Everyone Hates Marketers | No-BS Marketing & Brand Strategy Podcast

Richard - 00:00:00:

When you know what you're talking about, you tend to talk precisely. When you don't, you tend to talk generally. And over time, people fuse those two things together. So, I think you're right in specificity, certainly in terms of numbers. Precise numbers have an aura of believability in a way that round ones don't.


Louis - 00:00:20:

Bonjour, bonjour, and welcome to another episode of everyonehatesmarketers.com, the only actionable podcast for people sick of marketing bullshit. I'm your host, Louis. In today's episode, you will learn 4.5 little-known facts about human behavior that you can apply in your daily job or in your business. So yes, four and a half, not four, not five. You'll know why in a few minutes. My guest today has been on the podcast before. In fact, he's been on the podcast five years ago, which is crazy. It's one of my favorite episodes of all time. I remember reading it and rereading it, the transcript. To learn more about it, I wrote a couple of blog posts about it. Anyway, we talked about the prideful effect, confirmation bias, habits, brand purpose, personalization. And today, we're going to talk about five or at least 4.5 or maybe four other ones. Anyway, he's the author of the book, The Choice Factory. He has a new book, The Illusion of Choice, which is equally good, if not better. He specializes in applying behavioral science to marketing in a way that stupid people like me understand. So anyway Richard Shotton, welcome back.


Richard - 00:01:33:

Very nice to see you again.


Louis - 00:01:35:

Do you mean this?


Richard - 00:01:36:

I do indeed, yeah. I like the suspicion, though. I like the suspicion.


Louis - 00:01:41:

That's my standard. I'm suspicious by default, you know, being French and knowing what the British are like. I'm always suspicious of people like you.


Richard - 00:01:51:

Fair enough.


Louis - 00:01:52:

So, as we said last time, we talked about those very core behavioral biases, the things that humans are kind of born to do because we evolved this way, right, as a survival mechanism or anything like that. Before we get into the 4.5 ones that I want to talk about today, I just have a thought, which is when you look at things from a very granular point of view, so every individual, you know, their own biases and why, you know, for example, I tend to trust someone more if they are more transparent with me and or they admit a fault or stuff like that. But then if we apply that to the 8 billion people on Earth in terms of, we are all programmed to behave roughly the same way in those situations, it feels like all of the societal problems, climate change and everything we need to deal with, all of that is linked to one or two or three or even more behavioral biases. Do you agree or disagree with this? And do you understand what I mean?


Richard - 00:02:48:

I understand what you mean, and I certainly think a lot of those big problems, like climate change or our lack of reaction to it have some behavioral science end-opinions whether it's everything is matter of debate but you're absolutely right I mean two biases that spring to mind there's an idea called present bias that we are much more concerned about benefits and problems in the now than in the future you know that's a problem with climate change you know we're asking people to make sacrifices now for a benefit in the future. And then the second bias is around concreteness. Which is we are much more likely to remember and be moved by concrete, visualisable, tangible things than abstract ideas. I think
yes, you can apply behavioral science to those big problems. And it's more than just describing the problem. Because once you've identified something like, present bias is an issue, you could think, well, who else suffers from that problem? Pensions industry the savings industry health and fitness and then you think well what have they done to successfully evade that problem and could we take any of those approaches and apply them to the climate challenge so i think yes behavioral science can explain maybe the reasons why we have some of these problems but also practically suggest some potential solutions


Louis - 00:04:13:

Well, now I'm curious. You've just used the curiosity bias gap against me. You tell me something interesting, you don't say everything, and now I want to know more. How, for example, did the pension industry or those industries have solved this kind of long-term thing, like putting money aside for 35 years until you're old enough to get it?


Richard - 00:04:31:

One of the most practical approaches in America comes from Richard Thaler, who won the Nobel Prize a couple of years ago for economics, and Shlomo Benartzi. And they came up with an idea called Save More Tomorrow. So normally in pension companies, you are asking people to put more money in and so what's very apparent is there is pain now. You know, you're going to get less money in your salary straight away, and you're not going to see the benefit for 34 years. What Benartzi and Thaler did was create a new program where people weren't asked to give up anything now. They were asked to increase or start the pension contribution when they next got a pay rise. So, what you've brilliantly done there is shoved the cost, the pain, to an equally far distant future as the benefit. So, you've started not to try and ignore the bias or overcome it, you’ve essentially tried to work with that nuance of human nature. So, Save More Tomorrow is a brilliant, I think, very practical tactic the pensions industries started to use.


