Hey , it's now time to vote for this year's Habit Weekly Awards 🏆

Voted by you, the readers, this is an opportunity to give credit to all of the behavioral science content creators and organizations around the world. Without them, this newsletter would not be possible.

Time to Vote! It takes less than a minute and means a lot for everyone nominated. Who will you vote for this year?

Have you voted? Great, then it's time to explore the best of the past month's PRO content, plus we announce Habit Weekly's book of the month!

We had a fantastic Insider Call on Dec 1 with Melaina Vinksi, Head of Behavioral Science and AI & Analytics Practice at IBM.

We talked about how behavioral science and AI feed into each other, growing behavioral science in an organization as the solo behavioral scientist hire, managing behavioral risk in models, and the need for behavioral science to move beyond nudges to influence systems thinking.

Melaina’s parting thought for Habit Weekly readers:

As behavioral scientists, don't put yourself in a box! It’s really enticing because that box has a lot of credibility right now, and it's very shiny, and it's exciting to be in that box. But the applications are actually much bigger. If we take a step back from our individual methodology and toolkits, we can do much better, bigger things in the world.

The full recording can be found here and in our event library.

The story
This month we’re learning how to build brands that stand out in our noisy digital world by reading Branding That Means Business, How to Build Enduring Bonds Between Brands, Consumers & Markets, by Matt Johson, PhD, and Tessa G. Misiaszek, PhD. The authors declare that brand is one of the company's most powerful assets and a tool that can dramatically impact customer perception of the company’s products and services. This book uses numerous brand examples to showcase behavioral science and neuroscience’s role in this work.

The book’s ending is where we’ll begin (spoilers)
We learn towards the end of the book that 2020 was the year human-made stuff exceeded the total mass of living things on the planet. Wrap your brain around that! It’s more important than ever for companies to build brands with a solid signal to get past that noise. And according to Johnson and Misiaszek, brands are distinguished by what and to whom they signify.

Ok, so how do we start building a brand?
It wouldn’t be a good book without a fun metaphor, right? Johnson and Misiaszek write about how not all houses are homes, and the same goes for brands. A brand that feels like home has created meaning for its consumer, and that meaning should be every brand’s end goal. To continue this metaphor, what also makes a home is its occupants—so the relationship a brand has with its consumer and the community they foster between each other and with other consumers also plays a large part in the transformation of a house into a home. The foundation of this home, or brand, begins with the company’s guiding principles, and those principles shape the brand’s personality. The type of home you build for your consumer matters immensely. And the type of brand you are, big or small, dictates your brand strategy.

What does that mean?
Your brand personality signifies your shared values. Almost two-thirds of consumers choose brands that represent their values, and it’s even higher, 78%, for Gen Z and millennials. Brands are also now part of public discourse whether they want to be or not. Your company must maintain its guiding principles and brand personality in the event of random viral video placement, which companies like Twisted Tea or Ambien can attest to. And one of the worst things a company can do is flip-flop, like Halmark’s disastrous handling of an ad placement.

Habit Weekly's book of the month.
Johnson and Misiaszek argue that brands can lead us to experience the world differently, often in an enhanced way. Creating a society rich with compelling brands gives deeper meaning to the physical consumer world. They include more information on social norms, social signalling, the halo effect and product development, the neuroscience behind decision-making once trust is gained, and more marketing gems worth pondering. Check out Habit Weekly’s book of the month.

– Lizzie

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