The Science of Communicating & Marketing Your Business

It's going to start with a response to reader Dwight Homer's question "What is an A6 or A11 or V6 or V21, etc. decision style?" in his Did Americans Always Think This Way? (Responding to WindKiller's comment on "What McCain said about Obama and Palin to Hillary and Biden") comment. From there we're going to analyze some interviews and the debates to get an idea of how the candidates think. This is a follow up to something Tex and WindKiller have been asking about and hinting at in their comments on "Hillary is piloting the space shuttle and Sarah Palin is riding a bicycle" and Designing a Political Language Engine (WindKiller's PWB comment) and What's Happening Up North? respectively.

First, Thanks to all of you for reading and commenting.

Second, and starting with Mr. Homer's question...

A6, A11 and so on are classifications NextStage uses to designate decision, learning, cognition, etc., styles. They are shorthand notation for some very long and very detailed explanations of what triggers different reactions and responses in different individuals and groups of individuals and why these individuals and groups act and will act. Very briefly, these classifications are shorthand notations for

• how people think,
• how they behave,
• how they demonstrate that behavior and
• what motivates their behavior.

1. are more emotive than most
2. become emotional during conversations
3. are more apt to make decisions when there's some emotional values involved
4. are more apt to learn something when the lesson appeals to the emotions
5. tend to focus on what's in front of them work-wise
6. tend to live "in the day"
7. base decisions on positive influences
8. are good listeners
9. don't rely on future rewards much if at all
10. tend to ignore past successes and failures
11. make a final decision based on whether or not they can see an immediate advantage to the decision
12. are swayed when allowed to take part in activities
13. tend to have a positive outlook on life

1. base their decisions on whether or not their recent past contained any negative aspects
2. learn most readily when the lesson references a recent past, negative event
3. often experience negative memories which are triggered by some sound (a voice, a word or phrase, music, etc)
4. often experience visual memories which bring up painful past experiences
5. tend to be loners or dissociative with others
6. willingly avoid social situations
7. base decisions on avoiding pain or discomfort
8. learn most rapidly when the lesson has a threat (real or imagined) of pain or discomfort
9. are strongly influenced by references to past failures and associated uncomfortable memories
10. rarely make references to past, present or future successes
11. are not influenced by references to past, present or future successes
12. ignore making decisions or engaging in activities which are guided towards present and future pleasures/successes
13. ignore advice and/or counsel which directs their attention to present or future pleasure/successes

Before the break I mentioned that these classifications are shorthand notations for

• how people think (Cognitive),
• how they behave (Behavioral),
• how they demonstrate that behavior (/effective)and
• what motivates their behavior (Motivational).

Sometimes similar themes appear in different notations. Let me offer that it's not that they show up, it's where they show up. The order in which a item appears is an indication of how great a role that item plays in that individual or group's learning, decision making, memorization, etc., style.

What goes into a NextStage {C,B/e,M} matrix is both a summation and synthesis of information that's been in the literature (linguistic, psychology, sociology, anthropology, neuroscience, and lots of subdisciplines) for the past 20-150 years. I believe the term "{C,B/e,M} matrix" originated with NextStage although the much of the science behind it didn't.

Adjusting the sieve

How many different ways do people think? That depends greatly on how fine a sieve you want in place when you answer (much of this is detailed in Reading Virtual Minds). You can correctly state that most native English speaking countries (with the exception of Australia) promote three different ways of thinking. Do you want to involve southern Europe excluding the eastern Mediterranean? Then you have four. Include northern Europe and you have between five and seven. Go to eastern Asia and you still have five to seven but they're a completely different five to seven than in Europe as a whole.

What makes this a powerful (to us) concept is that we've learned certain types of individuals fit into certain groups extremely well. For example, what makes an individual a good researcher (ahem)? What makes someone an excellent business leader (say C level of a large business)? Are different qualities necessary to be an excellent business leader of a small business? Is one an A32 and another a B17?

Marketing and "Knowing How They Think"

Clients use our designations to better understand how to market to different individuals and groups. For example, people doing extreme sports tend to think in certain ways. These ways of thinking permeate everything in their life, not just extreme sports. Our experience is that most marketers don't have the tools or background to make use of distinct {C,B/e,M} matrices in their creative, nor do most businesses know how to adjust their marketing material to more precisely target (ie, get a larger portion of a target) audience. To that end, standard lifts using our methodology are documented in our case studies.

You're Marketing. It's in Your Blood and Wired into Your Brain

I don't know if anybody's told you, but marketing appeared long before humans were humans. Ever seen a peacock's beautiful plumage? That's marketing. Ever heard a lion roar? That's marketing. The great ape beating its chest is marketing and we've learned from our evolutionary ancestors well. Ever wonder why you're attracted to some people and not others?

Sometimes the marketing is obvious. The woman wearing revealing clothing (whatever that means. It's different in every culture) is marketing, the man with the sports car (this is becoming prevalent as western cultural values become more and more ubiquitous) is marketing.

Marketing and advertising is so a part of our neural makeup that we do it without thinking and -- more to the point of this discussion -- use it without thinking. I could offer that we're now about to get into something akin to horoscopes ("You get along well with Libras and Virgos". In truth, some companies use our technology on what I call "matchmaker" sites) except that it's much more like mRNA and DNA signalling (because that's what we based this part of Evolution Technology^TM (ET) on). We demonstrated and published ET's abiliity to find job candidates that would immediately fit in and perform well in an existing group via these principles at a Boston KM Forum meeting in Aug 06.

What I mean by the above is that someone who's (for example) an O12 will get along incredibly well with some other Os, some Vs and a few As. Have you ever had the experience of just meeting someone and feeling like you've known them all your life? Or maybe you've heard someone talking or lecturing and what they said, the things they shared and the pictures they showed gave you the impression they were speaking directly to you at this moment in your life?

Congratulations, your {C,B/e,M} matrix was vibrating at just the right frequency to be in harmony with that other person's or that speaker's (and yes, the math behind some of this is based on ...oh, let's face it, I've probably already gone too deep for most folks reading this).

So Politicians Can Win Elections by...

The logical outcome of this is that anybody who vibrates at the right frequency or has the {C,B/e,M} mRNA that binds to the largest population will be most trusted, most favored, so on and so forth.

Recent politicians who did this best included Presidents Clinton and Reagan.

My next blog post will investigate the personal communication styles of the 2008 Presidential candidates based on their recent interviews and debates.

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

Links for this post:

• {C,B/e,M} matrix references on TheFutureOf blog

  <UPDATE>
  That blog no longer exists in its original form. The blog name is still there and it's no longer what I'd hoped it would be. All of my FutureOf contributions can now be found on TheAnalyticsEcology.
  </UPDATE>
  

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