Charles Duhigg’s February article How Companies Learn Your Secrets includes a number of fascinating (I
think) threads:
- Consumer “predictive analytics”
- Habit loop
- Behavioral changes and marketing
I am completely stuck on the concept of the “habit loop”. Duhigg
blogs frequently on the habit loop, describing it as a cue à
routine à
reward. In this article, Duhigg discusses how it impacted Febreze’s marketing strategy,
which tried to create a new habit of daily Febreze use:
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Initial Failure
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Cue
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Bad odor (i.e. cigarette smoke)
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Routine
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Spray Febreze
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Reward
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Odor eliminated
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The campaign failed. Harvard Business School researchers
worked with the Febreze team to identify and correct the problem. In short,
they initially missed a key logical progression:
- People become immune to “their” bad odors
- The reward doesn’t matter if they can’t smell the initial bad odor
Observations uncovered an existing cleaning routine that Febreze
could connect to.
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Cleaning Routine
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Second Campaign
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Cue
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Notice mess
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See cleanliness
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Routine
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Straighten mess
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Spray Febreze
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Reward
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Admire cleanliness
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Enjoy fresh scent
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At first I wasn’t entirely clear why I was so stuck on this anecdote. Then, in a
blinding flash of the obvious, it hit me. Process innovation, my role, my
team’s role, centers on changing routines. We typically don’t use the term
“routine”, but that’s exactly what it is. Now for the next step: better
understanding the routines that we believe VDC can improve.
5 comments:
Hard to get people to consider something else if they think their existing process is pretty darn good already, by golly! ;)
Hmmmm, makes you think. Could we be misidentifying the "cues" to our current behavior?
Keep us updated on your thoughts, for sure.
and read the Forbes article on implementing change not applications... Forbes link
I agree with Steve here. The problem is also that it is insanely hard to teach people BIM if they do not feel like their is anything wrong with the way they traditionally go about the design delivery. I think that the people that achieved the best results in transitioning to BIM are those that not only felt like things needed to changed but also knew exactly what they would want to change about their legacy processes. Here is a good article on that "Can BIM be taught" on BIM Troublemaker's blog
Hence, are we looking at the wrong "Cues?" We are trying to get everyone to recognize that their process is broken.
What other cue to habit can we touch?
Like in the example, we have become "immune to our own bad odors."
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