She should have music (wherever she goes)

In 1982, Gerald J. Gorn conducted an experiment in which subjects saw pens of one colour while hearing pleasant background music, and pens of another colour while hearing unpleasant background music.  Later on, the subjects were offered a choice of pens and – you guessed it -they tended to pick the pens that had been paired with the pleasant music.

This phenomenum is known as associative conditioning, and it is used extensively by that most influential of industries, Advertising. Next time you look at an advert, pay attention and you’ll notice that products are associated with humour, particular colours, select music, sexual innuendo and smiley attractive people having good times.  (Go ahead, you can associate these things with us, if you like.)

So what has this got to do with project leadership?  Well, I’m not going to recommend “Eye of the Tiger” as a project theme tune, or even to propose that you are as flagrant as I have been with the pictures in this blog, but I do want to point out that the stake-holders for your project (your team members, sponsors, governance group, customers etc.) have all got those same, sophisticated, “association engines” between their ears that the advertisers use without asking…so maybe you should have a careful look at things like:

• The environment your project teams meet and work in -what does it say about the importance of the project?
• Your use of colour, humour, pictures, multimedia, language, formats and fonts in your communications.

Ensure that they all align to give all your stake holders very positive associations with your project.

Philip Greenwood

Tags: associative, conditioning