- In Part I, Branding Just Works, we explored the wide range of proofs for branding’s value.
- In Part II, Why the pushback? Why the eye rolls? we identify and evaluate the reasons, rational and emotional, for the less than full, universal embrace of branding’s value in B2B.
- In Part III, So What is This Thing Called a Brand? we will address age-old, time-honored questions: What is a strong, robust brand, anyway? What exactly should we be agreeing to when we refer to brand and branding results? Why should anyone care?
We will explore these questions in two stages:
- When pushback is rational, warranted, legitimate, and debatable
- When pushback is something else entirely: more biased, unwarranted or illegitimate, and virtually closed to debate
A. When pushback is rational, warranted, legitimate, debatable
Let’s begin in openness and fairness. Before delving into pushbacks, let’s “walk a mile in the eye-rollers’ shoes” and ask: Is pushback ever a valuable or a reasonable reaction to a branding petition? Yes, is the simple answer, in at least six situations and scenarios.
1. Making the case for a branding program is hard work and success is not always guaranteed.
Keys to success include understanding the mindsets and preconceptions of your management team, literally “walking a mile in their shoes,” to best address their issues and concerns. In fairness, marketing and branding programs can face stiff competition from requests from all other budget petitioners, and you have to, well, perform like a powerful brand yourself, CMO – you have to differentiate yourself, stand out and above the rest, build trust by fulfilling your audience’s needs with reason and empathy. Branding is as branding does! At minimum, you must align marketing and branding objectives to business objectives; ground your proofs in data and research; put customers at the center of all you propose; and learn to “speak finance.” It’s not about “likes,” or “shares,” it’s what “likes” and “shares” mean in terms of cash flows, customer conversions, revenue growth.
- Two Propolis Experts, Darren Coleman and Tony Lamb, have recently published two great pieces detailing how to assemble water-tight arguments to convince (skeptical) management teams of the value of branding programs (check out Propolis for access to both articles). I have offered B2B Marketing a piece detailing how to craft emphatic arguments and weave a compelling narrative, borrowing from Aristotle no less. Without serious preparation, pushback to your branding petitions, sorry to say, CMO, might source with you.
2. Data from the FT confirms that C-suite members who understand brand are the exception, not the norm.
About one-third of those corporate executives polled, declare their knowledge of how a strong brand is built or maintained is poor to very poor; nearly half report only average understanding of how to build or maintain a brand. This lack of brand understanding and basic knowledge of what brands can deliver, exacerbated by a lack of firm definitions of what a brand is and virtually unbridled expectations of what branding can and should do, lead to myriad, serious and inter-related branding problems. (Thanks to Darren Coleman for reference below.)
Source: The Board-Brand Rift (Financial Times, 2020).
3. Brand mismanagement is all too frequent.
Acknowledged, common mistakes include tactics being substituted for real strategy; brand measures left unaligned, and so meaningless, to broader business objectives; campaigns left unexamined for customer resonance and message-value. A poster campaign here, a social post there, aligned or not, doesn’t matter; content, what’s that? a new logo – we’re done.
4. False assumptions about branding abound.
That it is easy, all tactics, the job of the marketer to make pretty campaigns and party-plan events; that it is old-fashioned, unnecessary, replaceable by CRM, ABM and data-driven marketing plans; that it is expensive, useless, even frivolous, a drag on more important budgets, like Sales and R&D.
5. Underestimation of what it takes to create and manage a brand reaps its toll.
It’s rarely admitted but delineating a brand strategy and creating a brand campaign to fully, richly bring it to life, is difficult work. It requires a good deal of experience and expertise. Not everyone is equally talented or suited to creating powerhouse branding; in many instances, it even seems people believe that brands just happen. Or that a brand is a brand is a brand, each one is equally strong and functioning. This is just wrong. There is rich, distinctive content to branding, there is marketing depth and strategic business purpose behind branding. This is vital.
