I attended The Art of Marketing conference (#taom) in Toronto last week. The day was jam packed with top speakers – among them Seth Godin, Mitch Joel, Sally Hogshead and Dan Heath – and the learning was top notch.

I wanted to share some of my key learnings from the event (as always, your comments are welcome).

1. Staring down the lizard brain

Seth Godin talked to us about the lizard brain, the part of our brain that allows us to compromise or to play it safe when the right answer might just be to take a risk. Formally, it is defined as “a key component of the limbic system in the brain, involved in the experience of anxiety, distress, and fear.”

People need to stare their lizard brain down and embrace risk where appropriate  if they are going to break out of their comfort zones. The vast majority of us are ruled by our lizard brains that prevent us from doing things differently. To be sure, paying heed to our lizard brain is important at times (like ducking when a baseball bat is flying at us, as Godin illustrated in a series of amusing slides) but evidence suggests that the lizard brain dominates our actions at work and prevents us from innovating.

More on the lizard brain can be found here

2. Seven Fascination Triggers

Sally Hogshead spoke about 7 things that trigger fascination: mystique, power, lust, prestige, alarm, vice, trust. I found this to be particularly interesting because understanding the role that emotion plays in a purchase decision often dictates whether you get the sale.  Or in other words, “facts tell while stories sell.”

Her best example was illustrating how Jagermeister – the “popular drink nobody likes”  - came to prominence despite tasting a bit like “battery acid.” People don’t drink Jager for the taste, they drink it for the experience as evidenced by the savvy marketing which links hardcore partying to drinking Jager-bombs. People rarely remember Jagermeister for its taste; they remember it for the environment they were in while consuming it.   An important difference.

3. Bright spots.

Dan Heath spoke about the power of focusing on bright spots in our organizations vs the natural human tendency to focus on the negative. In the face of overwhelming obstacles, the power is focusing on the bright spots and growing those parts of your organization.

He cited the example of how Save the Children was able to reduce malnutrition in Vietnam. By focusing on the bright spots (ie. studying what mothers of healthy children were feeding their kids and replicating their methods across several villages) versus getting lost by trying to combat the larger, more overwhelming problems like poverty and unclean drinking water.

4.  Quality over Quantity

Mitch Joel talked about popularity contests in social communities and why having as many Twitter followers as possible is missing the point. It’s better to focus on better quality followers, keep them engaged and nurture that community as much as possible. This is the easiest way to create a committed fan base vs targeting as many people as you can (as the saying goes … “jack of all trades, master of none”).

5. Every month, 20% of Google’s search terms are new

Wow. Talk about having to adapt quickly when user search queries are turning over at that rate. This creates an incredible opportunity for long tail businesses, but can also be pretty frightening for established players who are not able to adapt as quickly to changing consumer preferences. This fact came courtesy of Mitch Joel.

6. The emotional vs the rational mind

Dan Heath gave an amusing example of the  Clocky alarm clock, an ultra annoying alarm clock that wheels around your bedroom until you chase after it to turn it off. A very effective way of ensuring you wake up in the morning. This example illustrates the tension between the rational and emotional mind. The rational mind is what sets the alarm clock the night before knowing full well it has to deal with the emotional mind at 5am that desperately wants to press the sleep button. Creating a hostile environment for sleep through the Clocky’s erratic movements is what guarantees the person will wake up.

Overcoming the tension between the rational mind and the emotional mind is the key to change. Heath uses the analogy of a Rider (rational mind) and an Elephant (emotional mind) to further illustrate this point. From his book Switch

“The Rider provides the planning and direction, and the Elephant provides the energy. So if you reach the Riders of your team but not the Elephants, team members will have understanding without motivation. If you reach their Elephants but not their Riders, you’ll have passion without direction. In both cases, the flaws can be paralyzing. A reluctant Elephant and a wheel-spinning Rider can both ensure that nothing changes. But when Elephants and Riders move together, change can come easily.”

7. Be an artist

Seth Godin quipped “The first person to put a urinal in an art gallery was an artist, the second person to do so was a plumber.”

The point is that true art is very hard to copy and the benefits often accrue to the originator of a concept. Godin’s argument was that artists are indispensable because what they create cannot be easily copied. This was consistent with his overall message from his current book Linchpin:  “Are you indispensable?”

Listening to inspiring speakers always fills my head with ideas, the challenge becomes how to leverage these amazing concepts when you are back in the daily chaos of the office.  For those who attended #taom: how are you going to apply these concepts to change the way you do business?