FCB's Matthew Willcox Unravels Decision Making with Launch of New Book

FCB’s Matthew Willcox has intertwined more than two decades of advertising and marketing experience with the findings of decision-science researchers from around the globe to create a marketing book that suggests a different approach to influencing people’s decisions.

In The Business of Choice: Marketing to Consumers’ Instincts, Willcox – EVP, global planning director of FCB West and the founder and executive director of FCB’s Institute of Decision Making – makes sense of the brain’s decision-making systems and how to apply them to today’s marketing challenges. Laced with entertaining examples, Willcox illuminates how the brain’s decision-making systems have been evolving for millions of years and shape consumer choices about everything from toothpaste and clothing to smartphones and retirement plans. 

“It’s fascinating how even if the choices people make sometimes seem irrational, they make sense if seen through the lens of human nature,” said Willcox. “When brands understand this and align their products with the way humans naturally decide, they are destined for greater success.”

The book, published by Pearson/FT Press and available now at Amazon.com and other major retailers, provides some game-changing thinking for today’s marketers able to benefit from discoveries being made in this golden age of decision science. It holds truths on how brands can change consumer behavior, not simply attitudes, perceptions or brand awareness. By better understanding the way consumers actually make choices, Willcox’s chapters provide a blueprint on ways brands can leverage instinctual human behavior.

“As behavioral science and neuroscience reveal more every day about human decision-making, we’re learning how human intuitions and the cognitive mechanisms that have evolved over millions of years drive our choices,” said Willcox. “The Business of Choice aims to help marketers apply these new scientific insights to their brands so they become consumers’ most instinctive choice.”

Jen Sey, global CMO of FCB client Levi’s, said Willcox’s “experience in advertising and his understanding of the science of decision making come together here to make for an insightful and incredibly useful tool.” Sey said that “understanding how it is that human beings make choices — the complexity of inputs, the evolutionary success factors, and the cognitive processes — makes for fascinating subject matter.”

Adam Alter, associate professor of marketing at NYU Stern School of Business and New York Times best-selling author of Drunk Tank Pink: And Other Unexpected Forces That Shape How We Think, Feel, and Behave praised Willcox for bridging the practical and academic worlds. “In The Business of Choice, he lucidly explains what marketing practitioners can learn from marketing academics — and vice-versa — and makes an excellent case for strengthening the ties between the two disciplines,” said Alter. “The result is a fascinating and charming read.”