6. Sometimes resources are just lacking.
This is not about eyerolls, it’s just reality. Sometimes resources have to be allocated for other marketing or business priorities, e.g., brand communications training among sales, or product development. Sometimes funding just needs to be rolled back for a host of market realities. This is all part of the picture. Keep focused and prepare to be determined but flexible in these situations. Whether your external branding or internal branding programs are put on hold, say, for the next 12 months, keep your eyes on the long-term prize. It’s all for the good of the brand in any event.
What can you do to respond to legitimate pushbacks about branding? Is anything to be done at all? Yes.
With previous branding efforts less than stellar, yielding results more lackluster than blockbuster, in-going expectations among the management team can understandably be low. What are we paying for? What results have we ever had from branding programs? Isn’t it time to stop this? You can just hear the pushbacks ready to roar like a rushing river.
At the same time, effectively, through no fault of your own, CMO, you may be beginning your branding petition below ground-zero. Or at least on an uneven playing field. Or maybe you have been battling this for some time. All the more imperative, if you do receive support for branding programs, that you be prepared to demonstrate value for the money allocated. This immediately reinforces what we have detailed above in 1.) Making the case for a branding program. Bespoke plans, properly documented and argued, are obviously sine quâ non, job number one.
Beyond Job No. 1: Complications, Future Whammies
Upon further reflection, however, the problems of branding in B2B are more complicated and often run deeper than issues surrounding just one petition, well-argued or not. In fact, with further probing, the situation can appear entirely fraught, with multiple layers of problems, acting singly or in compound. Lined up, they look for all the world like a series of double, or even triple, whammies:
- Agreed: the absence of a strong brand can generate many problems in a company, and legitimate pushbacks by the management team, when it comes to additional funding and support.
- At the same time, these problems are only exacerbated by a deep lack of management and executive understanding of branding, which is documented in quality surveys,
- Nor has the discipline of branding done itself any particular favors by not promoting standard definitions of branding and predictable outcomes, instead allowing hundreds of definitions to thrive, while rarely reigning in and articulating exact expectations.
- This comes down to the wonderful richness that is brand, at the same time that there are no standardized exams; no “brand czar, no one “minding the store” or monitoring the discourse, outcomes and directions that branding can deliver.
- In sum: the branding situation in B2B companies can emerge as a free for all; as if a sort of pinball game, with multiple whammies lurking around corners; with endgames as likely to result in Tilt as in Winner.
Recommended: Consider three additional, longer-term initiatives
Assuming everyone on the management team is open to logical arguments, and that there are no hidden agendas or individual biases at play—which we will soon argue is not always the case — we suggest that you strongly consider three additional initiatives, short and longer-term, to lay the groundwork before you present your case, and to ensure its success thereafter.
1. Brand education for the management team – in two flights
The need to educate your management team, and ideally their teams, in the value of branding, is an unavoidable conclusion from this analysis. And this education comes at two levels, or in two flights: macro/”big picture” and micro/day-to-day:
- At the macro-level, management needs to understand the overall, “big-picture” values of branding, and what it can do for companies, from driving top internal cultures to making stock market darlings of high performers. In Part I, we have already laid the groundwork for you in terms of branding’s big picture contributions and the deep and varied historical and empirical evidence in its support.
- At the micro-level, management needs to understand day-to-day brand basics: What is a brand? What does it take to create and manage a brand? What specific outcomes should they expect their brand to deliver to their company? In Part III, we will detail exactly what this thing called a brand is; what rich content, and enormous opportunities, it holds.
(See also below, New realities, pp. 22-26, for additional content and approaches to incorporate in an overall branding education program.)
Upside potential to these initiatives:
The value of this education process – well beyond an individual branding petition—can be enormous. It allows you, CMO, to start the discourse; control the dialogue and terminology; and manage and focus management’s expectations! It can take branding out of its silo and make it part of your larger, corporate culture. It can go a long way to reducing branding’s “otherness.” Without this footing, your branding efforts will never have the power or impact they can and should have — for your company, your department, your own career. It will at least give you a fighting chance. As there is no time like the present to start, we think you will agree: Hurry up, please, it’s time.
