1273: Richard Shotton & MichaelAaron Flicker | Marketing to Human Minds

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28:25That's 20 % off at rag-bone.com with promo code JORDAN. When they ask where you heard about them, please support our show and let them know we sent you. Don't forget about our newsletter, We Bit Wiser. It is a two-minute read every Wednesday. It is very practical, applicable. You can use it right away. It's a nugget of wisdom from one of our thousand-plus episodes. And it's a great companion to the show. JordanHarbinger.com slash news is where you can find it. Now, back to Richard Schotton and Michael Aaron Flicker. It's tough to do this with every brand. Like, how would I do this? I've got to release the podcast on vinyl.

28:56You can only share it if you have a dual tape deck. so you can give a copy to your friend. Like the last time I used something like that was I was copying Michael Jackson's Bad album, I think, which is still fire even with tape hiss in the background. But like not every brand can do this, right? It's tricky. And they don't need to. So if you're a podcaster and you are free to air, well, a bias and experiment about price sensitivity is irrelevant. Right. But if you are one of the 90 % of FMCG or CPG products that has to sell, well, then you do want to be interested in price sensitivity. and it doesn't have to be as direct as in the La Salita study.

29:32In the book, we talk about Oreos. They do a promotion where they tied up with Pac-Man. That's a brilliant approach. That's cool. Because Pac-Man is probably a hell of a lot cheaper than buying a modern computer game, and it gets people to think about their childhood. Imagine how much it costs to license Pac-Man from Atari. They're like, somebody wants to license Pac-Man? And they're like, yeah, it was that or Sonic the Hedgehog. And it's like one was a million dollars and the other was like, go ahead. Whatever, bro. You know, we just we're just stoked you want to send us a photo of you doing. Yeah.

30:04Give us some free Oreos was probably the cost of licensing Pac-Man 45 years or whatever after the inception of the brand. Yeah. Disney's really good at this kind of stuff, too. Not just with the nostalgia. I mean, they're the masters of this, but they used to do this thing where I grew up adjacent to a bunch of rich kids who would get everything, you know, that they wanted, kind of. And I remember when videos would come out of new movies like Lion King was first available on VHS. You couldn't rent it because it was even though Blockbuster had like 100 copies, they were all gone for the first like six months that they were there.

30:39Unless you got super lucky or your friend worked there, but people could buy them. But if you wanted to buy that VHS tape, it was like$100 in 90s money. Okay, so I don't know what that is now. $200,$300, like it's insane. And my friend's mom's going to buy these things. And I'm like, how are you getting this? Where are you getting it? And it's like, oh, if you're willing to pay out the nose, you can have it. But then what was really interesting was I was like, oh, do you have this? And they're like, no, you can't buy that. I'm like, what do you mean you can't buy that? It came out five years ago.

31:08And they're like, yeah, if you want, I don't know, Fantasia or something, The Little Mermaid, you have to wait like 10 months or possibly even two, three years for them to make another batch of these VHS tapes. Or you're buying it on, I don't even know where you would buy a used video back in the day, like some thrift store. You'd get a lucky find because it wasn't available. They stopped making it. It's like taking a book out of print and then being like, you can't have it, but it'll be back in three years. And to increase the sexiness of this, Jordan, they called it the Disney Vault. So not to make you feel that they were stealing from you, they manufactured their own scarcity.

31:46I see. They created the Disney vault. The video was out of the vault and then it had to go back in. The point of your story, which I think all listeners can understand, is that sometimes scarcity is truly real. Oh. And sometimes that's the point. Sometimes it's to the brand's benefit to limit the availability to drive up cost or to drive up interest. And Supreme as a clothing brand was based on the only the concept that they were going to have limited quantities. Yeah. Disney, your example, they're limiting the time that you can buy those videos. I assume this doesn't really work in the age of the Internet with Disney's vault because it's like, oh, it's in the vault.

32:23Fine. I'm going to go steal it. You know, maybe they limit it from streaming services, too. I assume Disney has the power to do that. But you can't take it off the pirate bay. But then again, 0.1 % of Internet users probably know how to do that stuff, right? So maybe it still works. I don't know. You know, in America, K-pop Demon Hunters was the hottest summertime blockbuster. It was made by Netflix. Yes. But Netflix did not anticipate its success, and they did not have the Halloween costumes that they normally would have. And that was true scarcity. They did not think it was going to be such a blockbuster.

32:57They did not make them. I don't know if this is factually true, but walking down the streets in New Jersey, the number one homemade costume was K-pop demon hunters. You know, there is something to that ability to manufacture it. And sometimes it does occur in the world. Don't worry. Every Chinese manufacturer was on it. They were like, hey, K-pop demon hunter. All right. We need like white hair and some glitter. And then we need like a blue hair one and then booty shorts and then put them all in a plastic bag and then call it K-pop demon hunter. Sir, isn't that illegal? Do we care? Not really.

33:30Boom, Amazon. And then that thing you could see, you know what? It's like purchased 89 ,000 times this week. And I'm like, it's Monday night. What? Yeah, it's incredible. There's just the entire Chinese inventory of wigs and like pink booty shorts and whatever else was. They were running the presses overnight for those things is unbelievable. The demand for that. You frequently mentioned the attention to action gaps such as like wanting to work out but you don't your motivation isn't sufficient how do brands work around this yeah so it's a very common problem that people intends to change their behavior like they intend to eat healthier or exercise more but they never quite get around to doing it and the argument from psychologists is motivation is a necessary but not sufficient condition for behavior change what you also need to do is associate whatever behavior you're trying and encourage people to do with a very clear time, place or mood.

