Author: David Greenwood

💎 On avoiding potentially negative celebrity association (of Jersey Shore)

And that is what Abercrombie & Fitch was worried about when it saw “The Situation” wearing their clothes on Jersey Shore. Their press release stated:

We are deeply concerned that Mr. Sorrentino’s association with our brand could cause significant damage to our image. We understand that the show is for entertainment purposes, but believe this association is contrary to the aspirational nature of our brand, and may be distressing to many of our fans. We have therefore offered a substantial payment to Michael “The Situation” Sorrentino and the producers of MTVs The Jersey Shore to have the character wear an alternate brand. We have also extended this offer to other members of the cast, and are urgently awaiting a response.

Companies are usually overjoyed when celebrities wear their clothes. But Abercrombie was worried about what would happen if the wrong celebrities started wearing the brand.

Excerpt from: Invisible Influence: The Hidden Forces That Shape Behavior by Jonah Berger

💎 On adding unneeded complexity and jargon ruining a piece of writing (consideration of contemporary phenomena)

From Ecclesiastes:

I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

Orwell’s version goes:

Objective consideration of contemporary phenomena compels the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.

Excerpt from: On Writing Well by William Zinsser

💎 On advertisers’ biggest decision being how much to spend (rather than how it’s spent)

Everybody who’s written anything half-way useful about adverting has agreed that the most important decision a client company makes about advertising is the decision to advertise in the first place. The difference to a company’s long-term prosperity between advertising and not advertising is infinitely greater than any decision it might make between two alternative creative approaches or two competing advertising agencies.

But that, of course, is a very generic point of view. And agencies like all competitive brands, have little to gain from generic truths.

Excerpt from: Behind the Scenes in Advertising, Mark III: More Bull More by Jeremy Bullmore

💎 On how advertising jargon is used to hide flimsy thinking (synergy, media-neutral, content-led…)

Advertising and marketing people need to lose the jargon. A culture of business bullshit has slowly polluted the commercial world. Engagement, low-hanging fruit, synergy, media-neutral, content-led, always-on, ideation, adcepts, holistic approach, storytelling, user-generated content, leverage, realtime 24/7, cultural currency, the list goes on (and on). This language is symptomatic of a move towards the unnecessary complication of the world of advertising and marketing.

These terms allow people to hide behind them, and mask flimsy thinking. They confuse and conceal…

Excerpt from: How To Make Better Advertising And Advertising Better by Vic Polinghorne and Andy Palmer

💎 On the power of a name (to incite racial discrimination)

In January 2014, researchers from Harvard Business School released a controversial working paper on a study they had conducted. The study revealed that non-black Airbnb hosts could charge approximately 12 per cent more, on average, than black hosts – roughly $144 per night, versus $107. In September 2016, looking across 6,000 listings, the same researchers found that requests from guests with distinctively African-American-sounding names (like Tanisha Jackson) were 16 per cent less likely to be accepted by Airbnb hosts than those with Caucasian-sounding names (like Allison Sullivan). Particularly troubling was that, in some instances, Airbnb users would rather allow their property to remain vacant than rent to a black-identified person.

Excerpt from: Who Can You Trust?: How Technology Brought Us Together – and Why It Could Drive Us Apart by Rachel Botsman

 

💎 On how we overestimate ourselves (even when it comes to our image)

Whitchurch and Epley took photos of people and blended their facial image, in 10% increments with either an attractive or unattractive face. So the face became more or less attractive. We then showed people all 11 versions of their faces – their actual face, the 5 blended with the highly attractive face, and the five blended with the highly unattractive face—in a randomly ordered lineup and asked them to identify which face was their own. We found that people tended to select attractively enhanced images of themselves, thinking they were more attractive than they actually were.

