The Illusion of Choice

My daughter Theory will suddenly scrunch up her face, turn red, and start to belt out a cry that has been crafted for millions of years to motivate you to act.

What is so interesting to me is how, once you figure out what is wrong and fix it, the crying immediately stops. Within seconds there are smiles, or a look of content.

What is just so amazing is how mechanical, how mechanistic, the process seems to be. A dirty diaper, hunger, cold. There are generally not that many variables at play yet.

It gets to wondering. How much of my own behavior is really equally as mechanical. Are my deliberations and choices mostly revisionist history to rationalize the actions I am taking regardless?

I once was having a discussion about decision-making and choice with my cousin Simon Confino, who like me works in the field of branding and marketing and consumer insights. Simon, who is married to my cousin Shayne who happens to be a Jungian psychoanalyst, responded in a way that stopped me in my tracks. He said, paraphrasing, we often cannot control our selves and behave despite ourselves.

This rang profoundly true to me, especially as I was working on Slim-Fast at the time. People wanted t lose weight. They expended enormous amounts of energy and thought trying to do so. They wanted, with every fiber of their minds, to eat less. Yet, all their will power more often than not was insufficient to keep them from eating. They had no choice.

Simon, who is often looking at the sub-conscious, understood that much, maybe most of our actions and behaviors, derive from these deep places from which “we” have little control. Maybe we don’t even have much self-awareness.

Does Theory now that she is wet and uncomfortable, or that she is hungry and wants milk? And as our cognitive capabilities mature and differentiate, how much remains a black box.

Well I am getting hungry now and gonna quite blogging to grab a bite to eat. 15 minutes from now when I sit down to take a bite, how much do I really know about the inputs and variables that defined my choice?

Fresh Produce and Meat Supply Chain Tracker

This morning I am attending the PSFK conference. It is a room filled with very smart, innovative thinkers – think a mini TED conference. The conference is being held at the Jewish Heritage Museum. It is ironic that I am here, having been laid off, and considering my career trajectory.

Many years ago, while completing my postdoc, I came here to meet with the director David to network and discus career possibilities. We had a long meeting and at the end, he decided to introduce me to a dynamic young woman, who also studied anthropology, from Harvard, who was doing work for the museum.

This woman was Abby Kolodney (who is now Posner) who in turn introduced me to planning. Within a few weeks I was working at an agency.

So it may be here that my career takes a new spin. There are a lot of people doing a lot f interesting and inspiring stuff. They are people who are creating solutions driven by both technology and social agenda.

There are people who are solving problems that are irking. For example, I have been complaining about the lack of visibility into sourcing when it comes to meet and fish and poultry. When I go to the local market, I want to know what I am buying. Yes the FDA recently required to labeling for these products, but country of origin, while significant, is not providing the most vital information.

One speaker noted Fish Cards.

Created by the Monterey Bay Aquarium, it provides information to help choose what to eat. When Tara was pregnant, I had to carry around a folded up, grease-stained piece of paper whenever we went to dinner or I went to the supermarket. I wanted to know about mercury levels. But I also wanted to know which fish were sustainable to eat. The Fish Cards are indeed very helpful.

But I wish there was a way to track supply-chain. There should be an easy way to identify the source and a database that is easily accessible to provide relevant information.
And honesty, I would like his to move beyond just meat and fish but to include all produce and packaged goods.

Recently I went to the market at the milk I usually buy, Strafford, was sold out. The other alternatives I would consider were Horizon and Organic Valley. Well it was a crap shoot until I got home. Then I went to the organic milk scorecard online.
Yes I could have used my iPhone at the POS but come on, my 3G network is bout as fast as yeast.

But an application that can use the camera to read a barcode and tap into a database to tell me all about a food item - now that is what I need. Anyone heard of such a thing? Optic codes can be recognized by phone cameras. They were used by Area Code for marketing purposes. So we just need a database. Who could take the lead here? Whole Foods?

Information mapping

Good Magazine produces graphic displays of information in each subsciption.

Fogelson-Lubline, in Brooklyn, crafted a graphic displaying the US trade deficit this month.   

I love the use of scale to provide perspective. 

Chris Jordan takes advantage of this technique in his creation of installations to provoke social change.

Check out his installation that gives you a bird's eye view of the number of prisoners in the US.  These panels depict the total 2.3 million folded prisoner's uniforms representing our prison population.

 

Mimetics and Brand

Brand theory needs to be built upon the existing knowledge of cultural dynamics, as brands are cultural representation, social artifacts that we create.

But to understand how we process cultural representations, we need to understand the architecture of the mind. Enter evolutionary psychology.

Evolutionary psychology looks at the way the brain has evolved to process information, to gain insight into how we think and behave in a cultural world. It sketches how cognition is embedded within the context of our lives. We can make highly calculated decisions on how to invest in our 401(k), but when asked the simplest question about fundamental probability, we flounder. Because solving complex mathematical equations is not an intuitive skill. Investing for the future is.

Mimetics

Cultural learning is a shortcut to individual trial and error. Its immense survival value have made us into cultural beings. We swim through a sea of culture and are hardly aware of it. The science of understanding how cultural beliefs are transmitted is commonly referred to as mimetics.

Brands, as cultural representations, can be understood through the lens of mimetics. When designing a contagious virus-like idea, it benefits to understand the fundamentals of "cultural epidemiology." What makes an idea stick? What attributes make an idea likely to be broadcast to others to be spread?

Mimetics uncovers these fundamental principles.

The Umbrella Arms Race

Walk down the sidewalk...