Registration for Design for Conversion New York City is open.

Peter van der Putten

Peter van der Putten is the Worldwide Director Decisioning Solutions at Pegasystems. He helps companies worldwide to optimize customer experience and improve customer lifetime value by delivering real time ‘next best action’ recommendations and intelligent dialogues across online and traditional channels, driven by interaction strategies, real time decisioning and predictive analytics.

Read the rest of his bio and the ones of the other speakers here.

Platinum sponsor and case-owner Coop Switzerland

Coop is a large retail corporation, offering everything you need for a living: grocery stores, hardware stores, pharmacies, restaurants, banking, fuel stops – you need it, Coop offers it. Besides beeing omnipresent in Switzerland, they really take a lead in social responsibility and sustainability. Starting with fitting product lines going over to employee care and ending with many projects to preserve swiss cultural heritage and nature. They never said it this way, but the: “Don’t be evil”, fits them quite well. You can expect a case study that brings Coop’s engagement and the DfC’s main theme “authenticity” together. And no, it won’t be optimizing the conversion in their online store – think more strategic.

Platinum Sponsor and Case Owner XING

Pro bono case-owner Greenpeace

About XING

We’re currently working with the User Experience Department of XING together to form an exciting case. If you’ve lived under a rock in the last years: XING is one of the few true success stories of the internet business. They created a global social network with focus on business relationships. They all did it on their own and they actually earn their money – how many startups do you know, that got this right? So they already have achieved quite some fame and fortune and now they’ll join the DfC to present a case to you – be excited, now!

About Greenpeace

Well, Greenpeace needs no real introduction. Since some decades they’re working as a NGO around the globe to preserve our world for the next generations to come. Lately they’ve had some huge success using social media and social networks for their causes. Just check Google or Facebook for KitKat or BP. Currently we’re discussing which case could be brought to you, maybe we keep it as a suprise.

A frequent theme running throughout his engagements is the subject of Unpacking the Creative Process. Creative processes need not be haphazard or questionable procedures; rather, creativity can become deliberate and effective procedures. This deliberate approach to creativity and innovation is captured in what he calls Design Thinking.

See all speakers for the DfC Cologne

It is a basic need for every relationship, that you think your counterpart is authentic, may it be between companies and customers, among Social network buddies or even in a game. Let’s take that game example as games represent the most artificial environment – actually it’s one of the key definitions of a game, that it has to be virtual. In a game you maybe represent yourself with an avatar or with an anonymous nickname. There can be no connection to the social world outside the games boundaries. But still, in this boundaries there is the need for authenticity. Your have to be reliable, authentic and trustworthy. What you do and what you represent must be corresponding – otherwise nobody would want to play with you.

So even in a digital world, where everything is possible and nothing can be assured, there is a need for authenticity. And authenticity is always about relationships and communication – even when you talk to yourself. (Would be a bad start, if you couldn’t be capable to be honest with yourself.)

So, one could think authenticity is about this new communication and marketing paradigms, which order everyone to replace stupid brainwash through push-media, with open and honest conversations and networks of trust and friendship. Well, if that’s actually you or your company and you’re already doing all things this style, then this is authentic for you. If you think that you now just have to play your PR and marketing in another way – think again.

There are a many thrilling questions regarding the definition of authenticity, if it is needed, how to be authentic or how to support others to achieve it. For the 4th DfC in Cologne we will present cases and speakers, that evolve around this theme – we believe the theme will be thrilling and exciting to work on as it touches so many aspects of our daily work and world.

We are really looking forward to the cases, speakers and you! Get your ticket right now.

First confirmed speaker is persuasion design expert Kath Straub, other speakers will follow soon.

The Venue
We like the conference to be a party, that’s why we went all out this time. We’ve booked the new Club Bahnhof Ehrenfeld.

Registration
Registration will be online soon (as will be the new website). We  only have 100 seats, so be quick. If you want to be really sure sent a tweet to @dfcworld with a reference to the 4th edition/Cologne and we will put you on the pre-registration list. (early bird fee will be about € 175,-)

Argument map for this article included.

The argument I do want to make might come more as a surprise. In my honest opinion it is the greatest marketing fallacy around today. It’s the fallacy that marketers think in a well-reasoned or rational way. And by marketers I mean you.


I would love to extend this argument with “there is not enough science in the marketing discipline” and “the intuition of marketers is worth nothing, so why not just dismantle the whole discipline?”. But first things first.

Marketers are just like humans
Important eyeopener for marketers this decade was the fact that consumers are not the rational agents we expected them to be. We went from Homo Economicus to Homo Sapiens (PDF). But what applies to consumers also applies to marketers. Marketeers are very normal members of the Homo Sapiens family, despite the fact that marketers themselves forget this now and then. Even marketing experts are not a special kind of species. All human, all irrational. Actually very logical when you think about it.

Bounded Rationality
Marketers don’t act rationally because it’s impossible to do so. Nobel laureate Herbert Simon sees economic decision making as a vain attempt to be rational. If a complete analysis is to be done, a decision will be immensely complex. So when you are making your business case you think you are being very rational. But we both know that your excel sheet doesn’t contain a complete analysis. When you are modelling the market you hopefully realize that your equation is very limited. That’s because our thinking is limited, limited by our rationality.

Intuition doesn’t get smart by itself
Let me just be clear; I am definitely not somebody that dismisses rationality and says that intuition will save the day. It is a pity that some half-witted marketers pick up one book (1!) and think their gut feeling is something special. It is wrong to assume that what you can’t process rationally, you can process intuitively. The critique on Blink was that Malcolm Gladwell didn’t do a particular good job in explaining how intuition gets smart. Because in fact there is something special about the intuition of marketers when you compare them with experts in other fields.

World class chess players can process a stunning number of moves upfront. And very experienced firemen, while under immense pressure, can make snap judgments that come close to ideal decisions. But this requires years of practice. Intuition learns from experience when there is clear feedback. The marketer knows his market. He recognizes signals from this market. So the marketer’s intuition learns from this feedback, right?

What happens when I push this button?
Wrong. You can’t compare playing chess and firefighting with doing marketing. The market is a black box, far too complex to be understood. Let alone to be influenced or even controlled. It not some piece of machinery based on 4 P’s for example. No buttons that can be pushed. The signals that the marketers recognize, have nothing to do with their actions. Push button “Price” down and up goes “Sales”. Sorry, no cause-effect relation there. No learning curve. No nothing.

Conclusion
It wouldn’t be a big deal when I would say that marketers are irrational bastards, like the rest of us. Even the decisions that “Czech chess master”-type marketers make are fucked up.

Or am I being irrational when I say that?

Next to that we have loads of new surprises we want to show you (but we can’t otherwise it wouldn’t be a surprise anymore)!

Stay tuned for speaker updates, which we will announce through the website and Twitter.