REVIEW: Sandeep Dayal — Branding Between the Ears (BOOK)
Strategy expert Sandeep Dayal’s new book is the thinking man’s version to approaching the post-modernist framework of the workplace. Considering the tonal shift in traditional decorum from a hierarchal point of view to something more even-keeled and even emotional, there are notable positives and negatives to be taken away from such a shifting.
The positives may outweigh the negatives in the long run, but in an increasingly amorphous and shapeshifting corporate jungle, strategy has never been more key. These days the term conjures up an old-school sense of rigidity in one’s business practices, but as Dayal brilliantly demonstrates in his new book — it’s entirely possible to be progressive, but remain successful thanks to a conglomeration of rules and standards whose culmination proves timeless. With limits, it’s a good thing to breathe new material into the implementation of one’s business practice — particularly behavioral sciences and up-to-date, corporate psychology. Dayal states that he believes this to potentially be an enterprise’s ticket to long lasting and innovative successes.
“What are marketers to do until such time as we can read people’s minds with a handheld scope?” he writes, the book’s title — Branding Between the Ears — a perfect encapsulation. “My view is that good qualitative research is the key to uncovering insights that result in great brands. The supercomputer nesting inside our own skulls is not perfect but pretty darn good when suitably trained in the craft.
AMAZON: https://www.amazon.com/Branding-Between-Ears-Cognitive-Connections-ebook/dp/B096484BZ2
Those deep in the art of marketing sciences will immediately point out that methods like focus group discussions are overused and flawed. True, but so are all other methods, including particularly those based on neuromarketing. The real trick is to not rely too much on any one method, but to use many different ones. When you are trying to understand the mind of a consumer, it is akin to understanding personal relationships. To decide how great a work colleague is, you may look at how good they are as an individual contributor when they have to produce a work product without help…Likewise, to get real insights into consumers, instead of just one method, use a mix of them, including in-depth individual interviews…”
The sign of someone reliable in their knowledge base, concurrent to their being an excellent communicator is their ability to make the reader feel foolish. Dayal’s descriptions, while backed by statistics, third-party reports, and clear, concise examples, are so bell-clear you feel like the answer was in front of you the entire time. It’s a great technique he applies to everything else the book covers, and he’s not afraid to use fun and pop culture-based analogies to keep the audience entertained.
But the overall message of Branding Between the Ears is a profound one. One that leaves the reader with a haunting sense of the complexities and nuances involved even in a field as coldly rational, and just plain cold period, as business itself. “The brand marketers of the future need to dive a lot deeper into the fields of psychology, behavioral science, and human emotion science,” Dayal states. “…They have to think more and strive to connect the dots better between science and consumer psychology. Marketing leaders will in most cases not be able to do it on their own without bringing specialists, schooled in behavioral sciences, into their departments and creating the experimental environment that the field needs to work in to be effective.”
Colin Jordan