34:27So essentially you want to create a cue or a trigger moment. So thinking in the kind of personal example that you mentioned, let's say you want someone to take vitamin D every day. You wouldn't say just take vitamin D once a day. You'd say once you've had your first coffee, take vitamin D. There might be no pharmacological reason for taking it after coffee, but by attaching that behavior to a very clear trigger moment, it is much more likely to occur. Because you're not going to forget the coffee, but you're probably going to forget the vitamin D. It's exactly that. The coffee drinking happens, and that moment acts as a catalyst that converts the vague intention to take vitamin D into actual behavior change.

35:07So yeah, you need to create this cure trigger. When we were kids, there was a give me a break, break me off a piece of your Kit Kat or something like that, break me off a piece of the Kit Kat bar. And that was like, oh, you're done with dealing with a-holes at your retail job. sit down and snap open this thing and then share it with your friend. It's a pretty brilliant campaign, I assume, worked well for them. Interestingly, and I didn't realize this until Michael and I were chatting during the book, that American campaign is completely different from Britain. In Britain, the line for about 70 years is have a break, have a kicker.

35:39And they've run that line consistently. That's even more directly associated with the break. Exactly. So I prefer that simplicity and directness of the British one. It's not that they're talking about how beautiful the Kit Kat tastes, but there is this very clear association. You have a tea break, you have a coffee break, you're there with your Kit Kat. There's no sharing involved in the British one, I'll point out. It's selfish. Have a break, have a Kit Kat. And if your friend wants some, well, too bad. He should go get his own. Selfish Brits. What else is new? What about Diet Coke? You mentioned Diet Coke in the book.

36:10I just remember all of the women leaning out the window looking at some guy digging a hole or whatever and slamming a Diet Coke in the parking lot. I probably shouldn't have admitted that, but that's the one I remember. Your memory is spot on decades later. And what they were trying to show everyone was when it was time to take a break from work, it was time to have a Diet Coke break. Crack open a can of Diet Coke. Treat yourself to something indulgent but not necessarily unhealthy because it was Diet Coke. That was the pitch 30 years ago. But what's fascinating is you remember those women leaning out the window looking at the workmen.

36:47I don't know if that would fly in today's advertising culture. Maybe not. It was probably where the phrase thirsty comes from, actually. And then they had Cindy Crawford, I think, later because guys started drinking Diet Coke, which I don't think Coca-Cola really expected. I think that might have been an afterthought that guys actually were going to start to drink Diet Coke as well. And, yeah, Cindy Crawford made sure that we were. snickers also does this really well this whole like hey are you hungry don't don't bother with food or anything just have a snickers bar it's exactly the same principle yeah and what they do really creatively is the other two we talked about kit kat on a break diet coke at a timed break we're very literal snickers is a little bit more creative and they say not just when you're hungry but you're not you when you're hangry oh yeah so if you're beyond just being hungry you actually are not the you you want to be when you're so hungry you're angry and they make this campaign you're not you they've got amazing uh creative you know they have betty white turning into a football player when she's hungry you know i mean really great creative but they're interestingly using this anger from being hungry as the trigger moment.

38:01And that can be pretty compelling because it's a feeling you have inside you. So the next time you're so hungry, you're starting to get angry, that's when you should pull a Snickers bar. So they're using a trigger in a similar way, but slightly different. Are they doing anything other than being funny and memorable? Is there anything else going on? Or you mean also the break association, but it's instead of a time, it's a feeling. That's actually, you're right. That's it. Wow. Speaking of humor, though, it cuts through the noise. What else does it do? You mentioned in the book it actually can reduce price sensitivity, which I'd never heard of.

38:33It's a fascinating one in that you would think all advertisers knew this. But actually, across the world, there has been a reduction in the proportion of ads that try and amuse. So you go back to the 1990s and about 60 % of them try to amuse. 2023, it's about 35%. Yeah, ads were really funny in the 90s. They used to be a lot funnier. And it's a massive mistake. People notice ads if you put them in a good mood. They're more like to believe what you tell them. And then, yeah, work that I've done with Ben Davies suggests that it also reduces price sensitivity. So we got 821 people. We showed them a series of promotional ads.

39:15So maybe like a bottle of Bailey's for$10 or some pizzas and Budweiser's for$15. And every ad people had to rate whether they thought it was good value or bad value. We averaged those scores. And then we asked what mood people were in. And what we found is if people are in a good mood, 76 % of them thought that products were good value. If they're in a bad mood, it was 60%. So exactly the same product is rated 26 % better value if people are in a good mood. And I think what's happening here is what people should do is just judge an offer on its inherent qualities, the price and the benefits. But what they actually do is they confuse their initial feelings, their internal feelings with what's in front of them.

40:00And some of that positivity they're feeling generally imbues the product in front of them. So putting people in a good mood is a great commercial tactic. This works on me so well. If I'm at the airport and I have to overpay for a salad, I'm like, yeah, well, I'm at the airport. That's how it is. If I'm at Disneyland and I have to overpay for a salad, I'm like, what? It's a Disney salad. Look, it's got a Mickey shaped crouton in here. That's fun. And it's like, because I'm in a good mood, but also there's more to it, right? Disney's wowing you with every step, right? So you feel like, okay, price of it in being this magical place is everything is five times more expensive.

40:36The airport doesn't quite have that same sheen. But yeah, when you're in a, when I'm in a good mood. I mean, I literally I don't want to be in a good mood if I'm shopping for something expensive, because I will often just be like, you know what? I like these guys. They have a cool logo. And I'm like, what am I doing? No. Yeah, I need to be in a either mediocre mood or even a bad mood when I'm shopping for something expensive. And then I'll have I'll pull the trigger later when I don't it doesn't feel so painful. You know, we talked earlier about how nostalgia decrease your price sensitivity. Now we're talking about humor decreasing your price sensitivity.

