Most Marketing Doesn’t Work (Because Most Humans Don’t)
Marketing is the science of human motivation. That’s it. That’s all we need to do.
We’re trying to motivate people. To buy something. To sign up. To stop doing something. To start doing something else. To make a change. It doesn’t matter if it’s a new app, a personal trainer, or a compost bin. The challenge is always the same:
How do I get someone to do something they weren’t already doing?
Now here’s the big problem. The reason most marketing is useless. The reason most people can’t market, even if they’re really good at explaining things.
It’s because most people don’t actually understand how humans work.
Worse, they think they do.
“If It Makes Sense, People Will Do It” (No. They Won’t.)
Most people assume that if something is clearly beneficial, people will just… do it.
They think all they need to do is explain:
- Why their thing is good value
- Why it’s better than competitors
- Why it makes sense
And then they’re baffled when nobody clicks.
If you’ve ever worked in comms, you already know how this goes. You’re not trying to sell lipstick or leggings. You’re trying to get people to:
- Stop smoking while pregnant
- Put litter in the bin
- Eat less junk
- Show up to a smear test
- Wear sunscreen every day
These things are obviously good for you. There’s robust data. Strong incentives. Rational messaging. And yet… often getting people to do these small life saving things is a huge drag.
Let’s talk about sunscreen for a second. Sunscreen helps prevent one of the most common and fatal cancers (melanoma). It’s cheap. Easy to use. Oh, and it slows down 90% of visible ageing.
So everyone uses it, right?
Wrong. Some people actively believe sunscreen causes cancer. Or that red meat cures everything, or that vaccines are a conspiracy.
(If that’s you, I beg you: eat a vegetable. Just one. Maybe something with fibre.)
And they aren’t a tiny minority. In fact, there’s quite a few of them. And the worst part is, many of these people started thinking this way in response to, because of, public health messaging which comms people spent months planning.
We’re Not Rational. We’re Rationalising.
There’s no one-size-fits-all answer to any of this.
Because human motivation is messy.
We’re not as smart as we think we are, and we overestimate how rational other people are, too.
In fact, the smarter you are, the better you are at making emotional decisions sound logical.
🔹 Dunning-Kruger Effect: People with low ability at a task often overestimate their ability. People with a high ability overestimate people with a low ability.
(Citation: Kruger & Dunning, 1999)
🔹 Cognitive Fluency: If something is easy to understand, we believe it more.
Even just making it rhyme makes it feel truer, this is known as the “rhyme-as-reason effect” (McGlone & Tofighbakhsh, 2000).
🔹 Milgram Experiment: Most people will deliver an electric shock to someone if told to by an authority figure, even when they think it’s causing real harm.
(Stanley Milgram, 1963. Horrifying. Still true.)
🔹 Asch Conformity Experiment: People will knowingly give the wrong answer just to fit in with a group.
(Asch, 1951. The lines were obviously different lengths. They agreed anyway.)
🔹 Elevator Conformity: People will turn and face the wrong way in an elevator just because others are doing it.
(No, really, this was demonstrated in a 1962 hidden camera experiment on Candid Camera. Later replicated in social psych studies.)
Basically: we are soft, squishy, highly impressionable creatures who think our brains are like organic computers, but mostly just want to be liked and stay alive.
What Actually Drives Human Motivation?
So what does motivate us? It’s not just logic. It’s much deeper than that.
Here are a few of the big drivers:
- Social status
- Sexual attractiveness / desirability
- Looking good (right now)
- Avoiding pain / discomfort
- Pleasure / enjoyment
- Nostalgia / childhood dreams
- Feeling important / needed / admired
- Helping others (sometimes)
- Avoiding death (eventually)
- Hunger. Like, a lot.
Now, smart people? They’re even worse. They’ve got more language, more resources, and better justifications for their emotional choices.
They’ll convince themselves they bought that car for “fuel efficiency” when actually… it was just hot.
Logic Doesn’t Sell. Desire Does.
Take me, for example.
I could really do with a dash cam. Or a home security system. Both are practical. They could protect my family. They’re relatively affordable. They make sense.
But what did I buy?
A Mulberry bag. That I 100% don’t need. But it ticked the boxes:
✨ Beauty
✨ Status
✨ Teenage dream unlocked
That’s what people buy into. Not logic. Not spreadsheets. Not sensible outcomes.
They buy stories, feelings, identity, and dreams.
People Don’t Want Prevention. They Want Pleasure.
This is why people won’t take the free, fast, life-saving option.
- They won’t check their balls in the shower
- They won’t wear SPF daily
- They won’t floss
Because it’s boring. It’s uncomfortable. And they’d rather enjoy the bath.
Even “looking good when I’m older” isn’t motivating to most people. “Looking hot tonight” is.
Until something changes.
For instance say you have a heart attack. Suddenly, status doesn’t matter. Safety does. And running every day becomes your new priority. Getting skinny is a happy side effect, but not the goal.
Motivation shifts. It’s fluid. And marketers who don’t understand this are shouting into the void.
So… Why Is Most Marketing Useless?
Because:
- It assumes people are logical
- It assumes people will read more than a headline
- It assumes people make decisions based on features
Good marketers know they’re trying to convince a brain made of grey goo to act in a way that even it doesn’t fully understand. And they can’t predict what will work until they get data.
That’s why the smartest thing you can do is sometimes this:
Get dumber.
Forget the fancy features. Forget the perfect arguments.
What would make someone feel something? What would make them want this?
Appeal to their ego. Their hunger. Their desire to be admired. Their longing to be seen.
It’s like that old Mad Men saying ‘sex sells’.
TL;DR
- Most people don’t do what’s best for them.
- They don’t change behaviour based on logic.
- They change when something hits them emotionally, socially, or viscerally.
- Motivation is fluid, unpredictable, and often irrational.
- If you want to sell? Understand desire. And get used to the idea of testing.
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