Scott McAfee, Partner at Sanders\Wingo, joins us today to talk about why he's speaking at The 3% Conference, the big idea behind his Behavioral Science Lab and words of advice for his daughter if she decides to go into advertising.
Why are you coming to SF to speak at The 3% Conference?
I believe in the mission. I love being around smart, strong people, especially when they are women. Since the beginning of my career, I’ve worked with women partners, women creative directors, and women agency principals. I’ve enjoyed it tremendously.
An environment without a balance of female leadership feels lopsided and weird.
This was instilled in me at an early age. I remember one time when I was about fifteen; my dad and I were working on the family car. (Actually he was working, I was holding the flashlight.) We were listening to a radio news story about whatever international debacle was unfolding at the time. My dad stopped, took the Lucky Strike out of his mouth and said, “You know kid, the world will only get better when more women are running the show.” Then he told me to hand him a wrench.
Women have always led purchase behavior, but now shifting media habits have made their role in the marketplace even more apparent. Their creative instincts, their business instincts and their leadership instincts are more intrinsically valuable than ever. Brands and agencies that want to stay relevant will follow these instincts. And not just for ‘women marketing to women.’ Across our culture, stereotypes and ‘guy humor” are being replaced by ideas and narratives from women that are more nuanced — and more interesting.
I want to be part of that reality. It’s more fun.
The 3% Conference is one of the pillars of change in modern business. I really admire Kat Gordon’s combination of grace and determination. She reminds me of what the great anthropologist Margaret Mead said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”
Tell us about your Behavioral Science Lab that you'll be discussing on the Intrapreneurship panel.
Behind every marketing trend, media innovation or successful product launch are the dynamics of human behavior. Rather than chasing the latest shiny digital object or Big Data factoid, we need to really understand how people make decisions—decisions and tendencies that they themselves don’t really understand.
Market research has some effective tools, but there are huge blinds spots. First, people don’t know why they do what they do, so paying them to tell you in a focus group is a flawed premise. And of course, the many fascinating ways we can slice and dice Big Data don’t necessarily give us the right answers either. Even when we learn exactly what people’s purchase and usage behavior is, we don’t quite know why they make those choices.
We built the Behavioral Science Lab to continually study the “Why.” We wanted to uncover insights before our clients asked for them. We developed a signature tool, MindGUIDETM in order to better understand the many factors that go into what economists Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler coined as people’s ‘choice architecture.’
Market research interprets people’s buying decisions in a vacuum. But, we all live in a dimensional world with many direct and indirect influences on our choices. MIndGUIDE helps demystify those influences and puts them in order of priority, so we have a ‘map’ of an audience’s decision process. This allows us to recommend more efficient and unexpected solutions to a client’s problem—solutions that may or may not involve advertising.
We’ve published several studies in various marketing and product categories. Our BSL study on non-profit brand affinity attracted the attention of Unicef International, who invited our Managing Director Christian Goy to present the study this month at their donor conference in Amsterdam.
We are launching a new BSL web site this month, and unveiling our newest tool, BrandEmbraceSM. BrandEmbrace takes into account the multiple facets of a brand experience and how they add up to produce a loyal and engaged customer. Ultimately the BrandEmbrace IndexSM identifies and quantifies the strength of the brand.
We developed BSL as a side project, independent of Sanders\Wingo operations or client work. As we made progress, we presented our findings and recommendations to my S\W partners, who immediately saw the potential and got behind it.
It’s been a great experience and we’re just getting started.
You've got a young daughter. What words of advice would you give her if she decided to go into advertising?
Believe in your instincts. You have a point of view, and while not everyone will like it, your instincts are uniquely yours. Ignoring them is like tossing a compass overboard.
In advertising, like most businesses, there are a lot of distractions and false gods. Your job is to find human connections to the brand and bring them to life in an interesting way. All the meetings, all the PowerPoint decks, the MBA-speak, and even the awards are secondary and will proliferate on their own. Stick to what’s important—authentic human emotion.
I started out in advertising wanting to “be great.” I came to realize that greatness is the product of simplicity and authenticity. Stay true to yourself. Don’t be afraid to fail.
As my daughter Amelia at age five told me while experimenting with paint, “You know what Dad? A big ‘oops’ can be something beautiful.”
Seek out people who genuinely appreciate you and your brand of talent. Ignore the others.
Note: You’ll notice I have avoided any mention of gender, bias or glass ceilings. Hopefully these issues won’t be nearly as acute in fifteen or twenty years. I’m hoping we will have addressed them through high school and college years, so that she’ll know how to assert herself in the workplace. In any case, anyone who’s met Amelia knows that assertiveness and leadership come naturally.
Click to Tweet -> Believe in your instincts. You have a point of view. While not everyone will like it, your instincts are uniquely yours. ~@ScottTMcAfee 
Thanks to Scott for joining us on the blog to share his insights. Go ahead and connect with him on LinkedIn or follow him @ScottTMcAfee.