Downside risks: Caveat magister
It should not go without saying, however: easier said than done. Curating and conducting such a course, such a curriculum, will be time- and resource-consuming and will require sensitivity and sensibilities to formats and approaches, and not least, to how your management team will react to “going back to school.” Failing this, your wonderful branding education program could have all the look and savor of another (quadruple?) whammy. Good luck!
2. Keep brand education evergreen and fresh
Fast-forward to a more mature, appreciated status for your brand, all your hard work having richly paid off. Now you may want to consider reminders, or take additional, proactive steps, to continue the process and set records straight, e.g., educating on the dangers of setting purely ROI-driven goals (short-term and reactive vs. longer-term brand investment). Or expecting results too soon – brands don’t work like sales promotions. Longer-term, you might consider recommending adding a financial value to your brand on the balance sheet (ISO10668.) This is a “big idea” and should garner CFO attention! The point: there is no finish line.
3. Work with branding experts to get it right
Even if the experts can sometimes get it wrong, work with professional creative teams to build and strengthen your brand. Don’t do this alone, Argue for this in your brand program and campaign for the funds. Brand campaigns are of exquisite value; don’t cut corners.
Still, there is pushback we’ve all heard:
Say you have made an excellent case for the value of your branding efforts, now and in the past; say your management team is reasonably versed and conversant in branding, thanks to your hard efforts; and say resources are available. Why do we still hear the cacophonous chorus of nays, like just so many crows cawing or cicadas chirping? Why do all these 10 damnable, anti-B2B branding arguments, remain in place and continue to pop-up like zombies?
- Too expensive
- Only for consumers
- For TV
- Can’t prove ROI
- We already have a logo and graphic identity.
- We now have CRM and ABM, who needs a brand?
- Just give me another sales guy for what you’ll spend on branding.
- Brands are “soft,” “fuzzy,” inefficient things.
- Our products can sell themselves.We need clear, direct, hard selling!
These common pushbacks, dating back a good 30 years, are factually misguided and lame; many are outdated, empty, easily controverted, even comical, except this is serious business. They remain endless chicanes scattered in the path of the huge opportunities that branding affords; they serve nothing other than as convenient excuses to delay, divert and stall progress. (If Atalanta scattering her golden apples to divert her suitors comes to mind, thank your Classics teacher.)
We have no way of documenting what percentage of management teams, and their teams, offer such pushbacks today; we can only say that serious, unrelenting pushback remains real, in spite of solid evidence to the contrary.
So what is going on?
B. When pushback is something else entirely: more biased, unwarranted or illegitimate, and virtually closed to debate
Can it be? Is it possible that facts don’t matter?
With the proof of branding in B2B so rich, abundant, and multi-varied, we have to ask ourselves hard questions: What is going on here? What is still prompting the zombie pushbacks? …Is something else –- some hidden agenda(s)– driving the unwarranted rebuttals and closing down the debate? What else do we have to do or say to shut down what seems like insanity? …Is it fair to conclude that, perhaps, evidence isn’t enough? That there are, in fact, biased agendas? …Is it possible that facts don’t matter? That facts can and will be ignored; that cogent proof and rationales can and will be dismissed with resistance for resistance’s sake?
Seeking explanation in other, parallel situations
These questions, all yielding hypothetical answers in the affirmative, are very important. When facts and reason alone prove virtually incapable of “turning the dial”, we logically, reasonably seek out explanations and parallels in other, similar and important scenarios. Today, pointedly, we are quick to think of anti-vaxxing, climate change, roiling political divides, gun control, book banning – all situations where no amount of evidence seems sufficient to move people from their prior, entrenched positions.
Does not this “sticky,” unbudgeable resistance to B2B branding fit into these situations where “facts don’t matter”? Can we not characterize the enduring resistance to B2B branding, just as these other situations are characterized, as a classic case of confirmation bias? Yes, is our simple answer, a hypothesis we explore in detail below.