Excerpt from: Mindwise: How We Understand What Others Think, Believe, Feel, and Want by Nicholas Epley

💎 On how little we remember (even about items we see so regularly)

However, if I asked you to describe a £10 note to someone who had never seen one so that they could create it from scratch, I’m guessing that you wouldn’t get very close to reality. Are the “£” and “10” in the same color? Does the word “ten” appear on the note anywhere? If so, how many times? How many digits does the serial number have? Is it printed vertically or horizontally? What pictures are there? How big is the note exactly? Your unconscious mind has the answers, but your conscious mind is evidently preoccupied with other things!

Excerpt from: Consumerology: The Truth about Consumers and the Psychology of Shopping by Philip Graves

💎 On confusing the quantity and quality of work (a lesson from Henry Ford)

This last point reminds me of Henry Ford’s reaction to a consultant who questioned why he paid $50,000 a year to someone who spent most of his time with his feet on his desk. “Because a few years ago that man came up with something that saved me $2,000,000,” he replied. “And when he had that idea his feet were exactly where they are now.”

Excerpt from: Rory Sutherland: The Wiki Man by Rory Sutherland

💎 On why we don’t have full awareness of the reasons behind our actions (an evolutionary explanation)

A fascinating theory, first proposed by the evolutionary biologist Robert Trivers and later supported by the evolutionary psychologist Robert Kurzban, explains that we do not have full access to the reasons behind our decision-making because, in evolutionary terms, we are better off not knowing; we have evolved to deceive ourselves, in order that we are better at deceiving others. Just as there are words that are best left unspoken, so there are feelings that are best left unthought. The theory is that if all our unconscious motivations were to impinge on our consciousness, subtle cues in our behaviour might reveal our true motivation, which would limit our social and reproductive prospects.

Robert Trivers gives an extraordinary example of a case where an animal having conscious access to its own actions may be damaging to its evolutionary fitness. When a hare is being chased, it zigzags in a random pattern in an attempt to shake off the pursuer. This technique will be more reliable if it is genuinely random and not conscious, as it is better for the hare to have no foreknowledge of where it is going to jump next: if it knew where it was going to jump next, its posture might reveal clues to its pursuer. Over time, dogs would learn to anticipate these cues – with fatal consequences.

Excerpt from: Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don’t Make Sense by Rory Sutherland

💎 On communicating risks to others to change behaviour (are anti-drugs ads too formulaic?)

Public-education films in the rich world have historically focused on the risks to health caused by taking drugs. Several decades later, those campaigns don’t seem to have made much of an impact—and that is not surprising, given that the chances of dying of an overdose are fairly slim. The truth is that buying and taking illegal drugs probably won’t kill you. But it may very well kill someone else. Cocaine, for instance, is manufactured and exported exclusively by cartels that use murder and torture as part of their business model.

Excerpt from: Narconomics: How to Run a Drug Cartel by Tom Wainwright

💎 On how willpower can be depleted (it’s not something that we just exercise)

So psychologist Roy Baumeister and colleagues put it to a closer test. People were invited to watch a sad movie. Half were told to react as they normally would, while the other half were instructed to suppress their emotions. After the movie, they were all given a hand exerciser and asked to squeeze it for as long as they could. Those who had suppressed their emotions gave up sooner. Why? Because self-control requires energy, which means we have less energy available for the next thing we need to do. And that’s why resisting temptation, making hard decisions, or taking initiative all seem to draw from the same well of energy. So willpower isn’t something that we just exercise — it’s something we deplete.

Excerpt from: Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain by David Eagleman

💎 On needing multiple techniques to understand a consumer (think about the big picture)

This is illustrated by the parable of five blind men walking into an elephant.

Each tries to describe what they’ve bumped into.

One blind man feels the side of the elephant.

He says, ‘An elephant is like a wall.’

Another blind man feels the elephant’s trunk.

He says, ‘No, an elephant is like a snake.’

The third blind man feels the leg.

He says, ‘You’re both wrong, an elephant is like a tree.’

The fourth blind man feels the tusk.

He says, ‘Sorry, but an elephant is like a spear.’

The fifth blind man feels the tail.

