Context is King - Prof. Dr. Koen Pauwels - Northeastern University

The combiner 9 episode of Von Martenkraft Ver aller die von Margenfafr wolergen ver antwertlichtent. Herzl vekomm. And welcome to another episode of Mark. My name is Olaf Hartmann and I have the great pleasure today to speak to Professor Kuhn Powles. Kuhn is one of the worldwide top scientists on marketing and ad effectiveness. He's professor of Marketing at the Northeastern University, publishes regularly in the Harvard Business Review, the Sloan Management Review, and wrote several books on smart data analytics, the digital economy and improving marketing decision making. And I was really impressed when I saw them being translated in Chinese, Turkish and many, many other languages. He's an academic with a sure footing in marketing practice. That's why I love to have him on the AS. He works as a consultant for over 20 years and since 2019 he's also the principal research scientist for Amazon. He shares actionable insights with agencies and advertisers under the motto Helping People Avoid Bad Choices and Make Best Choices. I'm a great fan of his newsletter and was delighted that he recently gave a presentation at the GAM Markendia Log in Berlin about the changes in consumer behavior in the current crisis which led to this podcast. Welcome Koen. Great to have you on the show.

Fantastic. Thank you much for inviting me. Very happy to be here.

So for our Martin Craft warm up, I always prepare a couple of quick fire round questions and you answer like you feel Long or short? Mountain gear or beach towel?

Mountain gear.

Leonidas or Neuhaus?

Definitely Leonidas.

Budweiser or Jupiter.

Tupila. But my favorite beer is none of those two.

Okay, which one is your favorite?

I like Creek. The Belgian Cherry beer.

The Creek. Ah, so. So you like Guse as well? That 99% of our listeners probably are not familiar with that's. I'm a great Gurze fan. I'm. Yeah, as I told you, I'm married to a Belgian and I. I really love this. Yeah, maybe we can. We can educate people. This is a education podcast. Let. Let please explain what gu.

So yes, so most beer had a very kind of typical bitter taste, right. With everything else that's going on. So whenever somebody says to me I just don't like beer, I say, well, you haven't tried Belgian beer yet. So for the current levels of wine or cognac or whatever, your poison or your pleasure is right? Depending on how you put it. So Belgian beer like User and the derivatives like Creek Frambot Peche, which is the peach Variant are spontaneously fermented. So you get the typical bitter taste from beer, and it's really injected in there. Whereas those beers are just like wine. They're in these oak wooden barrels, and they're exposed to the bacteria in the air, so they spontaneously ferment. And they don't have this very bitter taste. They're more like sour sweets, depending on, for instance, you know, how they're mixed and which kind of fruit is added. The traditional juice, which you may like and which you can get only in very select. I think Brussels cafes, is actually very, very sour. And not to my liking personally, but. But the sweet and sour variations are just absolutely delicious. And. Yeah. So if you traditionally don't like beer, this is definitely something you should try before giving up on the whole category altogether.

Definitely worth trying, but you need to take some money because that's a really expensive beer. If you order that in a pub, easily 9, €10, or like, even if you buy it wholesale, it's like €4. But like you said, it's like, spontaneously fermented. And I used to live in Brussels near one of those old guse factories. And I learned there that it can only be brewed in an. In a circumference of 20 km around Brussels. And this spontaneous fermentation is generated from a bacteria which only exists there. And guess who found out that this bacteria existed? The Americans. They came over and wanted to find out what's this mystery about this beer only being, you know, spontaneously fermenting around here. And they found there's this extra bacteria just around there.

So this is one of the things that I love about the States and probably one of the reasons I immigrated from Belgium to the States. Right? So the American curiosity and the desire for experimentation. So the US by the way, now is officially the third best country for beer. Can you imagine that? The home of Budweiser and so forth.

All the craft beers.

All the craft beers. So when home brewing became very popular and when it was no longer dependent on the water from a specific river, because you can now get any water, you know, my. My fellow Americans here, they went crazy. And so it's letting a thousand flowers bloom. Right. A lot of these experiments are just way too hoppy or just not drinkable. But once in a while, you find something really, really good. And I like this going back to Brussels, by the way. This is actually a kind of an interlude into marketing. So my bachelor's party was in the center of Brussels. It started on the grand market. It ended up with a pub crawl. Of all of the ghost places, you know, increasing levels of alcohol. But the first task that my two brothers g me, they gave me kind of sheets of paper, and I had, like, 10 minutes to memorize them. And then I had to pretend to be a guide in training of Brussels, and I had to gather foreign tourists around me to pretend to give this guy the tour of Brussels. Now, what was so funny about it? The sheet of paper was all, you know, very, you know, strong stories from my own family. Our, you know, our uncles and aunts, you know, they told us crazy stuff, and I. And I was put in a 15th century light. So my uncle Andre became the, you know, the great duke. And my. My last name, Powell, means son of a peacock in Dutch.

My native language, son of a peacock.

And as you may remember, in the grand market in Brussels, there is a golden peacock somewhere. So I started there. I got this bunch of 25, you know, Japanese, Irish, English, American, Spanish, foreign tourists around me, and I started there explaining my family's history, which I knew was all kind of stories from the 20th century, as if they were 15th century. And. And my. Because my brother's like, you're in marketing. You know how to lie. You can pull this off.

You know how to lie. What a bad. What a bad reputation.

Such a bad reputation.

So bad.

Yeah. They're both lawyers, so if anything, I would say they know how to twist the truth, but that's a lot of discussion. And so. And so I. I got these people around me, right? But of course, you know, as I was giving the tour because my brothers were snickering at the back, one by one, the. The tourists figured out that this was not a true tour and left. But at the very end, there was this one lonely kind of tourist. It was. It was a woman from Japan who had just kind of, you know, just. Just drunk all of the wisdom and all of the stories. And I had to tell her, well, I'm sorry, you know, this is a bachelor party. This was fake. This is like, in respondents, you give a debrief. Right. And. And so I now have to go on to the next part, and we have to go to a pub crawl. So, sorry, but that was the story of my Bach.

Oh, that's. That's fantastic. And. And, okay, I think this podcast is going to take some other turns that I expected, but I have to. I have to. This is too good. Because on the. On the grand plus, I also made one of the first experiences. I mean, like, your. Your brothers basically gave you already their bad reputation of Marketing. Whereas we understand marketing as the truth. Well told. Yeah. But I also made my first real, really important experience on marketing at the grand plus in Brussels, because I used to, when I lived there, I had an American friend and he was a juggler and we juggled together. And so we were training like for six months for this juggling show with like torches and knives and balls and whatever. And then, and then we, then we said, okay, now we are ready for our first show. So we decided we wanted to make a lot of money. So, you know, near the grand place, there's the Place de la Monet.

