Neuroscience brings Direct Mail back to life!

Neuroscience continues to prove the 'marketing experts' wrong and also confirm for many of us that we never really understood how the brain works.

Recent neuro-research has proven that direct mail is not dead and actually has a stronger influence on consumers than digital media. Furthermore, actual real life experiments revealed that direct mail creates a much stronger impression that lasts longer, and delivers a better return on investment and improves a brand's adoption. Whilst postmen in the UK are extremely happy with this revelation, many multi-million dollar brand consultancy companies are a little red faced. They have been 'selling' new marketing strategies based upon - you need to go fully digital; Social 2.0 is the only way; it needs to go viral; digital is much more cost effective, ubiquitous and has the best impact. How wrong they are and it just goes to show that we should continue to validate even our basic concepts against new developments in neuroscience.

 These findings were the result of research done on for the Royal Mail by the Bangor University. People were given physical direct mail along with digital advertisements. What they found through fMRI scans is that direct mail is significantly more multi-sensory than online marketing, as a result of the increased number of senses used by holding something in your hand, rather than just looking at it one a monitor. So, the lets go digital bandwagon just hit a bump and all the advertising consultants will have to take out their old 'direct marketing' slides from the trash bin and build a new presentation based around a mix of digital and tangible items that we can touch, hold and feel. Time for a new set of buzz words and re-vamped strategic pitches, I think!

The Theory of Human Excellence (THE) is based on the very latest neuro-scientific research such as the experiments used above, plus some completely original thought based upon years of investigation and analysis. THE provides a new way to view the way humans think or make decisions, plus it delivers a revolutionary strategy that is used to define and control how organisations operate and improve their business in areas such as marketing, sales or man management. The combination of new research plus original thought are used to deliver human excellence at work, which increases productivity and profit.

Terry Wilcox
Theory of Human Excellence