Category: Excerpts

💎 On the power of names (why female storms kill more than male ones)

Such names matter more than one might expect. In 2014 a study by researchers at Arizona State University and the University of Illinois found that hurricanes with feminine names killed more people than those with masculine ones. This has little to do with their ferocity, which was randomly distributed, but rather with people’s reactions to them. It seems that tropical storms with women’s names are taken less seriously than those with male names.

Excerpt from: Go Figure: Things you didn’t know you didn’t know: The Economist Explains by Tom Standage

💎 On the power of a price tag (they are used as an incorrect indicator of quality)

Wine without a price tag doesn’t have this effect. In 2008, American food and wine critics teamed up with a statistician from Yale and a couple of Swedish economists to study the results of thousands of blind tastings of wines ranging from $1.65 to $150 a bottle. They found that when they can’t see the price tag, people prefer cheaper wine to pricier bottles. Experts’ tastes did move in the proper direction. they favored finer, more expensive wines. But the bias was almost imperceptible. A wine that cost ten times more than another was ranked by experts only seven points higher on a scale of one to one hundred.

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

💎 On the power of a name (Paradise Island)

There is an island in the West Indies that was once called Hog Island. Hog Island was a very beautiful island, but it was difficult to attract tourists to it. Then, one day, a clever person had the bright idea of changing the name of the island and, suddenly, it was inundated by tourists. What was the island’s new name? Paradise Island!

So, don’t use words carelessly. See the power in the meaning of words and use this power to develop your idea.

Excerpt from: The Idea Book by Fredrik Härén

💎 On the phenomenon of wishful seeing (the manifestation of wishful thinking)

In a more recent study, psychologists from New York University asked students to estimate the distance between their own position and a full bottle of water on the table at which they were sitting. Beforehand, they fed some of the students a diet of pretzels to make them thirsty. The thirsty students judged the bottle to be closer than the other students did. Another study revealed that hills appear steeper to us than they actually are, and that this tendency is exaggerated when the observer is old, unhealthy, or wearing a backpack.

Excerpt from: Born Liars: Why We Can’t Live Without Deceit by Ian Leslie

💎 On the pernicious effect of “the Arithmocracy” (more specifically, the spreadsheet)

What the spreadsheet has done is to create in organisations and governments an over-reliance on numbers (by no means always meaningful or even accurate) with the result that often spurious numerical targets, metrics or values invariably override any conflicting human judgment. This has given rise to what a colleague of mine, Anthony Tasgal, calls “The Arithmocracy”: a powerful left-brained administrative caste which attaches importance only to things which can be expressed in numerical terms or on a chart.

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

💎 On the lottery of pitches (I hate it / I love it)

Three main clients attended, the editor, publisher, and some bloke from distribution who kept talking about lorries and timetables! Well, he would, wouldn’t he.

We diligently went over the strategy with heads nodding enthusiastically, even the man from distribution. And then I revealed the line that captured their positioning. The Mail on Sunday: ‘Depth without drowning’.

There was stunned silence. Finally, the publisher said, ‘I hate it’. Every time I read the word ‘depth’, I see ‘death!’ This is not going well, I say to myself! No, no, no says the editor, that’s absurd. That’s what we do, provide news in depth. I foolishly think we’re back on track. Someone with a brain is thinking about this. And then he says, but I hate the word drowning. I have a fear of swimming. Jesus, I say to myself, I really am dealing with tabloid brains here. There are only three words in this line, what else can go wrong. So I turn to the distribution genius and say how do you feel about the word ‘without?’

Excerpt from: Hegarty on Advertising: Turning Intelligence into Magic by John Hegarty

💎 On the life-saving benefits of breaking the rules (during the Second World War)

Guilford’s own story is an interesting one. He was a psychologist who, during the Second World War, worked on personality tests designed to pick out the most suitable bomber pilot candidates. In order to do this, Guilford used intelligence tests, a grading system and personal interviews. He was annoyed because the Air Force had also assigned a retired air force pilot without psychological training to help in the selection process. Guilford did not have much faith in the retired officer’s experience.

