The Science of Communicating & Marketing Your Business

One thing WindKiller wrote was "When you were analyzing the candidates' web sites 4-5 years ago (primary and then presidential), I seem to recall seeing a fair number of V15's, V9's, K15's and K9's."

There's an implied and not stated question there; Have American thought processes changed over the past few years?

Yes, they have (and good catch and eyes, WindKiller. Thanks for keeping me on my toes). I was going to include this information in What McCain said about Obama and Palin to Hillary and Biden and didn't know if it would be interesting enough to people not versed in the science. I'll do my best to make it more accessible in the future.

That offered...

This chart is the one shown in What McCain said about Obama and Palin to Hillary and Biden and shows the primary decision/communication styles for the US population a little over a year ago (3 July 07). The dominant style is V19 by just under three (3) percentage points. V19s have the following characteristics:

• These people are extremely visually oriented
• They tend to live in the past
• They pay the most attention to references of past events, framed in the negative and presented in a visual format
• They are influenced by being reminded of past problems

This chart is from 30 May 03. V19 is listed and it's in third place. The dominant decision/communication style is V3 with A11 about one percentage point behind. The V3 communication style can be summed up as

• These people base their decisions on what they see
• They focus on past failures
• They favor explanations of how to get out of present of future trouble
• They are more often influenced by the examples of others rather than their own experience

• These people base their decisions on avoiding pain or discomfort
• They are not influenced by references to past, present or future successes
• They tend to be loners who willingly avoid social situations
• They learn most rapidly if the lesson has a threat (real or imagined) of pain or discomfort

There are some things worth noting on these two charts alone. The dominant communication styles in 2003 were

The take-away from this indicates a major shift in how the US population is making decisions. People in 2003 were listening to each other much more than they are now, despite all the hoopla about social media and such. Note that I wrote listening, not talking. People may be talking to each other a lot more now than they were in 2003 but they're not listening to each other as much as they were then.

This concept -- talking but not listening -- actually hearkens back to another comment WindKiller posted in Barack Obama, John McCain, Politics, Presidential Election 2008 and Political Websites, part 2.

Another item worth noting is the A6 decision style; 5.59% in 2003 and 6.15% in 2007. That's pretty steady considering population fluctuations and such. The big winner, of course, is V19 with a gain of about three points.

But the times, as they say, are a'changin'. Tuesday, 9 Sept 08, just over a week ago saw the loss of V3 and the gain of A10. The sum of this change over a year's time is that people are now talking and listening to each other much more than they were before. People (in general) are still sensing a personal vulnerability but the close cropping of styles (10 and 11, 19, 21 and 22) indicate a large percentage of the population is still on the fence (more like "teetering on the edge") regarding which way to vote.

Like A11 and unlike V19, V6 stays fairly steady through time. Styles that remain steady through time are usually indications of cultural and/or demographic based decision styles and are often demonstrated by a geographically stable population. Historically these are shown by large immigrant populations all settling in one geographic location. More modern times see these phenomena in socio-cultural economic groups (national or international unions, religious groups (not denominations. For example, not "Baptists" but "Evangelicals"), etc.). It would be a worthy study to follow the A11 and V6 because these styles are complementary. Going after one usually means going away from the other.

A consistent style -- such as V19 -- that varies over time tends to be a demonstration of a socially defined decision style, such as Boomer, GenY, GenX, WASP, DINK and so on.

Of course, this could also play into Republican and Democrat based decision processes.

Something for another post, me thinks.

Finally, what has changed in a little over a week? Pretty much the numbers remain as they should. You'll see major shifts in short periods of time when widescale trauma occurs -- much like the human body responding to injury, the more serious the injury the greater the change in the body's response systems. "Trauma" can mean anything that shifts social consciousness on a grand scale and includes sports teams winning to the emotional strain of filing income taxes to national economic instability to devastating weather.

Summing up this post, I offer the following table for those keeping score.

Please contact NextStage for information regarding presentations and trainings on this and other topics.

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