Louis - 00:05:38:

That begs the question, if we were in charge of the world, which is a very bad idea, don't let me in particular, you'd be fine, but don't let me. How we would use this principle then for climate change? And maybe we can dive maybe to something more specific than just climate change, but


Richard - 00:05:54:

Yeah, so if you were a climate change charity, you could take that principle and apply it to your donations. So, it's not save more tomorrow, it's give more tomorrow now. And there's some lovely work by Brennan, I think, Brennan, Brennan, the University of Stockholm, where she's shown for charities that if you do essentially the same thing, ring people up. And rather than asking to increase their donations then and there, agree to increase them in a couple of months, you get a significant increase in people's generosity. So, you could apply it in that way if you're Greenpeace or whoever's campaigning on these issues. Or you could think about, well, changes that the government are trying to introduce. Well, maybe the closest proxy is rather than introducing changes that impact straight away, give people a lot more warning. So, there's a big backlash at the moment in London, UK. Not necessarily against climate change policies, but about clean air policies, because they've introduced a ultra low emission zone. Now, the argument might have been if you had told people that was coming with more notice, then you've pushed the pain so far into the future. You get people to agree, you know, and it will soften the introduction a little bit more. So, I think you could apply it. Maybe if you find a lateral industry that's kind of dealing with the same problems, I don't think you can apply every solution, but it at least gives you an easy few idea to start with.


Louis - 00:07:22:

I love that. Interesting thing is when you compare two massive life-changing events that happened recently, COVID with climate change, right, in terms of threats to humanity, just to put them next to each other. One was extremely, it was something that happened. There was a before and after. There was like, shit, this thing is spreading to the world and now we need to do something now. Well, the other one has been something that we've been warned about for decades, right? On one hand, you see the reaction that the countries had, which was almost immediate. I mean, you can debate that, but like they did so much very, very fast. And the other, we're still trying to agree on what the fuck to do. So, is that also linked to a cognitive bias of some sort?


Richard - 00:08:09:

We talked about present bias the other bias i've kind of skirted over is this idea of concreteness so there's an amazing study by Ian Webb just to show that it's not just like i've plucked out the air so he did this study back in 1972 where he recruits a group of people not very big group but i've replicated this study in a much larger group recruits a group of people reads out 22 word phrases half of which are what he calls concrete phrases square door white horse and Pitch these words, they're tangible. The other half of the words are things like basic facts, subtle truth. And what he finds is that when he asks people to recall those words later, on average, people remember 9% of the abstract phrases, 36% of the concrete phrases. So, there's a massive fourfold swing in memorability. And his argument is the strongest of our senses is vision. So, if you can picture something like a white horse, it's sticky. If you can't picture something like a basic fact, it's very, very forgettable. Bring that back to climate change. And many of the problems, certainly, you know, five, 10 years ago, maybe you're starting to see something now, but many of the problems people were talking about were very abstract. And I think there is a problem in that abstraction, in that people struggle to remember it, they struggle to move them. So maybe the argument with COVID is wave of people coming towards you, dying country and country, getting closer and closer, that's far, far more concrete, and therefore much more motivating.


Louis - 00:09:46:

And this is why, if you go back to a lighter subject like copywriting, this is why specificity is so important, right? I mean, I have a few rules in my head that I kind of cycle through when I write and when I try to come up with angles for episodes or whatever. The number one that we'll never get away from is specificity. How can I make it more specific, specific, specific? Because specificity means that it gets easier to visualize. Today, I just want to give you an example. And then I literally sent an email today where I made a point about everyone's being so nice to each other in the marketing industry and being so fake about it, right? Like, it's like, oh, thanks for having me, blah, blah, blah. I love your work. Well, no one has ever checked their work. And I took an example of an influencer doing an ad and I just imagine a scenario where they would say, okay, this product is amazing. I've used it for a week now and I can already see the changes on my scrotum. Could have kept it a bit more generic, such as this product is amazing. If you use it for a week now, it is great. But I made it, I genuinely in my head cycled through that and said, okay, how can I be more specific and a bit funny? And scrotum is why not? So just a very, very small example, but it's genuinely ingrained in me now. Like it's been years that I've learned that. And yeah, specificity, you can't go wrong with it.


Richard - 00:10:58:

Yes, I think there's three very similar points that overlap, but aren't exactly the same. So, you've got specificity, you've got concreteness, which is, I can visualize this thing. And then I think the scrotum part is what a psychologist might call, and I never thought I'd be putting those words together, is what they might call it. I knew, I knew. It's called the peak effect. So, there's an amazing mid-90s study. It's a bit bizarre, but bear with it. Uh, I think Michael Santos was one of the Californian universities. Gets his graduate students to go out onto the street and beg for money. And sometimes they ask for some spare change or a quarter. Other times they ask for 17 cents or 37 cents. And what he finds is that they raise significantly more money with the precise request rather than the general request. It's not that you can visualize 17 better than 25, but 25 a quarter is something that, well, he argues that people always ask for a quarter. That's the standard thing people do. And therefore, in this begging situation, he says, people have scripts, like a film script, but a script. He says, if you are going through life and weighing up every decision, you'll just be overwhelmed. So, what tends to happen is when people meet a familiar circumstance, they've developed a script. So, thing a happens, beggar asks for money. Well, then I turn on my script, just say no. Beggar's not weighed up on his individual merits. But if you ask for something out of the blue, something surprising like the 17 cents or the 32 cents, there is no script, and therefore at least you get considered on your individual merits. So, I think the thing with the scrotum there is that it wasn't what I was expecting you to say, and therefore it captures my attention, at least gets me to consider your argument.