What is confirmation bias?
In recent years, we have all become way too familiar with the concept of confirmation bias. It features prominently in many national and international dialogues across a host of issues: political, medical, social, ethical, educational, environmental. According to the Wikipedia entry, confirmation bias is “selecting or reinterpreting evidence to support one’s beliefs.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias
Effectively, confirmation bias is the tendency people have to embrace information that supports their beliefs and reject information that contradicts them. We can be quick to abandon critical thinking if credible, seemingly reliable sources offer false or misleading information, or if this information, however flawed, is consonant with our pre-existing opinions or biases. “I hear you; I get what you say, I just don’t believe you,” goes the typical confirmation-bias retort. If reason is designed to help us generate sound judgements, suggest Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber in The Enigma of Reason (Harvard), then there is no more serious design flaw than confirmation bias. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/02/27/why-facts-dont-change-our-minds.
Confirmation bias is hard-wired into how our brains process information
We all have the tendency for confirmation bias; it’s generally acknowledged to be hard-wired in us. A chief benefit confirmation bias offers is short-cut heuristics – when we’re overwhelmed or short of time, we rely on simple rules like group consensus or trusting an expert or role model for quick decision-making. Confirmation bias easily allows us to side with people who share our pre-existing views, all the while keeping us in comfort zones where we feel safe. This can be for good or ill, however, as we effectively are making decisions based on identity, beliefs, feelings, emotions, values and social goals. (We will argue that professional goals and values function in much the same way.)
Bias can best reason, beat logic, spawn “alternative facts”
Against these powerful tides — of tradition, belief, values, emotions, peer pressure and community, singly or in combination, facts and objective analyses simply cannot measure up; in fact, they can be easily brushed away, even if they are patently true, and can provide us benefits (e.g., anti-vaxxers on vaccinations). Indeed, confirmation bias has given birth to the infamous, shockingly perseverant concept of “alternative facts” that blithely, blissfully creates “alternative realities” and justifies “alternative communities and comfort zones.” Why is this? Why do we, seemingly reasonable people, so often think and act so totally irrationally?
Confirmation bias has become problematic in today’s complicated environment
Recent, cross-disciplinary research on decision-making sheds light. Mercier and Sperber suggest that confirmation bias is adaptative and that it has evolved to help us hold our positions in our communities; and to protect us from isolation or danger via upstarts and iconoclasts:
“Living in small bands of hunter-gatherers, our ancestors were primarily concerned with their social standing, and with making sure that they weren’t the ones risking their lives on the hunt while others loafed around in the cave. There was little advantage in reasoning clearly, while much was to be gained from winning arguments…. Our ancestors, however, did not have to contend with fabricated studies or fake news or Twitter, so it’s no wonder that today reason often seems to fail us.” As Mercier and Sperber write, “This is one of many cases in which the environment of truth has changed too quickly for natural selection to catch up.” https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/02/27/why-facts-dont-change-our-minds.
Steven Sloman and Philip Fernbach, in The Knowledge Illusion: Why We Never Think Alone (Riverhead), agree.They believe that we’ve been relying on one another’s expertise ever since we figured out how to hunt together, and so well do we collaborate, that there is “often no sharp boundary between one person’s ideas and knowledge and those of other members of our group”. When it comes to new technologies, for example, incomplete understanding is perfectly acceptable, we don’t need to know how TVs or AI work. Where it gets us into trouble is in more complex, critical issues like politics.
We think we know too much; way more than we actually do; and as strong feelings about issues rarely emerge from deep understanding, a community of so-called knowledge can become increasingly dangerous. Baseless viewpoints proliferate and proliferate; they can only be stopped through conscious, concerted probing of the issues and critical analyses of their implications. This, of course, rarely happens. We shall return to this point shortly.
