Getting Customers To Purchase Using System 1 Thinking Is the Most Important Thing

In Chubbies' journey from a no-profit e-comm store, reliant solely on DR ads, to a robust, profitable Brand culminating in an IPO, one of the hardest things we had to do was to unteach ourselves that the digital performance marketing toolkit had changed the face of marketing forevermore.

In a fantastic post by Tom Roach entitled "In a World of Change, What Won't?", Roach walks through exactly this lesson we learned in our journey at Chubbies.

Over the past 20 years (my entire working career) the world has evolved at a rapid pace.

New media channels, new communication methods, new ecomm platforms popped up every other month.

And, yes, these were important to be on top of.

But just as important as what was changing, was what was not.

The human brain is a piece of technology that has been forged over 521 million years since the first organisms started to develop brain structures.

So 20, 30, 50 or even 100 years of change in the media landscape is not going to fundamentally rewire how we behave, how we process information, and how we make decisions.

In his book Thinking Fast and Slow, economist Daniel Kahneman proposed a mental model to describe how the brain makes decisions to guide behavior through two systems of thinking:

System 1 is the fast, automatic, intuitive, emotional, and - importantly - low effort system.

And System 2 is the slow, deliberate, rational, and high effort system.

Surprisingly, or unsurprisingly, the vast majority of human decisions are made with System 1 thinking vs. System 2 - it's a simple matter of effort. If you can make a decision quickly and easily, why wouldn't you?

As such, it became critical for us at Chubbies to align our brand with our customers' System 1 thinking - and at scale.

And Roach has a great framework for how to do this in his seven fundamental principles of effective marketing communication:

1. Reach: Brand expansion is about new audiences - "Your brand’s health depends on lots of people who don’t know you well, don’t think of you much and don’t buy you often, if at all."

2. Attention: It's not just about being seen, but being memorable. This is why simply measuring total impression volume isn't a KPI in most modern marketing orgs.

3. Creativity: It's not just about standing out - it's standing out in a delightful and surprising way.

4. Distinctiveness: As you are building a connection - it's important to ensure your customers know what they're connecting to, and that those brand assets are distinct in the milieu of brands they're surrounded with on the daily.

5. Consistency: It’s the drumbeat to which strong brands march.

6. Emotion: Emotions drive decisions. Get an emotional reaction - drive an emotional connection.

7. Motivation: Align with your audience's aspirations, and they align with you.

In a world obsessed with the next big thing, remember, the most effective growth strategies are those that resonate with the unchanging human psyche.

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