41:10Yeah. The point is your emotions have an oversized impact on the decision you're going to make to buy in that moment. And most people do not give that the credit they think they should. You know, most people would say, I'm making a rational choice in this moment when really what came right before it will have a big impact. It's essentially this idea that what comes first is the intuitive reaction. You know, I feel warm or cold towards a salesperson. That happens And then once I've made that decision, then I use all the powers of logic at my disposal to justify that decision to myself. It's the emotional, quick, intuitive reaction that comes first.

41:51Then logic goes afterwards. So what businesses want to be doing is trying to create that snap, quick, intuitive positivity. And a lot of these behavioral science experiments that we discuss in the book, they're all about creating that immediate emotional reaction. Apple does this well, not this particular thing, but a lot of these particular points, it does it well. Remember the Mac guy? His name is Justin. I forget his name. He's an actor, quite popular now. And then they had the PC guy and it was like a dork versus like a cool kid who's just relaxed and gets it. And the other guy had a suit on.

42:23It was kind of like a dweeb. And they come out with the iPod, which was not the first MP3 player by any stretch. But I remember before it was like the Diamond Rio 128 megabytes. And you're like, OK, what does that mean again? I don't really know what that means. I got to do some math. I got to read some online reviews. And then Steve Jobs is like 1000 songs in your pocket. And you're like, I need that. I have to get that right now because I want all of the songs. I want to imagine 1000 songs in my pocket and look cool doing it. And they're just really good at making things concrete and understandable and also cool at the same time.

42:59I mean, Apple, of course, they you pay for that. And then they pay for that to whoever they're hiring for this creative stuff. But it works really well. You know, at a very 30 ,000 foot level, you can imagine that if someone can get you to imagine it in your brain, you can imagine what a thousand songs in your pocket may be like. That's a lot more visual than saying, having you trying to understand what 512 kilobytes really means. And the study that proves this is really quite interesting. It's Ian Begg at the University of Western Ontario, and he gives study participants a list of 22-word phrases, things like impossible amount, rusty engine, white horse, subtle fault.

43:44And the game is how many of the 22 word phrases can you remember by the time he finishes reading them? And everybody writes down what they can remember. And the average that they can remember, 23%, pretty good. But what's really the striking observation is that they remember just 9 % of the abstract words, things like impossible amount or subtle fault. But they remember 36 % of the concrete terms, things like white horse or rusty engine. So they're four times more effective at remembering those things that they can draw and imagine in their mind. And we see lots of brands do this. M &M says it melts in your mouth, not in your hand.

44:25Maxwell House Coffee says good to the last drop. These are lines that help you remember the thing they want to insert in your brain. And that's what Steve Jobs did so well in that moment. He helped you remember the iPod much more meaningfully, much more concretely than the competitors. Yeah. Red Bull gives you wings is another one that you guys mentioned in the book. What Apple also does is they have this and you touch on this as well. Optimal newness, right? It's something that is exciting, but not terrifying. I thought this was quite interesting because on the iPhone, for example, the icon is the old phone and like the touch screen exists, but it also was made to look like buttons and the buttons that you would normally dial are still there.

45:03The keyboard is still there. And I remember when the keyboard popped up, I was like, OK, this is cool but you mean to tell me that they redesigned the whole phone and they couldn't figure out an easier way to create input and very likely they do and did have that and they were like wait we're giving people a touchscreen email mp3 mobile device like we need to ramp down the amount of new stuff we're giving people before it turns into star trek and they don't want it yeah there's an amazing book by um derek thompson called the hit makers and in it he has this wonderful phrase which if you wanted to sell something surprising make it familiar and if you want to sell something familiar make it surprising now to your point when iphone launched it was a massive change this was a really novel technology to most people so what they tried to do was give it this aura of familiarity by using very real world everyday symbols so the delete function was an actual trash can the notes pages was a legal yellow lined pad it still kind of is well now although it's much less realistic than it once was it was 3d right it used to have the blue lines which looked like handwriting that's right i forgot about that when you deleted a page it looked like there was a tear at the top you know it looked like a bit of paper they've been pulled off so that was really useful when it was a shockingly new technology but what johnny ive and Steve Jobs did, as has that iPhone got more familiar, they started making those icons that we still have on our phone now far less realistic.

46:34They became much more abstract. So it's not just that Apple applied this principle of optimal newness very well. It's that they kept on applying it in the right way throughout their product lifecycle. What is that called when you make something that's digital look analog? Yes, skeuomorphism. Yeah, I knew that there had to be term for that because that's it's so widely used in design. You mentioned in the book that Edison, you know, invented the light bulb and they made them with wind shades, which they obviously did not need to emulate gas lamps, which were everywhere because they wanted to make this thing look familiar enough where people weren't like, I don't want this UFO on the road.

47:10Right. I want something that looks normal. Yeah. I mean, the concern was when you get people to bring electricity into their house and they're replacing these gas lamps, why did they need those wind shades, which became lampshades of the future. And it was to make people more comfortable with them. So it's not just digital tech moving from BlackBerrys with buttons to iPhones with screens, even 150 years ago, moving from gas lamps to electricity. We are always asking, how can we get a most advanced version, but yet it's still acceptable to everybody that they're going to want it in their house.

47:46And that's a balancing act. I'd say that's probably more art than science. you had to feel that you could get that amount bought by the consumers. And Edison does it with the lamp, and so does Steve Jobs and Johnny Ives. One thing I'm shocked still works is the whole$5.99, not$6. I just refuse to believe most people would care if something is one cent more or a dollar more. And like you said, it's an emotional thing. But it's funny because I've seen things, where was I, Costco, I think, and something was literally$17 ,984.99, as if it would matter at that price. But apparently it does. Yeah, of all the studies, this is one that's probably been around the longest.