Yeah.

The place of money. I mean, what a great place to start your first endeavor in juggling. So we went there and thought, like, we need a lot of people. And so Thursday afternoon when everybody goes on lunch break, there are lots of people there going to the cafes, eat out there and so on. So we said, like, okay, that's the place we're going to do our show. So we juggled for over an hour there and we earned in total €2. €2 in one hour. And we were completely devastated. But we believed in our product. We believed in our product. So we changed the context to the Grand Plus. One of those small side streets of the grand plus next to a cash machine where all the tourists wait on Saturday night to draw money. And we juggled next to that cash machine to that big line of tourists getting money. And we delivered the same product and we made €160. And that was a revelation moment. That quality is always relative to perception. It's the context that made the difference. And we were not at the, at the Grand Plus. We were not basically the motives that people had that passed us by. They wanted to get their lunch quickly, meet their colleagues and so on. And they were. And we were like an obstacle in between, you know, like throw, throwing those torches and knives and whatever. And they had to get by. And suddenly the same people maybe on Saturday. Yeah, going there with a girlfriend, wanting to have a good time, wanting to be entertained. And suddenly our product sold.

This is wonderful. It touches on two things that we may talk about in this podcast. So number one in retailing, we always used to say that's three key success factor in retail. You probably notice, right, we're all old school, location, location, location. And so on the online world that is actually still true. It' slightly different kind of things. The other way that I wanted to put here is, is yes, kind of the mood that people in and why they're there for is just absolutely Key. So I have a paper with the German and a Dutch author that I love so much and it's basically this was published in 2016, right? And we saw. Well, every year there's a new kind of big new thing in marketing, like a new channel you have to do either online or offline.

So how everything else dies. Everything else dies.

Everything else Diesel TV is that display heights are that everything is that except for the one new thing, right? That is, that is cool. That year. So, so we were like, well, if we write this paper and we had great empirical data because I'm a data people. And we were like, how can we write a conceptual framework so it's not completely absolute next year. And so we came up with this, this concept of content integration and content separation. And that simply means the following, right? So if you, if you are typically in a location, right, and let me just talk about online because that was context of, of that study and we had about 15 online different ad forms. If you're online. And so let's say you are, you know, you're looking for a game or shoes or entertainment and, and basically that is, that is your purpose for let's say visiting a website. If I now place an ad tech about entertainment or shoes or games, you're going to be so much more receptive to it. Whereas if afterwards, let's say you didn't buy the shoe and now you're checking sports and suddenly I retarget you with an ad about shoes, you' this is, this is content separated. This is not the reason why I'm in the website for. And so what we found, and this was for an online retailer in the Netherlands, they thought that some actions were extremely powerful, including retargeting. And empirically they were less powerful. They got as many traffic to the retailer. So we saw the traffic increase by about the same amount, but these folks were a lot less likely to convert to actually purchasing about, about only a third as likely. So we said, look, if you want quality consumers, you should, you should, you know, do the content and migration. You should be there when people are in the mood, as you said, which you're juggling to have a good time and, and where the purpose of the website is indeed, you know, maybe to explore or buy new products or, you know, to connect with something cool. And so different websites cater to different kind of moods and you should respect that as a, as a marketer.

And that goes against what has been preached for many years now is like, oh, it's all about reaching the right people. And it doesn't matter the context, and that is that, you know, like, I, I sell you Kuhn, like, you are the target than my competitor. Yeah. Wherever.

Wherever.

Kuhn, you know, we just have to reach him. So it doesn't make a difference if I reach you at the, at the highway gas station, in front of the toilet, or in the champagne bar, in, in the Adlon in Berlin. It doesn't make a difference. Yeah. And that, that I always. It always troubled me that that's. That was basically the story of just selling impressions and the right people. Yeah. And so, and this, and, and this goes, goes together. It's like the effectiveness of marketing depend understanding the motives that people have in certain contexts. So also, to target stable Personas is also not helpful there, because Kuhn in front of the bathroom or Kuhn in the champagne bar, you will be receptive to completely different things. And so both times, the description of Kuhn would be the same. So I think that clustering context is very powerful. I'm happy that we already reached the fourth question of my intro. Let's continue there. But we will. We'll return to that. That's, that's, that's.

That's a very interesting, you know, anecdote for your German audience. Right. So I was always amazed. So I was at the. The association for Consumer Research conference in Berlin. I think it was 2000.

Oh, I was there as well.

It was so fantastic. I love the city. You know, we had a running tour of it. And, but, but, but my, My dear colleague, Alex Bleyer, which actually was in Boston, and I returned to Germany, he says, koen, you really have to go out Berlin to nightlife in Berlin. And so what was so funny to me, kind of, you know, I always dress like, like I want to. Right. And so in, in most cities in the world, including in most German cities, you know, I would typically be underdressed, so. Right. So when the bouncer would look at me, they would be like, oh, you know, you're not fancy enough together. But service. This is the first time ever it was in some kind of a bunker, Right. Where everything was, you know, strange lights and, you know, you felt like you were in a World War II or three kind of thing. It was a very special atmosphere, and it was the only place where I feared I was overdressed together. And so some people in our company from other German cities were refused, but I was kind of Berlin dressed enough.

You were grungy enough, you were stylish enough.

Yeah. So I always kind of, you Know, it really depends on where you are and what you're receptive to.

Yeah, totally, totally. So that leads me back. Do I really? Yeah. Okay, let's finish the question because I want, I want to know some of these. Okay, so now back to the, the quick fire round of question which we took 20 minutes already for. Beatles or Bach?

Beatles.

Porsche or Tesla?

Wow. Neither.

Neither.

I, I am buying a fully electric vehicle and I was interested in Tesla, but I'm one of these perky people that, that will car company if your CEO is doing stuff I completely disagree with. So.

Excellent. Probably so much for your brothers that marketing has no ethics, you see.

And it does for me. I mean, I myself have boycott lots of, you know, you know, magazines and things for reasons that I think, you know, are pretty good. But, but yes. So I will buy a fully electric vehicle. But I'm looking at, you know, German, us, Japanese car companies that are now fully in the race. So I just love the competition right now in that market.

Oh, great.

Yeah.

And it's also a very interesting question from the branding perspective because that's a new category. So which brand is going to, is it really going to be the combustion engine brands that dominated the market that are able to transfer the trust into the electric category or should they create a new brand? What is your opinion there?