He says ‘You’re all wrong, an elephant is like a piece of rope.’

All of the blind men mistake their little bit of truth for the whole truth.

Excerpt from: One Plus One Equals Three: A Masterclass in Creative Thinking by Dave Trott

💎 On the balance between too much and too little choice (the inverted U-curve)

Take a simple study on pens led by Avni Shah and George Wolford, psychologist at Duke University and Dartmouth College, respectively. The scientists found twenty different pen options, all of which cost between $1.89 and $2.39 and contained black ink. The subjects were told that the pens cost about $2, but that they could purchase any of them for a special discounted rate of $1.

Here’s where things get interesting. At first glance, offering people more pens might seem like a good thing, since they can find the pen that best suits their needs. Some people like ballpoint pens, others prefer roller-balls, or just care about the texture of the grip. Sure enough, offering people more pens led to a higher percentage of people buying pens, at least at first. When only two pens were offered, 40 percent of students bought one. However, when there were ten pens to consider, 90 percent of people found one they liked enough to buy.

But now comes the inverted U-curve—when more than ten pens were offered, people became much less willing to choose any pen at all. The drop-off was steep: when there were sixteen different pens to choose from, only 30 percent of subjects bought one.

Excerpt from: The Smarter Screen: Surprising Ways to Influence and Improve Online Behavior by Shlomo Benartzi and Jonah Lehrer

💎 On breaking the hedonic treadmill (appreciate the present)

You could call it the Paul Arden question: “How can people more fully appreciate the magic and wonder they already have around them?” As advertising experts, we are supposed to be the authorities on adding perceived value to things. So we should ask ourselves why the public’s appreciation of most things (especially those things provided by private enterprise) is so woefully low. Ask people about their mobile phone, their Sky+, their broadband connection… goods which would have seemed miraculous to our grandparents… and within a minute or so you’ll be listening to morose complaints about the monthly bill.

It seems to me that, if we were seeking gratitude rather than money, most capitalists would have given up the game decades ago. 60 years ago, under communism, a few million Russians were happy to die for the right to queue for a potato. Today, in a market economy, people who buying a microwave oven for £70 at 2 o’clock in the morning complain if they have a three minute wait.

Excerpt from: Rory Sutherland: The Wiki Man by Rory Sutherland

💎 On the need for ads to turn viewers into accomplices (or they will be our challengers)

In his dense but thoughtful book, The Act of Creation, Arthur Koestler says this: ‘Language itself is never completely explicit. Words have suggestive, evocative powers; but at the same time they are merely stepping stones for thought. The artist rules his subjects by turning them into accomplices.’

That seems to be as good a definition as I know of the role of creative people in advertising. We have to try to turn our audience into accomplices; because if they aren’t our accomplices, they will be our challengers.

Excerpt from: Behind the Scenes in Advertising, Mark III: More Bull More by Jeremy Bullmore

💎 On why the true creative person wants to be a know-it-all (broaden your perspectives)

One of the best advertising people ever was Carl Ally.

He said the true creative person wants to be a know-it-all.

They want to know about all kinds of things: ancient history, nineteenth-century mathematics, modern manufacturing techniques, flower arranging, and lean hog futures.

Because they never know when these ideas might come together to form a new idea.

It may happen six minutes later or six years down the road, but they know it will happen.

Excerpt from: One Plus One Equals Three: A Masterclass in Creative Thinking by Dave Trott

💎 On the dangers of looking for formulas in advertising (you can’t be that mathematical and that precise)

In 1964, as reported by Denis Higgins in The Art of Writing Advertising, he was confronted by an interviewer trying to analyse just how and why he was such an original advertising thinker. Asked if there were any striking characteristics unique to talented writers and art directors, he said, ‘One of the problems here [in this interview] is that we’re looking for a formula. What makes a good writer? It’s a danger. … I remember those old Times interviews where the interviewer would talk to the novelist or the short story writer and say, “What time do you get up in the morning? What do you have for breakfast? What time do you start work? When do you stop work…?” And the whole implication is that if you eat cornflakes at 6:30 and then take a walk and then take a nap and then start working and then stop at noon, you too can be a great writer. You can’t be that mathematical and that precise. This business of trying to measure everything in precise terms is one of the problems with advertising today. This leads to a worship of research. We’re all concerned about the facts we get and not about how provocative we can make those facts to the consumer.’

