In a recent column in Marketing magazine ('Marketing's new mindset') Andrew Walmsley brought up the left-brain right-brain debate. Marketing is changing, he suggests, from being a campaign-dominated activity to one of 'continous activity', thanks mainly to the rise of digital technology which allows for shorter feedback loops and the ability to act in real time. The traditional marketing tactics of repetition and persistence will slowly become obsolete as marketers are now able to measure results immediately and tweak their efforts accordingly.
Although the article claims that marketers "need more than logic to succeed", it's not clear what that missing quality is, other than the ability to "manipulate, analyse and understand data in a way that marketers never had to before." Isn't that still a reliance on data, and presumably the application of logic/reasoning to that data? There's a noticeable lack of any mention of right-brain engagement, such as the application of wisdom, experience or big-picture thinking.
In a footnote to Walmsley's article we are reminded of the theory that "those who are 'left-brained' are said to be more logical, objective and analytical than the 'right-brained', who tend to be characterised as intuitive, subject and thoughtful individuals." Never mind the admission that "the reality is not so black and white", the damage has been done here in the choice of words: the right brain is all about the touchy-feely, fluffy stuff that can't be measured and there's no evidence for, whereas the left-brain deals with facts, data, evidence, reality.
For me, the whole piece was written from a left-brain perspective. For a jaw-dropping exposition of this I highly recommend Iain McGilchrist's The Master and His Emissary. The book has certainly convinced me that here in the West in the late 20th/early 21st century we are living in a culture dominated by left-brain thinking, where everything must be measurable, explicable, replicable.
It's the left hemisphere of our brain that seeks to abstract things, to store up information, to classify, but in order to see the wood from the trees it needs the right hemisphere which sees everything in context. The way we make sense of the world is a continuous dialogue between the two hemispheres of the brain. In McGilchrist's view (and he serves up plenty of evidence for this), the right hemisphere has a controlling or co-ordinating function which keeps the tension between the two 'brains' in balance... but in a culture where left-brain functions are held in higher esteem than those of the right, worshipped even, there is a danger that the left-brain can come to dominate.
Or in McGilchrist's terms, the Emissary (left brain) rises up against the Master (right brain) and skews our way of being in the world and our relationship to everything. Because sadly the left hemisphere is "a wonderful servant, but a very poor master."
Now the realisation of this really would mean a 'new mindset' for marketing. But since the issue is a lot, lot bigger than that, how we sell things to people just doesn't seem all that significant in the scheme of things.
