Dan Cobley: What Physics Taught Me About Marketing

For this blog post, I will be doing a summary and review of Dan Cobley's Ted Talk, What Physics Taught Me About Marketing. Dan Cobley is the marketing director for Google in northern and central Europe. Dan Cobley received his first degree in Physics from Oxford University, although he has worked in marketing his entire career. In his Ted Talk, he relates four theories of physics to four ideas in marketing. These four theories are,
1) Newton's Law of Acceleration
2) Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle
3) The Scientific Method
4) The Law of Increasing Entropy

Here is a Youtube link to the talk, or you can view it on the Ted website here.
 

1)  The first theory of physics he talks about is Newton's Law of Acceleration. Newton's law of acceleration states that force is equal to mass times acceleration (f=ma). Therefore, acceleration is equal to force divided by mass (a=f/m). Acceleration is a factor of how much force you put into an object that has a certain mass. The more powerful the force, the more powerful the acceleration. The bigger the mass, the less powerful the acceleration. Small things take less force to accelerate than big things. Dan Cobley relates this to marketing by putting companies in the place of the mass. If you are a large company, you already have an image out there that customers relate you with. However, the bigger the company, the harder it is to change the image of the company. In this case, changing the image of the company would be related to the acceleration of the object. He gives the example of Hoover company, which was well known for producing vacuum cleaners, attempting to create a line of washing machines. Since Hoover was already imaged as a vacuum cleaner company, customers were hesitant to purchase a Hoover washing machine. Since Hoover specializes in vacuums, they wouldn't be as competent with washing machines as a company that specialized in washing machines. This is the reason brands like Unilever use smaller sub-companies to market their wide array of products. Unilever owns Dove hair care products, as well as Hellman's mayonnaise. If you were going to buy shampoo, would you reach for the Hellmenn's, or would you go for a brand like Dove that is a staple name in hair care products? I would personally choose Dove. The smaller companies that each market a different type of product have less mass than using one name for all of a companies products, therefore making it easier to change the image of the company from the customer's perspective.

Unilever owns all of these brands. Customers would rather buy Breyers Ice Cream, Skippy Peanut Butter and Suave shampoo than a bunch of different products that are all the same brand.

2)  The second theory he talks about is Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle: it is impossible to view a particle in its natural position, because the act of observing the particle moves it from its natural position. If you shine a light on a particle in order to observe it, it's going to move. Anything you do in proximity to the particle will move it from it's natural position. It's like the question, if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? He relates this to the habits of customers. If a customer knows that they're being observed, then they are not going to act naturally. Just the knowledge that they are being observed will cause them to deviate from their natural habits in some way. In order to observe a customer's natural habits, they can't know that they are being observed. 

People act differently when they think no one is watching. This is very relevant to Dan Cobley and his position in Google. Millions of people use Google everyday, and whether they are aware of it or not, Google observes and tracks internet habits for every one of its users. Those who are aware act differently because of it (that's why they invented incognito mode, another breakthrough invention by Google).

3) The next theory he talks about is the scientific method. The scientific method states that you cannot prove a hypothesis through observation, you can only disprove it. Take for example the theory of spontaneous generation, which was a passable theory for thousands of years. This theory stated that life was created from things like mud, dirt, and rotting meat being exposed to sunlight. There was a ton of evidence for this, like maggots coming out of nowhere on pieces of meat. It wasn't until later that scientists, using stricter tests, proved this hypothesis wrong. Rotting meat in a sealed container produced no maggots. Contrary to all the prior evidence, one fact disproved the whole hypothesis. Dan relates this to the image that a company has in its customer's minds. A company can do as much as possible to give itself an image in its customers minds, but it only takes one action to destroy that image. Think of BP, which marketed itself as a very Eco-friendly oil company. Now think about the BP oil spill and the way the company handled it; it was the opposite of eco-friendly. Ever since then, no one thinks of BP as "that eco-friendly oil company". They spent a lot of time and money creating this image, and screwed up once and toppled it. If you are in charge of a company, any action that you take (or don't take) can have a huge affect on the image of your company in customer's minds. 

4) The last theory he talks about is the theory of increasing entropy. Entropy is things moving towards chaos, so the theory of increasing entropy is the theory that things will always move towards chaos. Over time, things will become more and more chaotic. This is related to the marketing of product in the public sphere. Once you market something, you put it out into the public to get a reaction from it. Hopefully, people will react to it how you want them to; but you can never be certain where exactly this marketing campaign will go in the minds of the customers. When you put something out there, it will move towards chaos as more and more people react to it differently. Take Coke as an example. In the 1980's, they switched their Classic Coke product out for New Coke. Based on taste tests, New Coke would be far more popular than Classic Coke. When they finally made the switch, however, people reacted in the exact opposite way they had planned. They stockpiled Classic Coke, and demanded that Classic Coke be put back on the market. Coke could do two things: either bring back Classic Coke due to popular demand, or remain on their warpath of selling New Coke. Obviously, they brought back Classic Coke, because people would probably have boycotted them if they got rid of it. Once something is released to the market, it is highly beneficial for the company to pay attention to customer feedback, even if the product released has the opposite affect from what you intended. By being aware of customer's reactions, it will put you at a marketing advantage as opposed to if you ignore customer reactions and continue with your original plan. By being aware of how you're customers react and reacting to them, it brings you closer to your customers in the end.

Dan Cobley uses his background in physics to view marketing principles in a different light. These principles are relevant to anything marketing related, and pretty relevant when dealing with people in general. This talk is really a marketing talk; the only hard science he talks about is Newton's law of acceleration. Even though it is a marketing talk, bringing physics into it bridges the relationship between the two sciences. After all, marketing is a science; the science of having an affect on the people you are trying to influence. There are examples of these theories everywhere, and they aren't limited to the world of advertising.