Louis - 00:12:57:

It's also something you can visualize pretty well. I'm not going to be here to argue scientists who actually don't research when I'm here in my shed complaining about it. But to me, it feels like there's a few biases at play in the same experiment, right? Like a quarter is one step removed from 25. That's the first thing. Yes, a quarter is the norm. But 17 and 27 are so specific that they don't feel random. And I think it connects to another one. There's so many, it's difficult to extract just one, right?


Richard - 00:13:24:

I think that's a fair point. And I often use the very first study someone did because they kind of came up with the idea and it feels fairest to quote them. But I think you're right that there's almost here blurring precision and surprise. But there are certainly studies that particularly look at precision. There's a wonderful study by Schindler at Rutgers University where it shows people ads for a deodorant and people get the same basic ad, so it has the facts around what it looks like and things. And then at the bottom of the ad, sometimes it says reduces perspiration by 50%. Other times it says either 47% or 53%. And Schindler finds that trust goes up by 5%. Perceived accuracy goes up by 10%. And I'm talking about the group who hear the precise number are the ones that are more positive about the product. And his argument is this is essentially generally in life. If someone doesn't know what they're talking about, they will resort to generalities. So, if you said to me, how old is my neighbor who lives... You know, six hours down. I'd say, well, he's in his 60s. If you said, how old's my brother? I'd say 51. When you know what you're talking about, to talk precisely, when you don't, you tend to talk generally. And over time, people fuse those two things together. So, I think you're right in specificity, certainly in terms of numbers. Precise numbers have an aura of believability in a way that round ones don't.


Louis - 00:14:57:

Is this something that we've learned in our life, or is it something that we are born with, that association between those two?


Richard - 00:15:07:

Good question. I mean, this is not my expertise. And I think evolutionary explanations are fascinating, but they're hard to falsify. So, I much, much prefer experiments where you get a kind of condition and you get a learning and a reading afterwards because you're exposed to it all the time.


Louis - 00:15:29:

Yeah, I feel that's something that we're born with. Because we are born with stories being so entertaining to us. We are born with this social group element. We are born with so many things that are kind of the foundation of our society, like the way we behave and all of that. Why not this one that feels like I can trust this guy because he doesn't seem to be talking with his ass or his crotum?


Richard - 00:15:54:

Yeah, but I think the reason why we've fused precise numbers with trust is because over time we've learned people who know what they're talking about use those things. I mean, I guess you might be able to test it if you could, you know, maybe run experiments around primary school children. And then see if it still works there. Although if it still works, I'd then say, oh, they must have learned it by the time they were 10. But if, yeah, if we could test it on four-year-olds, then it would do it. We'd keep on going.


Louis - 00:16:23:

Is there a way, like there are experiments. Someone gave me a book when my daughter was born two years ago about a scientific experiment you can do on a toddler or even lower, like, you know, stuff to test stuff. I'm sure we could find a way to test that in toddlers. Like, you know, did they tend to go more towards someone who's holding I don't know. I'm just, you know, maybe there is something. All right, moving on. I wanted to touch on, before we go on to the reason why I said 4.5, and I guess we started to talk about it a bit, but we didn't say everything there is to say. Let's talk about this red sneaker effect. And the reason why I want to ask you about this one first is because the whole mantra that I'm trying to talk about more is standing the fuck out, right? Which is like, you need to take some risks in some way, shape, or form. You need to be, to go specific, you need to go narrow, you need to stand the fuck out in some way. Anyway. What is that about?


Richard - 00:17:19:

