My Brain hurts - Wunderman books

as they have TV schedules etched into
their brains.
But no one will remember TV schedules if
they don’t have to. And so the next
generation are likely to use their TiVos
differently, collecting most of their viewing
to watch when they want. Classical ad
industry watch out.
• Current drivers use satnav as an aid to the
mental maps they already have in their
heads. But who will bother to memorise a
map if they don’t need to?
Like the generation of schoolkids who forgot how to
add one and one to get two because they were
allowed calculators in their math exams, expect the
next generation of motorists to be completely lost
when their satnav breaks down.
Expect the next
generation of motorists to
be completely lost when
their satnav breaks down.
8. CONSUMERS LEARN ONLY
THROUGH DOING
Every tech device or service today comes with an
instruction manual, which can be up to five centimetres
thick.
Tech manuals are so incomprehensible that some
manufacturers pray silently that someone will write a ‘for
Dummies’ book to explain how to use their new device.
But the problem goes beyond this.
Observations show that most consumers never read the
instruction book, no matter how well written.
The only way most consumers learn is by handling a
device and trying to make it work. The only way most
consumers learn is by doing.
‘Plug and play’ was therefore never a manufacturer
strategy. It is just a consumer reality.
Instructions for using
payphones in South Africa
are visual, because South
Africans speak eleven
different languages. Other
telecoms companies could
learn from this.
46 WUNDERMAN
MY BRAIN HURTS 47