Further complications:
The emotional pull of confirmation bias even has “a physiological component,” write Jack and Sara Gorman in Denying to the Grave: Why We Ignore the Facts That Will Save Us (Oxford). It just feels so good. “People experience genuine pleasure, there is a rush of dopamine, when we process information that supports our beliefs. It feels good to stick to our guns, even if we’re wrong.!” https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/02/27/why-facts-dont-change-our-minds.
Confirmation bias is long with us: evidenced over time and cultures
No surprise, confirmation bias is nothing new or culturally limited as these almost chilling references across time to Thucydides (5C BCE), Ibn Khaldun (14C), Francis Bacon (16C), and Leo Tolstoy (19C) attest.
- “It is the habit of mankind to trust to careless hope what they long for, and to use sovereign reason to thrust aside what they do not desire.” (Thucydides, The Peloponnesian Wars, 4.108.4)
- “If the soul is infected with partisanship for a particular opinion or sect, it accepts without a moment’s hesitation the information that is agreeable to it. Prejudice and partisanship obscure the critical faculty and preclude critical investigation. The result is that falsehoods are accepted and transmitted.” (Ibn Khaldun, Muqaddimah)
- “The human understanding, when it has once adopted an opinion…draws all things else to support and agree with it. And though there be a greater number and weight of instances to be found on the other side, yet these it either neglects or despises, or else by some distinction sets aside or rejects.” (Bacon, Novum Organum)
- “The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him.” (Tolstoy, “The Kingdom of God is Within You,” 1894)
Confirmation bias in the B2B context:
If it walks like a duck, and talks like a duck, it’s a duck. We have not been able to find any literature, either in support or in contradiction, on the topic of confirmation bias in the context of B2B branding, but we are prepared to be the first to offer this hypothesis: that a great deal of the pushback branding continues to receive in B2B is due to confirmation bias. Why do we say this? It begins with people; with their characters, profiles, mindsets, and predilections; effectively, it begins with human nature.
Profiles: B2B types generally
People who legitimately tend to gravitate to B2B companies, across roles, fields and disciplines, share certain profiles and characteristics. While not prescriptive, but commonly descriptive, these characteristics include that they graduate university in the STEM disciplines – science, technology, engineering and mathematics; They are drawn to B2B professionally because it is practical and product-driven; because it requires a high comfort level with things tangible, solid, conservative, quantitative and data-driven; because it favors quick results and turn-arounds; and because they needn’t go far to find other, like-minded colleagues and staff — pragmatic, hands-on, hard-core, “kick-the-tires types” — who are equally comfortable in this kind of world. Another telling characteristic: so many come to love their products so much that pictures of these physical, tangible products feature prominently on their work desks. Think Caterpillar, and “yellow iron.”
Profiles: B2B Marketing types
It is nothing new to flag how different are the profiles, characteristics and mindsets of people who are typically drawn to marketing and branding. Again, not prescriptively, but certainly, commonly descriptively, we can say these people tend to graduate university in humanities and liberal arts, including business management. They are drawn to marketing and branding professionally, whether B2C or B2B, because it is wide and open-ended; creative and interpretive with few rules; more literary than mathematical, more fiction than non-fiction; more focused on the word than the number; more image-driven than formula-based. (Nor are there any formal exams required to become a professional marketer, as there are formal exams, for example, to qualify in finance. Whatever would you, could you qualify or formalize in marketing?)
Marketing and branding also require practitioners to have high levels of comfort with all things intangible, emotional, qualitative, and longer-term; they must have high sensitivities and sensibilities for managing “untouchables” like positioning, messages, core values, vision, insights, personalities, and promises. They must be good storytellers and spark to really smart graphics. Why? Because all these requirements are at the core of true brand stewardship, which true marketers seek out naturally.
Profound profile differences generate polarities of beliefs
Think of it: is it possible for people, their profiles and mindsets, their jobs, to be in greater contradistinction than they are among B2B marketers and their B2B colleagues? The daily polarities they navigate –of product vs brand, tangibles vs intangibles, physical vs. ungraspable/inspirational, quantitative vs, qualitative – are nearly Manichean in scope. (It’s even possible that distinctions between these two types hearken back to their university choices: STEM is linked to the 4-discipline (“scientific”) quadrivium, while liberal arts is grounded in the 3-discipline (“humanities”) trivium, a divide as old as Plato and still with us.)
