System1, unlocking profitable growth, reviewed

By @SimonCocking, review of System1, unlocking profitable growth by Kearon,  Ewing and, Wood available from Amazon here.

Human beings make decisions in two ways. One is slow, deliberate and calculating. The other is fast, instinctive and emotional. And the fast one is in the driving seat. Psychologists call is System 1. This book shows how businesses can achieve profitable growth by devising their marketing for System 1 decision-making. It reveals how designing for System 1 can unlock success across innovation, advertising, brand building and shopper marketing. It brings together years of work on how people buy, and how to get them buying you.

Great book, terrible title. It’s a good, quick, visual, interesting read. Thoughtful, though at times after it’s initial interesting premise you’d like them to dig a little deeper into following through their line of thought – namely the one that, if we, as humans as that instinctive and shallow in our decision making processes, how do we fully capitalise in this? The book is well illustrated, with effective visuals helping to build on the points made, which is of course a good and logical approach if we are that knee jerk in how we make our decisions. The blurb on the back “we think much less than we think we think!” is an interesting and provocative call to arms. As we move into a time of more video, more images, more infographics there maybe a lot of value in the ideas that they are communicating to us. In some ways the title of the book has very little to do with any of this, an enjoyable read, but perhaps a more informative title, or at least sub-title might help to pull in more of those instinctive, quick to judge humans, that perhaps we all really are?

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