I personally think that they can add to their existing brand and it is actually one of the things I talk about, right. So this is, this is my book. It's not the size of the data, it's how you use it. So one of the things I talked about, one of my first consultancy was for the very first, you know, ever. Well, in the 21st century, the first electrical vehicle on the American market. I don't think many people will remember what it is. So I don't, I won't even say the brands, right. But I was consulting that company for a while and I was doing more tactical stuff, right. So I was, you know, you know, typical marketing allocation. You know, the headquarters back in their home country said hey, you have to hit more profits, but we are going to kind of make the cars older. We're going to not have a new generation in so many times time. So the US branch came to me and said, hey, can you please model this right? And say, hey. And I put this in a very little kind of spreadsheet that if you make the cars older, kind of our profit will decrease unless you allow us more money for ads or something else. So it was, it was kind of, it was that consultancy I was doing and at that point they said, oh, we are launching the very first electric vehicle on the market and it's going to really have a halo effect on our parent brand. So they specifically going to your question, they wanted to have kind of their brand and then, and then the electrical vehicle. And I'm just like Toyota price. And they said this is going to do wonders. You know, we only think we're going to sell. This is by the way, 2008, 2009. That's how long it is ago. We don't lounge it and we only going to sell a few hundred vehicles. Right. Because you know, there was less people interested and the infrastructure wasn't there. But we're going to spend $250 million on advertising. It's 250 million because some consultancy company has told them had calculated what the halo effect will be. So they're like, we're going to sell so much of our other vehic vehicles, the brown vehicles, I call them. And so I was like, I don't trust this. So they were happy for me. And I'm like, well, I won't. Just give me all the data on Toyota and price. Which, which, which, which I don't get and analyzed. Go ahead.

One question. It was a different brand or it was a sub brand of the, of the.

It was a sub brand of, of a, you know, a major Japanese manufacturer.

Okay, okay.

You know Toyota and their price experience. And of course what I saw there that, that the first time price was launched, right? It was, it was, you know, it get this huge satisfaction rating on G.D. powers and Associate. It didn't have an excellent brand opinion. That was the exact measurement there. And Toyota had a very high one. So it was only after price caught up, which is years later when the price 2 was was introduced, that it actually helped lift Toyota and help Toyota sell more of its other products. And we actually, we interviewed people that came into the retailer for a price and then left with the Corolla because they're like, oh, I didn't know prices were expensive. So it also depends in the US on the gas prices, right. When gas prices are high for US standards people like electrical vehicles because the acquisition extra cost can be. So I was like, no. So my halo effect was a lot smaller. And so I advised to only spend $100 million. So they could have saved $150 million right there. They decided not to go with me. They decided to spend $250 million. And so they had this big launch. They were the first electric vehicle on the market. And if you look at it right it Now, I think 15 years later it still didn't make a profit and it's still overshadowed by by other things despite them spending so much money. So. So there is a lot of money at stake in these kind of in.

These calculations and to make good decisions can save you a lot of money and buy you a lot of gers. Then.

I did. I didn't see any, any percentage of. Because I didn't my decision otherwise I would have liked to see a percentage of the $100 billion that saved.

Very interesting. Thanks for sharing that. So three more questions. Steve Jobs or Bill Gates? Bill Gates Targeting or reach?

I would say reach. That may be something that I should kind of expand on. Right? Yeah. I'm doing a lot of of research and and I see this huge balance between what some people may call hyper targeting and not targeting at all. And so here is what I mean. So a lot of kind of online ad providers sell what I would call hyper targeting and it has all bunch of ethical considerations. Right. And I also with three party cookies going away and I mind as a consumer myself being hyper targeted. So I get upset and people tell me it doesn't happen. It happens. I get upset when I put something into Gmail and an hour later I get ads for it on on Facebook. I'm very upset about that kind of sharing. But, but there is kind of sharing based on what I do on for instance a platform that I trust and give the permission to right. To have one P sharing. And so I do like being targeted. I do like being shown, you know, products and ads that are more relevant to me. So I do like some form of targeting. However, I think that specifically online it's being oversold results. One of the experiments we did very recently is to also kind of send the ad to people that are not supposed to be targeted. And we had very similar results. So I'm like well either our targeting algorithm is not that good or there.

Is something but we're collecting massive amounts of data just to do this hyper targeting. But in the end what you just said is that it doesn't really work work.

So that is the thing. So because something is is unethical or illegal, lots of companies think it must be effective and that's good.

It must be good.

It doesn't. It's like my thing that is unethical or illegal and annoys your consumer which isn't even effective. And so this goes back, this is a quick anecdote. So all the way to the 50s.

No, I love your anecdotes. Make it a long one. It's just fantastic.

Yes. So I bet you have somehow heard about subliminal advertising at some point in your career. Career. And so, so the true story about it was that the guy who brought it out really wanted to sell his consultancy business and he wanted to have more companies pay him lots of money. So, so he brought out this research which shows that if, you know, in the, in the movie theater, in the break, he showed for just like a millisecond, I think it was Coke and it was popcorn, if I remember correctly. And he says, look, you know, during the break, more Coke and popcorn were sold on in a comparison theater. So this was a big kind of hoopla, of course, you know, politicians jumped onto it. This is subliminal advertising because it's too short for any consumer to really consciously note it. And this should be forbidden. Now interesting part is that for the, what is it, 70 years since this has never ever been replicated. So it's, it is bogus. It subliminal advertising just doesn't work. But he got lots of money for companies, but just because it was unethical, they assumed it was very effective. And so I see that coming back in also online advertising. And so I'm like, yes, I'm all about effectiveness. As you know, lots of my research in the last year is all about ethics and it's all about, you know, you know, the privacy paradox. So why do people say they care a lot about privacy but in their choices, for instance, it doesn't reflect. And so, and it's a two by two, you know, there's lots of things that are not ethical and also not effective. And kind of just bringing that out will help companies make poor choices and.

Help them, I think. And then there's a better chance to change their behavior by pointing it out that it's not effective, that, that it's actually terribly dangerous. Like I had Bob, I had Bob Hoffman on the show and he, he recently spoke in front of the European Parliament also about this. You know, like if the Gestapo or the Stasi or the KGB had this kind of data that, you know, the big digital companies have, I think many things wouldn't have happened like the reunification of Germany.

Germany.

I'm a little bit doubtful that I think they could have taken out networks much quicker and so on. And now it's like, I have nothing to hide. People say, yeah, that's true, you have actually, now you have nothing to hide. But things can change. And I think the states are a good example where you know, like the laws about abortion and all that, suddenly the data of, you know, like which websites you visit, location data becomes highly relevant if you actually commit a crime. So I follow you completely on that path. But I think that it's the ch chance of changing something in the behavior is more that you as a scientist can prove that it doesn't work and that it wastes a lot of money. I think then the chance of advertisers actually changing something is higher.

