve actually run the recognition. If a business isn’t already familiar to a buyer, spending marketing on a more persuasive pitch is trying to solve the wrong problem. An unfamiliar business, product, brand, service, whatever, needs repeated low-pressure exposure before we start doing anything else, showing up in the right places consistently before anyone’s going to sit and listen to what we have to say. Persuasion works on people who already trust us enough to listen. That’s number one, okay? Number one is that we need to treat consistency as a strategy and not the boring part before the strategy.
We talked about the mere exposure effect, okay? How that rewards the accumulated weight of having shown up more than alternative options. So it doesn’t reward a single touch point. So a business that changes its message, or its look, or its angle every six months, using some excuse like, “Oh, well, we need to stay fresh.” You’re actually sabotaging the one mechanism that would have made people trust it because we’re having to recreate that familiarity all the time, okay?
And number three, we need to measure whether we’re being recognized, not just whether we’re being clicked on, right? Many of these marketing dashboards are built entirely around the understanding system, right? So conversions, and click-throughs, and filling in forms and all that sort of stuff, right? The visible stuff at the end of the funnel. But hardly anything gets measured about whether the audience actually recognizes the brand before any of that happens, right?
If we start tracking unprompted recognition and our association within that category, even if it’s just rough, right? If it’s just waving a wet finger in the air, well, maybe a bit more than that, right? We get a heads up on the problem that conversion metrics don’t show us until we’ve already lost the deal and we’re sort of crying into our beer and trying to pick up the pieces and wondering what’s all gone wrong. Because it’s the recognition that builds that trust. And only once we have that in place can we start talking about the things that matter, that we think matter to the customer.
[0:28:05] DC: I love it. Today we have explored the human side of why known often beats new. And next time we’re going to shift this conversation from human behavior to the business behavior in an episode called Risking to Win. Thank you, Gee, so much. And thanks to all of you for joining us for B2B Marketing B.S. Please subscribe to Podcasts From the Printerverse wherever you’re listening so you never miss an episode. And everything you need to connect with me and Gee is in the show notes. Until next time, everybody, market long and prosper.
Thanks for listening to Podcasts From the Printerverse. Please subscribe, click some stars and leave us a review. Connect with us through printmediacentr.com. We’d love to hear your feedback on our shows and topics that are of interest for future broadcasts. Until next time, thanks for joining us. Print long and prosper.
[END]