It turned out that Guilford and the retired officer chose different candidates. After a while, their work was evaluated and, surprisingly, the pilots chosen by Guilford were shot down and killed much more frequently than those selected by the retired pilot. Guilford later confessed to being so depressed about sending so many pilots to their deaths that he considered suicide. Instead of this course of action, he decided to find out why the pilots chosen by the retired pilot had fared so much better than those he had selected.

The old pilot said that he had asked one question to all the would-be pilots: “What would you do if your plane was shot at by German anti-aircraft when you were flying over Germany?” He ruled out everyone who answered, I’d fly higher’. Those who answered, “I don’t know — maybe I’d dive ” or “I’d zigzag” or “I’d roll and try to avoid the gunfire by turning” all gave the wrong answer according to the rule book. The retired pilot, however, chose his candidates from the group that answered incorrectly. The soldiers who followed the manual were also very predictable and that is where Guilford failed. All those he chose answered according to the manual. The problem was that even the Germans knew that you should fly higher when under fire and their fighter planes therefore lay in wait above the clouds ready to shoot down the American pilots. In other words, it was the creative pilots who survived more often than those who may have been more intelligent, but who stuck by the rules!

Excerpt from: The Idea Book by Fredrik Härén

💎 On the importance of curation (the Library of Babel was useless)

The Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges wrote a story about the Library of Babel. His library was composed of a near-infinite labyrinth of hexagonal rooms, which contained every possible combination of a 416-page book, randomly sorted. Yes, somewhere in the library was every useful and brilliant possible book. But in reality the library was endless and entirely useless. Without curation, or aggregation, or filtering, the Internet would be such a Borgesian nightmare.

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

💎 On how the language we use to describe an event shapes our memories (every word is important)

Elizabeth Loftus showed subjects a videotape of a car accident. Some subjects were then asked, ‘How fast were the cars going when they smashed into each other?’, others were asked, ‘How fast were the cars going when they hit one another?’ The average speed given by the first group was 41 miles per hour and by the second 34 miles per hour. A week later subjects were asked whether they had noticed any broken glass resulting from the accident. The presence of broken glass was incorrectly reported by twice as many of the first group as of the second: the suggestion that the cars had been travelling fast had made subjects confabulate the occurrence of broken glass.

Excerpt from: Irrationality: The enemy within by Stuart Sutherland

💎 On communications becoming more believable if they’re ‘wasteful’ (the handicap principle)

Sometimes it’s even necessary to do something risky or wasteful in order to prove that you have a desirable trait. This is known as the handicap principle. It explains why species with good defense mechanisms, like skunks and poison dart frogs, evolve high-contrast colors: unless it can defend itself, an animal that stands out quickly becomes another animal’s lunch. For a nonbiological example, consider the difference between blue jeans and dress pants. Jeans are durable and don’t need to be washed every day, whereas dress pants demand a bit more in terms of upkeep—which is precisely why they’re considered more formal attire.

In the human social realm, honest signaling and the handicap principle are best reflected in the dictum, “Actions speak louder than words.” The problem with words is that they cost almost nothing; talk is usually too cheap. Which is a more honest signal of your value to a company: being told “great job!” or getting a raise?

We rely heavily on honest signals in the competitive arenas we’ve been discussing—that is, whenever we try to evaluate others as potential mates, friends, and allies.

Excerpt from: The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life by Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson

💎 On thoughts and feelings following behaviour rather than the other way round (Benjamin Franklin effect)

Eighteenth-century American polymath and politician Benjamin Franklin was once eager to gain the cooperation of a difficult and apathetic member of the Pennsylvania state legislature. Rather than spend his time bowing and scraping to the man, Franklin decided on a completely different course of action. He knew this person had a copy of a rare and unusual book in his private library, and so Franklin asked whether he might borrow it for a couple of days. The man agreed and, according to Franklin, ‘When we next met in the House, he spoke to me (which he had never done before), and with great civility; and he ever after manifested a readiness to serve me on all occasions.’ Franklin attributed the success of his book-borrowing technique to a simple principle: ‘He that has once done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another than he whom you yourself have obliged.’ In other words, to increase the likelihood of someone liking you, get them to do you a favour. A century later, Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy appeared to agree: ‘We do not love people so much for the good they have done us, as for the good we do them.’

