The Advertiser’s Guide to Habit & the Human Psyche
We bite our nails when we’re nervous. We play with our hair when we’re bored. We think of these types of routines when we hear the word “habit” (see what I did there?). But as Charles Duhigg notes in his bestseller, “The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business,” habit is ingrained in the human psyche far beyond nail biting and other trivial routines.
Our brains naturally group sequences of actions together to save time and effort, which when given a certain cue, we carry out to earn a neurochemical sensation of reward. This “habit loop” of “cue, routine, reward, repeat” dictates the way we eat, sleep, think, work and more. Understanding the psychology of habit carries the following crucial implications for our efforts to reach consumers:
Distinctive, tangible product/service experiences make your brand most salient
Duhigg highlights Febreze and Pepsodent as products that owe their success to distinctive usage experiences. Febreze’s “clean scent” and Pepsodent’s “minty tingling feeling” reinforced consumers’ habit loops by offering tangible “rewards” for completing “routines” (cleaning their homes or brushing their teeth). Distinctive rewards like these in turn drive greater brand salience, association and sales.
Consumers are most receptive to messages that they process mid-routine
Duhigg examines the radio promotion of Outkast’s hit “Hey Ya” to demonstrate how habit loops affect the way we perceive messaging. Listeners initially changed the station within seconds of hearing “Hey Ya” because it sounded like no other songs on the radio. The single exploded once DJs played it between two familiar pop hits because the sense of familiarity cued listeners to continue listening to the station (routine) and ultimately enjoy the song (reward). For brands, this dynamic between routine and message absorption proves especially important when launching a new campaign or piece of content.
Brands can drive the most effective behavioral change by prompting consumers to alter their routines and maintain the same cues/rewards
Duhigg emphasizes that we transform our habits most powerfully when we work within our existing habit loops. Snickers has championed this approach by drawing associations between the out-of-sortsness we feel when we’re hungry (cue), eating Snickers (routine) and resolving the unease of hunger (reward). By maintaining the same cues and rewards, a brand reaches its audience at a point of familiarity, making consumers more open to adopting a given behavior.
The most effective influencers spread their messages to casual social connections in a wide variety of networks
Duhigg discusses the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott to show the importance of an influencer’s “weak ties” to their message’s reach. Although Rosa Parks had not been the first person to fight bus segregation (cue), her variety of casual social connections gave her protest (routine) the strongest infrastructure for “going viral” (reward). Duhigg notes that casual acquaintances tend to run in separate social circles, so a person’s weak ties in a broad range of networks stand to spread a message/behavioral change most widely. This line of “influencer strategy” in turn gives a brand the strongest mass reach potential.
“The Power of Habit” shows the integral role that habit loops play in our world, and the importance of understanding them from a brand building perspective. So when you plan your next campaign (cue), keep these lessons in mind (routine) to drive your most effective work (reward).
