You can’t have one without the other.
The left brain-right brain theory came out of the work of Nobel Prize winning psychologist Roger W. Sperry. This is the guy who actually cut the brain into 2 halves and had a bunch of split-brain patients. The essence of his findings were that the left brain is wired for certain functions such as: logic, math and analytical thinking; while the right brain is wired for things like: creativity, intuition, reading emotions, and recognizing faces.
In the world of marketing, we are in a catch-up phase where the use of analytics is on the rise. All of that left-brain power was just not a big part of the marketing mix. Or rather it was not an effective part. The availability of necessary data was just not there for that left brain to churn through. So quite naturally, the right brain got to do more of the work. In some arenas, the right brain’s creative and intuitive nature was what marketing was all about. But as we have seen, the right brain marketing efforts of the past may have gotten lost in all of its creative energy, and became awash in creativity for the pure creative effect. In that pre-internet marketing model, getting the right creative agency was key. They were the genesis of marketing.
But now, all of a sudden, the amount of data is exploding as is the computer processing power that is cheaply available to us. We now have behavioral, demographic and transactional data that is enabling us to learn a lot more about the buyer. And so, the use of analytics is steadily growing so we can make better marketing decisions about what is effective and what is not. It seems that the creative side, that right brain processing power is quickly moving to take a back seat to all the strategizing that is taking place.
But hold on for one second, you have seen this story before. Whether you reflect back on Space Odyssey 2001 and what happened with HAL; or more you recently reflect on the meltdown in the financial markets driven by all those algorithms and the quants behind them, the same is true. Somewhere along the way, the logic failed and the processing model did not behave the way it was supposed to. And of course, when the unexpected happens, it really is unexpected and we are not prepared for the recourse. So the left brain also has the ability to go off the deep end as well.
So, as we add more analytics to drive our demand generation processes, we cannot let the left brain take over with its extraordinary logic and reasoning. The right brain brings that intuition and experience to guide the process, and the imagination to create different possibilities and hypotheses. In fact, recent research on the left brain-right brain subject has shown that if the 2 sides can be harnessed together, as co-processors on various tasks, it produces the best results. The challenge of course is to establish that process that will harness the 2 sides together.