As Madison Avenue focuses more intently on trying to influence consumer behavior, one of the world's largest agencies is starting a unit that will tap into research from academics in the field as well as the work of its own employees.
Draftfcb, owned by the Interpublic Group of Companies, is opening what it is calling the Institute of Decision Making, devoted to finding out more about the instinctual ways that consumers behave along with the rational and emotional ones. The unit will concentrate on emerging fields such as behavioral economics and neuroscience.
The institute is getting its own leader from inside Draftfcb, which works for advertisers such as Del Monte Foods, S.C., Johnson, Kmart and MillerCoors.
The institute has formed ties with marketing and psychology faculty at Stanford and the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley.
Executives at Draftfcb say the unit represents a serious commitment to developing additional methods to help marketers understand consumers who are growing increasingly skeptical of - and resistant to - traditional advertising.
"The last two or three years, agencies have cut back" because of the economy, said Michael Fassnacht, global chief strategic officer at Draftfcb, but "we need to create intellectual property.
"Our clients are getting involved in this," he added, referring to the study of instinctual behavior, "and we need to have an expertise, a point of view." The goal, Fassnacht said, laughing, is "to make strategy sexy."
"Understanding the foundation of consumers' behavior decisions has become more complex," he said, as they "consume more information and make decisions faster" than before.
And the Internet enables consumers to be "in shopping and decision mode at the same time, 24/7," Fassnacht said, which further complicates efforts to decipher their decision-making.
The institute will be particularly interested in exploring how consumers choose among competing brands or products in stores and showrooms or on websites.
"Choice is becoming more complicated and can be a bad experience for people," said Matthew Willcox, director for strategic planning for the Draftfcb. "Maybe brands are not as powerful in driving choices as they were," in which case agencies need to scrutinize "the levers of decision-making," particularly the instinctual ones that are "a little more about our reflexes."
The unit has already assisted Draftfcb in landing new business, Willcox said, in the form of a project in California to study better ways to present information about energy to encourage residents to reduce usage.