So to finish your question, so why I chose for reach and why I had to doubt a second is the following. So there are colleagues of mine which I highly admire and respect that say reaches everything. So for instance, there's no interpretations of that in business to business markets. That said, hey, hey, you know, whatever business, the business market you're in, the chances are that about 95% of your potential buyers are currently not in the market. I mean I did the practice price paper on office furniture. So when are you interested in office furniture? When you're either kind of starting an office or you have to expand it. And so companies face this dilemma, right? And so this particular colleague says oh, you should reach these 95% as much as the 5% which are currently in the market. I think that is complete bs. I mean obviously when I'm selling office furniture or whatever B2B product you have or when I'm seeing a consumer product, I want to sell nuts to squirrels. As I said gooden Target, right? So I want to kind of reach and I want to make sure I have the people currently in the market for a car, I have the people currently in the market for office furniture. And then yes, I should also build my brand and stimulate mental availability to the people not currently in the market. But I'm not going to spend as much kind of time and resources or. And an assumption of this line of thinking is that look, you know, the people currently in the market are the heavy buyers. They will see your ads anyway because they pay more attention to ads for the product because they're in the market. And I'm like, well this is an heroic assumption that has not been validated by research as far as I know. So I'm like reach is very important. I'm a kind of a journey of funnel thinking guy. You need the awareness, the consideration especially for high involvement product. But, but it's, it's complet kind of weird. And I have not seen any company say hey, I'm going to spend as much Kind of money reaching each and every one of these potential buyers not in the market as the people currently kind of ready with the money in their hands to buy my product.

That's true, that's true. But the assumption that only reaching those will actually convert in the highest amount of sale is also depending on the category. I mean, this is a really complex topic that we can spend the rest of the podcast talking about this because sometimes it's also important for certain goods that people that will never buy your products still know the product. If nobody knows what Mercedes stands for. Yeah, the Mercedes buyer doesn't get the full value of the Mercedes. So you need to advertise to many people that will never, never buy a Mercedes just to deliver the value that the, in that moment, the prestige of the Mercedes delivers. And then there are many, like, very functional products where it's totally like, like what you just said. You just need to find the squirrel that need the nuts. They want them. And I also think it's like back to our stories. Reach would have been that I juggle all over town all day long. And that is also not possible because every company always have limited resources. So you target also just by focusing your resources, because nobody has enough resources to target to everybody. But I think a good example where this reach has worked very well is like the expansion of Red Bull. Example mates. Like, when he started out, he started to sponsor the Formula One immediately. And people said, excuse me, but 90%, 95% of the people watching Formula One, they live in countries where Red Bull is not even available and this is a complete waste of money. And he said, no, it's not waste. It's investment in future markets. Yeah. So. And it worked great. It's like, hey, Red Bull was there. Mental. Mentally available already connected with the right mental concepts, the power, the, you know, like the, the flugel, how do you call it? Gives wings. I don't know what, what the. What is the English slogan? In German it's for light flugel. What is it in English?

Gives you wings.

Yeah, there you go. So it was connected with that kind of thing. So, yeah, and, and so you always need, like to look a little bit deeper. There's never the, the one, the black and black and white answer for these kind of things. Excellent.

One case I always used to teach is BMW films. So BMW in the US in about 2000, they didn't know what to do with their money. And then, and then they didn't have the product to introduce that year, so they were pretty free to look at More like image advertising. And half of their employees wanted to do something on the Internet, half of them wanted to make movies. So they combined it and so they had this BMW films made by up and coming directors. And so lots of them are very famous now. And the car was being shown complete freedom of the director. It was beaten up, it was shot through, there was blood on the thing and so forth. And then when we discussed the case, right. So the people who saw it, because this was 2000 and only on the Internet, so with all the broadband connection issues and so forth, only very young people saw it. In their 20s, most of them were not able to afford to BMW. And then the question is, why do you do that? And you're like, well you know, BMW was getting away from its edgy image because in the US people typically say I don't want to drive my father's car. And BMW was big in the upper years of the 80s. So the new people were like, you know, not very interested in BMW, but they got that, that interest and they got that awareness. And even though they couldn't even afford the products, it was seen as a major revival of, of the brand.

Yeah. And then, and then maybe they didn't buy it, but they often influenced also like what the father, the kind of car the father buys often is influenced like by the younger people. Like my son influenced my car buying behavior quite, quite a bit. He thought the car was, was not, was, was uncool. You know, you thought twice about buying that car. So that's a very interesting point. And I think that this, that the idea also like connected with the mental availability is also the category entry points. Just to be known, just to reach everybody doesn't make, doesn't do the trick. It's about connecting yourself with a category entry point that is, that is highly relevant. So when that category entry point mentally becomes available and you just pop up, you're in the relevant set. And so I think the mix between, between the two and I don't think that the colleague that you mention whose name we don't mention here, it's like in Harry Potter when you listen to him carefully, he doesn't make the point as, you know, like as blunt as.

We just presented, it's definitely most his followers that, that I get into the clinch with. So to just kind of, you know, to give you category endeavors are indeed very, very important. I know them by a difference, different name. So my first job, so I did the PhD in UCLA and my first job was in the tech school of business at Dartmouth, which is a fantastic New England school. And so I, I co teach branding there with Kevin Keller, which some people may know in your postcards in branding. And so he talked about point of difference, point of parity. And point of parity is that indeed you come to mind in the consideration set when people think about they can category. And that was very much instigated by the 2000, the first dot com bubble where there were all these super bowl ads that there was like a monkey playing on drums. And at the end nobody knew that you were in finance or whatever you were selling. And we're like, well, this is a huge waste of money. And I applied this right away the next year. So they had top school, was very well known in the Americas, both North and south, but not in Europe. So a lot of European potential MBA students don't know. It's a, it's a top 10 school. It's one of the oldest business schools. It's a fantastic place to go to.

True.

And so they had invited all these European business journal journalists to come over and be entertained and, and I intercepted the brochure that we were going to give to them. The brochure was all about how we were different and better than Harvard. And I'm like, stop. We, we just cannot do that. When you start talking about your point of difference, if people don't know your point of parity, then they will make all these negative associations. So if you're going to say, for instance, hey, say we have smaller class sizes than Harvard, then journalists will think, oh, probably because they're less popular. Right. If you're going to say our faculty is more accessible than Harvard because each of them actually teaches in the MBA program, they're going to say, oh, they're probably less famous. Of course, they're, you know, lots of free time. So we changed the brochure and we first said here, here is how we're similar to Harvard. Right. So we have all these reasons that we are as good as Harvard in these three or four key points. And then we said, you know, so that's a category entry point. Right. So if you want, and you want to go on a great MBA school, this is what you do. And then, you know, then, then, then people are open to say, you know, how you're different. So I always find that. And this is the difference, I think Jenny Romania, which I absolutely love. Yeah. In the ERA Magbaz Institute, I think she posted something about being in the room and being out of the room. So once you're in the room. When people know a bit about you, then you can focus on your point.