Polarities, biases thrive in an already complicated branding environment
Little wonder, we have honestly heard “brand” called “fuzzy” and “soft” among B2B types, so odd and threatening do they find brand; so uncomfortable does brand, and all things intangible, make them. Add to this discomfort, a fundamental lack of understanding of what branding is and does; and legitimate problems brand may have presented in the past, when not fully developed or properly measured. Add as well, the pressure presented to their personal and professional goals — their “turf”, salaries, promotions, future — when they’re asked to support a branding proposition: CFOs may fear, What if I support this brand with a sizeable budget and it doesn’t work out? Sales may fear, What will I lose if brand disrupts my relationship with my customers?
Like-minded communities offer comfort zones, resistance
Our brains have evolved shortcuts that allow us to quickly size up perceived threats, while peer pressure can drive us to seek out people who espouse similar beliefs, and provide welcome comfort zones, even if this interferes with our ability to objectively analyze the facts. As hiring of similar types and mindsets is the norm; and as cultures and communities develop accordingly, preferences for all things tangible and quantitative are likely to proliferate in B2B; resistance to objective analysis of facts about branding remaining stubborn.
Prediction: a “perfect storm” ahead
So, CMO, when you go to present your petition to the management
Team for your branding program, wholly apart from being totally buttoned up with a proper, insight-driven, business-grounded, and data-based proposal, you could very well be looking at a table deeply divided. Two sides, backed by their own beliefs, facts and communities, now challenged to work together and support one another when they are virtually at total odds. Retrenchment and retreat to comfort zones is predictable; digging in and avoiding compromises is to be expected; taking consolation in community beliefs, notwithstanding good, solid, pure logic to the contrary, is likely around the bend. If you haven’t already experienced such a situation, consider yourself lucky. You are likely to one day.
Based on what we have detailed, however, we think you will agree, this kind of impasse goes beyond mere disagreement: Does it not describe a perfect storm of full-blown confirmation bias? As you petition, are you not at the very eye of this storm? If so, how do you go forward? How do you prevail at what is likely a serious, unmoving impasse – for you, your department, your brand, your management, your company? Recent thinking into confirmation bias — how to recognize and manage it, how to better negotiate a path forward — is instructive.
Navigating the “perfect storm:” a whole new ball game
If we identify branding impasses, especially major ones involving annual budgets and requiring full management support, as situations of confirmation bias, this leads us to three new realities –three, new acknowledgements and implications about traditional arguments and approaches to both pro- and anti-branding.
Each is a game changer. Each is grounded in recent thinking and studies about confirmation bias and decision making generally. Each describes a “new reality” – “alternative facts,” as it were, “alternative behaviors,” that will be required to finally remove the branding impasses; finally calling out the impasses for what they have so often been: reflexive (over-)reactions to a perceived threat, grounded in lack of understanding and knowledge. Harsh, but fair.
Reality 1: Facts DON’T matter: When arguing the case for branding, CMO, as it is always worth repeating, you must be totally buttoned up. Your petition is equal parts due diligence, business-based proposal and customer-driven manifesto. But don’t always expect even the most beautiful, shining proposal to prevail. Facts, logic, reason will not, as we know now, necessarily win the day. In parallel, think political fact checking, which is always necessary and surely critical for the history books, but rarely changes minds in the short term. So, it’s not about digging in deeper, this will doubtless result in further divides and impasses. Rather, embrace the need to reframe the debate and the discourse. And this means fundamentally reframing the nature of the argument, which takes us immediately to Reality 2.
