Let’s Talk with James Ballinger – Behavioural Science in Marketing

Today, I’m delighted to be joined by James Ballinger.

James is a highly experienced marketing strategist with a proven track record of transforming brands over the last two decades. As Client Services Director and board member at The Behaviours Agency, he’s passionate about applying behavioural science to create truly engaging campaigns that resonate with audiences. He’s not just about surface-level changes; James has spearheaded major projects focused on building lasting brand memorability, from revitalizing existing brands to launching entirely new ones.

In this interview, we’ll delve into his unique approach to brand building and explore the strategies he uses to achieve impactful marketing transformations. We’ll discuss his insights on driving sustainable revenue growth and discover how he leverages innovation and emotional connection in today’s dynamic marketing landscape.

Leon: James, welcome! Great to have you with us today – thanks for being with us!
I’m really keen to delve into The Behaviours Agency’s unique approach. You place a strong emphasis on behavioural science, which is fascinating. Could you elaborate on how this translates into understanding and influencing customer behaviour? What makes this approach so impactful for your clients?

James: Marketing is influencing behaviour. So it makes total sense to us to take a behaviour-first approach to solving brand and marketing challenges.

Behavioural understanding comes from being aware of how our brains work. Essentially, they’re lazy and instinctively look for the first available answer to a problem. This is known as System 1 thinking, which is the brain’s fast, automatic, intuitive approach (as opposed to System 2, the mind’s slower, analytical mode, where reason dominates).

Because our brains are lazy, they use a range of techniques and shortcuts to make decisions for us. And it’s behavioural science that helps us learn about and ultimately influence these decisions and build shortcuts, connections and memory structures.

Therefore when we’re working with clients on building strong brands or compelling creative campaigns we’re talking to them about how we tap into and influence their audiences’ instinctive and unconscious motivations and default behaviours, beliefs and feelings.

What all this means is that we have a suite of tools, built on what behavioural science has taught us, that help us solve the challenges our clients have.

For example, we have a way of mapping customer motivations to ascertain the most important motivational drivers we can leverage in a brand or campaign positioning. We also have a framework for mental availability. It combines the four key components that most strongly help to build and retrieve memories.

Leon: That’s a compelling point about tapping into those instinctive, unconscious motivations. It certainly seems like that’s where the real magic happens! But how do you actually go about doing that? Could you give us some specific examples of how you use these behavioural science insights to craft campaigns that truly resonate with those hidden triggers in home and garden consumers?

James: It’s probably easiest to explain using a project we carried out with Karndean Designflooring.

Having carried out a brand positioning project for the global Karndean brand, the UK team required a campaign to raise awareness of the brand so it comes to mind first amongst those planning on carrying out building work or renovating their home.

Our research uncovered the behavioural insight that people planning to do their kitchen, bathroom or living room often don’t consider the floor until the job’s underway – so it’s a bit of an afterthought. And when they do think of the flooring, they’d think of wood or stone as the premium option.

So the opportunity for Karndean was to elevate the role of the floor in the entire process.

To ensure homeowners consider their flooring first, we demonstrated the emotional potential of great flooring, and how it underpins everything that goes on in every home.

Our ad replays familiar situations and scenarios that occur in everyday life and therefore connects the floor to the emotional power of life in people’s homes.

So by making this emotional connection, we’re building brand memorability so that Karndean is the most ‘top of mind’ and therefore more likely to be recalled when the customer enters the market.

After seeing the ad, the campaign resulted in an 87% improvement in the perception of the brand. 81% of viewers said it stands out from other advertising and 87% were more likely to consider Karndean as a result of seeing it. The campaign was also awarded ‘Best Creative Campaign’ at the MPA Awards in 2022.

Leon: That Karndean example is really insightful!
It really highlights the power of connecting with consumers on an emotional level. Now, it’s clear that creating memorable brands is a big focus for you at The Behaviours Agency. Why do you think it’s so crucial in today’s saturated market, and what are some of your go-to methods for making a brand truly stick in the minds of consumers?

James: In today’s world where we’re bombarded with brands vying for our attention, and new brands pop up all the time, brand memorability is vital.

Brand memorability goes beyond mere brand recognition or brand awareness. It’s about leaving a lasting impression in the minds of the audience, prompting them to easily recall your brand when they need a product or service in your category.

It’s about being the name that jumps to the forefront of their consciousness, sparking a positive association even amidst countless competitors.

Doing it successfully requires the bravery to invest in your brand, and the budget to create strong and powerful memory structures.

Brand memorability directly impacts purchase decisions, and therefore drives business growth. It impacts these factors:

• Increased brand preference – If your brand is readily recalled, consumers are more likely to consider you when making a purchase decision.
• Stronger brand loyalty – Memorable brands cultivate familiarity and trust, leading to repeat customers and brand advocates.
• Enhanced brand image – A well-remembered brand is often perceived as more established and reliable, fostering a positive brand image.
• Improved marketing effectiveness – When your brand sticks in their minds, marketing messages resonate more deeply, leading to higher campaign ROI.

To build a memorable brand requires a focus on four key areas:

• Distinctiveness – how to deliver a distinctive brand
• Personal relevance – how to motivate your audience
• Long term consistency – how to build brand stories that last
• Emotional connection – How to move from functional benefits to emotional connections.

Leon: Those four areas you mentioned – distinctiveness, personal relevance, long-term consistency, and emotional connection – sound like a recipe for success.
But let’s face it, many brands struggle to achieve true memorability. In your experience, what’s the biggest pitfall that prevents them from cutting through the noise?

