Dan Pink, the Right Brain, and Marketing in the 21st Century
Since it published in 2005, I’ve made it my mission to highly recommend the Daniel Pink book, A Whole New Mind, to pretty much everyone I come into contact with (and perhaps especially to reporters writing about gender in marketing). I’d like to, but, alas, I can’t buy 4500 copies to distribute. So, I’ll just mention here that Oprah recently interviewed Pink, and then, as part of a commencement address she did kindly distribute that many copies of his book to graduates (what a great way to launch them forward into life/careers).
What Dan Pink and Oprah have to do with you is this: Pink offers a whole new way to consider gender in marketing, while Oprah has raised it up for the masses – who will likely take her up on reading the book, raising their experience and expectations of the world around them. These people, of course, are also those who buy your products.
What I find fascinating is that, with a simple change in word choice, polar opposites (men vs women) become two collaborating elements (men and women, left with right brain thinking – with the right side, in fact, doing the “guiding”). While that is the way he and Oprah discuss the topic, Pink actually neutralizes the language a bit more in his book by calling these L and R-directed thinking (which I think is helpful).
In the just past information age, L-directed thinking (logical, linear) was rewarded in business and life, but now, in our “conceptual age,” R-directed thinking (emotional and relational) is more emphasized in personal and business realms. The observations and predictions of Pink’s 2005 book have become more evident these four years later. We DO live in a world where things like design and story matter MUCH more to humanity and that is seen in what today’s consumers expect from brands and marketing.
This could well be what goes through many a buyer’s mind these days:
“If you want my brand love or my hard-earned dollars, make your pitch a much richer proposition than facts and price. If your corporate values aren’t a fit, I can tell. If your design pales in comparison to the level that, say, Apple, is delivering, I’ll ignore your products. If you can’t match up some element in your or your customers’ stories with some element in mine, I’ll see if your competitors can.”
In fact, as I type, I’m also preparing for a storytelling panel at the Pacific Coast Builders Conference (PCBC) in mid-June. End users, such as home purchasers or retail/commercial building shoppers or tenants, may well have previously been a demographic marketers treated as L-directed thinkers. I doubt that that has ever really been the case, but wow – the world has significantly changed and most industries have to serve an R-directed decision-maker. The “senses” that include design and story are top of mind to most consumers today (whether they realize it or not). Yet, brands are ploddingly slow to develop their more R-directed efforts.
So, yes, let’s revisit the ideas in Pink’s book – as per Oprah’s recent nudge. Start to think of the consumer not in terms of gender, polarizing one from the other, so much as how he or she is a perhaps more R-directed thinker today. When you make that assessment, it is easier to serve the way women may have been more likely to buy in the past without making it about only women.
R-directed equals being guided by women (as per the definition of transparent marketing in Don’t Think Pink – which is not a comment on the author of A Whole New Mind by any means). Pursuing this idea and changing your marketing to better serve today’s consumers may well be easier when gender is left out of the conversation. Right brain thinkers are already uniting and calling us to task.