48:25And you are right to agree. If I was to show you two products, one for$10 and then the same thing for$9.99, and I ask you directly, which of these prices would you prefer? Which would really change your behavior. You'd probably say, oh, you know, they're almost the same. It wouldn't affect me. But that's not how we experience prices in a shop. We just see one of those prices. And because people are cognitive misers, because they are trying to make quick decisions, what happens is when they see$10, they just remember that price as 10 something. When they see$9.99, they think of it as nine something.

49:03So rather than demand going up by, a tiny, what would it be, 0.1%. It actually goes up by something like 10 or 15%. It's far more of this kind of stepped effect on demand than pure logic would suggest. So it's often known as this left-hand digit bias. You know that thing where you intend to keep listening and then you get distracted? Yeah, let's exploit that for a minute. We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by Progressive. You chose to hit play on this podcast today, Smart Choice. Progressive loves to help people make smart choices. That's why they offer a tool called AutoQuote Explorer that allows you to compare your progressive car insurance with rates from other companies.

49:42So you save time on the research and you can enjoy savings when you choose the best rate for you. Give it a try after this episode at Progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Not available in all states or situations. Prices vary based on how you buy. I've got homes.com as a sponsor for this episode. Homes.com knows when it comes to home shopping, It's never just about the house or the condo. It's about the homes. And what makes a home is more than just the house or property. It's the location. It's the neighborhood. If you've got kids, it's also schools, nearby parks, transportation options.

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50:43Homes.com. We've done your homework. If you like this episode of the show, I invite you to do what other smart and considerate listeners do, which is take a moment and support the amazing sponsors who make this show possible. All of the deals and discounts are searchable and clickable on the website at jordanharbinger.com slash deals. If you can't remember the name of a sponsor, you can't find the code, email me, Jordan at JordanHarbinger.com. Happy to surface codes for you. It is that important that you support those who support the show. Now for the rest of my conversation with Richard Schotton and Michael Aaron Flicker.

51:15Yeah, a lot of these little subtle things tend to make a big difference. One example I thought was really fascinating from the book was when you're shopping online, if something says unavailable versus out of stock, because if it says it's unavailable, It's like, oh, we don't have our shit together with our logistics and we couldn't keep enough of these. And you're like, ah, that's annoying of this company not to have this. But if it says out of stock, it's like, sorry, this is just really popular. And you're like, well, in that case, I want you to notify me when this is available again so I can come back really quickly and buy it before it's out of stock again.

51:47But yeah, like I was trying to buy a dry bag from a company and it was like out of stock. And I emailed them. I was like, when is this back in? And I looked. It's so funny because this is last week. I had another dry bag from another place and it was unavailable. And I was like, idiots, you know, like it was like, come on, man, these can't be that popular. It's a dry bag. And the other one, I was like, well, if this is so popular, I obviously want this one. So I emailed the company and they're like, actually, they're going to be back in stock tomorrow. Here's the link. You can buy it right now.

52:14So I did. And it was just the language that made the difference. And I think that's the underscore of what we wanted to communicate to people. even a single word choice can imply it was the brand's fault or it's so popular that you should want it to. It taps into one of the most powerful biases in behavioral science called social proof, the idea that lots of other people are doing it. And so you would be, you know, you should follow that too. One word can make a big difference. And so, Jordan, your example really shows that every word that you choose as a brand makes a big difference. Even if the words are not real at all.

52:50Tell me about Haagen-Dazs, which I thought the whole time was a European, I don't know, Hungarian ice cream or something. And it turns out it's from the Bronx. I feel tricked. They had wanted you to feel that way. OK. They really wanted to launch the brand as if it was a Danish brand. They have a map of Denmark on the original packaging. The fact that there is no umlauts over A's in Danish didn't even matter. It was foreign to the American audience, and that was enough to increase its perceived value. I think that fact that they wanted to create something that felt more foreign and more premium, they were able to do through language and through packaging.

53:33There's a lot of brands that still do this. It's not because it seems very 80s to be like, oh, this is French, so it's fancy, you know, like Evian, right? But I mean, Atari, that's clearly a Japanese name. It's a California company from right here. But the argument, I think, with the Haagen-Dazs is what we expect affects our actual experience for products. You know, we talked about it right at the beginning with the healthy food label. You have an assumption that something is healthy. You assume it's going to be worse tasting. And that expectation affects your actual experience. And it's just the same by wrapping your product in this sophisticated Danish imagery.

54:08it sets up expectations about quality and sophistication it will change how they actually experience that product now i think when this was done back in the 1950s by a tiny little company it probably was you know acceptable i don't think we'd recommend any massive brand did this today because it's at heart deceitful but the underlying point that the expectations you set up will affect the experience of the product. That's something that I think lots of people can learn from. I hear you on the brands, but doesn't Starbucks make me say grande instead of large or medium or whatever? So I don't know.

54:46They're getting away with it. Kind of. I still say medium and they know what I mean. They don't give me any guff anymore. They're threading the needle there. They're implying Italian heritage. They're implying the greatness of where great coffee comes from without telling you they're an Italian coffee brand. So it's an interesting example you raise because they're really right on the line by using Italian words, but not saying they're Italian. They didn't put a map of Italy on the cup. So I think Mark Leran's right. Starbucks, I think, are in the kind of right side of that ethical gray zone. The original Haagen-Dazs, a bit more dubious.