Of difference and you're relevant for the category you've been accepted as, as you know. And then they look at the difference exactly like first they first buy the category and then they buy the difference within the category and then that's where the brand comes in.

Yeah.

I love Jenny as well. She was also on the podcast and I love also her new book. Book, I don't know if you read it already. It's about measuring brand health. I think they're doing just great work and I think they're along, along the line of the work that you are doing and I think you're doing a lot of good in the world of marketing, like more evidence based marketing. So that finally I, with over half of the podcast gone, I finally come to my first real question which is, which is basically like the state of marketing science versus marketing practice. Like what is your perception there? Hopeful, Devastated.

In between I'm going to be very controversial, which is probably good for podcasts.

Go ahead.

Excellent. I have been very concerned with the gap between, between marketing science and marketing practice from I think for about 25 years. And so I, I, in the beginning I always thought it's us academics faults, right. You know, we, we publish in journals that no petitioners read. We write in a way that is way too complicated. The top journals that I published in, right. 5, 5% acceptance rate and then you're in, if you're lucky, in four rounds, four years after producing the research. Research. It's not timely, it's not relevant and so forth and so forth. So, so I've done a lot to try to, you know, popularize, disseminate some of my research insights. Right. So you know, I have the Harvard Business Review, I have the Sloan. There's, there's a paper coming out about why brands grow with Oliver Cole in the, in management and business.

The new kind of not how brands grow, but why brands grow.

Yeah, why brands grow. Which, which I think is the more important question. You see my, my, my slight hint here but, but, and so I've presented at conferences. I also now work in, in practice and I've done consultancy. And so yes it is true that, that a lot of kind of the, the research that let's say academics produce is, is just not at the level and at the timely level that, that practitioners can, can really use. Which is one of the reasons that, that I have so much respect for, for Byron and for Jenny and for the Ehrenberg Bas Institute, they have absolutely, obviously succeeded in making business list lesbian in the uk. Right. And I actually find that specifically kind of people in Germany and Austria specifically are very interested in what academics have to say. So my early consultancy was in Germany and Austria because I think it's unique in the world that, that when a practitioner in Germany kind of has a problem that they think is a bit too tough, they trust academics so much that they go to the alma mater and they ask their professional professor who taught marketing, hey, I have this marketing effectiveness problem. And then, and so my first consultancy was with the professor saying, oh, but that's Kun Powell's kind of specialization. And I was referred to in that way, so kind of having a Ph.D. and I thought, so when I produced my first book, right. I am not a back flap. And I, my, my short bio, I wanted to say I had a PhD and my American publishers, no, we cannot not say that. We cannot not say on the back flap because no practitioner will ever buy the book.

They will not listen to you.

Yes, they will say it's going to be too dry to read. And so. And I'm like, well, I also want to sell in Germany and if you don't have a PhD, I will sell there. So it talks to you about the different, different respects, right? So with all that I have done, I will say, yes, academics can do a lot to disseminate and we have some good role models on the other hand. And this is my very quick anecdote. So I absolutely loved our dean in the business school, Paul Danis. And he had quarterly meetings with all of his faculty. And so, and he's an accounting professor, but he was on the board of lots of companies. And so I was only two years out, so this is like 2003. And I talked to him about, you know, how I tried to get practitioners to listen to me. And I was doing so much kind of the bridging world. And he's like, kun, it's not your fault. It's the marketing practitioner's fault. I'm like, please explain. And he's like, look, right, so, so in my, in my faculty, I, you know, you know, finance, let's say, right, so finance my faculty or scientists. And the people on Wall street to try to beat the stock market are also scientists. They have to be, they have to kind of, they have very small arrows to kind of improve. So faculty, scientists, practitioner scientists, they get along very well. My strategy faculty are glorified consultants. They're not scientists whatsoever. And we had some of the very Best strategy faculty on, you know, on there. Right. And they talk to kind of people in companies who are not scientists either. There's no gap between theory and practice in strategy whatsoever. It's only in marketing that you guys, the faculty are scientists and people that I talk to in marketing departments in these companies on the board, they are not scientists. They don't have the scientific mindset. They don't know what has come before, before. And so that always stuck with me. It's not just the academics fault. And that just came back, for instance, I think three weeks ago on Twitter, where I'm still am. Right. I kind of, you know, it came up a marketing scientist. And I could only name one example. Right. Our good friend in Australia. And I'm like. But lots have happened since the 50s and the 60s that Ianberg did this work. And so this person kind of. And I was referring to Kevin Kel. I was not referring to myself whatsoever. Right. Out of all the other wonderful people in your podcast. And this guy says, I was in branding in the US for 30 years and I have never heard about Kevin Keller. And now that's your fault. I mean, how on earth is this possible?

That is your problem. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, it's like ignorance is seen as a blessing, which is too.

That's totally. That's totally correct. And Jenny. Jenny actually said like the way that they. I also had Magda on. On from the Ehrenberg Bass on the show. And. And they do basically a test in the beginning. They basically test what is the mental model that this marketing department works after. And they just give statements. True or false? True or false? True or false. A little bit like Hans Rosling. I don't know if you know this book Factfulness, where he goes to Davos and asks these questions and these world leaders don't even know basic facts about how many children are vaccinated against the five most important diseases in the world. And they make policies according to this worldview and they basically do the same thing. They just go in with a bunch of questions and then they have basically a bearing on where this department and then this marketing competence in the company is. And then they start debunking these faulty assumptions. For example, that growth comes from loyal customers. Yes. Like, even. Even in cigarettes. I mean, like, cigarettes is the most addictive product in the world. And even in cigarettes, it's the long tail that makes the volume. Yeah. It's the. It's the occasional user that. That buys one pack a year. Yeah. And that's. That's where the volume comes from. But if you think that your loyal customers will generate like your growth and you basically your mental model leads you astray, and I think that's a very good way, like to go in like that first do like a mental assessment, basically. Yeah, but it's also tough. It's tough. I mean, it's not tough conversations that you have afterwards because people have to let go of things that they believed all their life and then emotions come into play. So I want to see that.

I would say in marketing, the problem is even worse. So, yes, I completely agree. You know, people have been in marketing their whole life, they have some mental model needs updating. But I think marketing is only also one of the only places, you know, we don't have any exam to be a marketer. Right. It's not like you have, you know, the financial kind of thing that you actually have to show that, you know, Bar exam.

Bar exam for marketers. Yeah, yeah.

And so the in stream of the last 25 years of people who just jump on the new trend, hey, we're a digital marketer, or we are, you know, generative AI marketer now, who don't even know anything about what happened before, who don't have any credential or any experience in marketing and still are allowed to call themselves a marketer. I think that creates a unique opportunity and challenge for education in our side.

