Ahhh… Upstate New York in the Fall.

The inaugural Bright Ideas Conference is an information-packed half-day event that will provide participants with a host of opportunities to increase their knowledge and grow their businesses. The conference features a keynote speaker with attendees also participating in two of the four workshops being offered.

WHEN: October 15, 2009 | 7:30 - 11:30 a.m.
WHERE: Siena College Sarazen Student Union
COST: Chamber Members: $55 | Non-members: $75

Get all the details and register HERE.

It’s time for our annual checkup. That time when we take Fred Reichheld’s advice to engage the people we touch to help us grow and continually improve. We are asking you (yes, YOU!) “The Ultimate Question.”

So please take a moment to click on this link and take our very brief, anonymous survey. If you received this link in the email, then you won’t need to take the survey via the blog… it’s all the same survey.

Thanks again to all of you who help keep the fire going. We love you all!

On a plane home from Sydney (more on that to come) this weekend, I pulled out my trusty Moleskine and flipped through to land on a page of notes that I took when I spent time with Rob Morris. If you’re a regular reader of the blog, you’ll know that Rob is one of the founders of an organization near and near to our hearts here at Brains on Fire: Love146.

Rob is inspirational when he speaks to large crowds or when you have dinner one-on-one, but the note that caught my eye was this: “Will influencers give you sweat equity? No. But the PASSIONATE ones will.”

That’s gold, baby. And so freakin’ true.

It might seem like we’re hammering that issue home here at Brains on Fire. And you’re darn tootin’ we are.

Look, influencers are great. And often times we include them in the Participation and Insight portions of our movement-building projects. But how likely are they to bend over backwards to help, well, anyone except their immediate circle who keeps them influential? Not very. But the passionate folks, the ones that aren’t afraid to roll up their sleeves and be a part of something bigger than themselves - they are happy to contribute sweat equity. Because sweat equity goes far, far beyond you tweeting or blogging about something. Sweat equity is a personal sacrifice. When you give you sweat equity, you give your loyalty. Your time. Your effort.

And I’ll take 100 passionates who contribute that sweat equity just because they care as opposed to 1000 influentials who post a tweet and never think about it again.

I’ve recently delved into Habit, by Neale Martin. Every once in a while you come across the right book at the right time - a perfect confluence of ideas. Just the right perspective for a problem you’re working on.

It’s probably not a revelation to anybody that there’s a big mismatch between the “why” consumers will give you and what’s really going on in their brain that’s driving a certain decision. Neale does a nice job of introducing one of the culprits - our habits. Those automatic behaviors that we do without even thinking about them. Without understanding our “autographics”, if you will, can we really understand why consumers do things? Or - the marketer’s dream - how to help your brand become habitual?

Two points that Neale lays out that I found particularly important to take away:

1. Our habits often operate independent of intention, and absent of conscious goals. In other words, the habit system and the goal system can be like the devil on one shoulder and the angel on the other. Unfortunately, all too often we don’t even know the devil is there. We can easily talk about what we intend to do. But habits lurk in the shadows. Never gone. But always (for many of us) dominant.

2. Habits are also not driven by attitudes. Sometimes they may align. But it’s also true that the best psychographics can still do a terrible job predicting actual behavior. People say they want to eat healthy, but don’t. Say we care about the environment, but buy disposable. Attitudes are conscious expressions of our beliefs. Habits are unconscious behaviors, rooted in the past - often going back a long long time.

These simple realities present particularly big challenges for marketing - not only because they inherently limit what can be learned from the vast majority of market research. But also because they spell out a truth all too often ignored - that information is not enough to change deep seeded behavior. Healthcare compliance is a perfect example - there’s no shortage of information and health education out there. But we still smoke, drink too many soft drinks, and eat carbohydrates like they’re going out of stock.

What fascinates me these days - is thinking about how to effectively recondition habits. If you can’t do it by throwing education at the problem, how do you do it? I also find the idea of changing the goal from developing preference for your brand to making it a habit intriguing. Albeit scary. This is one of those times where I have to say that I hope neuroscience and/or marketing never quite figures it out. While the idea of really making consumers healthier, or greener is inspiring - would marketing really use that knowledge responsibly?

I guess that would mean breaking our own bad habits!

This post comes from Matt Reese (Keeper of the Gates)

This question came from a very nice woman I met at a cookout who was starting a company that specialized in home veterinary visits. It’s such an interesting question and there are a lot of different ways to answer it. You could focus on the tactics of word of mouth marketing, or talk about social media but I think what gets lost is what makes people talk about your product or service in the first place. For people to talk about you in an authentic way you have to give them a reason, and that reason should be how much they loved using your product or service.

Negative, positive and ambivalent word of mouth can happen for a lot of reasons but in general they fall into a few different categories. According to a study from Wilfrid Laurier University, which I think is right on point, people will engage in negative word of mouth for three reasons- anger, disappointment and regret. When people are angry, they’ll talk negatively about you to get revenge. If people are disappointed they’ll talk about you in a negative way to warn others and when people regret doing business with you they turn to their social circle to make themselves feel better. Then there are the customers who are merely satisfied- who won’t talk about you at all unless asked and even then their comments won’t exactly inspire anyone.

The people who will spread the word and preach to the streets how awesome you are, are the customers who are amazed by your product or service and also feel that they can trust you. These are the people that will stick by you when the economy sucks and these are the people that will help grow your roots and help you weather the storm so your tree isn’t the first to tumble. (Link to Tallest Trees Post)

Most examples of a company encouraging you to talk about them while simultaneously selling a sub par product are local, since most of those companies don’t make it long enough for others to find out about them. I’m sure you have your own but a great example in Greenville was a small shop that was so busy trying to convince people to talk about them, they forgot that people weren’t willing to pay eight dollars for a mediocre fried hot dog! Needless to say- they didn’t make it past a year.

Negative word of mouth is a killer for new businesses, it’s tough to overcome a loud critic of yours when there are only a few people talking about you. By the same token, having a loud a proud advocate of yours telling everyone about your service can be a huge boost to a new business. So before you focus the tactics of word of mouth, focus on having an amazing product or service that will blow customers minds without fail!