Long-standing idea in behavioral science that we notice what's distinctive that study goes back i think to 1933 in the work of Bernuth von H who's at the College of William & Mary so her idea is you give people long lists of let's say animals there's 10 animals on this list cat dog weasel and one clothing item swimming trunks people remember the swimming trunks more than the animals. Or vice versa, you give them loads of items of clothes and one animal, and it's the animal they remember. So that idea, very, very well proven, one of the easiest ways to grab attention. That's reasonably well known amongst marketers, but what's interesting is a series of follow-up experiments by Francesca Gino, and we might want to talk about some of the controversy around her as well, potentially. She ran a study probably about 15 years ago. And in the original pilot study, she goes to academic conferences and when people arrive at the conference, she notes down on a continuum from very scruffy to very smart, how they're dressed. After she's done that, she goes and finds them again, and she asks them how many citations they have. So, citations being the number of peer-reviewed articles your work's appeared in. And she finds an inverse correlation between smartness of dress and number of citations. So, it's the super successful academics who are breaking the convention, because at this stage, the norm is to dress very smartly. That's what you're expected to do. But the people who've got New York Times bestseller books, the ones who go on the talk shows. They're the ones who just ignore the conventions and turn up scruffily. It's the junior academics, the people who haven't got tenure, they're the ones that very closely abide and cling to those conventions. Now, Gino's argument, which he proves in a number of other studies, is it takes a degree of status to break a convention. Because if you have no status at all, you tend to get punished for convention breaking. And people, a bit like that precision point, they kind of learn that over time. You have to have status to break a convention. And then the two things, they take on a life of their own. So, when we see people who break convention, we assume they must have high status.


Louis - 00:19:35:

Correlation is not causation, right? I mean, I wanted to place that in the interview to seem smart. The contrarian thinker in this would say okay, that makes sense, but isn't it because those people in the first place were more inclined to take some risk or to be a bit contrarian that they ended up having more citations and therefore


Richard - 00:19:55:

Yeah. So, as you say, this is her, she does this as basically a pilot study. So, what she then will do is create various different scenarios. Imagine you're going to a golf clubs, annual dinner, and you see John wearing a black tie. And you get a bit of a description of John. And then they rate how good a golfer he is or whatever. Other people will see the same description of John, but he's shunned the black tie that everyone else is wearing. And he's wearing a bright red tie. So, she takes the correlation that she finds in that pilot study, and then she runs it in these various different thought experiments. So absolutely right. I think the first study was proof of concept. She then tests it in more rigorous areas. Now, the reason, I mentioned she was controversial, and I want to be careful not to lie to anyone, because I think this is all allegations. Since the publication The Illusion of Choice. One of her studies, a different study, has been accused of data manipulation. It's an interesting area. So, let's say she's found guilty you've then got a decision, well, you could strikeout, that specific study. Or you could ignore all her work. Now I would probably err towards the size of just ignoring the work that has been disproved, but I know other people take a slightly more stringent view. But when it comes to the red sneak effect, I've essentially run studies that are covered in the book, which support her evidence. So, what did I do? I found a beer brand. In fact, I found two beer brands who had a design thing. So, all their beers look reasonably similar, all their kind of iterations on a theme. And Sometimes I showed people five beers, four of which were from the first brand, all of the same design. And then you had one brand which was standing out in effect. Next group of people, I showed them, I flipped it essentially. So, the standout brand was now surrounded by lots of similar brands from their family. And they had one of distinctive brands that had previously been the majority. And what I showed was that rating of the design of exactly the same item went up by I think about 7% when it was distinctive rather than when it was blending in with its surroundings. Without seeing the visuals, it's a little bit hard to explain, but I hope that makes rough sense.


Louis - 00:22:28:

When it's grouped with things that don't look exactly like that, then it tends to be seen as more distinctive.


Richard - 00:22:34:

The effect we saw was much smaller than Gino's. And I put that down to it being a more realistic commercial situation rather than thought experiments.


Louis - 00:22:46:

So, what is the implication there? If we had to pick the single one specific thing, you would recommend folks listening who tend to be like business owners and people who want to like get shit done to apply that effect. What does that mean for them?


Richard - 00:23:01:

If you look at a remarkable range of business categories, whether it's perfumes, cars, banks, what they tend to do is identify the category conventions and then stick to them. But Von Varga would say that's a bad idea because you'll become invisible. And the red sneaker effect would say that's a bad idea because you'll be seen as lower status. What you should do is think about all the conventions of the category, split them into two different groups, ones that you think are there for a very good reason, leave them well alone. But that will still leave you loads of conventions that are just there for tradition's sake. And it's those that you should break. You'll be more noticed and you'll be seen as higher status. So, an example of someone doing that, not such a big brand yet in the UK, but in America, I think it's now over a billion dollars in terms of its valuation, liquid death. What they've done is enter the water market, and they've very consciously ignored pretty much all the conventions of the water market and instead behaved like they were a beer brand. And it gives them wonderful standout and boosts that admirability.


Louis - 00:24:06:

The challenge here is to, as you said, select the right conventions and not go too far. And it's not that easy, right? So, it's like, which one do I challenge? Which one do I not challenge? And sometimes you go too far. And the other thing that is important here is conventions help people decide, right? With the category heuristics. When they see certain conventions mixed together, they know what it is. If it's a metallic can, it looks green and you can open it and it's all at a festival, then it must be a beer. So how do you then strike the balance between the need for people to see things so they understand them and understanding it?