Of the business and for this podcast, because this was the original, like Martin Kraft is like, find the sources and the reliable knowledge. So that's why you're here, I would.

Say to close on that question, right? Academics, you don't have any excuse anymore. There's so many great ways to disseminate your knowledge, such as this podcast and practitioners, you don't have any excuse anymore. You don't have to read to learn of marketing. You have podcast, you have, you know, very short form blogs, newsletters that you can use to find the latest.

Excellent. So let's dive in to leave some knowledge behind in the podcast. You are the principal research scientist for Amazon. So one question I have for you, which actually came from one of my listeners, was like, what is the role of brands in the future in a platform economy? Do they become more important, less important if they get in trouble? Why they get in trouble?

So I'm an empiricist, right? So I go back to 20 years ago when people talked exactly the same question about the Internet. So there's this, you know, paper by, I think Brillianfsson of MIT talking about frictionless Commerce, it's like, look, you know, brand is not going to matter at all anymore online because with one click you can go to the other brands, you can price compare and brand is not going to matter what whatsoever anymore. Now this has not come to fruition, if anything, brand has been shown to be more important online. Now why is this? Because online we are just bombarded with offers and information. And so the more we are bombarded and overwhelmed with information, the more we use shortcuts like brands, which is why it's so important to invest in your brand. So I just don't see that happening. So I see a huge importance of the brand. So, you know, maybe brief introduction about Amazon ads, right? So Amazon ads is mostly known by lots of people for the lower funnel things like sponsored products. So a consumer is already in your category and is comparing and you put an ad there, right? But over the years, and this is why I came in, Amazon ads has been adding mid and upper funnel products, right? So now like on fire TV or on, on, on Thursday night food football or on dsp, which is all over the Internet, you can basically kind of get awareness for your products. You can get consideration for your products. And so, and so we've seen that investing in this one specifically for brands that are, you know, don't have that big of a brand image yet. This is what allows you to make this jump and to just see much more conversion, right? So we know about branding and upper funnel advertising that it increases the conversion of your local funnel ads. So if, if you kind of walk down the street or you know, virtual or not, and, and you see something pop up on BMW, right? Are you, are you see something pop up, let's say about Cola, about Coca Cola versus a completely unknown Cola brand, You know, whether it's a price promotion or a deal, which one are you going to click on or say yes to? It's the one, the brand, you know, so, so I would say, you know, in the platforms I don't see anything, I mean most of my research also I have to split by brand familiarity because different effectiveness depending on whether your brand is already very familiar or not, right?

Yeah. So that basically means that brands become more important even, and that you should be even more careful and make good choices for building your brands. Because if you lose the brand, then you're up for grabs, then somebody is going to be always going to be more efficient, cheaper and more frictionless than what you can offer. So, and now that's one worry that many people have. Like how do we deal with a platform economy. And the other one is like the recession which is already there basically or coming and it's going to take a couple of years. And that's what the GM marking was about. So let's just recap a little bit in a nutshell, what is known how to do good marketing in a recession. And I have one question afterwards, but let's start with that one question. So what, what is known to give a orientation like reliable knowledge how to act in a recession?

So sorry. So I would say this is the time to reconsider your marketing just like you reconsider everything. Right? So yes, I mean it is an opportunity to see, you know, how effective things are. Very often you're in a pressure to cut budgets. So knowing what you can cut without, you know, hurting your consumers or your sales too much or your employees, employees is just very important. And, and so in all of my effectiveness research in all of my consultancy, I always kind of clearly say, hey, these are the actions that are working very well for you. Right? And these are the actions which are just not worth it. And then I try to convince companies to do a field experiment to execute so that they can see it in real data. So kind of being ready with it is very important. So, so I do a lot of work between marketing and finance, the departments. And so finance typically says to me that they don't trust the marketing department because every year they ask for more money for a shiny new thing. And when finance says then where can we cut down a bit? They say no, no, no, everything is positive. So, so, so I think as a marketing department you should be ready for such tough questions in any kind of economy. Right? Go ahead.

And as a good example, like Procter and Gamble, like Mark Pritchard a couple years ago was the first one that called out the hyper targeting and pulled 200 million from, from that and like didn't have any effect at the cash register. Like, like reinvested in others. And, and now they reinvested. They, they, they invested a lot in radio because they basically said like the reach that we lost in, in linear TV we can make up in radio. And they, they, they I think 43% more than they used to like. And, and it's, it's massive what they're doing and in, in a sense because the, the, the cost of reaching these people is so much, much lower. And at the same time you can reach young people that don't watch linear TV but have the radio running while they repair their car, while they are whatever and radio usage among the 18 to 24 year olds is the first time for years has been growing. Now it's more than it used to be.

So the other thing I would say kind of so yes. And also kind of reconsider your creative message. Right. Because some things may not be a good idea to tell during a recession where your customers are also hurting. But then kind of also don't be too negative. Right. So as I said in my Harvard Business Review article of I think two years ago, right. When we thought that the COVID was the recession, we didn't knew that was going.

And then the Ukrainian war came.

Yeah. So that talks about kind of your spending patterns. And so this actually happened to me. So I made the switch from the tech school of business to a startup university in Turkey in istanbul, this was 2008. And the founder of the university which was running several businesses in several countries said hey Kun, the recession is coming also to my part of the world and probably like six months. Right. He's a very smart guy. And, and so every academic article I read tells me to increase my spending and every manager I talk to tells me to decrease my spending on marketing. Which one should I believe? And so I had to formula. So I have this, this very nice formula about optimal marketing spending. And, and this is written by actually somebody in Ehrenberg B Institute by Malcolm Wright, 2009 Journal of Advertising Research. And he basically shows that, you know, there's an optimal spending on market. I won't have time to get into it here, but you can.

Okay, we put that link in the show notes. Okay. Please remember. Yeah, please send me the link.

And so the interesting thing is so your optimal spending on marketing depends on, on how many sales you expect, which typically goes down in a recession. It depends on your unit margin. So the more money you make per product you sell, the more you should advertise. I think that's very intuitive. And it also depends on your elasticity. So by which percentage do your sales go up if your advertising. Advertising go up for each medium. Right. As you talked about radio and so forth. Now the problem is he says, well, I have no clue about elasticity and I have no data to give you to, to to kind of estimate it. Which is a very typical situation. Right. So I'm like no problem. Let's just think through. And we thought through all of his business and I'm like, are your sales going to increase or decrease? And it's like decrease. I think only beer sales increase during a recession for.

Yeah. And sweets Gummy bears and chocolate.

