When you get an email, do you:

a)      Read instantly, but don’t always take action immediately.

b)      Read instantly, act immediately.

c)       Don’t read it until you have time to act.

d)      Notice it, but only read it if it looks important.

Why do you do that? Do you always do that? The way you consume email is likely a well-ingrained habit that feels so natural to you, that you probably don’t think twice about your method.

Humans Function through Habits

Habits are behaviour patterns that have become automatic to us. According to Charles Duhigg, the author of The Power of Habit, as much as 45% of our daily activities can be driven by habits and are meant to make us more efficient. Imagine how much mental energy we would consume if we had to make thoughtful decisions for such repetitive routines as what time to wake up each morning. We rely on habits so much, that when we stop to ponder why we do things a certain way, we can often stump ourselves.

The Habit Loop

In The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg explains how habits work:

Every habit has a cue, a reward and a routine. The cue is a trigger your brain will recognize to put you in automatic mode, like seeing unread emails in your inbox.  The reward is the benefit, whether emotional, physical or cognitive that your brain is craving. In this instance, your brain could be craving that release of anxiety when you know you’ve read all your email. The routine is the behaviour pattern that gets you the reward, such as reading through all your emails.

When you resist your craving and deny yourself that reward, how does that make you feel? Anxious, sad, annoyed or are you still feeling in control?

Can Marketing Influence Habits?

Deliberately changing your own habits or changing someone else’s habits are both possible but can be difficult. As marketers we can sometimes be on either side of the fence: motivating consumers to challenge their natural inclinations or reinforcing the reward for continuing their routines.

This video demonstrates how Target was able to study shopping behaviour of pregnant women to effectively market the right message at the right time:  How Target Knew a Teenager Was Pregnant Before Her Father Knew

They strategically capitalized on one common shopping habit of new parents: once they started shopping in one store, they were often too tired to go to multiple stores.

In this second example, we learn how an entire riot crowd was made to peacefully scatter by simply taking away one part of the equation: How the US Army Uses Habits

Understanding how habits work is just the tip of the iceberg. There’s much more to explore in the realm of habits, so dive in:

• The Power of Habit, by Charles DuHigg
• Famous list of 7 habits of highly effective people
• Bad Work Habits

Far from new, the topic of collaborative consumption has recently taken center stage.  If you’ve ever used a Laundromat or the services at a print shop you have participated in collaborative consumption.  So what’s changed?  Over the past decade we’ve lived in a culture that has indulged in hyper-consumption. This type of lifestyle is not only tough on the wallet but the environment as well. Rent is getting higher, city life is getting more expensive and for a large number of the population, maintaining a lifestyle of better and newer is no longer sustainable.

Img Source: HelloCity

Rachel Botsman and Roo Rogers cover this topic in great detail in their book “Collaborative consumption: What’s Mine is Yours.” Defined as “the sharing, swapping, bartering, trading or renting access to resources as opposed to ownership”  it’s a book based on the idea that we can reverse hyper consumption by going back to traditional means of sharing resources.

One harrowing image is shared within the first few chapters of the Great Pacific Garbage patch, an ugly and very real look at how we consume impacts one of the most important resources we rely on – water.  Like an iceburg, the garbage that sits on the top of this floating mess is only the beginning of a much bigger problem that forecasts a rather scary looking future.

Img Source: The Daily Green

So, what does a garbage patch in the middle of the ocean have to do with collaborative consumption? If you’re not altruistic type, why should any of this matter to you?  Here are 4 reasons you should care. In the examples below, you might be surprised to see some familiar startups that have already made a positive impact on your life:

1) It supports the idea of sustainable living.

• Make money, save money– Example: Relay Rides lets you rent cars or make money off renting your car.
• Why buy when you can rent? – Example: Rent the Runway, rent dresses by celebrity designers.
• Take advantage of unused space – Example: Air BnB, rent while you travel instead of booking at hotel.

2) It helps cuts down on waste.

• In the form of time, energy – so we can spend more time doing things we actually want to do. Example: TaksRabbit, a marketplace dedicated to empowering people to do what they love.
• In the form of garbage waste – find uses for things in your life that otherwise may no longer serve a purpose (Example: re-cycled crafts on Etsy)

3) It connects us to each other – and helps build community by…

• Connecting with Like-Minded Others (Etsy)
• Creating a space to meet new people, try new things – Example: Grubwithus, a social dining network that bring people and food together.
• Exchange Skills. Example: Skillshare, a global learning community.

4)  It has the potential to create very real, social change.

• Through shared resources. Example: Biki - bike sharing changing the way cities are managing their carbon footprint.  The Network Hub – Shared office and desk spaces for people to collaborate, share and nurture ideas.

