The 4 P's of Marketing: Promotion

Speaker 1 Welcome back to Behavioral Science for Brands, a podcast where we bridge the gap between academics and practical marketing. Every week we sit down and go deep behind the science that powers great marketing. Today, I'm Michael Aaron Flicker. Speaker 2 And I'm Richard Shelton. Speaker 1 And today we're diving into our miniseries on the four piece of marketing. In today's episode, we explore promotion. Let's get into it. So, Richard, this is an episode we've been excited to record for quite some time. Speaker 2 Yeah, the the the four piece has been a great mini series. I think OK, promotion is our bread and butter. So this is there's some really nice examples coming up. Speaker 1 Yes. So as a reminder, you have in the four PS, you have plates, you have product, you have price and then you have promotion. Yes, we got, we got a little confused there, but we have these four major classic areas that help when you, when you first learn about marketing. They create the, they, they create the pillars from which all marketing thinking and, and, and much of original marketing academics come from. And promotion is really maybe the one that's gotten the most conversation. It's the one where when you get into marketing and specifically advertising, it's where a lot of people's brains go. So if when we're talking about promotion, we're referring to all communication activities that are used by the brand to inform, persuade or remind the target about the brand. And so the goal of the promotion pillar is to generate awareness, highlight the brand's unique value and ultimately to drive sales. And under the umbrella of promotion sits advertising, sales, promotion, PR, social media, direct marketing, all of the ways that you talk about the brand. And so it's really a quite a big umbrella. And so often when you're engaging with brands or you're engaging internally at an agency, you're reminding people there's so much more than just promotion. Like don't limit your thinking only to the promotion pillar, but that's why we saved it for the 4th of four because we said, let's get through these other critical pillars. But now we've got a little time to indulge. We can talk about, you know, the many ways that behavioral science can impact the the pillar of promotion. And I think let's, let's get into it with that. How's that sound? Speaker 2 Sounds good, sounds good. Speaker 1 So from our book we have this lovely study and we have this lovely story. So I'll set the place to get us started here and and we'll use it as a jumping off point. It's the late 1970s and imagine a American fish importer that you may have never heard of. His name is Lee Lance, and he has discovered this amazing new fish that he believes will be perfect for the American palate. It's buttery, melting your mouth flavor. It's flaky but firm. And he just knows that the American market would love it. But restaurant to restaurant, he can't seem to get anyone to pick up the fish and start selling it and eventually has this insight. You know what? Maybe it's the name of the fish itself that's my problem. It's not the product, it's the actual name. And he thinks maybe Patagonian toothfish isn't the most appealing thing to put on a menu. He renames it Chilean sea bass. And in the 1990s they see a 30 fold increase in consumption in America alone. So this is an amazing reminder that sometimes a single word or a single name can have a oversized impact on the on the effectiveness of your brand, on the effectiveness of your product. And when you and I were talking about this and authoring the book, we would look for a study that could really simplify this. How could we bring it down to 1 academic study? And we found a great study run out of the University of Washington by Elizabeth Loftus and John Palmer. And it's 1974 and they're going, they're running a study to see if they can determine the impact of a single word. So here's how the study goes. They show one of these classic car crash scenes. They're two cars. They're they're speeding towards one another and everyone who is a part of the study sees the same video clip. And what they're asking is how fast was the car moving when they now this is the truck when they touched each other, when they collide it with each other. The trick in the experiment is that they change the word, the verb used to describe the action that's occurring. And so in some instances, they asked how fast were the car going when they contacted one another. Other times they say hit, bump, collide it. And at the top end, how fast were they going when they smashed into one another? And by changing just that one word, how fast were the cars going when they contacted one another? The average response is 31.8. How fast were the cars going when they smashed one another? 40.5 miles an hour? That's a 27% change by just changing that one word. And it's a great example of how just changing one word can have a big impact on how people perceive what they're seeing in the video. Speaker 2 Yeah, it's an amazing video and we'll stick a a link to a replication of it in the, in the, in the in the show notes. And the original reason the academics did this study was that they were really sceptical about witness testimony. So they believed that a skilled policeman could, by the words they used, steer what people remembered about incidents and and an instant and and get the witness to say what they wanted. So they were trying to run the experiment to make people a little bit more sceptical about witness testimony. But what was proven in the criminal world is super relevant in the commercial world. It's essentially an argument that we don't experience reality neutrally, and what we experience is filtered through a lens of the language that's used to describe reality. So if I say these cars smashed together, you know, that has a sense of energy and speed, we assume they were going faster than if I say the cars contacted each other. Now that principle, that language effects