Last night, BMA Saint Louis held an informative and thought-provoking event at Maritz, hosted by Director of Brand Strategy Paula Godar (@paulagodar), and featuring a presentation by Mary Beth McEuen, VP and Executive Director of the Maritz Institute (@marybethmceuen). Here are my notes from our session:
The topic was The Game Has Changed - A New Paradigm for Brand Engagement from the Inside-Out. Paula introduced Mary Beth, and McEuen began her presentation by telling us a little bit about what the Maritz Institute is all about. She said that the Institute is focused on advancing understanding of people through the sciences, through neuroscience in particular. It's about figuring out what makes people tick. And isn't that what marketing is all about as well? I know that at least, as we better understand what drives and motivates people, we can become better marketers.
When McEuen was over marketing and brand strategy at Maritz 10 years ago, she said they started down the path of "Brand Alignment" - This is what captured her attention and the attention of other senior marketers and leaders at that time. The leaders at Maritz began to have a conversation about authenticity. They began to understand that marketing needed to move beyond a place of simply communicating messages but to a place where you engage with people in an authentic way. Today this need is understood generally throughout the marketing community, says McEuen, "but it doesn't mean we're doing it just yet."
Her work at Maritz evolved into a fascination with the concept of a brand, what is a brand. McEuen gave us the metaphor of a bucket. "Our memories are not very good," she said. " We don't actually remember all facets of an experience." In fact, she went on to explain, many don't even enter our interpretation. We kind of filter through it. "Even in this room tonight, everyone will have a different experience. But, everyone will walk away really remembering the emotion and feelings they hold surrounding that experience."
She explained that as the bucket fills with water, every time we have an experience with Maritz (or any given brand), it's like a drop in the bucket. The bucket might be crystal clear and beautiful or it may be kind of cloudy if you haven't had the greatest of experiences, but another drop will enter into the bucket. "Every single drop matters," she said.
"Every once in a while there's something that knocks you into the experience of truly positive, or truly negative, and those really shape things."
And so, as they continued their analysis of what it truly means to monitor experiences and engagement as they influence the brand impression, the team at Maritz developed a tag line.
Tag line of Maritz Institute: The Science and Art of People and Potential"From the beginning, Maritz based client solutions on science," said McEuen. She mentioned B.F. Skinner and the "behavioralism" movement in psychology as having shaped our early thinking. Now Maslow has had an influence as well. But Skinner and Maslow have pretty different perspectives on things.
Maslow believed "Organizations designed right are vehicles for human potential," said McEuen. Steve Maritz realized that we were missing a link to the more recent sciences which is why he created the Maritz institute.
The "Art" is really important in this tag line, she explained. "Science for science sake is really not all that interesting."
Artful design of marketing and business practices means that "you know when you've done it well when it really connects with people."
"The Maritz Institute is really a network of people," said McEuen. It is made up of four people officially, but the network includes folks at Harvard, across academia, and about 300 people across Maritz.
The next stage of her presentation focused on: How do we need to think differently about engaging the key stakeholders within businesses.
"Ultimately our goal is to have a positive impact on stakeholders. It should be good for business and good for the individuals -- a win/win, enrichment midset," said McEuen.
This really gets us to "Why and How The Game Has Changed."
McEuen referenced several books at this point that are recommended reading: "Consumer Shift" by Andy Hines and "Marketing 3.0" by Philip Kotler.
She said of Kotler's work that he shows us how Marketing 1.0 was product-centric, one to one. Marketing 2.0 is consumer-oriented, one to many. And Marketing 3.0 is values-driven, many to many (a network, collaboration). Hines believed that we are entering into the age of a more creative society and of human spirit, the rise of the cultural creatives, the knowledge worker.
McEuen discussed Maslow, revisited: When we hit the great recession, we saw that people in general reverted, as we expected, down the Maslow hierarchy toward basic needs such as security, but during this recent recession, it seems to be categorizing people up, toward expression.
McEuen said, "There are rapid changes going on in societal values, and business is going to have to keep up."
Regarding consumerism and "stuff", McEuen said "We've been living among the values of challenge, achievement, competition, materialism, prestige. Now we're hitting a stage of "when is there enough?" When we have less resources, some folks are saying, "This is enough. I have enough..." and then they move up the pyramid into trying to find meaning: collaboration, thrill-seeking, community, freedom, novelty, self-expression, experimentation, passion, authenticity.
Individual success starts to morph into collaborative expression.
When you think about consumers trying to find these values, what brands come to mind that are currently tapping into this? The audience replied with "Apple", "Target" and similar brands.
McEuen then said that it's going to be important that as marketers and brand managers, we understand how important it is the ways in which these shifts are impacting employees. And more importantly, how engaging employees properly due to these shifts will have an impact on your ability to engage your customers and/or prospects and drive the business forward. Thus, the importance of employee engagement, especially considering these recent developments in values.
Employees are most engaged at companies that seem to highly value: Stimulation, Self-direction, Universalism and Benevolence.
McEuen displayed a slide with the following quote: "Businesses are social systems. All social systems are underpinned with assumptions about human behavior. The problem is many of our current assumptions are wrong or out-of-date."
- Peter Drucker
Our new goal as marketers and as leaders is going to be:
Delivering on the brand promise from the inside-out so that it's authentic. We need to create places of "engagement."
Leverage reward and recognition, said McEuen. This has an impact on engagement, and ultimately on customer satisfaction.
Southwest Airlines is known for being a place of engagement for its employees. Think of companies, websites, group meetings, that are places of engagement.
Everything has to be participatory now. It can't be static or else it's missing the mark.
McEuen shared with us the Three People Principles That Guide Business Practices.
1. Humans are both emotional and rational in their decision-making. McEuen referenced the metaphor of the Elephant, the Rider, and the Path they follow:
Adapted from psychologist Jonathan Haidt), the Elephant represents emotion, the Rider is rationality, and the Path indicates the focus or direction. The Rider is analytical. She directs the Elephant, but the Elephant must be emotionally engaged in order to respond to the Rider (an Elephant is too big to move if it’s resisting). Once the Rider and Elephant are ready to go–once you’ve gotten your team, class, or self convinced and motivated– you need to give them directions down a Path.In order to create successful change in any context, leaders and teachers need to engage their employees, peers, students, or selves both emotionally and rationally while also providing a clear direction.
"If you think about the rider as reason, elephant as emotion," said McEuen, "when the two disagree, who's going to win?" The audience laughed. >
2. People are both emotional and rational in their decision-making. They are driven by multiple motivators.
3. People are both individual and social.
Lastly, McEuen gave us the four key motivational areas of individuals and explained their significance in our ability to engage and tap these motivators in our marketing initiatives. This is based on the work of Professor Paul Lawrence and Dean Nitin Nohria of Harvard Business School.
The Multiple Motivators
1. Acquire: driven to acquire stuff, status, resources
Emotions: competitive, powerful, superior
2. Defend: driven to defend status, stuff, ideas, relationships
Emotions: Angry, frightened, anxious
* We really "get" the first two as marketers.
3. Bond: drive to engage, cooperate, "fit in" to the community
Emotions: Cooperative, protective, grateful
4. Create: driven to create better self, team, organization, world
Emotions: Awe, curiosity, wonder
Emotions are highly contagious - we don't keep them to ourselves.
The brain is a meaning-making device, it's always trying to make sense of things.
It's much harder to understand and tap into the last two, but it's possible.
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