• Through time banking:  This idea involves the transfer of time and skills from one individual to another. It’s an interesting concept to consider, if the connection between 4 or even 5 people could be made such that every person got something out of the group that was needed.

At the end of the day there are still a number of kinks to be worked out for this movement to work. For one, there is a strong element of trust that is required from both parties. Startups in Canada also far and few between. On the bright side, the internet has provided an accelerated platform for these kind of exchanges to take place allowing startups like AirBnB, eBay and ZipCar to achieve major recognition. If you think about it, the idea of collaborative consumption could apply to any area life where there is an opportunity to extend the use of something beyond its most obvious purpose. Have a driveway? Rent it out as a parking space. Always wanted to learn how to speak Italian? Learn from someone who might want cooking lessons. Going traveling? Swap  homes for vacation (a la “the Holiday”).  For more on this movement and businesses who are embracing this idea, this website is  full of ideas, interviews and thought starters: http://collaborativeconsumption.com. The ideas and opportunities are endless and it’s only up to us how to see how far we will take it.

20 day’s old now since Google’s policy changes took effect (March 1st) and with the initial public outrage subsided, it’s still worth noting a shifting reality in terms of how companies like Google, Facebook, and Microsoft will continue to use privacy policy changes to gain market share and position. And how that will change how marketers value them.

As the reality that data continues to provide brands the thread to opportunity that informs real-time digital communication plans and campaigns, policy changes will continue to shift and morph.

Not the most mind blowing radically future forward thought leadership topic of the year, but we should be reminded to pay attention to these behind-the-scenes mega competitive business play’s once in a while. Like Moneyball – these competitive moves are played out in the background – collecting, assessing, and assigning the value of Data – or in other terms – value of you; the user. Google’s changes are but the beginning and “remind us what it’s really selling: Us”

As said in the Feb 20th Fiscal Times article “In Google’s New Privacy Policy, a Push for Profits” Shawndra Hill, a Wharton operations and information management professor, says Google had little choice but to make better use of its data. “Strategically, if they want to compete against Facebook, they have to take advantage of the data that they have.” By combining the information collected across its various platforms, Google has increased its value to advertisers”.

By combining and consolidating its various platforms and their separate privacy policy’s, making one blanket policy so that if you as a user agree to share more of yourself on one of their platforms than another – they can make sure marketers can access your “whole” behavior set.

So by making one broad policy, Google effectively can now offer more insights through collecting consumer behavior data across its entire network of owned properties, making it that much more valuable to advertisers.

Certainly not to be trivialized, and I am by no means suggesting they are breaking laws, or disseminating any information that consumers don’t already offer up (although debatable). Some say “Google actually deserves credit for being transparent about the fact that it’s changing its privacy policies and offering its perspective on how it’s still being fair to users”.

Reserving judgment on the Google Monster, I am simply calling attention to the way businesses are going about competition through policy changes as another means of competitive advantage. Significant in that access and a greater understanding of how to use consumer behavior data is how marketers will win in 2012. And how those companies that most effectively and efficiently (fairly) collect and offer access to that data will be the go-to for marketers. It ain’t about “click-throughs” anymore – but we knew that already right?!

If done right, crowdsourcing is powerful stuff – allowing people to instantly collaborate on global projects. We saw some great examples last year, with both YouTube and Vimeo (backed by LG and Canon respectively) asking people to contribute content toward building one cohesive story. YouTube had the clear advantage of both reach and pedigree – backed by big Hollywood players Ridley Scott (Alien and Blade Runner, among other gems) and Kevin Macdonald (The Last King of Scotland). The basic idea for ‘Life in a Day’ was for people to submit video captured on July 24, 2010. They received over 4,500 hours of footage sent from 192 different countries, whittling it down to a 90-minute (edit much?) film that premiered on YouTube and Sundance. Critical response has been overwhelmingly positive, though in my humble opinion, the brand positioning of LG: Life is Good (But is it? According to the film, life is good, mediocre and sometimes horrifying) seems to have been lost in the shuffle.

Over on the Vimeo front, ‘The Story Beyond the Still’ embarked on a slightly more rigid exercise. Vincent Laforet, an early adopter of HD DSLR filmmaking shot the first piece of a narrative, asking filmmakers to submit the next chapter of an ongoing story. Also premiering at Sundance, the end result worked as an interesting piece of content, but more importantly a demo of what can be done with a Canon in the right hands. Even with its limited reach and its clunky, forgettable title, ‘The Story Beyond the Still’ still seems the more targeted of the two campaigns, reaching the exact niche audience (aspiring filmmakers) that Canon wants to engage with.

So which is better? Does it matter? I’m just excited to see social media and film play nice together. It’s about time.