The politics section is rarely a must-read for marketers scanning their daily press. What can a bunch of political hacks, recording the sterile debates in parliament, tell us about marketing? The reality is that if you are searching for new thinking about consumer behaviour (and let’s be honest, new ideas to impress the client), then political journalists, such as The Times’ Daniel Finkelstein, are well worth reading.
I particularly recommend a piece he wrote a few weeks ago on The five sexiest ideas in politics. In this he summarises some of the key thinking in the area of social psychology, which is the emerging intellectual discipline focused on people’s behaviour. Most marketers have an intuitive understanding of the concepts summarised by Finkelstein, but it still helps to have an intellectual underpinning for ideas such as “social norms” (how we tend to copy the behaviour of those around us) or “situationalism” (how the situation in which we find ourselves also shapes our behaviour). Many of these same ideas will also find their way onto the marketing conference platforms during the next 18 months.
So tear your eyes away from the gossip columns and sports pages and check out what is being debated in the politics sections – it is not all John Lewis furniture allowances and Olympics over-spends.