Such advice came from Charles Duhigg, The New York Times investigative reporter, who gave a talk from his latest book, The Power of Habit: Why we do what we do in life and business. Looking very much like a professor, Duhigg recounted the considerable time and millions of dollars that consumer products giant, Proctor and Gamble spent to develop their billion dollar product line, Febreeze.

The story involves a scientist who discovered an odor killing chemical and the P&G marketers who tried, and nearly failed, to turn that innovation into a successful home cleaning product. It turns out you can’t sell stuff to people by telling them their houses stink! P&G’s fortunes turned, as Duhigg illustrated with both scientific rigor and humorous anecdotes, on the fact that we have formed habits controlling nearly half of our daily actions and that Febreeze was a perfect reward for people who take great satisfaction in cleaning.

The habit loop, as Duhigg described it – Cue, Routine, Reward – is a simple yet powerful reminder to marketers that we need to plug into consumers’ existing rituals in order to create experiences that will surprise and delight…the keys to customer obsession. And as Duhigg’s examples illustrate, the consumer insight necessary to understand those habits is derived from careful consideration of consumer attitudes and behaviors.

Experian Marketing Services is hosting its annual Digital Summit (today through Friday) at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas.

This premier digital marketing event, with the theme, “Customer Obsession: Empowering Meaningful Relationships,” features highly engaging and inspiring learning sessions, providing marketers with key insights and best practices for keeping their customers at the heart and center of everything they do.

Attendees are learning from marketing experts about the latest trends in digital marketing across email, mobile, social, search and display. In addition, content from the event delves deep into understanding the new American consumer and the latest in cross-channel marketing.

And here are some of our favorite tweets:

Learn more about the 2012 Digital Summit and follow along on twitter #CMSummit
and view photos on our Pinterest board. View this blog tomorrow for updates.

Bryon noted what we all already know but need to keep in mind every day: the customers are in control and the best way to improve sales is to improve engagement. He suggested a focus on building brand advocates – they’ve used a “surprise and delight” strategy to convert detractors by initiating a personal contact via Twitter and other means. He said that one-to-one engagement can not only turn around a bad situation but also create a lifetime fan.

Amy noted that while it’s important to speak to the customers, you have to stick to the brand’s core values when you do. Make sure your messages and images stay close to your core. Your programs can and should be influenced by the data you mine and receive, but you never want the data to completely rule the marketing strategy or message. She said it’s a fine balance between data insights and the art of brand marketing. Bryon stressed the importance of not becoming “data myopic” and both suggested spending time in the stores to really understand how the customers are behaving.

Both panelists thought it important to mostly keep their company’s brands separate. In other words, it’s tempting to jump into cross-marketing programs across the sister brands, but you must be very careful to preserve that 1:1 connection each brand has with its own customers; that connection is kind of sacred.

As for social media, both panelists stressed the need to have an authentic voice in social channels. They also pointed out that you can easily get distracted by the next shiny new social object, but you simply can’t be everywhere. You have to think about which social channels you really want to be in (i.e., where your customers are), plus when you want to jump into a conversation and how you sound when you do.

In the end, if you map everything you do back to the customer you will have a greater measure of success. Both have also seen benefit in breaking down silos that exist within the full marketing organization so that there is greater sharing of information, strategies, tactics and successes.