So he was in finance, in, in fashion and apparel. So no way then unit margin. He's like, yeah, I can squeeze my suppliers, but my customers will squeeze me more. So I'm like, well here you have the formula, right? So you should reduce your spending unless your, your effectiveness is increasing. And so we went through and we were like, where would effectiveness increase? And so, you know, we had this business in, in, in, in Russia at the moment, which was an apparel business and it was completely outspent by competitors, kind of flooding the market with fashion. And there was more of a mass market one. So it was, it was never, you know, be able to afford to do TV advertising. And I'm like, look, the TV rates are way down in a recession because all of your competitors have stopped spending. You know, people, consumers actually very open to the mass market message that because it was, you know, a great value for money.

It was a cheap, yeah, it wasn't.

The cheap brands, right. The time to go big on TV advertising in Russia at the time. And they did it to great success and they could do it because they were pulling from, from other places even more than competitors because they're like, you know, he had a bank in Romania and we were like, well, the recession is going to last way longer than anybody else thinks. So we even closed branches there. So we really reallocated based on the formula that we used without any data, just thinking through what, what will probably happen and where money would be well spent in a recession.

Oh, that's excellent. Okay, that link goes in the show notes. Guys. That's, that's great. And obviously all the books that you've written in Chinese. No, but I was really impressed like to find all those languages that your books were translated in. So kudos to that. And so we had like maybe one, one thing like on the psychology, like what you just said, like some things change in a, a recession. And you've researched that and you spoke about that, about that maybe like a small, like small summary of what, what you, what you would say. What is the biggest difference in a customer in a recession besides being. Yeah. Like price sensitive.

Oh wow. So, so, so I, I think number one, people have, have a different kind of view on gains and losses. And this, this I did research with somebody we're still trying to publish. It's a fantastic paper. And this talks about gains and losses and price promotions. So price promotions are so fascinating because you temporarily reduce your price. It's a deal people buy. So that's a gain for the consumer. But then you have to go back to regular price and that's a loss.

That's painful.

That's painful, right. And so we saw that managers actually, in a recession, right, people would think you would increase price promotions. They cut back a bit on price price promotions. And we were like, why is this the case? And, and, and so we found our, you know, theory in the psychological theory of, of regulatory focus, which talks about being in a, in a promotion focus or a prevention focus. So promotion focus is also known as a grown mindset. Right. So, so people have an intrinsic kind of, you know, tendency to do that. So I'm extreme on promotion focus, for instance. So I see life as opportunities you either take or you don't take. Like coming on this wonderful podcast. And so, and so for me, I'm much more focused on potential gains. So I really like a deal and I don't mind it that much when, when you put back to regular prices. My wonderful wife, who co wrote this book with me, right. Break the wall, Zeynep, she's much more prevention focused. So prevention focused folks see life as, as disasters that you either avoid or don't avoid. Now there's also a temporal tendency to that which is really more interesting, which talks about depending on the situation and your mood, you're more promotional, prevention focused. Right. So going back to your wonderful juggling in Brussels thing, when you're on a Saturday, when you're trying to have a good time, you look for entertainment options. You don't mind if the juggling was a bit late, completely promotional. You only spent like five minutes, you know, of your time, which, you know, you had lots of time anyway, and it could be a really good experience to see you.

You didn't say our juggling was lame right there. No. Five balls, torches, knives. That was not lame.

Whereas if, if you're speeding to your work in the Place de la Monet, you're really kind of, you're trying to get to work, you're trying not to be late and have your boss on you again.

That's right. Your prevention focus, that's. I never thought of it like. That's true. It's true. It's like you, you don't want to be late, you don't want to be late back to work also. And, and it's, it's, it's about efficiency. You're in an efficiency mindset and that's always like preventive. You don't want to waste. Oh, that's very good.

And so one of the things we did Right. And so in this research is like, you know, we looked at the whole United States. That's why we had data and in all of the markets and we had the recessions and the boom times, and we had also some markets who are just much more labor market resistant to recession. Like for instance in Boston, where I am in a recession, not that many people get fired, even the people who do have lots of social welfare. So there is more prevention focus, but not as much as in another town in the US where you don't have that safety net. And so we actually show that if you give a temporary price promotion in a recession, yes, people take the deal, but they're way more upset than in boom times when you go back to regular prices. And so it's not a good idea to give temporary price reductions. I mean, if you can reduce your regular price in a recession. And good for you. Right. But you should be careful. So people are more in a prevention focus and they look more at stuff to kind of save stuff. I mean, they don't know if their job is on the line and so forth. And so they think more about avoiding bad choices than about making optimal choices.

So that means basically you should add value instead of give no discount. Add value. So that gives you a psychological security that it's a good deal. Yeah, but, but you still don't learn a lower price. So then you don't see the difference later when you buy it again, it's still at the same price that you bought it. But yeah, so that would be. So that's very good takeaway. So excellent. And I want to be respectful of your time because I know that you have have to go. So I would like to, to, to wrap up our great conversation with something like if you look back at your long career, what was something in your research or in, in your professional career that you would have wished that you realized earlier or learned earlier? What was the biggest, like, surprise where.

You said, like, oh, wow. So I would say kind of. I mean, when I was very young, I wanted to be an explorer. I mean, you know, when I was, when I was seven, I wanted to be a math teacher. But then when I was my teenage year, I wanted to be an explorer. So I was very excited to discover marketing when I was, I think 19 years old because I was like, well, most of the earth is explored, unfortunately. But there's so much in this kind of combination of psychology and economics that I want to see. I think, you know, for me, I just.

How did you just. Sorry to segue There. How did you discover marketing? Like what was the moment that you discovered marketing?

So I was in an undergraduate in my native Belgium, but I went with the Erasmus exchange to Galway in Ireland. And I'm now up to 95 years taking my family back this June. So I'm very excited about that. And so that was the time that I experienced marketing and I was taught by a practitioner, it was taught BY Somebody with 25 years in the field. Very exciting. And in Ireland you have to kind of read for your degree. So so in the exam you have to specialize and then you have to show the professor on the exam that you know more than, than, than she or he does. And that's the only way to get more than 70% by the way. So I specialized in reference price, which is also key to the one, the gains and losses. I just thought so as a 19 year old I was reading up about reference prices and I was so excited. That kind of psychology and economics which I was studying at the time met so beautifully in there. And so I was like exploring the human mind in the context of exchange, which is what marketing is, you know, and there's so much new stuff to learn every year. You know, my students, my colleagues, you know what I read in also academic journals. It just is always very kind of exciting to me. And so I think I would say kind of make sure that you continue to learn new stuff. As for something that I learned in companies is really take care of your internal stakeholders. This is so many. Anybody who works in a company probably already knew this, but I had to learn this the hard way.

So as a consultant, like don't think that the truth wins always in organizations.