our actual experience of the world. I think Lance was a genius to realise that in the in the world of fish now who wants to eat a Patagonian tooth fish? It feels spiky and inedible and unappetizing. Chilean sea bass, much, much nicer. And he's not the only fishing Porter that's had this idea. I think what's even more amazing is it's a repeated tactic that fishing porters have used. So it used to be that people try to sell dolphin fish, but no one wants to eat a dolphin, and not even that they are related to dolphins, but no one wants to eat something that's called dolphin fish. So it was rebranded as mahi mahi. No one wants to eat mud bugs. They were rebranded as crawfish. Now again and again and again, we see this idea that if you change the language, you change people's experience of the event. Now, of course, you know, 99% of our listeners, maybe 99.99% of our listeners are not going to be working in the fish import business. But all these experiments, people should focus on the, the core insight or the peripheral detail. And you can apply this whatever business you work in. You know, if you run a restaurant and you want people to order vegetable dishes, don't refer to them as meat free. That emphasizes deprivation. Refer to them as field grown. You know, that's much more appealing. If you are running a clothes store, don't say that you sell second hand clothes. You know, that just makes them sound a bit old and poor quality. Say that it's vintage. If you are a politician and you want people to be happy paying their inheritance tax, call it a state tax. If you are a Republican and you don't want people to pay that tax, you want them to be angry about it, call it a death tax. You know, it's the same thing, but one draws attention to the fact that it's asked for an inopportune time. 1 draws attention to the fact that it's generally paid by very, very rich people. If you change the language, you can change people's perception in the event. So I think there's so many opportunities for brands here. Speaker 1 And I think something that can get easily misunderstood, I think everyone can generally agree that language is important and the way you frame something is critical that we can all agree on. The point that we're driving at here is think about the most critical part of your sales proposition, the most critical part of your branding and be very cautious about the way you use those words because they leave it emotional resonance on the listener, on the buyer that you can, that that you can use to your advantage if you're very specific. So of course be thoughtful about all the words, but we're making the point about the specific value prop in that moment. Is that fair? Speaker 2 And and I think maybe pushing this point of people, you know, we say people recognize the value of language. I think they do to degree. My argument would be most people underestimate the importance of of the language that's used. Now there are extreme examples and this amazing one from Leelands that demonstrate that. And people might get, OK, I can see how they eat a chilli and sea bass, not a Pascalian tooth fish. But I think often businesses will leave an inappropriate word on the website because they kind of assume if the product's good enough, if the situation is dealt with the well enough, it, it doesn't matter that much. So really mundane example, and this one's backed up by evidence. There's a lovely study from 2019 by Robert Peterson, who's at the University of Texas. And he looked at the language that he used to describe items that aren't there to buy on a website. And in his experiment, sometimes those items were labeled unavailable, sometimes out of stock, sometimes sold out. And he gets people to go through a purchasing journey, thousand plus people and they are randomised into different groups and people see the situation with a different label. He then asks everyone to rate how disappointed they are with the website. And his finding is people are 15% less disappointed if you say an item is sold out rather than unavailable. And his argument it's is it all about what that language infers? If you say unavailable, it insinuates the organization has been really poor in their logistics. If you say sold out or suddenly you as a business are drawing attention to the fact that the brand is very popular and that harness social proof, you know, we want things that other people want. So, So even in these areas, I think an awful lot of people would look at their website and think, well, all the language is great. I've said it's out of stock. That's absolutely fine. What we're arguing is these tiny changes, even in areas where people are assuming it's all OK, there's so much room for improvement. Speaker 1 I think this is, it's a great reminder for us all as marketers to say where can we even take something that we think is good and make it great by saying have we really been intentional? The one other area that comes to mind, Richard, is in the B2B space when you're selling maybe to what you assume is a more technical buyer. So often we've seen that brands that have the technical buyer or selling to another business with let's say a more educated buyer, they'll use terms or they'll use phrases that we would call inside the Weltway or inside baseball. These are American terms. They mean that they're only known to the, to the people that are in the game and there may be a danger and that as well, right? Because when you do that, you are really assuming that you understand that the other person who's buying it understands and that that may or may not be true. And you're and you might be unintentionally creating, creating dissident or creating it in a distance with your buyer. So especially when we have more technical products to sell or more B to B products to sell, I think this rule really is helpful to say what are we? If you stepped away from it, how could it, how could it be affecting someone that's in the buying journey? Even in those instances, I think you might find