Excerpt from: The Real Mad Men: The Remarkable True Story of Madison Avenue’s Golden Age by Andrew Cracknell

💎 On medical conditions (invented by advertisers)

In addition to the dread of auto-intoxication, the American consumer faced a positive assault course of other newly minted or rediscovered maladies – pyorrhea, halitosis (popularized by Listerine beginning in 1921), athlete’s foot (a term invented by the makers of Absorbiner in 1928), dead cuticles, scabby toes, iron-poor blood, vitamin deficiency (vitamins had been coined in 1912, but the word didn’t enter the general American vocabulary until the 1920s when advertisers realized it sounded worryingly scientific), fallen stomach, tobacco breath, dandruff, and psoriasis, though Americans would have to wait until the next decade for the scientific identification of the gravest of personal disorders – body odour, a term invented in 1933 by the makers of Lifebuoy soap and so terrifying in its social consequences that it was soon abbreviated to a whispered BO.

Excerpt from: Made In America: An Informal History of American English by Bill Bryson

💎 On writing copy for a specific person not a demographic (it should be a conversation between two human beings)

All the while I have fixed in my mind a mental picture of who will read what I’m writing.

I don’t mean “AB males aged 35-44 with a promiscuous attitude to white spirits.” I mean I think of an actual person, be it a friend, neighbour or relation, who is in the target audience.

When I see that person in my mind, I know what will appeal to them.

That way I can write copy the way I believe all copy should be written: as a conversation between two human beings rather than an announcement from manufacturer to consumer.

Excerpt from: D&Ad Copy Book by D&AD

💎 On consuming the product (not the brand)

The foolhardy researcher who dared question the cola dogma was Read Montague of Baylor College of Medicine. In 2005 Montague conducted a scientifically controlled, double-blind version of the Pepsi challenge. Participants received two unlabeled cups containing Coke and Pepsi. They were asked to drink them and indicate which tasted better. The result—an even split between the two drinks, with no correlation between the brand of cola participants claimed to prefer beforehand and the one they chose in the study. Tasters could not distinguish between the two. These results horrify Coke and Pepsi lovers. They insist—science and double-blind tests be damned—that they would have been able to tell the difference.

Excerpt from: Elephants on Acid and other bizarre experiments by Alex Boese

💎 On how poor our recollection of taste can be (how context alters it)

It turns out that we actually have surprisingly little recollection (or awareness) of even that which we tasted only a few moments ago. In one classic demonstration of this phenomenon, known as ‘choice blindness’, shoppers (nearly 200 of them) in a Swedish supermarket were asked whether they would like to take part in a taste test.13 Those who agreed were then given two jams to evaluate. They were similar in terms of their colour and texture (e.g., blackcurrant versus blueberry). Once the shoppers had picked their favourite, they sampled it once again and said why they had chosen it, and what exactly made it so much nicer than the other jam. The shoppers were more than happy to oblige, regaling the experimenter with tales of how it was their favourite, or that it tasted especially good spread on toast, etc.

What many of the shoppers failed to notice, though, was that the jams had been switched before they tasted their ‘preferred’ spread the second time around. The experimenter was using double-ended jam jars in order to effect this switch unnoticed. In other words, the unsuspecting customers were justifying why they liked the spread that they had just rejected.

Excerpt from: Gastrophysics: The New Science of Eating by Charles Spence

💎 On the mistake of thinking advertising has become harder (because it hasn’t)

It’s a puzzling form of self-deception, this. Comparisons across time are meaningless. Winning things gets neither harder nor easier. The increased sophistication of your consumers, real or imagined, will affect your competitors no less than yourself. There has never been a time when advertising was expected to do anything other than work hard.