So I was in a Belgium company for about two years before I decided I hate office politics. I'm going to go into academia. And there is less office politics in academia. There is some. Right. But then working again for companies, I realized kind of a complete focus on the external customer. Right. Which is what, you know, marketing myopia. And everybody tries to convince you. You really, really have to make sure that people inside your own company know what you're doing, know the value of it. Because otherwise, you know, they don't tell it to the external customers. Right. Let's say, you know, you're trying to influence the sales force. If the sales force is not convinced about the value of your insight, it's going to be tough. And also if you don't take a lot of care of your internal stuff, stakeholders, if there's a recession or you know, they need some to cut somebody, then it may be your head that's on the, on the chopping block. So, so I mean and if it's.

Not your head, then it's your budget for sure then, then you can't do anything anymore. If you haven't haven't done internal marketing before for your own marketing budget, then that's on the chopping block.

So that's something that I learned and that I wish I would have known earlier. That is.

Okay, well that's makes two of us. I learned that also very late. I always, I was always surprised when the truth didn't win. Well, it's not logical, it's psychological. Oh, that's great. So, so looking, looking forward, like what do you hope for in, in marketing, marketing science and practice for the next years? What is your, I know that you're what we just talked about also you have an idealistic view of what should happen also in, in the, the way that we deal with data, hyper targeting and all that. What do do you hope for?

Oh, let's see. So I hope for first of all a lot more cross fertilization between you know, let's say science and practice in marketing. All of my academic research the last year has all refocused on better marketing for a better society. And I think it's because I do so much consultancy and I do it for for profit companies. I'm like hey, in my free time, in my research time, let's investigate, you know, esg, environmental, social and governments. Let's investigate maybe racial bias and influencer pay. Let's do stuff about disinformation and elections. So I apply marketing tools to non for profit marketing settings and so I really hope that that comes true. I mean for instance in ethics, right? I'm now kind of, you know, as I said, researching the privacy paradox. So kind of, you know, how do you do good research to somehow qualify, quantify whether consumers are actually kind of harmed by companies, you know, sharing data and then what, what the solution should be and how should we consult kind of government regulators which have very different minds in the US versus the European Union by the way, how do we do good research to kind of properly consult, you know, both companies who do want to, most managers I know do want to do the right thing. But what is the right thing is a good question. And how do we give kind of consumers a lot more free freedom of choice? So, so personally and, and I think this is the reason I fit so well in the US I want freedom of choice. I want the company to say, hey, you know, we either won't share your data with third parties or we pay you a hundred bucks to do so. And so instead of the regulator just forbidden every kind of sharing. Right. And I want to have a strong difference between one piece sharing where for the trusted websites that I have, they use my past in the website itself to get me better ads and products. I think personally that's very different from three party sharing, which I don't mind is going away personally. And so I think we need some good research. We have great research to show that stopping 3p cookies is bad for publishers and advertisers. I mean there's great quantifications about how much they lose. But then to recommend to a regulator, hey, we should allow three party cookies because there's no good research that, that quantifies how it hurts consumers. And like we can do that. We need better research to kind of, you know, quantify the different perspectives and to then basically be able to influence and put them on the same scale.

I mean they would lose probably in the short term, but, but another thing, like it would basically take away the logic of clickbait, which is, which is influencing our society in a very strong way like that. The logic of just making somebody click on what you're giving them like which is, which is sensationalizing the news, sensationalizing the headlines, sensationalizing everything, even if it's not true. And now with artificial intelligence coming, coming on and being able to. I just saw Trump being arrested yesterday from the FBI in Mar a Lago. A picture. It's true. No, it's not true. It was just AI generated happened just.

And things that will come to pass.

Yeah, that's, that's, that's right. Yeah. Okay, that's great. So, so that's what you hope for. So more responsible still remain like keep the freedom in, in the system because it's important, but at the same time find solution and find out what's good and what's bad. I think that's a, that's something good.

To hope for and you can think about, you know. Yes, clickbait is horrible. But at the same time a lot of people, including me, want some degree of personalization. It has been five years that I've been solicited to get a high, my high school diploma. So before personalization I was constantly bombarded with ads to get my high school diploma. So I do want some personalization, but I mean, and different consumers differ in the, in their preference. So yes, I really hope that we can get much deeper and more actionable than that.

Yeah, that's, that's very good. So that leads me what, what you, you showed me a book in the beginning. What, like that you're just reading. But my question. Question was actually what book have you gifted most often that you would point our listeners to? Maybe we can do both. Like, what is. What is a book that you gift often where you say, yeah, or which you just recommend and the other one that you're just reading.

So the one that I gifted most often is Reality is Broken, and it's a book that helped me understand my gaming kits. The book is now, I think, 12 years old. And it is basically talking about, you know, know, why especially young people are so interested in games and what games offer that we should try to emulate in real life. So that's called Reality is Broken. It's a fantastic book. And then, of course, I recommend my own books. Right. The one that I gifted. More. It's not the size of the date, it's how you use it. And then the one that I wrote and came out this year is, is Break the wall. Why and how to democratize digital in your business. The first book I co wrote with my wife, Zainab Akshahili, who is an organizational behavioral. A professor. And so we really kind of go deep into companies and say, hey, you know, the digital transformation, you know, people have written so much about it, but it only really works if you can truly democratize it. And we have great interviews with people in the trenches who have yet who share both their failures and successes. And we put it in a framework. So that's the book that I would like to give to people. And.

Fantastic.

I think I have a discount code to share for the listeners to your podcast if they want.

Okay, we'll put that. Yeah, send it to me. And we, we put that in the show notes. Great. And the last question, if you have the chance to put a screensaver on all those people responsible for brands in Germany, Europe and wherever they're listening to this podcast, what would the screensaver say?

Your customer is not you. I think the one mistake that, that, that people make and everybody does, that you assume people are like you. And specifically in marketing, you know, we are always reminded, no, the consumer is. Is not like us. So just because I like a certain form of personalization and I want to be paid, that does not mean that the people I do research about. So research is so important to get out of this myopia that everybody is like us, which every human being has but specifically in marketing the customer is not you and you really have to do a lot of kind of, you know, both anecdotes and seeing what the customer actually does right and talking with consumers but also statistics and kind of the idea aggregate metrics that I use in my research to kind of truly understand.

That's fantastic. So I open my computer in the morning, it says the customer is not you.

Remember?

Yeah Kun Palt I'll be back. I'll be back. Kuhn hartlegbedankt My sincere thanks for your time and the great advice that you shared and the many stories. This was a very unusual flow of conversation but I loved it completely. Completely. It was fantastic and I wish you all the best and hope you can continue helping people to avoid bad choices and make best ones.

And yes, till the next time for everybody.

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