If it comes to mind, it comes to be

On Monday, after 24 hours of speculation, it was confirmed that the venerable department store BHS was going into administration. Given that up to 11,000 jobs would be put at risk as a result, the story quickly became headline news.

Two days later we heard something else about BHS.

That same Monday had proved its best trading day of the year to date, with sales up 80% on the equivalent day in 2015.

This piece of news was announced with an air of irony, bordering on bemusement: why had the brand been most successful on the very day when it had been in the news for being extremely unsuccessful?

Well, at least in part, simply because it had been in the news.

For the first time in years, BHS was on the nation's mental radar.

And that alone, presumably, was enough to get more people than normal to go shop there, even if the happening that got it on that radar was distinctly negative.

This sort of thing happens because we are 'cognitive misers'.

Thinking burns up a lot of energy, so we do it only when we really have to.

If we can just stick on the automatic pilot and go with the unanalysed flow, we will.

So as a result, if something readily comes to mind, it often inevitably comes to be.

We had a personal experience of this phenomenon during the early days of Dye Holloway Murray.

In our first year or two, the lion's share of pitch RFPs that came our way was referred by one particular consultancy, with whom we'd built a solid relationship.

So we spent a lot of time and energy trying to think up new ways to impress them - speculative creative ideas, thought pieces about branding and communication, and so on - in the hope of getting more. 

Until one day we noticed something.

The instances when we received an RFP from them were invariably right after we'd bumped into one of their principals on the street.

Presumably that random encounter had made us top of mind, so if they returned to the office soon after to be briefed by a new client, we'd be on the tip of their tongues as an option.

The penny dropped that we'd been pursuing the wrong communications model: trying to achieve persuasion, when salience would prove much more effective.

So we stopped doing all that extra work, and one of the Partners would regularly just take a stroll around their office area during lunch hour instead, in the hope of seeing and being seen.

By memory we ended up receiving at least as many RFPs, and certainly expended far less time and thought to get them.

Sometimes the advertising game is a lot simpler than we make it...