Richard - 00:24:40:

I mean, this is, I think, where it probably varies by category because a convention that is necessary in one might not be necessary in another. But let's think about banking. You might say, well, look, this is something that requires deep levels of trust to open a current account. Some degree of presence is important, some degree of taking things sensibly. So, you could say, well, that's something we don't want to muck around with. But then you could think, well, OK, where can we afford to play a bit fast and loose around the rules? Well, I'd argue something Monzo. Did brilliantly, was the category convention for debit cards in the UK was to be bland and unnoticeable. What they went and did is turn theirs bright, hot coral, bright pink, I would say, Now, the amazing thing about that is paradoxically, by breaking that convention, they are providing the reassurance that we're saying is a category necessity. So, Barclays and Lloyds of London, UK get reassurance by having a thousand branches built out of brick that are going nowhere. Monzo have created that category reassurance by looking like they're much more popular than they are. Because if you go to a coffee shop, you're standing in the queue, 10 people in front of you, each gets a debit card out. You don't notice the HSBC one, you don't notice the Barclays, you don't notice the Lloyds of London, UK because they're bland pastels. Someone gets out that hot coral card, you definitely notice it. Because you're noticing it loads, you assume this is a massively popular card. And you assume, well, if everyone else has got these things, they're not going to disappear overnight. My money is reasonably safe.


Louis - 00:26:11:

Yeah. So, you're sending signals, right? You're sending signals of like, you can trust me the long term, just like putting ads.


Richard - 00:26:18:

But you've done that by breaking unnecessary conventions to have these debit cards. It's indistinguishable.


Louis - 00:26:25:

Another type of breaking convention in that specific convention in that specific category is the metallic cards. So, I have Revolut business, right, for my business. They sent me a heavy metallic card, credit card, and it's heavy. It's like you can really feel the difference. And you place a lot of value into this. Like it definitely feels something for your little, you know, for my own little status and for my own little self-love about feeling like I'm valued by them and I don't get yet another plastic card. Those little things are so important and people tend to forget about those little conventions that you play with.


Richard - 00:26:59:

Absolutely. I mean, the, the one that springs to mind as well is car ads. I mean, they are interchangeable. It is a side-on shot of a car going down a nondescript Central European mountainous landscape, bendy road. I don't think that is a necessary convention to identify the product. If my car was triangular shaped, I think you're right. People might think that's gone too far or not even know it's a car. You don't need to buy that very specific. Kind of stylistic approach to ads in the car category. I think you are right to sound a note of caution. If you're in a supermarket and you don't look like the product, your category, there's a danger of like inattentional blindness. And there's some lovely experiments that show that. But I think there are so many conventions for most categories. There's still plenty to play with.


Louis - 00:27:42:

Oh, absolutely. Very selfishly. Seven years ago, when I started that podcast, I didn't have that much knowledge. I just did it almost on a whim. But I knew there was one thing that pissed me off was the quality of the conversations that I was listening to on other marketing podcasts was suboptimal, to be nice. This kind of the logo, the red and black, the title, all of that were conventions I purposely chose to fuck with a bit. But I didn't know it would go anywhere. Like, to be honest, it was just conversations on Skype on people admired. And yeah, I'm very proud of that because you mentioned example of supermarkets or whatever. But you can, if you're listening to that, you can do that on your side projects. You can play with that in your own small company. It's not just for big company.


Richard - 00:28:21:

Absolutely. And arguably, that Von Varga effect, the boost to noticeability, is more important for a small company than a big one because a big one can maintain success through its sheer volume and wealth and advertising spend. Generally, small government doesn't have that luxury. So, you need to punch above your weight. So, if anything, these opportunities are even more important for smaller launch brands.


Louis - 00:28:46:

Let's move on because if we want to actually finish, close the gap, the curiosity gap, we have a few more to talk about. So, the other thing, a few minutes ago, when I gave you this example of specificity about the scrotum, you laughed.


Richard - 00:28:57:

I did. I'm a child at heart.


Louis - 00:28:59:

My wife doesn't find me funny, but you do. So that's great. But humor is another thing that connects with all of this. It makes things more memorable. Now, everyone will say, duh, it's obvious. But is it?


Richard - 00:29:10:

I mean, if you look at the data of how many ads are using humor, what is, I don't think, disputable is the volume of ads that are using humor is declining. So, there's some wonderful work by Kanter. I think it might be Boyd who first published it. They looked over 200,000 ads and they showed, and 1990 maybe, I think 55, 60% of ads were aiming to amuse. 2015, it's about 45%. So, you've seen this long-term decline in the proportion of ads that use humor. So, when people say it's obvious, it's like, well, it's not obvious to a significant proportion of marketers because we're moving away from it.


Louis - 00:29:48:

But we're moving away from it, not because people don't know, because they can pick up your book, they can pick up, like, it's not that difficult to know that humor makes it memorable, because there are other biases at play that prevents them from using humor.


