Dan Monheit on why he wrote a behavioural science book for marketers

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by Anna Munhin Feb 1, 2023 News
Dan Monheit on why he wrote a behavioural science book for marketers

Dan Monheit; image supplied by Hardhat.

After the release of his first book, Dan Monheit can now add author to his list of accomplishments.

The Why, The Book provides creative solutions to help business leaders and marketers understand the quirks of human nature and create better strategies for behavioral change.

The industry is embracing behavioural science and marketers need to understand the irrationalities of human nature if they are to succeed in creating better campaigns, according to Monheit in an interview with Ad News.

It was something that had been in the works for a long time.

Sophia Prendeville, Hardhat's client engagement lead, asked if they could get the book out for Christmas. I don't think it would be that difficult: we've produced a lot of the content already and we've still got a few weeks to go.

It seemed reasonable to me. It was more work and more fun than we thought it would be.

Monheit has been sending out The Why newsletter to thousands of marketers for the last couple of years.

It was partly my own curiosity that led to The Why. The whole thing started when a friend asked me why she kept the boxes from her expensive shoes and jewellery.

I had people asking me about everything from standing outside a restaurant to New Year's resolutions. It became this real labour of love - it's one of those things where every fortnight when it comes around, it's like 'I can't believe it's already been two weeks and I have to do another one', but it's the most fun thing I

It seemed like it would be easy to write the book. A lot of people were asking if we were going to do a book version, and we said we would just have a try.

Dan Monheit - The Why, The Book

Monheit said the wave of behavioural science has been rising as marketers become aware of their biases.

There is a lot of great work coming out of the field and I am doing what I can here.

I think marketers are starting to realize that they are all in the same boat. A field of study dedicated to why people behave the way they do feels like a good thing for us to understand.

Monheit said that marketers spend a lot of time reading, writing and asking how things work, so it's important for them to ask questions about our own motives.

There are questions about how all of this works. It's great that we ask, but the thing that we don't often ask is how people work.

The people are an important part of the equation. In the absence of asking how people work, we tend to assume that they work like pragmatic, rational individuals, when in reality, most of our decisions can't be further from pragmatic and rational.

The most time was spent on editing and refining because the illustrations and majority of the copy had already been done.

We had to figure out how to get from a PDF on a screen to a book on the shelf.

The guys at Good One Creative did all the illustrations and looked after the publishing side too.

I woke up yesterday to find that we were the number one seller in the Marketing & Consumer Behaviour category. I was close to falling off my chair. The answer is yes, at least this week from a sample of one person.

There are three books that Monheit would recommend to anyone interested in behavioural science.

Richard Thaler's Nudge is one of the classics that set me on the path to writing my own book.

The prime market for this book is curiosity marketers, according to Monheit.

There is an inherent curiosity about why people do the things that they do. The book is easy to read and will help you understand what's happening around you.

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