Predicting Customer Behavior:
Finding What Works and Why

Test Your Intuition (and see where it can lead you astray)

• Fact-or-Fiction Test: How many of these popular myths do you believe?
• Evidence versus pseudo evidence: Only what can be repeatedly tested and observed counts
• Famous “gut decisions” that were successes -- and failures
• How randomness mimics statistically valid trends—and how to avoid letting it happen to you

Marketers’ Critical Thinking 101

• Critical thinking: Examine data with an objective perspective
• Overcoming obstacles to critical thinking to make fact-based marketing decisions
• Case Study: Did Erin Brockovich “prove” anything? Mistaking correlation for causation.
• 10 deadly thinking errors to avoid in marketing

Discerning Useful Correlations

• Correlations are often just coincidences. Learn to determine the real cause in order to impact your marketing results
• How our natural inclination to identify patterns often leads to errors
• Getting to the cause: Build measures into your campaign upfront to eliminate contingencies
• What versus Why: Learn when the What is more important than the Why

The Great Creativity Debate

• Is creativity the great determiner of marketing success or do other factors weigh more heavily?
• Case Study: The Harley-Davidson turnaround
• Correlating award-winning creativity with bottom-line sales—fact, fiction, or a little of both? The role of creativity in advertising and direct marketing

How to Predict What Most People Will Do, Most of the Time

• How to conduct amazingly reliable predictive research even on a shoestring budget
• 3 real-world mini cases that highlight the impact of this predictive research
• How most focus groups and opinion surveys waste money and fail at predicting customer behavior
• Rules for reliable predictive research

What Evolutionary Psychology Reveals About Brands

• Heritable versus learned behavior in humans
• The original human habitat and marketing today
• Evolved morality and branding
• When sex sells, when it doesn’t, and why
• The "rules" of cheating
• The anthropology of brand recognition
• Psychological roots of successful design
• The implications of evolutionary psychology in marketing

Networking Opportunity:
Lunch will be served each day to facilitate networking with your peers.

 

DAY 2
9:00 A.M. - 5:00 P.M.

Beware the Experts

• Marketing and the law of truly large numbers: The role of recognizing coincidence
• How best-selling marketing books mislead
• Apply critical thinking to the word of the expert
• Case Study: A Fool Strikes Gold in Las Vegas

Using the Scientific Method to Strengthen Marketing

• What is the scientific method for marketers?
• Using the scientific sethod to make marketing more powerful than ever
• Testing 1-2-3: The 3 steps to becoming a marketing scientist
• 5 Rules for a valid marketing experiment
• There is an art to marketing: Learn the role of artistry without sacrificing the bottom line

A Scientific Look at Branding

• Brand isn’t just a logo, a tagline, or a corporate identity program. Responsible branding versus branding malpractice (which is rampant)
• How the brand impacts direct marketing, and how direct marketing impacts the brand
• 5 tests of brand strength

How to Build a Scientifically Sound Strategy

• How to build a rock-solid strategy and unleash creative freedom at the same time
• 7 steps to a winning strategy

Marketing Insights from Evolutionary Psychology

• How pre-wired behavior influences buying
• When sex sells, when it doesn’t, and why
• How reciprocal altruism, pattern seeking, and other evolved traits influence behavior in the marketplace