Excerpt from: 59 Seconds: Think a little, change a lot by Richard Wiseman

💎 On confident branding (Renault versus Audi)

The third marker, I would say, is the most influential of all, yet hardly anyone spots it even though it is staring you in the face. This is the one that arises from Hegarty’s decision not to translate the slogan. By leaving the slogan in the original German he enabled the brand to occupy the position of being not just German, but being uncompromisingly German.

Most foreign cars in the 1980s tried to play down their foreign origins. And in order to demonstrate that their cars were “anglicised,” advertisers used English slogans in their advertising. BMW used the slogan “The Ultimate Driving Machine,” Renault in their 1992 Clio ad used “A certain Style,” and VW in their iconic Princess Diana Golf ad used “If only everything in life was as reliable as a Volkswagen.” But Audi, by sticking to their original German slogan, effectively gave out a super-confident message that their cars were German and proud of it, and that they were not prepared to compromise them by changing them in any way. If people wanted a hybrid adapted to their local market then they could buy one of the other marques, but if they wanted the real thing then they should buy an Audi.

Excerpt from: Seducing the Subconscious: The Psychology of Emotional Influence in Advertising by Robert Heath

💎 On removing anxieties about buying a product (Dr Pepper)

But weirdly, I’ve never asked for Dr Pepper in a bar because you know they’re not going to have it and there’s that mild embarrassment about asking for something they haven’t got, and feeling like a bit of a twat. However, if you ask for Coke and they don’t have it, it’s their fault not yours, the whole dynamic’s completely different. The only place that it’s socially acceptable not to sell Coke is a total health farm weirdo place full of organic produce, and even then it’s a bit irritating. They’ll have loads of those Fentimans Victorian-style lemonades, and even then it’s a bit irritating—come on, just sell Coke for crying out loud! Everywhere else has to sell Coke and it’s their fault if they haven’t got it. An aversion to little things like minor forms of embarrassment stop me from being a maximiser and asking for Dr Pepper, and I’ll always ask for Diet coke if I’m in a pub or a bar unless they have some massive sign saying ‘We Sell Dr Pepper’, in which case I would obviously ask for Dr Pepper.

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

💎 On the financial value of the framing effect of brands

This framing effect of brands is not marketing hype; it increases the perceived value and the willingness to pay a premium price — even for objectively identical products. The VW Sharan and the Ford Galaxy are identical cars – both produced in the same factories – but consumers have been willing to spend a premium of €2,000 for the frame that the VW brand added. In the UK, Virgin Mobile has higher perceived network quality and satisfaction scores than T-Mobile despite the fact that it uses the exact same network.

Excerpt from: Decoded: The Science Behind Why We Buy by Phil Barden

💎 On the danger of relying on recall alone as a measure of ad effectiveness (unconscious familiarity breeds affection)

Research has shown that print adverts processed outside of conscious awareness shift attitudes just as much as those processed consciously. In one study, 80 subjects were exposed to adverts either deliberately (they were asked to look at them) or incidentally (they were asked to assess the layout of the magazine page opposite). Afterwards, the group were asked to rate 50 adverts and say whether they had seen them earlier. Just 11% of those who had seen them incidentally recalled the ads that had been shown, but their ratings of them as more memorable, appealing, eye-catching, and distinctive were just as positively biased over the adverts not shown as those who had been exposed to them deliberately. It appears that the unconscious mind recognizes what it has seen before and, because it is familiar, can process it more fluently, which creates the feeling of liking something more – unconscious familiarity breeds affection!