To the envious practitioners of 2040, marketing in the 1990s will presumably seem to have been a doddle. How easy, they will think, how very, very easy.

The reason it doesn’t seem so now is because it isn’t.

Excerpt from: Behind the Scenes in Advertising, Mark III: More Bull More by Jeremy Bullmore

💎 On complaints of information overload having a long history (an example from the 1860’s)

In 1860 a young doctor called James Crichton Browne spoke to the Royal Medical Society of Edinburgh in language we would recognise today: ‘We live in an age of electricity, of railways, of gas, and of velocity in thought and action. In the course of one brief month more impressions are conveyed to our brains than reached those of our ancestors in the course of years, and our mentalising machines are called upon for a greater amount of fabric than was required of our grandfathers in the course of a lifetime.’ The roots of information overload run deep.

Excerpt from: Curation: The power of selection in a world of excess by Michael Bhaskar

💎 On consumers become less price sensitive when spending with credit card (we treat physical and digital differently)

Want proof? Consider an experiment conducted several years ago by Drazen Prelec and Duncan Simester, marketing professors at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The pair organized a real-life, sealed-bid auction for tickets to a Boston Celtics game (this was during the Larry Bird, Kevin McHale, Robert Parish era, so the tickets were especially valuable). Half the participants in the auction were informed that whoever won the bidding would have to pay for the tickets in cash (although they had a day to come up with the funds). The other half were told that the winning bidder would have to pay by credit card. Prelec and Simester then averaged the bids of those who thought they would have to pay in cash and those who thought they could pay with a credit card. Incredibly, the average credit card bid was roughly twice as large as the average cash bid.

Excerpt from: Why Smart People Make Big Money Mistakes and How to Correct Them: Lessons from the New Science of Behavioural Economics by Gary Belsky and Thomas Gilovich

💎 On consumers being price sensitive in some areas but price blind in others (printer ink versus champagne)

Just setting the printer default to “draft” quality would save consumers hundreds of dollars a year. Yet few consumers do. Though many companies still sell cheaper ink refills, refills account for only 10 to 15 percent of the market. That means that 90 percent of printing is still done using ink that, according to the PC World analysis, costs $4,731 per gallon. You might as well fill your ink cartridges with 1985 vintage Krug champagne.

Excerpt from: The Price of Everything: The True Cost of Living by Eduardo Porter

💎 On creativity being more arrangement than originality (look at things in new and different ways)

Creation, argued Koestler, comes from syntheses of existing ideas; from looking at things in new and different ways. Think about creativity in art. The Renaissance wasn’t about the completely new, it was, as the name implied, a rebirth – it changed the world not through unblemished originality but by reinterpreting the art and learning of the ancients. Likewise Picasso’s art, that paragon of modernism, drew inspiration from so-called ‘primitive’ works. Koestler argued that scientific discoveries work in the same way, often using metaphors or ordinary things to make breakthroughs. Think about the water pump which inspired William Harvey’s ideas about the circulation of blood, or the strings in string theory. As Newton said: ‘if I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.’

Excerpt from: Curation: The power of selection in a world of excess by Michael Bhaskar

💎 On the tension between emotional and rational thinking (the Elephant and its rider)

But, to us, the duo’s tension is captured best by an analogy used by University of Virginia psychologist Jonathan Haidt in his wonderful book The Happiness Hypothesis. Haidt says that our emotional side is an Elephant and our rational side is its Rider. Perched atop the Elephant, the Rider holds the reins and seems to be the leader. But the Riders control is precarious because the Rider is so small relative to the Elephant. Anytime the six-ton Elephant and the Rider disagree about which direction to go, the Rider is going to lose. He’s completely overmatched.

Excerpt from: Switch: How to change things when change is hard by Dan Heath and Chip Heath