The traditional marketing model was invented at one time (the 1950s) it was convinced that a prospect's buying behaviour could be easily modelled by classifying each prospect in a linear process according to his or her profile and recent behaviour. For example, attending a seminar placed it on the "Need Awareness" box, while a request for a price made it advance to "Decision Making".

In reality, each of us is constantly agitated by multiple questions. This is a biological truth, as Daniel Kahneman reminds us: faced with a choice, our mind mobilizes several circuits that each propose a different solution. A prospect can switch from one state to another in a matter of seconds. Worse, it can be in several states at the same time: to be interested in the functionalities of a software to the point of wanting to contact the salesman, but to be worried about not having a sufficient budget. Because they are based on an incomplete customer experience, traditional marketing strategies are built on unreliable ground.

Can decision and indecision co-exist in a prospect mind ? A consumer is more than one person at a time. This is called a role. He can be in several roles: for example, the mother who wants to buy candy for her daughter will hesitate between the role of mother who wants to please her daughter and the one who is worried about her health. Society is hierarchical: we are in turn "manager","father","passionate". You can be at the crossroads of many facets.

A weak signal is heard differently by everyone. Because the future is inherently extremely unstable, everyone sees the present and therefore the future differently. We're working on weak signals. We begin by finding a paradoxical fact that inspires reflection. The weak signal is the unimportant thing that turns out to be crucial. There are a multitude of them, the most important thing is the person who sees them: you hear all the same information, but interpret it differently.

Albert Einstein was the first to assert that a particle of light could behave as both an object (a corpuscle) and a wave. He demonstrated this through logic, then this reality was proved by experimentation (experience of Thomas Young's two slots). Later, the Frenchman Louis de Broglie made the hypothesis, then verified, that electrons, which are at the heart of matter, possess the same duality. This is why we talk about superposition: every particle is located in several states at the same time. Moreover, it is only at the moment of observation that the particle "chooses" to be either a corpuscle or a wave. This is referred to as "reduction of the wave function". To illustrate this idea, a parallel can be drawn with the shadow of a cylinder. Depending on whether it is observed in its axis or on its side, it is round or rectangular. The 2 states are superimposed, but describe the same object...

Like a particle, a target can adopt several states simultaneously. She may be curious to discover such a new feature and not convinced by its solidity; worried about the financial situation of the supplier and eager to work with the salesperson who represents him. On the other hand, the more we observe the target and ask him a lot of questions, like a journalist conducting an interview, the more we "reduce his wave function": we then measure with precision in which states (in plural!) it is located, and what relevant marketing actions should be triggered. We then move from a probabilistic state governed by indeterminacy to a deterministic world, closer to our Newtonian and Cartesian way of thinking : "I measure, therefore I am".

The professional's role is therefore primarily to practice a 360° marketing study of weak signals. To do this, he must multiply the opportunities to measure the prospect's needs (by email, on social networks, during physical events, with the help of appropriate thematic content) and use numerous digital tools that allow him to visualize the paths on his website, clicks in emails, reactions to posts on LinkedIn or Facebook... As soon as he has been able to identify a behavior, associated with a specific prospect, he can do the following marketing ans sales action - not before.

Strategic marketing plans are based on the idea that the purchasing cycle is a form of continuity: the more the buyer is put under pressure, the more his desire to buy increases. Experience has shown that increasing marketing pressure by sending an inappropriate message 20 times has no more effect than once. In the case of an emailing, this even ends directly in the spam box... proof that an insufficiently relevant campaign is not only ineffective, but even counter-productive !

After how many exposures to the message can a prospect take action? Is it true that you have to "touch" it 7 times to make it react?

It's an idea from the world before. We work on averages corresponding to a push world. The average does not mean anything. The number of contacts varies from one market to another. We put advertising pressure at the heart of the business, but if someone tries to sell me a bad product 100 times, it won't work. The hyper relevance of the message is already more interesting. It is the key element, and digital, thanks to Big Data, makes it possible to adapt the answers to a behavior which induces that the prospect is interested or not. Measure relevance and more accurate than measure the number of contacts per prospect.
 

