About Mark
Mark is a writer and consultant and one of the marketing world's leading experts on human behaviour. The Guardian called him "Malcolm Gladwell on speed" and Danny Finkelstein of the Times called him "a marketing guru".
His books like HERD and Copy Copy Copy and his entertaining presentations and shows bring complex science to life in a very accessible and usable way.
He has been a Fellow of the Society for over 10 years and for a number of years, co-produced our Annual Conference.
"The future — time travel for beginners — is the greatest gift we have. We live in the most affluent age in human history, yet suffer from growing time poverty. And the truth is, the more pressure we’re under, the worse our decisions become. The answer isn’t another productivity app, it’s this: between the tick and the tock, imagine multiple futures as if they’re real. Then ask yourself — what do I need to do today to be ready for any of them? Start a portfolio of actions. That’s how you prepare for what’s next."
Mark Earls
THE CREATIVITY, STRATEGY, INNOVATION & COMMS SESSION
How to make better decisions when you - like the rest of us - are time-poor
Time is money, they say. Since the dawning of the industrial age, we've used clock time as our guiding principle - in business and in our personal lives. Go faster, remove waste and optimise, optimise, optimise. From Henry Ford to Amazon warehouses, everywhere clocks give us the hurry-up; in our phones, watches, iPads, laptops, fridges, in every app we use, in every email and every message. And yet...the more we measure time, the less time we seem to have. The modern world is characterised by extreme time-poverty. Few of us in the marketing world ever get to the bottom of our to-do lists. And this is serious. Persistent time-poverty is terrible for us in so many ways, it damages our mental and physical health and our relationships. But more importantly it reduces the quality of our decision making. So what to do? Productivity apps will help a bit but the real wins come from our species' unique ability to do mental time travel, to move back and forth with our imaginations, to see other worlds and other perspectives (e.g. through the wardrobe). In this 24/7, always on world, we need to rethink time. This session covers three practical ways to think differently about time: how to think better about the future, how to unshackle yourself from the past and how to get everyone's times aligned.
How people choose (and how you can tell quickly)
How do we or people generally choose this kind of thing? Seems like a straight-forward question perhaps but all too often we get lost in the particulars of the customer journey - we struggle to see the woods for the trees. Asking "What kind of thing is it?" allows us to triage, just as ER professionals do. And triaging allows us to find and apply - Copy Copy Copy - solutions from unusual places, rapido style. Fast, furious, fun. This hour will help your team do so qualitatively and practice finding solutions. If you don't know what kind of behaviour or choice you're trying to change, how can you hope to be effective? You're shooting blind. If you don't know what kind of thing you're trying to influence, then you're unlikely to be successful in doing so.
This session will share what you need - a good map and some local knowledge about how to understand how people choose.