Richard - 00:29:59:

So, there are an awful lot of studies around humor. So, you're more likely to notice an ad that's funny, you're more likely to remember it. There's a lovely meta-analysis by, I think, an Austrian psychologist called Jaussent I, who's shown that on pretty much every metric, you get a positive boost if you use humor. And there's a number of experiments to back up each of those ones. So yeah, there is evidence, but I think a remarkable amount of marketing decisions are evidence-free. They're based more on the mood music all the department or their trade press than on peer reviewed observed studies.


Louis - 00:30:37:

And the conventions.


Richard - 00:30:38:

Yeah, and the conventions. And I think people make what sounds like a logical argument. Well, times are crap. People would find it inappropriate if we were humorous. That's one that comes up.


Louis - 00:30:50:

They would listen to one person in the room that says, oh, I don't find that funny. And that's it, right? That's it.


Richard - 00:30:57:

Yeah. If you have a committee of people, it's harder to defend humor seemingly because people are often running very serious business. They might think it's, yeah, there's a clash with the humor, but you're trying to use humor as a way of getting attention and then converting that attention into memory. So, it's like a Trojan horse. Did you use that phrase earlier? Like a Trojan horse for getting your message in. Advertisers are ignoring that point. But I think what's really interesting, and Labs first drew this to people's attention, there was a wonderful analysis of the IMDb database by a man called Bo Mitchum. And what they showed was that if you look at the proportion of Hollywood films going back about 100 years over time, when cultures at its bleakest, you know, start the Great Depression, Second World War, you see a spike in the number of comedies that Hollywood make. Now, I think what Hollywood are realizing much more astutely is If things are bleak, people don't want fake empathy, because really, what does your bank account or your trainer manufacturer care about you? What they don't want is fake empathy. They want light relief. That's what Hollywood delivers. And I think advertising would do a hell of a lot better to follow that model.


Louis - 00:32:12:

Fuck yeah. The little thing you said about they are in a boring industry, a serious industry, and therefore they can't use Zoom. Do you have an example of a company in a serious industry or even a solo business in a serious industry that use Zoom successfully?


Richard - 00:32:25:

That’s a great question. The one that springs to mind would be Compare the Meerkat.


Louis - 00:32:30:

Compare the Meerkat


Richard - 00:32:31:


Yes exactly people might say oh but no but it's different the whole industry uses humor or quirkiness but if you go back to when they introduce Alexander Meerkat every brand had the same approach they all were use our platform and you will save 120 pounds now people say well car insurance is a dry category all people care about is saving money that would have felt a sensible description of the category i think what compare the meerkat showed was actually it was just a game about being the most memorable brand now that's what was going to win it and they used humor to stand out and then to convert that attention to memory. So, I would argue that's a reasonably...


Louis - 00:33:12:

It's a really good example. I love that example. For folks who are not aware of it, it's a brilliant campaign. They started with that campaign, but then they used different ways to use the same characters by compare the meerkat. And it came up by. So, it's two people working in an ad agency that were a bit drunk in a pub who came up with that because they realized that when you say market with a Russian accent, it ends up sounding like meerkat. I read that somewhere. I didn't make it up.


Richard - 00:33:42:

CCP was the agency. They also, I think, might have been inspired. I don't know this, but there's, I think, Gecko in the US does something quite similar. I've never seen the Geico Geckos, but I understand it's a reasonably similar concept.


Louis - 00:33:57:

Yeah, I mean, they didn't come up with it from scratch. Obviously, there's always things that you've learned that you've come up with and whatever. But yeah, it's a brilliant campaign.


Richard - 00:34:06:

And amazingly executed. Having that idea, well, that wouldn't be enough. That's just 1%, isn't it? I mean, it's the execution and the constant humor. Yeah.


Louis - 00:34:14:

The fact that they went for it is what I admire the most because it takes guts and courage because I can guess how many people would have said this is a terrible idea. You know, this is a serious industry. Why the fuck are you showing a meerkat with a Russian accent? It makes no sense. It doesn't connect with anything related to what we sell. Why would you use it? I can picture that, the discussions in those boardrooms. But yet they did it and they showed, they broke a massive convention or a couple of conventions and then they became the leader. And I think they are still market share wise. And then others like go compare with this like fat opera singer singing, go compare, go compare in crazy situations.


Richard - 00:34:50:

We discussed earlier climate change. We talked about the importance of concreteness. And I wonder again if that's another reason why they compare the market so successful. They have. What System 1 would call a fluent device. System 1 defined a fluent device as a kind of mascot that is central to the drama. It's not just a logo at the end. It is a mascot that goes all the way through the story. Their evidence, and they're a research company, is that, and I think they've analyzed the World bank, is that campaigns, long-term campaigns that have a fluent device tend to be much more successful. I wonder if the reason for that is concreteness. It's hard to remember good value. That's a very abstract concept, but I can remember a Russian meerkat. And if you can imbue that Russian meerkat with these values of price saving, well, suddenly I think you're onto something very powerful.