55:20Yeah, interesting. They do this with products, though, not even just brands. Isn't Chilean sea bass called toothfish, which is gross and not something I want to eat? Chilean sea bass, though, yes, I'll pay$40 for a small piece. Why not? I'm calling in today from Argentina. Last night on the dinner menu was Patagonian Toothfish. Patagonian Toothfish was not the appealing choice on the whole menu, but we were in Patagonia. Right. The story comes from the late 1970s, an American fish importers named Lee Lance. And he has discovered Patagonian tooth fish and he wants to bring it into the U.S. restaurant scene, but nobody is ordering it.

56:01And he believes the taste profile is right. It's a white fish. It's flaky, but yet firm. It's got all the right things to make it a winner. and he comes up with the same type of insight that we've talked about before in the episode. He says, I wonder if the name is really hurting the overall sales. And so he invents a new name, Chilean Seabass. And like that, they lead in the 1990s to a 30-fold increase in consumption of Chilean Seabass alone. Wow. It's really incredible that one word can really make that difference. And in the book, we talk about all these other fishy tales, Jordan. Dolphinfish was historically called Dolphinfish, reminds American buyers of Flipper.

56:47They rebranded it Mahi Mahi and it does great. So there's a bunch of examples like that. That's interesting. Are there limits to that? Has this ever blown up in a brand's face where they're like, let's name it this and then it's not that and people get upset? I mean, I think generally with a brand, there are the occasional dubious ones like Haagen-Dazs, But most of the time, there is no absolute term that you need to have for a brand. So you've got amazing scope to pick things with positive connotations and still stay reasonably honest. In American politics, there was a big debate over an inheritance tax.

57:24And, you know, one party, the left, had established it as an estate tax. And when it's called the estate tax, 68 percent of people oppose it. When the Republicans rebranded the death tax, 10 percent increased, 78 percent of people oppose it. So it may not be a brand that's naming it, but just the thing that it gets named and it gets hooked as it gets remembered as can have a big difference and big impact on how people feel about it. That kind of branding or unbranding works really well. You hear about that a lot. Death panels, not insurance or whatever it was. It was a death panel. They're going to decide if you die.

58:03And it's like that's what insurance companies do now, by the way. Yeah, it's always so fascinating. I want to move on to some specific brands. I know we have very little time left, but I want to keep going here. Red Bull, the world leader in energy drinks, they have this very specific can size that used to not be used for anything else. Now other energy drinks I see use it. Even coffee uses it. Coincidentally, the best can for a dick pic comparison or so, I've been told. But yeah, this whole idea, we already talked about them before, they give you wings. So the big thing with Red Bull is they're applying this principle of price relativity.

58:40When we are trying to work out what a fair price to pay for a product is, we don't think about the benefits we'll get and then think about what's a fair price to pay per single benefit. What we do instead is construct this mental comparison set. And we think, well, if this new product is more than something similar, it's bad value. If it's less than something similar, it's good value. This idea that pricing is relative rather than absolute was harnessed brilliantly by Red Bull. because what 99.9 % of marketers would have done is launch Red Bull in a can that is the same size as Coca-Cola or Fanta or any other drink.

59:19Yes. And if they'd done that, that would have been the comparison set and people would have been unhappy paying much of a premium. But what Red Bull did, and Rory Sutherland talks about this brilliantly, is they shrunk the can, they put it in a much taller, thinner can and because it just looks completely different from other soft drinks, it made Red Bull into this completely new category. And there was no comparison with soft drinks any longer. The value people were prepared to pay became much more free-floating. So change the comparison set and you change the willingness to pay. Also, I think people almost like things that are more expensive because you expect it to be better.

59:57Is there any truth to that? Absolutely. So there's a Stanford psychologist called Baba Shiv, and he's shown that we assume high priced items are high quality. It's a very simple study. Get some Americans, serves them five different bottles of wine. And I'm stressing the word bottles. But the twist in the experiment is there's only four different liquids. So people begin the experiment and they have a little sip from the first bottle that is prominently labeled$5. And they say it's quite a nice Merlot. A couple of minutes later, they are having a sample from a supposed$45 bottle. But what they're actually doing is drinking exactly the same liquid.

1:00:36And when they drink it thinking it's super expensive, they rate it at 70, 7-0 percent better than when they think it comes out of a$5 bottle. So people assume that high price equals high quality. And as we've discussed again and again and again, those expectations affect the actual experience. That's interesting. Yeah, the wine thing is always, they've done so many of those where it's like, oh, these seven wine experts all think this is amazing. And then they're like, you know, two buck Chuck from Trader Joe's. Basically, the whole thing is kind of a farce. But price can signal or will signal quality.

1:01:10Although I again, I find it's often an illusion, not just with wine. I don't know anything about wine, but you ever buy anything off Instagram, like clothing or products? And you're like, wait, this is marketed so well. And then you're like, but this is expensive. It's$100, like special forces sweater or whatever,$200. And then you realize I talked to my buddy as a clothing manufacturer. He goes, yeah, what they're doing is they're spending$150 ,000 on ads. So this sweater, you could probably get off Timu or something for like$28. It's not that special, really. The wool involved, like it's like slightly above an Amazon, you know, generic brand, but it's not a$200 sweater.

1:01:50It's just that they spent so much money to sell you that, that they have to make it back. And so you're not actually getting the quality, you're getting the Instagram markup. And I've fallen for this so many times, right, because they're they're just bombarding me with this stuff. But the illusion is that they've invested in the quality, right? It's been trained by the special air service. You know, they've run it through the ringer and it's like, nah, it's just a special air service guy in the photo. That's really all it is. And it's interesting because brands have been doing this for decades, maybe many decades.

