Cowgirl Up

Three Ways Your Marketing Should Be More Like This Cuttlefish

So, I have this cephalopod obsession.

I’m not gonna lie: It originally had nothing to do with inspiration or innovation, and everything to do with the fact that, at age 13, it was hella cool to prove an original hypothesis (“Cuttlefish will respond to human mimicry of their tentacle positions, using our ten fingers to imitate their ten tentacles”) by signing with the cuttlefish living in the Monterrey Bay Aquarium. Smitten by cuttlefish and their willingness to interact with a human being, I started consuming everything I could read about cephalopods.

Since getting into social media, communications, and marketing, I’ve adopted the class Cephalopoda as a totem of sorts—there are three in my cubicle, and I had custom cephalopod-themed thank you cards made via Etsy, which I send mostly to business contacts. Only recently did I sit down and really think about why I like to be surrounded by cephalopods as I work. As it turns out, they’re a pretty good metaphor for marketing in the rapidly changing world of high tech and digital media.

1. “Cold” or “Deep” Intelligence

Why don’t we think of the octopus as intelligent or emotive, like dogs or cats? Research on the Giant Pacific Octopus (some of it’s quoted here, and I’d be happy to forward the PDF sent to me by a leading researcher if anyone would like it via email) suggests that the culprit may be the “cold” intelligence of the octopus, as it contrasts with the “warm” intelligence of mammals. Octopodes are problem-solvers who are enormously intelligent; research even suggests they’re probably conscious. They might conceivably be smarter than humans.

But until recently, nobody was studying octopus intelligence. Why? Because we don’t relate to how they express their intelligence. Their worldview—that of a predator who must continually solve the problem of getting food on the ocean floor—is enormously different from our own, leaving little time for the gregarious and affectionate disposition we relate to in our mammalian pets. We’re stuck in our own perspective, with the priorities inherent in living as a social primate, and for thousands of years we failed to notice the intelligence of some of the most interesting animals on Earth. How much have we failed to learn about the ocean as a result?

Marketers and corporate communicators often fall into the trap of forgetting user experience when users’ priorities, life experiences, and the way they express their needs differ enormously from what’s visible on our side of the screen. How much are we failing to learn about how users or customers experience our products as a result?

2. Cuttlefish and Color-Blindness

Cuttlefish are beautifully colorful animals, changing their colors and patterns in response to environmental stimuli, including humans and other cuttlefish. But they don’t see their own camouflage in the same way we do. In fact, they’re color-blind. It turns out that, instead of color vision, cuttlefish have polarization vision—and the best such vision found in any animal species so far.

So, when cuttlefish communicate through altering the visuals displayed on their skin, we can’t see what they see, and they can’t see what we see. The message they’re sending is in polarized light, but the message we receive is in color. Communication still happens, remarkably enough, but not only are we speaking different languages, neither of us is biologically equipped to learn the other’s language.

In marketing, some of the biggest goofs come from a message sent in one language that’s received in another; take Groupon, for example, which recently sent a message in the language of startups—a message that excused a major mistake by blaming it on the newness of the company—without considering that it would be received in the language of investors, people who trust kinda-sorta-important matters like their retirement savings to the ability of companies to have their shit together by the time they go public, no matter how new they are. Anyone who’s worked for a startup speaks “Oh shit we did not just do that, did we?” but anyone in communications for a publicly traded company, even a startup, also needs to speak “Yes, you just did that, you morons, and it may mean my 401(k) is worth $10,000 less than it was yesterday.”

3. Humboldt Squid Turn Global Warming into World Domination

There won’t be a lot of winners in the animal kingdom if global warming continues. Especially not in the ocean, where a warming world could change just about everything most species rely on to obtain food, habitat, and other resources. The Humboldt squid, however, is already winning big. Its population is exploding, to the point that some areas have removed fishing limits for these squid entirely.

Why do squid win when the other guys lose? For one thing, the Humboldt squid eats most of the other guys. It’s not dependent on krill or fish populations to survive; whatever’s in abundance, the squid will learn to feed on it. Even other cephalopods might fall prey to these indiscriminate eaters. So, when any outside force throws the competition’s habits out of whack, Humboldt squid show up to decimate the remaining population. That benefits them twice: First, they get a meal, and second, they’re reducing the number of predators remaining to eat tiny Humboldt squid babies. 

Marketing in a recession is a lot like living in the ocean during a period of global warming. If you’re a salmon, and in the business of swimming one way, spawning one way, and eating just a handful of things, you’re in trouble. If you’re a Humboldt squid, you’re dining on the salmon. Can your marketing plan “feed” on whatever remains abundant when times are tough, or are you dependent on a single source of success? How many markets do you “swim” in? The next time the economy contracts, will you be in the squid’s position, or the salmon’s?