Smash the boardroom door

Over a clear Hong Kong skyline and pretty good scrambled eggs, Andrew Brent kicked off the Marketing Society’s first event of 2018, Under the Spotlight: The Growth Director's Secret.

With CMO tenure at Boots, Barclays and PARKnSHOP under his belt and with his book shortlisted for a slew of top awards, there aren’t many more equipped to be placed under the spotlight.  

Like many, Andy has come to view the behavioural sciences and, more specifically, the dual process function of decision making (system one and system two, thinking fast and thinking slow, etc.) as the key to unlocking more effective marketing strategy.
 
He’s by no means the first to point out that fallacy of appealing to our rational Mr Spock, while allowing our irrational Homer Simpson instincts to run riot in the shopping aisle. What differentiates Andy's approach (and what prevents it from feeling like another spoke on the Kahneman bandwagon) is the ambition of its application.

Whereas the majority of marketers use the science of decision-making in fleeting moments to gently nudge consumers into submission, Andy uses neuroscientific research to smash open the boardroom door.

He does so by highlighting (with a little help from Bain & co.) that nine out of ten management teams fail to grow their companies profitably because they simply fail to understand the true motivations of consumer choice. He labels our inability to build sustained, profitable growth (and our reluctance to create Chief Growth Officer roles) despite its unquestionable importance, the growth paradox.

The vivacity and positivity of the questioning that followed showed the audiences acceptance of the overarching idea, but confusion as to how to apply it. To this, Andy took aim at practitioners of traditional research and their failure to deliver the implicit insights required to guide brands to the status of an autopilot choice.

In a final throwaway comment, Andy accepted that it might take another ten years before the limitations of traditional research are fully realised by the marketing community. Until then, there are 40 marketers keen to change their job title to Chief Growth Officer.

This review was by David Atkins, strategy director at DigitasLBi.