Rather than considering deeply before making a consumption choice, the average person is most strongly influenced by the behaviour of their peers, he said. “Human behaviour is shaped by social forces. To understand human beings requires you to understand the social element. Thinking is much less important than we think.”
He drew on the analogy that cats are able to swim but prefer not to; in the same way, people are capable of thinking and acting individually but prefer to copy behaviour that already exists.
“People do things and then think about it. We are no different from apes: humans are ‘ape squared’ rather than ‘ape plus’”, he said. “Brand behaviour is primarily a social choice - not an individual one.”
In addition, he said, marketers often made the mistake of trying to achieve results by changing human behaviour, rather than working with it. “In marketing we try and get people to do things,” he stated. “We need to move the emphasis from persuading to helping them do the work for us.”