James: The main pitfall is inconsistency. There is a misconception that audiences grow bored of your marketing, which is total nonsense.

In fact, recent research by System 1 and the IPA has shown that the most consistent brands see the largest growth in business effects such as sales value, profit, market share and sales volume, as well as brand effects such as fame and popularity.

In summary, this means there’s no such thing as wear out, and marketers need to fight the urge to change branding, messages and campaigns.

As the net effect of this approach may well be the opposite to the reason it is done.

Leon: We’re both familiar with Rory Sutherland, who’s a strong advocate for applying behavioural science to marketing. He argues that brands often overemphasize rational benefits. What’s your take on this? How important is it to focus on the emotional and subconscious factors in consumer decision-making?

James: Far too much of today’s marketing is rooted in the functional benefits of products and services. And while there is a role for selling the rational reasons why someone should choose your product over another, the truth is that only matters once the customer has emotionally engaged with choosing or buying.

It’s not always a marketing team’s fault though. Often we find there’s other stakeholders demanding marketers include more and more information to convince customers to transact.

Like Rory, we use the analogy of throwing oranges to someone. If you throw one, there’s a good chance it will be caught. But if three get thrown how many will get caught? The chances are it will be none of them.

The way we talk about it is to give people motivation, not information, to act how you want.

And at a brand level it’s particularly important to unite the rational, functional benefits together, and elevate them into emotional benefits that align with your target audience’s behavioural drivers. It sounds dead complicated, but when you really think this through for your brand, it’s actually not that mind-blowing at all.

It just takes discipline to see beyond functional product features.

Leon: I’m interested in exploring the consistency aspect further. You mentioned its importance earlier, and it reminds me of Mark Ritson’s view that there’s no such thing as ad wear-out when consistent branding is applied. Would you agree with that?

James: He’s right, and the recent study that has been carried out by System 1 and the IPA proves that being relentlessly consistent with branding and ad campaigns, delivers much bigger returns for businesses.

Obviously, Coca-Cola has mass appeal and has spent billions on being mentally available to almost everyone, but its Christmas ad hasn’t changed in years and years because it doesn’t need to.

But the real power of staying consistent is in how your brand is positioned and how that is expressed to your audience. So KitKat’s brand is all about being the chocolate snack to have when you take a break. ‘Have a break, have a KitKat’ has been the creative expression and campaign strapline since 1958. Most people can finish off the statement, “have a break, have a …” without thinking. This is the power of consistent branding.

Likewise consistent application of brand assets, especially those that are most distinctive, is fundamental to maintaining memorability. Customer’s don’t get bored of colours or shapes for example, but marketers do. Which is obviously a big mistake. Colourful brands shouldn’t ever say, “all this colour is distracting from the message we’re trying to convey”, but that is something our client marketing teams have been known to come out with!

Leon:  That’s a great point about the power of consistency. Building on that, could you share some strategies for maintaining consistency while also keeping your messaging fresh and engaging? How do you strike that balance?

James: The most important thing is to work out what you need to be consistent with. And the answer lies in knowing what associations or shortcuts your audience has with your brand. Ideally this is more than your logo or brand colour… but often this might be all there is, especially for smaller brands.

Dusk is a great example of a new entrant to the world of selling furniture online, who has quickly established a distinctive look and tone to all its touchpoints. Now, it’s about them leveraging the hell out of the things that appear to be unique to them. Whilst they have budgets to spend big on ATL advertising, it’s their website, retargeting, CRM that delivers the consistency. And it’s undeniably Dusk. This isn’t all because of their deep pockets, it’s because of careful and deliberate brand management.

What this doesn’t mean is that you have to be slavishly saying the same things in the same way in the same channels. Memorable brands are built on what is most motivating to their audience, and so campaigns or content can be used to explore different ways to pull on those drivers – and this provides opportunities to maintain engagement and freshness.

Leon: This has been a really illuminating conversation, James.
You’ve highlighted the importance of understanding the subconscious and emotional drivers behind consumer behavior. Looking ahead, with technologies like AI and machine learning providing increasingly granular insights into customer preferences, how do you see the role of behavioural science evolving in the future of marketing? Will it become even more critical, or will these technologies potentially replace some aspects of the ‘human touch’ in understanding consumer behaviour?

James: There’s no doubt AI and machine learning is going to impact a lot of things, but fundamentally I don’t think human behaviour will change especially in relation to brands, and purchasing decisions. The reason behavioural science is so powerful is because it has been rigorously tested, and our brains work the way they work, and always will.

What will evolve is the ease and scale with which behaviourally informed content can be created – and therefore find its way to shoppers for them to be influenced by. But we’ve been bombarding everyone with lots of information for a while now, and it really just means that to become truly memorable and top of mind brands have to make strong and deep connections, which is done by understanding behaviour and leveraging those insights.

So behaviour-first thinking isn’t going to be superseded by AI. AI can definitely support behaviour-first thinking, but what will not change is the lessons that behavioural science has taught us, and the magic is in how that gets applied to influence behaviour.

James, thanks so much for joining us on Let’s Talk!

We really appreciate you taking the time to share your expertise with us. Your insights on keeping brands consistent and memorable were spot on, and we especially loved your advice about tapping into those emotional drivers. That’s some seriously powerful stuff!

We’ve definitely got some great takeaways to use in our future projects at Door4. Thanks again!

Want to know more?

You can contact James via LinkedIn .

You can visit The Behaviours Agency website