In 1900, for a German equipment manufacturer who asked him to calculate the amount of energy emitted by light bulb filaments, the physicist Max Planck obtained incomprehensible measurement results. He finds that to "move" the electron orbiting the nucleus of the atom, a certain amount of energy (in packets or quantas, hence the term "quantification") must be applied to it. Below that, nothing happens, which contradicts a fundamental law of Newtonian physics, according to which any action generates a reaction of the same force. If the energy deployed is sufficient, the electron moves into a higher orbit, then releases the energy with a frequency and amplitude that depend on its position.

Let us consider the prospect not as a point evolving on a unidirectional time axis, (traditional representation of the process of purchase or sale) but as an electron whose level of interest for your offer would correspond to its orbit of gravitation around the nucleus. If it is low, it is at the "Not interested" level. Higher, it reaches "Curiosity", then "Consideration", "Commitment" and finally "Decision". It is possible to measure the prospect's interest at the frequency and amplitude with which it manifests itself. And to make it perform a quantum leap to a higher level, you need to deploy a certain level (marketing quantum) of energy. While knowing that when the electron does not receive any more energy, it descends naturally towards a level of orbit and lower excitation.

The role of the marketer therefore consists first of all in measuring this amplitude and this frequency. This is possible today thanks to new digital technologies. The frequency corresponds to the number of visits made to your website, and the amplitude of its interest is calculated according to the pages viewed. Once the "orbit" has been identified, the marketer must trigger a certain amount of energy (a set of messages) calculated to reach a new level. The level of this quantum is determined by observation - a series of tests on similar prospects. Although we are talking about quanta, it is a question of generating energy quantas adapted to qualitative marketing.

The best way to get a message across is to tell a story. And this story has to take place in a precise order. The plot of Cyrano de Bergerac would not be the same if Roxane declared his love to him from the beginning of the play!

However, traditional marketing is limited to the sequenced sending of automated messages. In his rather simplistic vision, the priority of message succession is defined in advance. TV advertising, posters, radio spots, web banners, the advertiser controls the order of passage, BUT only in a communication window for all its operations (between such date and such date) or empirically. For him, it's easier to manage... Not sure that the decision-maker perceives these desynchronized campaigns as well.

"Quantum cognition" is the name given to approaches that successfully apply the mathematical formalism of quantum theory to model cognitive phenomena. The issue is of crucial importance because it has immediate implications in Marketing. Provided that the sender can make as many measurements as he wishes, full persuasion is always possible. The sender can make the recipient believe what he wants. But no one expects the recipient to be persuaded indefinitely. Our research examines what can be achieved with short measurement sequences.

In quantum cognition, this is related to the assumption that people have difficulty transforming different types of information into a single, stable representation of the world. Our analysis suggests that this very characteristic makes a person easily influenced. And that a person can be more effectively influenced by a well-designed distraction rather than by arguments of informational value complementary to the decision. Distraction occurs when the mind is turned towards a perspective that the receiver has difficulty combining with his current perspective. This is a common experience that marketers and salespeople use as a tactic, intuitively feeling that it is very effective.
 

Noncommutative geometry first emerged from the work of the mathematician John Von Neumann, then it was taken up and developed by the Frenchman Alain Connes. In the quantum universe, the order of terms in an equation cannot be changed without altering the result. Impossible, for example, to write only 3x2=2x3. If you ask a particle "give me your position", then "give me your speed", you will get a different result than "give me your speed" followed by "give me your position". If you change a letter, the word, or the sentence, no longer works, as in the case of this anagram: the economic crisis / the comic scenario. The same letters, but two opposite directions!

More and more, audiences are looking for meaning. Good communication no longer consists in selling a product to a consumer, but in telling a story, an experience he will live as a customer. In this context of search for meaning, the personalized scenario of the campaigns is essential.

It is therefore up to the CMO to define, using A/Z testing, the correct order in which messages are transmitted, in the form of storytelling. This scripted marketing strengthens the relationship of trust between the decision-maker and the brand, between the buyer and the salesperson.