1:02:21You know, when you see a sports team sponsored by a brand, all of a sudden you think this brand of socks, it must be of higher quality. We started with Red Bull. When Red Bull has Felix Baumgartner jump off a helium balloon 24 miles in the stratosphere and free fall back to Earth. How much Red Bull did this man drink? That's amazing. And how much money does Red Bull must make in order to support stunts like this? Right. And so it builds this aura of just how successful the brand is, even if, as you say, they spent the vast majority of their money to make that happen. Yeah. Guinness does something that's almost like the inverse of this.

1:02:58This is a great example. It's been around for a long time. And I see a lot of brands doing this well. And I think it's kind of genius. Yeah, so Guinness, the lived experience, if anybody has ordered a Guinness at the bar, you're at the table, you're with a bunch of friends, everybody orders, and all the drinks come except for yours to Guinness. Because it's still at the tap, and it's still, we're waiting for the head to go down so they can give you the final top-up before it comes to you. And the insight that Guinness geniusly decided to exploit in the late 1990s was, actually, this isn't a bad thing.

1:03:35good things come to those who wait. They wanted to recognize this small little problem of the brand that it took longer to get served and show the mirror benefit, which is that it's actually a higher quality product. And so they build a big ad campaign around that. But there's so much history behind this behavioral science bias called the Pratt Fall effect. The Pratt Fall effect is the insight that when you show a little blunder, when you show a little imperfection, you become much more endeared to the audience that you are talking to. And we see lots of brands do this. Avis, famously in the 1950s, maybe early 60s, when you're only number two, you have to try harder.

1:04:20Or classic VW ads, America's slowest fastback, ugly's only skin deep. There's these examples of when you talk about your blemish, when you talk about your little bit of something that's wrong, you become more endeared to the audience. This, you said the pratfall effect. I like this. There's a movie with Dustin Hoffman. I don't even think he's the star, but he's a lawyer and he gets mustard on his tie while he's eating during a break. And his son or one of the other characters is like, yeah, mustard. And you know what I'm talking about? These guys got mustard on your tie. And he's like, yeah, I know.

1:04:52And he leaves it there because he's doing some sort of defense thing. And he's like, the jury is just going to relate to me so much better if I'm not this slick lawyer, but I'm some average Joe Schmo defending another Joe Schmo here with mustard on my tie in court. I think it is runaway jury, runaway jury. Is that what it was? I knew it was one of those John Grisham made into a movie kind of things. Yes. Yeah, exactly. There is something in that. But if you think about the brand examples, they go a step further. It's one thing to just admit any old flaw. But what you really want to do is think, what is my core strength?

1:05:28And then identify a flaw that emphasizes that strength. So Guinness, they say good things come to those who wait. They admit the flaw of slowness. And that's a brilliant flaw to admit because people assume, well, if it takes a long time, it's going to be high quality. So I would say if you're an entrepreneur or a small business person, don't just admit a flaw randomly. Think about what's your core strength and then is there a mirror weakness? So you might want to say that your core strength is high quality well then you should go out and probably draw attention to your high price or you might say that your core strength is that you've got a really powerful mouthwash well then go out and say it tastes awful because people assume if it tastes foul it's probably pretty potent there's a real skill in picking the right floor this kind of reminds me of how eminem and eight mile goes up and he does the rap where he's like yeah you You banged my mom last night and I can't get it up.

1:06:23And I've, you know, I never get any girls. And the other guy's like, what am I going to say now? Right. Like when you're if you're a defense attorney, you might go up and say the prosecution is going to tell you that this man has no alibi. The prosecution is going to tell you that he's an able bodied guy with a violent criminal history. And like then the prosecutor goes up and goes, yeah, so like what he said, but it's bad, right? It's bad. It's not something that you can recover from. He's guilty. So it's kind of, it reminds me a little bit of that turning the weaknesses into a strength as much as you can.

1:06:55But I wonder, you kind of mentioned this before, it has to be related, right? It can't just be a random flaw. This restaurant is really cozy. You can't have a lot of people in it. It has to be something like that. Not like, oh, this restaurant's really cozy. Also, there's no parking. So the ultimate effect, it should be related. Okay. But your example of the defense attorney, that's a kind of sub-air of the pratfall effect called the stolen thunder technique. And what you do there is you work out what you think the prosecution are going to emphasize. You admit that weakness in your case. And the point of doing so is you gain credibility.

1:07:30Because people think, well, if they've been honest about this element, all their other claims in their argument, they're probably true. So sometimes admitting any flaw gains you the benefit of trust. I see. And that's actually the original experiment from Elliot Aronson shows this because it's very similar to runaway jury. The whole study is they have an audio recording of someone completing a quiz. And as they're answering the questions, they get 92 percent right. And then in the audio recording, you could hear he spills on himself. they played that recording to one group of participants and then they play the same recording but they cut the flub the spilling of coffee i think it was on himself and they found that those that heard the clumsy contestant they found him 45 percent more likable than those that didn't so and that has nothing to do with his smartness in runaway jury the mustard has nothing to do with his ability as a lawyer so any admission any flaw will make you more appealing back to the quality of the whole Guinness thing.

1:08:34Can you use effort as a proxy for quality? So I was watching a YouTube video the other day with this guy, Mark Rober. He's super famous, huge YouTuber. He does all these fun science experiments. My kid loves him. So we watch these videos and he does this like pseudo transparency thing where he'll go, I wanted to dive into a pool full of jello. So we spent six months figuring out how to, and I'm like, ah, he says this for a reason, because if he's like, so we filled a pool full of jello and it's kind of hard. It's like, okay, whatever you dumped a bunch of jello stuff in a pool but he's like no we ran into all these problems and like here's a problem and we solved it this way we spent months and months and months and months and it's like well i know you didn't spend six months trying to figure out how to make jello in a pool that doesn't make any sense maybe you thought about it here and there and you waited for stuff for two weeks to come in the mail and then that didn't work right it doesn't matter but he lets your brain kind of fill in the blanks and you're like this video must be incredible but because they spent six months trying to make Jell-O in a pool.

