What Was Her Name Again?
I used the word “schema” in the headline. This isn’t a common word to you unless you are a psychology buff or a savvy marketer. Before I explain why, let’s take a little test on recall to illustrate my point.
Spend 10 to 15 seconds studying the letters below. Then turn away. Pull out a sheet of paper. Write down as many letters as you can remember.
J FKFB INAT OUP SNA SAI RS
After you have given it a shot, highlight the text below with your cursor to reveal the same letters again, with a simple change.
JFK FBI NATO UPS NASA IRS
Highlight the text above with your mouse or cursor. Now take the same 10 to 15 seconds and repeat the test.
You most likely did much better the second time around when you were remembering concepts rather than abstract letters. You remembered John F. Kennedy rather than FKFB. In this example, the concepts such as UPS and NASA were “schemas” already in your head.
Chip and Dan Heath talk about this concept in a book on strategically simple communications called “Made to Stick.” By doing this, “you tap the existing memory terrain of your audience. You use what’s already there.”
Use Your Their Head
This concept takes marketing to a new level. In order to tap into the “memory terrain” of your prospects, you have to really know them. In most cases, this interior knowledge of the customer is arduous to extract, which is why it is frequently skipped.
This is one aspect that dramatically affects the results of a message right from the beginning. Even with the best execution, timing and synchronicity, a message crafted without leveraging the schema of the hearer will be difficult to remember. The intended next action will be at best latent.
The Predictable Delegate
All too often, the delegate sent in place of true audience understanding in marketing today is the common platitude.
Please welcome the meticulous “Quality is Job No. 1” to the podium. He is flanked by the energetic “Providing Innovative Solutions” and the plural presence of “Our People Make the Difference.”
Not only can these phrases be wielded by any competitor without malice, they lack the concrete, real life details that make schema connections with your audience.
The Opportunity
As marketers, the opportunity is to focus on the front of a campaign on the intended audience for the message. Rather than accepting the advertising world’s demographic understanding of our target, we need to get some vital — and concrete — details that will provide a way to convey our message using “existing memory” within the minds of our audience.
In simple terms, the opportunity for you and me is to take this aspect of human behavior, leveraging schema, and use it lest someone ask us the important but unsettling question, “Why get something new when we can use what’s already there?” Or, “Why explain love when we can just use a kiss?”
Next time we’ll see how this concept has a dramatic effect on how political campaigns are run as we come up on a major election year.
Resources
Wikipedia: Schema (psychology)
