A report from Ogilvy Consulting details the key to the future of marketing: behavioral science. Known by many names, behavioral science is the study of the cognitive processes that underlie decision-making and behavior. While marketing has historically relied upon understanding customers by sorting them into superficial, “outside-in” traits (Slide 36), Ogilvy highlights that it is time to understand people from the “inside-out” (Slide 37) — that is, focusing on their individual motivations. One of the core elements of this “inside out” customer understanding, or cognitive segmentation, is personality (Slide 39).
Numerous academic studies, including most prominently those published by Pinpoint’s advisors (e.g., Professor Sandra Matz’s Money buys happiness when spending fits our personality, and Professor Michal Kosinski’s Psychological targeting as an effective approach to digital mass persuasion, among many others), have indicated the intimate link between personality and purchase-level decision making). Aligning marketing messaging with customer personality is an effective and powerful tool in the marketer’s arsenal. Ogilvy uses the same psychological framework that we do at Pinpoint — the “Five Factor Model.” Also known as “OCEAN”, this empirically driven and widely accepted model is the gold standard in quantitative psychology for mapping normal human personality traits. It’s worth noting, however, that Pinpoint maps personality at a more granular and comprehensive level, going beyond the Five Factors to also capture the personality scores on the six sub-facets of each high-level Factor. We call this Deep OCEAN™, which provides a total of 35 continuous personality dimensions for each of your matchable consumer records.
This framework explains why two customers who may be logically grouped together according to superficial demographic and/or behavioral traits, frequently have very different personalities and therefore respond very differently with the same message. Pinpoint provides easy ways to reveal these underlying drivers and optimize engagement. Please reach out for more information.