Reality 2: Philosophy, (office) identity politics, and world views DO matter: To brand, or not to brand, that is the question. The debate generated by bias has little to do with facts vs. facts, but rather with people’s philosophies, identities and world views. You either do, or do not, believe in the value of branding for your organization. For every proponent of “Branding Just Works,” there are those who believe that “Branding Just Does Not Work and Is Irrelevant to B2B.” Beyond the level of bespoke branding petitions, the level of this discourse is totally new, approaching the existential, because it acknowledges a deep, philosophical, professional divide about the concept of branding itself, and biases for and against.
Imagine, if you will, this new branding debate.
Pro-branding proponents would marshal arguments for the meta- and macro-values of brand, many of which we have detailed in Part I of this piece. In this new level of debate, however, instead of just nay-saying, anti-branding proponents would need to counter with serious arguments of their own. For example:
- That data and CRM eliminate costly branding programs as they fully supply customer insights and intimacy and allow for immediate responses to grow and develop more of the same.
- That many B2B businesses have so few customers and decision makers that they are better served with ABM and high-touch sales servicing.
- That many B2B businesses are just too industrial, or fragmented, or generic, or complicated for customers to form the “emotional attachments” branding is so famous for.
- That funds would be better allocated to rigorous channel management support than branding programs with inspecific KPIs and unreliable ROI.
- That internal corporate cultures emerge in response to CEO personalities and management team values, case closed.
- That longer-term results are so “yesterday”; that there is no time to waste on branding as turnarounds and results need to be quick – “Hurry up, please, it’s time; hurry up, it’s time” — thus quickly, even elegantly, making the anti-branding-case by turning around our time-demand mantra on us!
This is new territory.
As we have previously discussed, “change” and “new” are two great words, so long as they don’t apply to you. https://www.b2bmarketing.net/feature-post-b2b-insights/change-and-new-are-two-great-words-so-long-as-they-dont-apply-to-you/ It requires a good deal of good will, good faith, and open minds on both sides, to make a success of it. The CEO’s support and guidance are sine quà non. Would everyone spring to the chance to participate in such a debate? Doubtful. Would everyone be willing to fully prepare for such a debate? Even more doubtful. Would educating the management team about branding obviate the need for this debate? Among those receptive, of course; among those confirmed in their biases, unlikely, so stubbornly entrenched can opinions remain. Nor is there a guarantee you will absolutely prevail, CMO, although your chances are much improved in this reframed context.
But how welcome would be such a discussion!
Likely a first of its kind, it would establish what the branding debate has always been about: competing moral compasses, “alternative facts” and “alternative realities”. Legitimate argumentation would strengthen understanding and empathy on both sides, as participants will surely be able to finally see where everyone is coming from, what lies at the bottom of the issues, and what moral foundations drive the differing sides. Alternatively, less than full development of debating positions would give a quick signal that confirmation bias is e.g., more petulance for the quantitative and “solid” and fear of the intangible, rather than a full-blown worldview: a valuable insight.
CEOs will still judge for themselves.
But they too are better informed, and better prepared, to make some hard decisions and legitimate compromises. One thing is clear: We have moved way beyond arguing in the dark.
Reality 3: “Walking a mile in their shoes” WILL matter even more. Highly recommended. Current research into decision-making shows that we think we know way more than we do. Across numerous decision-making experiments, from those (famously) concerning how toilets work (they’re complicated) to articulating the details of classic political and social policies. results point to the singular benefits of “rolling up sleeves,” digging in, and “doing a bit of homework.” It is when participants work through facts, implications and complexities of topics – whether about household gadgets or policy proposals – that they finally see how clueless they are and begin to moderate their views.
It is now generally acknowledged that good-old, time-honored understanding through first-hand experience – however old-fashioned and true-blue – is the only thing that can shatter illusions and crack the barriers of confirmation bias. As we cited above (p. 20), when baseless viewpoints proliferate and proliferate, they can only be stopped through conscious, concerted probing of the issues and critical analyses of their implications. We now know, when people do learn more, we should not be surprised, they often change their minds. Knowledge is power, and empowering.