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

💎 On the danger of industry navel gazing (look outside)

As I look at the advertising being produced at the moment, at least in Britain, it seems to me that much of it has been produced in total isolation from the real world. The prose style that’s used in press copy owes nothing to any other prose style except that used in other advertisements. The makers of advertisements seem increasingly obsessed by only one subject: advertisements. If this is so, then two consequences will follow. First, since the receivers of advertisements are only too conscious of the rest of the world – socially, politically, culturally, economically – then the advertisement will fail adequately to connect the advertised brand or service to that bigger, truer world. And second, imitation and lack of originality become more likely. Advertising is feeding, I think, far too much on advertising, and not nearly enough on the wider, far more interesting world outside.

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

💎 On the importance of being interesting (not just being right)

She wants Mr. Interesting.

In the pub, who do you want to listen to?

The bloke who’s always right?

Or the bloke who’s always interesting?

Being right is overrated.

Because being right is seen as the truth.

But what is the truth?

The truth is whatever you believe it is.

And you only believe what you want to believe.

And you only want to believe what’s interesting.

Excerpt from: Creative Mischief by Dave Trott

💎 On the power of saying things simply (I’m hit)

“It’s over.” “It’s a boy.” “We’re going to win.” “He’s dead.” These are the words of big events. Because they are big you speak with utter and unconscious concentration as you communicate them. You unconsciously edit out the extraneous, the unneeded. (When soldiers take a bullet they don’t say, “I have been shot,” they say, “I’m hit.”)

Good hard simple words with good hard clear meanings are good things to use when you speak. They are like pickets in a fence, slim and unimpressive on their own but sturdy and effective when strung together.

Excerpt from: On Speaking Well by Peggy Noonan

💎 On the power of brand familiarity (friendship for the product)

Whether it is an impulse purchase like a candy bar or a package of cigarettes or an infrequent and highly deliberated purchase like a washing machine a refrigerator, a vacuum cleaner or a mattress, the biggest single thing that advertising can contribute is a friendly predisposition toward the brand—a whole complex of thoughts and emotions which give the purchaser peace of mind in the choice he makes.

We shun the unknown. We are naturally drawn to the familiar.

You might call this simply “friendship for the product”.

Your best friends are people whose qualities you like and admire and whom you enjoy being with— but they are usually people you see frequently.

The principle of frequency in advertising has long been recognized. Several great brands have been built around rigid adherence to this principle rather than through the content or power of any single advertisement.

Excerpt from: Leo: A Tribute to Leo Burnett, Through a Selection of the Inspiring Words that He Wrote or Spoke by Leo Burnett

💎 On the danger of prioritising the creative idea over the execution (the importance of craft)

The other big thing I learnt from John is the importance of craft. There is a universal fashion now to talk about the importance of creative ideas. If that means that good campaigns always have some kind of internal logic and coherence to them (even if that’s hard to put into words), I’ll maybe agree. But very often it sounds as if having the ‘idea’ is the only difficult, ‘creative’ bit, and the rest is mere ‘execution’. People respond to ads, however, not to abstract ideas: ads that exist in the full details of how they look, how they sound, the timing of the edit, the camera angles, the soundtrack, the lighting, every nuance of sets and propping and casting… and so on. If there’s such a thing as a ‘creative idea’ (which I doubt, though I don’t have room here to get too philosophical), we only know about it because of the execution that embodies it.

Excerpt from: Eat Your Greens by Wiemer Snijders

💎 On the risks of safe advertising (you’re invisible)

“An idea that hasn’t been done before might, on the surface, look really risky,” argues Bob Isherwood, worldwide creative director of Saatchi & Saatchi. “It’s an area where no one has been before. There is no precedent. But usually the biggest risk lies in ideas that are predictable, because ideas that are predictable don’t get noticed. You can’t sell anything to anyone unless they notice you. To get a boring ad noticed, you’ve got to run it lots and lots of times. If you’ve got a really original message, you only need to run it a few times. People retain the message longer and it costs the client less.”

“People think the low risk thing is not to run the high risk idea, observes Stow. “The biggest risk is to be safe, because if you’re safe you’re invisible and you waste your money.”

