So I came across this short and interesting Ted talk on Youtube
Dan Cobley, someone who works in Marketing at Google, explains some parallels between Marketing and Physics, a subject he took an interest to before Marketing. These parallels are by no means perfect, but conceptually, I think they’re quite valid.
In the video my favourite point that Dan mentions is Newton’s Second Law – Basically acceleration = force over mass, so to change the direction of a brand (the mass), it takes much more force (marketing) if the brand is big. He then gives us some examples of how big brands often create new brands to move into new areas (such as Arthur Andersen –> Accenture) and how companies with many little brands are successful (P&G, Unilever)
He makes a few more points, but I’ll let you watch the video yourself instead of regurgitating it to you.
As for my own thoughts, I tried to think up some parallels of my own (bear in mind I’ve only taken Physics up to Gr.11), since Dan mentions Newton’s Second law, I figured if the other 2 laws could apply as well.
Newton’s First Law – This is Newton’s Law of Inertia, basically if an object is at rest, it’ll stay at rest, and if an object is in motion, it stays in motion. So this is a bit similar to consumers (as one entity), if they don’t like your product, they’ll continue to not like it, and if they do like it, they’ll continue to like it. This is where marketing kicks in. Marketing can disturb the natural tendencies of inertia, meaning you need marketing to break people out of the “I don’t like your product” slump. Likewise, negative marketing (so I guess a campaign that bashes on your product) can disturb the inertia of consumers that DO like your product.
Newton’s Third Law – This is probably the one most people have heard of, for every reaction, there is an equal and opposite reaction. So i think of this as if consumers make a demand like “WE WANT GREENER PRODUCTION PROCESSES”, the company must (or at least should) make the appropriate reaction and comply with their demands if they want to stay in business.
Anyways, I know it’s a bit of a stretch, but for anyone who reads it, feel free to add any parallels of your own whether in a comment or as your own blog post 😛
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