Louis - 00:35:39:

In fact, in the book Building Distinctive Brand Assets by Jenni Romaniuk from The Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science, she says that the most underused and powerful distinctive brand asset is a character. And this is one of the most underused by a long man, especially in those B2B slash serious slash boring industries. I'm looking at my notes here on the book. I'm just going to try to find the exact number. But they make also the point about the human face. So, the fact that it's a character that has somewhat of a human look to it, not fully


Richard - 00:36:14:

Yeah, anthropomorphic. It's not a realistic maker either. There's a, yeah.


Louis - 00:36:18:

So that helps as well. I think there's a bunch of biases that just play together to make this one of the best distinctive assets to use.


Richard - 00:36:26:

So, I hadn't seen her data, but the Orlando Wood book, and he's at System 1, I think it might be Lehman has similar data. Not only do they look at the IP effect in the state of the bank and show that long-term campaigns that have a fluent device are more powerful than those who don't, more likely to hit their market share or significant market share growth. The number that are being used has plummeted over time. You go back, start thinking of some of the great fluent devices, Tony the Tiger, the Green Giant, many of them are very, very old. You know, the 118 runners, whatever, they're 35 years old now. So, again, how we're behaving is at odds often with the evidence around effectiveness as an industry.


Louis - 00:37:06:

Yeah, just like how we're behaving against massive, massive things happening in the world against the evidence that are all there to show. There was two books where she mentioned it. There was that book where it's all about the assets. The other one was in How Brands Grow Part 2. I think she talks about it more. I think they were mentioning the dog in Deluxe. It's a character. I mean, a real thing. I have the data about the Compare the Meerkat. So, they say it achieves its 12-month objectives in nine weeks. The campaign achieved all 12-month objectives in just nine weeks, became the number one brand for spontaneous awareness and consideration. Quote volumes rose by 83%, cost per visit fell by 73%. Alexander became the first UK advertising property to have his own highly successful Twitter account. And apparently his 2010 autobiography generated more pre-orders than Tony Blair's memoirs.


Richard - 00:37:54:

That Tony Blair's memoirs weren't very popular.


Louis - 00:37:57:

Yeah, I'm not going to find the data around the underused stuff, but they use two metrics. So, I think it's fame and uniqueness. So, do they know it? And do they perceive it as to be linked to that brand? Or does it feel like, you know, they don't really know which brand it's for? So those two things together, like the character asset is something that just works really well. So, moving on, I would say we catch our 2.5 of the biases because we talked briefly about the precision thing, but we'll come back to that a bit. We talked about the red sneakers effect. We talked about humor being more memorable. Let's maybe talk about a bit, because I know a lot of marketers are familiar with this, about this kind of framing, the gains over losses, something I'm trying to use every day as well. Our avoidance of loss is more powerful than our willingness. How do you say it? Avoidance of loss versus?


Richard - 00:38:46:

Best way to explain it is not the original study. Normally, I like going back to the original studies because it seems fair. But the original studies back in the 70s were by Tversky and Kahneman, and they involved small gambles, and they were a little bit abstract as a study. So, I think the best study for showing loss aversion is an Elliot Jason Aronson one. So, he was actually the person that came up with the idea about the Huxtable effect. But this is a much later study, he came up with this in 1988. He went around to 404 homes in America, knocked on the door and tries to get them to buy insulation. Gives them details about the insulation, some occasions says if you take out the insulation you will save 75 cents, other occasions he says if you don't take out the insulation you will lose 75 cents a day. Gain 75 cents a day or lose 75 cents a day. And I think there's a 55% increase in people who want to find out more information in that loss framing. So, the argument is that equivalent loss motivates us more than the equivalent gain. So, if I find five pounds quite happy, if I lose a fiver, I am significantly more unhappy. They're not equal in terms of scale. And what Aronson shows is you can take that as a marker and apply it to your work. Stop saying to people how much money you'll save by switching. Talk about how much the consumer will lose if they don't come to you.


Louis - 00:40:07:

It feels very small and subtle, but it's not. Definitely not. And again, I'm sorry to talk about evolutionary biology and psychology. I know it's not your expertise, but maybe there is a cleaner link here. Why, as humans, have we evolved to having a violence of loss more powerful?


Richard - 00:40:23:

That one, I can see more plausible explanation potentially, which is there is a cap to an upside. If you kill 50 giraffe in a day, you can only eat so much. Whereas not eating for five days is you're out of the game. You're dead. So, for most of our evolutionary history, when you're in those life and death situations, the ultimate loss far, far outweighs any upside you could ever have. So that kind of lifestyle, that scenario, made absolute sense to be very attuned to losses and try and avoid them. Now in situations where, we're dealing with far more trivial circumstances, it might not follow to take that same principle to small commercial purposes. I think that evolutionary explanation.