1:09:30So they're going to succeed and it's going to be insane. So I better watch this. Maybe an easier example is I do this for the show sometimes. I'll say, I read the entire book. I watched a bunch of your interviews. I read the Wired articles that you sent me, all this stuff. And then people are like, oh, this is going to be a good episode, even though I've already heard these guys on another podcast because Jordan goes above and beyond with the preparation, which unfortunately means I actually have to do that. so it takes me a lot of time but i don't hide that i'm doing that right i'm saying like hey i spent 10 hours preparing for this and then people go wow okay it's going to be good or dang that's all you did in 10 hours what's wrong with you but either way they know they know that there's effort involved yeah you're absolutely right so there's an idea called the labor illusion and we ran an experiment for the the book which showed a group of people an image of a fake new brand a vodka a bottle called Black Sheep Vodka.

1:10:24And we just asked people to rate what they thought of the design. And some people just saw the bottle. Other people were told the designer went through 143 versions. And what we found was that the group that heard that story of effort, the 143 designs, they rated it much better, about 30 % better than the group who didn't hear that story of effort. The argument is that judging the quality of a product is a complicated question. and when people are faced with complicated questions Daniel Kahneman argues that they tend to replace them with simpler ones that give them an almost as good answer and a simple question is to ask yourself how much effort did the designer go to so we use effort as a proxy for quality and in the book that's the basis of the Dyson chapter now what they talk about in their advertising again and again and again is that they went through 5 ,127 prototypes to get to the bagless vacuum Now, it shouldn't actually matter how many prototypes they went through.

1:11:21But behavioral scientists aren't interested in what should affect people. They're interested in what actually affects people. And these stories of effort will change people's perception. The same product will be rated better if people know about the effort that's gone into it. I love the idea of the transparency in products. It does work on me, man. I was on a travel website. I won't mention the name because whatever. But basically, I was searching for a flight. and it was like comparing hundreds of websites to get you the best price. And I was like, oh, not, hey, we're really slow because there's a lot going on under the hood.

1:11:52And yeah, maybe if you'd used Expedia, this would have been faster. It's like, oh, no, no, no, this site, they're doing a lot more than just those other websites. They're comparing hundreds of websites to get me the best price. It even says so on the screen. And I doubt it. It's probably just got a database that's updating here and there. But fine, I believed it. And I sat there and waited for something on the internet, which is very hard to get people to do. You know, and ChatGPT famously used this in its earlier models. When it was thinking, it was searching the internet, and it was compiling your sources.

1:12:23And as you wait and wait and you lose track of the tens of seconds, dozens of seconds you're waiting, they used it in the same way. We chose Dyson. They really focus on the number of prototypes. But Dyson also does something fascinating with their bagless vacuum. they put the cylinder that collects all the garbage from your ground in a transparent tube that you take out and see. And it was actually pretty controversial with the design team between Dyson and his design team because they said, who wants to see all the stuff being picked up off the ground? But actually, it shows you the effort that happened through your vacuum cleaning.

1:13:02Your vacuum cleaner's actually working. all other vacuum cleaners hide it in a bag and you throw out the bag without seeing the effect. It's satisfying to see it. It's satisfying. It's like watching Dr. Pimple Popper. You ever watch that show and you're like, oh, they're going to get that disgusting thing out of her head. And maybe I'm well, I know I'm weird, but I know I'm not alone because that show is a massive hit. We only have a little bit of time. I want to talk about music and how it changes our opinions of flavor and taste, because you go to a fancy restaurant. They're often playing some kind of violin music or whatever.

1:13:35I went to Italy in the 90s with my friend and his mom. And we met up with this guy. He was a like a wealthy my friend's mom knew him from the jewelry business. This guy was very like super wealthy. So he takes us to this crazy good steakhouse in Milan. And it is bougie company, man. People are dressed to the nines and I'm like 13 years old and we're out of place. And I'd never seen a restaurant like this in my life at that point, you know, and it would be a decade or more before I join a law firm and go to another one. Okay. Is that, that level they're playing music. And I go, Hey buddy to my friend, I go, you hear that?

1:14:09Hear what they're playing. He's like, no way. I'm like, yep. It's Tupac all eyes on me. The entire double CD back to front, not edited completely explicit. And there's all these wealthy Italian people that are just like, yeah, this is the kind of music I listened to when I'm paying$385 for a steak. They're just unbelievable. They did not read your book. Obviously they were above the cut in giving a crap about this principle? There's an awful lot of evidence that what we taste is not just a factor of the kind of senses on our tongue. All our other senses will affect us. So whether it's sound, whether it's weight, whether it's colours, these all affect the taste.

1:14:49Probably the psychologist that's most associated with this area is an Oxford psychologist called Charles Spence. And for one study, he does this at an Edinburgh conference, people sit down for lunch and some people are given very light cutlery others get heavy cutlery and all of them eat the same dish when Charles Spence surveys them afterwards about how much they enjoyed the meal how much they're prepared to pay the people who get the expensive cutlery they rate the meal as tastier and they say they're prepared to pay more I think it's like 10 or 15 more and his argument is we have these associations in our mind because generally they're true generally, heavy equals expensive and high quality.

