When studying for a physics degree, you learn all about various laws and hypotheses. You learn the importance of being able to apply everything you learn to real-life situations, in order to gain a better understanding of why things happen as they do, rather than simply accepting others’ opinions as your own. What many in the physics world do not understand, however, is the applicability of these tenets in other, seemingly unrelated fields. Take marketing, for example. Dan Cobley, marketing director at Google, recently gave a TED Talk in which he integrates his passion for physics with his love of marketing. Newton’s Law Cobley says this law, which states, “the force equals mass times acceleration,” can be rearranged to represent, “acceleration equals force over mass, which means that for a larger particle, a larger mass, it requires more force to change its direction.” When applying this law to marketing, “the more massive a brand, […] the more force is needed to change its positioning.” He applies this to large brands, such as Hoover, which is synonymous with vacuums despite their attempts to sell washing machines; and Unilever and P&G, both companies that opted to “keep brands separate, like Oreo and Pringles and Dove rather than having one giant parent brand.” By keeping individual brands smaller, they are less cumbersome and more agile, and therefore flexible enough to be competitive in the marketplace. Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle Cobley admits this principle, which states, “that it’s impossible, by definition, to measure exactly the state, i.e., the position, and the momentum of a particle, because the act of measuring it, by definition, changes it,” is a little more technical, but still applicable in marketing: “Think about the group of moms who are talking about their wonderful children in a focus group, and almost none of them buy lots of junk food,” he said. “And yet, McDonald’s sells hundreds of millions of burgers every year. Think about the people who are on accompanied shops in supermarkets, who stuff their trolleys full of fresh green vegetables and fruit, but don’t shop like that any other day.” In other words, marketing is not an exact science. The very act of marketing a product (i.e., targeting potential customers and trying to gauge their reactions to various products) can immediately distort their feedback, as they feel under pressure to react in a certain way. However, if you are able to factor this uncertainty into your marketing strategies, you will be better able “to measure what consumers actually do, rather than what they say they’ll do or anticipate they’ll do.” The Scientific Method Described by Cobley as “the axiom of physics,” this method states that “you cannot prove a hypothesis through observation[;] you can only disprove it.” Likewise, “you can invest for a long time in a brand, but a single contrary observation of that positioning will destroy consumers’ belief.” Using BP as an example, Cobley is able to show how a company who has always portrayed themselves as being environmentally responsible can ruin their image with one mistake. Likewise, Toyota, “revered as the most reliable of cars” lost much of their reputation due to the recall of several of its vehicles. The Second Law of Thermodynamics In a nutshell, the second law of thermodynamics states “that entropy, which is a measure of the disorder of a system, will always increase.” In other words, Cobley asserts that even the smallest amount of chaos in a marketing campaign can result in increasing disorder, something that is “unsettling for marketers”, but can actually be “a good thing” in that it “gets your brand closer to the people, more in with the people.” By allowing the distribution of energy to become a “democratizing force,” you can embrace this trend and “find a way to work with it.” Having a physics degree can give you lots of different abilities that apply in ways you’ve never imagined. Studying physics is more about developing a way of thinking about the world, and can benefit all aspects of your life. That physics degree will help you square a hypotenuse, but it will also help if you happen to be in marketing.
Thomas Gibbs is a freelance author and frequent contributor at Ethical Affluence.