- https://www.forbes.com/sites/brycehoffman/2023/04/30/overcoming-confirmation-bias
- https://impact.economist.com/projects/deliver-change/article/what-is-confirmation-bias-and-how-to-reduce-it/#:~:text=The%20simplest%20way%20to%20avoid,before%20coming%20to%20a%20conclusion.
- https://www.ted.com/talks/verna_myers_how_to_overcome_our_biases_walk_boldly_toward_them?subtitle=en&geo=fr
This takes us to three additional activities that are deeply hands-on, experiential and focused on individual journeys.
Reverse roles: In the context of B2B arguments for and against brand, one possibility of achieving true understanding of the issues is “to walk a mile in the others’ shoes” and reverse the roles. Take the two opposing branding views, such as we have described in Reality 2, and change sides. Argue from the others’ point of view! What’s old is what’s new again. If this hearkens back to what you did on your high school debating team, all the better. “Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer,” remain wise words.
Role-plays: In parallel or addition, role plays could be devised for the debating sides. Take sales and marketing. Assume one another’s approach to customer-service and customer-centricity, for example. How does sales connect with the customer to deliver top service? How does the CMO and marketing interact with the customer to deliver the same top service? What role does brand play in these interactions with the customer? What role does data and CRM play? What is the customer’s (all-important) view of servicing? Of the brand? Of company communications? Of CRM systems and quick responses vs. “emotional connections” to the brand? Of competition? How, if at all, do customer perceptions change your view of brand, for or against?
On judgement, role-plays of this nature are a superb idea in and of themselves! And could very well be part of an overall curriculum for branding education, as articulated above. The possibilities become richer and richer!
Switch roles in loco alii: In parallel or addition, switch actual roles for a few days. While not a perfect solution, it is a much deeper immersion and doubtless allows for a more informed understanding of each other’s points of view, of branding and beyond. Switching roles also has the added advantage of making branding even more a part of the corporate life, beyond silos and select meetings, where it may well reside for the most part. Branding can truly become part of the management culture, not something to take off the shelf a few times a year. This is really to understand your interlocutors, and what moral foundations matter to them, and for them to understand the same about you.
There are rich opportunities here for you, CMO.
- Above all, people will look to you to set the tone and pace of these game-changing encounters. Kindness, consideration, and openness to compromise will go a long way, as will empathy. And smiling.
- There is a big role to play as partner with the CEO, as a strong, effective manager of the process; and as the much-needed, enlightened communicator at the intersection of the world views and moral foundations that matter to branding’s success.
- There is also a big role to play regarding branding and bias education. As we have alluded, these educational activities are on the same continuum, and are mutually supportive, but the exercises designed to counter confirmation bias are much more hands-on and experiential, more a workshop or master class, rather than a lecture or a formal presentation. Altogether, however, they would make a tremendous internal branding curriculum that could be offered to staff more broadly. Quietly, under the radar, with little fanfare, you will have created a wow!
Why all this matters:
Our intention in calling out confirmation bias is to be consequent and transformational. It is to give marketers, their teams and supporters agency, purpose and purchase to go forward with the full expectation of being able to grow, nurture and develop their brands as mission critical to a company’s success. In our view, brand is too hugely important to leave to impasses and imprecise understandings. Too many opportunities go missing; too many customer interactions go undeveloped; too many competitive advantages go unexploited; a pity. There’s no time like the present to get this right and no reason any longer to let major barriers like confirmation bias, exposed now for all its complexities and powerful intransigence, stand in the way. Full-blown commitments to branding in B2B are way past their due dates for fulfillment. “Hurry up, please, it’s time. Hurry up, it’s time.”
What’s ahead:
We have spoken at length of branding and brands, arguably the most powerful and versatile business tools ever invented. At the same time, we have seen evidence that the great majority of management admits they don’t know what a brand is, or how to create or manage one. All of this begs the question: What is a brand? What are you asking your management team to commit to if they do put energy and resources behind their brand? What expectations should they have on branding’s effect on your customers, on your business? We address these questions in Part III.