Stairway to heaven

A few weeks back I walked into a very tall building in the heart of London. I was only going up 2 flights and to save waiting for a lift, and to get some much needed exercise, I thought I would change my default setting and go by stairs. One problem-I couldn’t find them. And so despite my best and well-meaning intentions, my default setting continued as my default.

We know climbing stairs is good for us-it’s a good workout and can even save time.

And yet few office buildings do anything meaningful to encourage stair climbing beyond maybe the odd notice or two trying to encourage people to stair not lift and which I suspect has only a very limited effect.

What is the first thing we normally see when we enter a building? It’s the lifts not the stairs.

And indeed when we do find the stairs we will usually find some grim, fluorescent-lit, concrete passage hidden away behind fire doors. I have even been known to end up locked out when moving between floors by stairs because I didn’t have the correct key card access.

It can be very difficult to change our default settings as every marketer will attest.

Maybe we should hide the lifts and make the stairs more prominent. Give them a lick of paint, put carpet on the stairs and framed prints on the walls. And while we’re at it consider making lift access dependent on key card.

That should do it.

But this kind of thinking is as relevant to marketers as it is to the designers and architects of buildings. We may not be designing buildings but as marketers we are architects of consumer choices. And the actions we take can help make it easy or difficult for consumers to choose.

We already pay great attention to how our products and services get noticed when the consumer is shopping. Supermarkets place great store on the location of certain products to optimise yield. And online we all battle for Google to promote us high on the rankings.

But there are many other places where we can influence customer choice through making certain choices more or less attractive, and this is not just about price incentives or penalties.

We may for example be required to influence channel choice. And just like the choice between stairs and lifts, it will be our responsibility to change the consumer default through priming customer choice by ensuring one choice looks and feels more attractive.

Perhaps at a more tactical level we are prompting customers to opt in rather than opt out. Or to consider and adopt our brand’s CSR programme.

There are lots of opportunities for us to think how to edit and design the consumer choice menu. Maybe we should stop being marketers and start to become choice architects and designers.