Excerpt from: Cutting Edge Advertising: How to Create the World’s Best Print for Brands in the 21st Century by Jim Aitchison

💎 On how innovative brands don’t start fully formed (bow ties at Starbucks)

For instance, when Howard Schultz launched what would become Starbucks, he modeled the stores after Italian coffee houses, a new concept for the United States. Schultz was definitely onto something, but the baristas wore bow ties (which they found very uncomfortable) while customers complained about the menus being written primarily in Italian as well as the nonstop opera music. What’s more, the stores had no chairs. The Starbucks experience that emerged from the many refinements and tweaks obviously looks and feels quite different from Schultz’s initial concept.

Excerpt from: Little Bets: How breakthrough ideas emerge from small discoveries by Peter Sims

💎 On how our emotions lead us to become less sensitive to differences in the magnitude of numbers (buyer beware)

Research scientists Christopher Hsee and Yuval Rottenstreich have asserted that people’s judgement and decision-making abilities can be impaired by an event such as the SARS outbreak, not because it induces negative feelings, but rather because it is an emotionally charged issue, regardless of the nature of the feelings it produces. Specifically, they argue that emotions lead people to become less sensitive to differences in the magnitude of numbers; they’re more likely to pay attention to the simple presence or absence of an event. In business terms, what this means is that people are more likely to pay attention to the simple presence or absence of an emotion-laden offer than to the specific numbers involved.

To test this idea, the researchers asked participants to spend a brief period of time thinking about some issues either emotionally or non-emotionally. Shortly afterwards, these research subjects were told to imagine that someone they knew was selling a set of Madonna CDs. Half of them were told that there were five CDs in the bundle, whereas the other half were told that there were ten. Participants were then asked to report the maximum amount they’d be willing to pay for the bundle.

The researchers found that those who had earlier practised thinking in an unemotional manner were willing to pay more for the set of ten CDs than for the set of five, which is quite rational. More interestingly, however, those who had earlier practised thinking in an emotional manner were less sensitive to the difference in the number of CDs, reporting that they would pay roughly the same for each set.

The results of this research suggest that emotional experience can have a detrimental impact on decision-making, perhaps allowing you to be persuaded by an offer when you shouldn’t be.

Excerpt from: Yes! 50 Secrets from the Science of Persuasion by Noah Goldstein, Steve Martin and Robert Cialdini

💎 On breaking comparisons with your competition to charge an eye-watering premium (launching Haagen-Dazs)

When we launched Haagen-Dazs in the UK in the early 90s we were in the middle of a recession. Not the best of times to be launching a luxury ice-cream brand. We positioned the brand as a sensual pleasure. We didn’t compare it to other ice creams, in fact we hardly mentioned the word ice cream. But at £3 a pot it was not only accessible, it was the most stylish pleasure you could purchase. The brand took off. Haagen-Dazs weren’t in the ice cream business, they were in the sensual pleasure business.

Sadly, over time, a succession of brand owners dragged it back to the ice cream sector. Now it’s just one of a number of ice creams fighting for attention in the supermarket freezer. Imagine where they could have taken that brand had they realized the potential of where we had positioned it – they didn’t realize we’d created a fashion brand.

Excerpt from: Hegarty on Advertising: Turning Intelligence into Magic by John Hegarty

💎 On hard to read fonts improving the care with which people read (Moses’s Arc)

If there is a dark side to fluency, might there be a bright side to its opposite, disfluency? Alter’s work suggests there might be. In one of his studies, he printed a simple, easy-to-read question: “How many animals of each kind did Moses take on the ark?” Many respondents said two. But when the question was printed in a harder-to-read font, respondents were 35 percent more likely to recognize that it was Noah, not Moses, who built the ark. The less legible font made people more careful readers.

Excerpt from: Hit Makers: The Science of Popularity in an Age of Distraction by Derek Thompson

💎 On how labels can determine how enjoyable our experiences are (cheese and body odour)

Recent research indicates that suggestion not only influences what we smell, but also how we react to smells. In 2005 researchers at Oxford University asked subjects to sniff two odors, one labeled cheddar cheese and the other body odor. Predictably, the subjects rated the body odor as significantly more unpleasant. However, the two smells were identical. Only the labels differed. Consider that the next time you’re enjoying some especially pungent cheese at a cocktail party.