1:15:31So the weight of something in our hand affects the experience and the taste. And it's not just restaurants that apply this. You get a Bang & Olufsen remote control, weigh it in your hand. It's pretty heavy. That weight does not need to be there. They have artificially added extra weight to make it feel higher quality. Oh, no way. I was going to ask if they just drop a bunch of extra plastic or metal in there like oh i want this to be like a this is a statement piece right this remote we generally assume if they picked it up and you know it's only a couple of grams that's the same type of experience we get with something very cheap right so we gradually fuse in our mind this heaviness and high quality and brands will then harness that to increase the experience i've noticed that uh small things like an apple tv remote they could make that so much cheaper if they made it plastic but it's metal, right?

1:16:27And I think because since it is small and very simple, which is the Apple design aesthetic, they can't also make it really light and they can't make it out of cheap materials because then it would look like kind of crappy. If it's something really small, I've noticed that high-end brands make it really dense or really nice material. They have to change like the tactile experience in your hand of the item. But if it's big, you can just make it heavy and it doesn't really matter if it's plastic because you're like, look at this beast, right? or it's got a touchscreen on it that's totally unnecessary.

1:16:58You can use something like that as well. And I think the point that that all draws to is that you are judging the quality of something for a lot more than just the experience itself. There's a lot more going into your evaluation, whether it's the weight of the cutlery or the material that the box is made out of. And that all plays into your sense of the premiumness of the product. If music changes our opinion of flavor and taste, do you have to match cuisine to genre? do i have to listen to indian music to eat indian food or can you play tupac at a steakhouse and it's fine so there are some studies that suggest exactly as you say that the music should relate to the type of cuisine however if people don't want to you know go through the rigmarole of working out what the exact right bit of music is a shorthand is to use classical music now in many cultures i think certainly american certainly british classical music has this aura of high quality.

1:17:53And in wine shops, there've been tests where they rotate the music, you know, sometimes jazz, sometimes pop, sometimes silent, sometimes classical. And what you see again and again is if you play classical music, the amount people are prepared to pay just edges up just that little bit. It just gives you a little advantage over your competition. That must be why my dentist does it because it's$2 ,000 for a filling. And actually the tempo of the music, I don't know of a study that talks about the balance of it, whether it's the genre or the tempo, but the tempo matters a lot. When you hear fast music, you're likely to eat faster and leave faster.

1:18:27Slow music will keep you in the space longer. Plenty of studies show that. So if you want people to turn over quick, play EDM, right? Play Avicii in there or something and get them dancing on the way out the door with a sandwich in their hand. Guys, there's so much in the book that we've run out of time, and I really appreciate you guys coming on the show and taking us through all of this. It changes the way we all look at marketing, branding, food. I find myself wanting a pumpkin spice latte all of a sudden, maybe pass on the Red Bull for now. I don't think I should mix those two things. But yeah, I appreciate this.

1:18:57It's such a cool inside look at the way our brains work and how people use those levers to get us to buy and consume things. Oh, brilliant. Well, I'm very glad you liked it. There's a lot we've discussed and there's a lot more in the book. Thank you. What a master of the art of communication. Charles Duhigg, author of Super Communicators, reveals key strategies for enhancing your connections and conversations in this enlightening podcast episode. Why do some people manage to connect with everyone else so effortlessly? And then there's times when I talk to my wife and like, we cannot connect with each other.

1:19:29And it turns out it's just a set of skills, right? Like it's just literally a set of skills that super communicators know and that any of us can learn and become super communicators ourselves. Looping for understanding. And it has three steps. The first is ask a question, preferably a deep question. Secondly, repeat back what you just heard the person say in your own words. And thirdly, and this is the one everyone always forgets, ask if you got it right. And the reason why this is so powerful is because it proves that I'm listening to you. It's really easy to stop thinking about how we're communicating.

1:20:00It's really easy to stop thinking about what's going on until we get in the habit of it. Communication isn't something that happens just one-to-one. Sometimes it's one-to-many, but the same principles still hold up. You're still having practical or emotional or social conversations. laughter is actually one of the non-linguistic ways that we connect with other people. There's been studies that show that in about 80 % of the time when we laugh, it is not in response to something funny. It's because we're basically in a conversation, and we're saying to someone, I want to connect with you. Nobody is born a super communicator.

1:20:37That's what feels tiring, is when you feel like you want to connect and you can't. Right? This isn't a behavior. This isn't a personality type. This is a tool that once we learn, we can use when we want to use it. Learn how to categorize conversations, improve active listening, and overcome communication barriers to build stronger relationships. Tune in and transform your interactions into meaningful connections on episode 963 of The Jordan Harbinger Show. I really appreciate these guys coming on and breaking all this down. A lot of fascinating stuff in here from brands that we all use. This conversation completely changes the way we look at branding, decision making, and and those subtle forces nudging us around every day.

1:21:16All the resources mentioned will be in the show notes at jordanharbinger.com. Advertisers, deals, discount codes, ways to support the show. Searchable and clickable at jordanharbinger.com slash deals. Please consider supporting those who support the show. Our newsletter, We Bit Wiser, jordanharbinger.com slash news, as mentioned before. Don't forget about 6-Minute Networking. You've heard me mention this a bunch over the years. That's 6minutenetworking.com. I'm at jordanharbinger on Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn. and this show is created in association with Podcast One.

1:21:45My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Robert Fogerty, Tata Sidlowskis, Ian Baird, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Remember, we rise by lifting others. The fee for the show is you share it with friends when you find something useful or interesting. In fact, the greatest compliment you can give us is to share the show with those you care about. If you know somebody who's interested in branding, marketing, sales, design, psychology, definitely share this episode with them. In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn. We'll see you next time. אחig