Louis - 00:41:12:

Absolutely, I mean, in fact, if you take two toddlers and measure the emotional response when you take away a toy or give them a toy, you'll see the difference. Mine is the key word here. So yes, I mean, avoidance of loss, definitely. This kind of feeling of ownership as well, right? Like there's also a bit of that feeling that it's yours and therefore because it's yours, you put more value into it, right?


Richard - 00:41:34:

Yeah. You made me think when you were talking around, you mentioned saying earlier around, there are kind of subtle ways of applying it. One of the best ways I've seen of applying it, and it's very, very rare actually, is on, I think it's the Wall Street Journal. So, they have a basic package and then a premium package. And obviously they're trying to encourage people to pick the premium package. Maybe that's digital and costs a hell of a lot more. What most people do in that situation is say, well, okay, if you get the basic package, you have these three things. You get access to the internet, our email, newsletter, and a free tote bag. And then on the premium package, they would say, you have those three things and you have exclusive dinners and you get the print review. You have six or seven positives. So, what they would hope is, well, showing people six positives sounds better than three and hope people can be won over. What the Wall Street Journal do is both the basic and the premium package have six lines, as it were. You have three green ticks next to the basic package, and then you have written out what you don't get. There's a cross through it and a big red cross next to it. Now, that feels like a very, very subtle twist. But I think what they're doing there is really emphasizing what you're missing out on. By getting that basic package. Most people don't do that. They try and sell the premium package by talking about what extra you get. That was a really nice way of emphasizing what you don't get on the lower margin product.


Louis - 00:43:00:

Look at what's not there, which is looking at the white space and all of that. So, we talked about red sneakers effect, the humor being more memorable, framing, how it's so important to frame in terms of potential losses and stuff. Precision is the reason why we mentioned 4.5 instead of 5. I could have come up with a way better idea, but Phill Agnew from the podcast Nudge already came up with something way better when he said, listen to exactly 17 minutes and 42 seconds of this episode, which was an interview with you that I found fascinating. So, we talked about it a bit, but if we had to summarize that one.


Richard - 00:43:33:

So, what most brands do, because we talked about the Schindler's Study, didn't we? And the argument was we assume a precise claim. Like I say in my book, there's 16 and a half chapters. It's more believable and more accurate. That's an interesting finding because it runs counter to what most advertisers do. They will say they have a million customers or 90% of people say they're amazing. But actually, the argument from Schindler would be, say you've got 89% or 91% of people that are happy or 1.3 million customers. We often round numbers for our own ease as a brand. Schindler says you should add in that extra degree of precision to come across as more believable.


Louis - 00:44:16:

And lastly, we'll finish that episode with the pick and rule. Why did I pick this one?


Richard - 00:44:22:

You picked it because it is the argument from Daniel Kahneman and Donald E. That all moments are not equal when it comes to memory. We are most likely to remember two particular elements of an experience. The peak moment, so in something positive, it should be the single most enjoyable moment. That's disproportionately important in shaping memory. And then the final thing, the very last part of an experience is also disproportionately important. Now, that's interesting to advertisers because most people focus on making a brilliant first impression. What the peak end rule would say is, yes, that's important, but actually you should put more attention, more effort, more budget into ending your product's experience on a high. When people come back into market, that's what they're going to remember.


Louis - 00:45:07:

Fantastic. We'll end this podcast by me summarizing briefly what we've learned today. We're going to butcher everything and hopefully we end up in a high for you listening. So, the Red Sneakers effect tells us that when we break some conventions inside a category, we tend to be more trusted or tend to be more higher status is probably the better word. Humor is more memorable and that's proven time and time again. Again, yet many folks don't tend to use humor that much because they are afraid of those other ways it's coming into play, like making sure that they follow the norm and making sure that Sally from accounting is not mad at the potential message we could put there. Framing is also another one we said. So due to our evolution and our drive to survive, it's way more important to survive, to have five days to avoid fucking starving after five days than to get extra food that you can store for later. So that's all about avoidance of loss. Focusing on that instead. There are subtle ways you can do that. It's not just big ways. It's like small details can count a lot. Precision, specificity, all of those concepts we talked about. This is why 4.5 biases I mentioned in the intro. So, try to be more specific. Try to make people visualize things. Try to be precise in your pricing and other stuff so that people believe it more. And finally, pay attention to the end of an experience like this one right now.


Richard - 00:46:27:

Fantastic.


Louis - 00:46:28:

I know I'm really fucking good at this. All right, Richard, you've been a pleasure. Thanks so much for your time.


Richard - 00:46:35:

Oh, brilliant. Well, thank you very much. Good to chat again.