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

💎 On how the sunk cost fallacy can lead to bad decisions (choosing fear of loss over enjoyment)

Hal Arkes and Catehrine Blumer created an experiment in 19S5 which demonstrated your tendency to go fuzzy when sunk costs come along. They asked subjects to assume they had spent S100 on a ticket for a ski trip in Michigan, but soon after found a better ski trip in Wisconsin for S50 and bought a ticket for this trip too. They then asked the people in the study to imagine they learned the two trips overlapped and the tickets couldn’t be refunded or resold. Which one do you think they chose, the $100 good vacation, or the $50 great one?

Over half of the people in the study went with the more expensive trip. It may not have promised to be as fun, but the loss seemed greater. That’s the fallacy at work, because the money is gone no matter what. You can’t get it back. The fallacy prevents you from realizing the best choice is to do whatever promises the better experience in the future, not which negates the feeling of loss in the past.

Excerpt from: You Are Not So Smart: Why Your Memory Is Mostly Fiction, Why You Have Too Many Friends On Facebook And 46 Other Ways You’re Deluding Yourself by David Mcraney

💎 On how the money illusion affects our concept of fairness (a lesson on Wall Street bonuses)

A company is making a small profit. It is located in a community experiencing a recession with substantial unemployment but no inflation. There are many workers anxious to work at the company.

The company decides to decrease wages and salaries 7% this year.

Sixty-two per cent judged the pay cut unfair.

In an another version of the question, the community was said to have ‘substantial unemployment and inflation of 12% . . . The company decided to increase salaries only 5% this year.’ Now 78 per cent said this was acceptable. But of course the workers’ lot is almost identical in both versions. Getting a 5 per cent ‘pay rise’ when prices rise 12 per cent translates into nearly a 7 per cent cut in buying power.

One conclusion is that inflation is the Scroogish employer’s best friend. A similar principle applies to bonuses. It was judged acceptable for a troubled company to skip an annual 10 per cent bonus it had been in the habit of paying, but not to cut pay by 10 per cent for a year. (Wall Street employers, at the mercy of a volatile market, have long made use of this.)

Excerpt from: Priceless: The Myth of Fair Value (and How to Take Advantage of It) by William Poundstone

💎 On how the safety of success encourages Hollywood sequels (Fast and Furious 928)

Take Hollywood, for instance: Among the ten highest-grossing movies of 1981, only two were sequels. In 1991, it was three. In 2001, it was five. And in 2011, eight of the top ten highest-grossing films were sequels. In fact, 2011 set a record for the greatest percentage of sequels among major studio releases. Then 2012 immediately broke that record; the next year would break it again. In December 2012, journalist Nick Allen looked ahead with palpable fatigue to the year to come:

Audiences will be given a sixth helping of X-Men plus Fast and Furious 6, Die Hard 5, Scary Movie 5 and Paranormal Activity 5. There will also be Iron Man 3, The Hangover 3, and second outings for The Muppets, The Smurfs, GI Joe and Bad Santa.

Excerpt from: Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions by Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths

💎 On how the company a brand keeps determines what consumers think of it (who are you compared to?)

When consumers who know a lot about cars were asked to evaluate a Honda ad, they rated it more favourably when it was surrounded by ads for prestigious brands like Armani and Rolex, than when it was in the context of less premium brands like Timex and Old Navy. When Simonson and Yoon compared how people evaluated the attractiveness of a series of products, including lawn mowers, food processors, and cars, they found that the strength of preference for a product was influenced by the context of choices presented at the time. For example, when a pen was selected from a set where it was significantly better than another, participants would pay more for it and think it wrote better than when the same pen was selected from a more balanced set of options. With the vast sums spent on advertising, a relatively small investment replicating Simonson and Yoon’s study for your own products and media options could lead to a dramatic difference in the way people feel about your brand.

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