that there's a more effective way to talk about it, maybe without using technical terms. Speaker 2 I think that's a very fairpoint that it is very easy in the world of professional services, B to B, to fall into the trap as an expert of using complicated language because you are so used to it, it feels second nature. The problem is you are generally selling to someone who doesn't know your services as well as you do, almost by definition. And therefore it's it can feel far more complex and off putting than often we believe. So yeah, a radical simplification of language when it comes to professional services would be a a great boon to everyone. Speaker 1 OK, That covers our first area of how we want folks to approach promotions and be really thoughtful about the language that they use. We have another take on this, a separate interesting example that we thought we would bring to the table. Speaker 2 And there were some many examples of where you can apply behavioral science to promotion. And therefore we've kind of really narrowed down on some of the more surprising examples. The Patagonian toothfish just isn't as well known as it should be. Another lesser known campaign is from Buckley's. So if you've got Canadian listeners, they'll know this inside out. But if you're in any other market around the world, it's not a very well known brand. And that is a a shame because they have been amazingly successful. So Buckley's was this family owned brand set up in 1990. And it does reasonably well. It comes from this kind of, you know, small start to have a reasonably big cough syrup in Canada. So by 1986 it was the ninth biggest cough syrup in the market, but still lots and lots of brands massively outselling it. So 1996, they decide that they're going to change their advertising. They get this amazing copywriter called Peter Byrne, and he comes up with one of the great lines in Canadian advertising. He comes up with this phrase. It tastes awful and it works. That was the strap line in 1986. It's still the strap line today and the success was phenomenal. By 1992 they were the biggest cough syrup in Canada. Not through increasing spend. They were still massively outspent by the global players. But within six years they'd got to the top of the market. And I think a lot of this is based on a really sound psychological insight. People are sceptical about what brands say. They are aware that brands cannot be all things to all people. So what Buckley's did by admitting admitting to a flaw, they harnessed this amazing idea called the pratfall effect. So the pratfall effect, we've discussed this on many different occasions. We cover it in the the Guinness chapter of Hacking the Human Mind. It's the idea that we have find people or products more appealing if they admit to a flaw. So the original work was done back in 1966 by Elliot Aronson at Harvard. And what he essentially showed in his experiment was if you have footage of a contestant doing amazingly well at a quiz, and some people watch that and then rate how much they like the contestant, and you show other people the same footage. But then you add on a little bit at the end where the contestant makes a mistake. It is that second group, the people who see the amazing performance and the spillage of of a coffee cup down the contestant itself, they will rate that contestant as being far more appealing than the group that just see an amazing quiz performance and to the order of about 45%. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So this was the first experiment in the area of pratfall effect. And it's essentially the argument that we find people or products would admit to or exhibit A flaw that much more appealing. Speaker 1 You know, it's such a human thing to just assume you should avoid your weaknesses, go to where you're strong, be, you know, be extra focused there. But as you're talking about, you have to think about the receiver of your message. People know that advertising is designed to sell things to you, and so naturally their defenses are higher. Bill Burbach, a famous leader in the industry, in the advertising industry, once stated a small admission gains a large acceptance. And so it was his insight that created that, that, that he used on many great campaigns. He was the leader that did Avis's campaign. We're #2 so we try harder. Same concept, right? That that there was a small admission. Hertz was #1 in the market. Avis was #2 everyone knew that they were a smaller competitor. So you can give that small admission, but you can get a really large acceptance because of it. I think it's just it. It requires you to stop thinking, thinking about only what do I want to sell, How much do I want to sell it? And you have to start thinking about the receiver. What do they hear, and what other preconceived notions do they have about you that allows you to start communicating in this way? Speaker 2 Yeah, absolutely. And I think a wonderful quote from Burnback draws attention to the fact that admitting A flaw makes you more believable. And if tangibly prove your honesty, everything else you say becomes that much more believable. And I think it gives, as you say, a bit of, of humanness, you know, it makes you feel a bit more approachable, less of a less of a show off. But the interesting thing with Buckley's and I think some of those great pieces of work that that burnback did is they didn't just pick a floor randomly. Now, the third benefit of admitting a floor is if you pick the right one. So Buckley's is always about the foul taste. So the the the line is it tastes awful and it works. But then they play with that very creatively so there were some particular lines they came up with. One of my favourites is a poster and it's got a picture of the bottle and it says the largest bottle we sell is 200 millilitres. Anything large would be cruel. It tastes awful and it works. There is a great line and really early ad from like mid 80s and it was a picture of, you know, was it, I think Frank Buckley was the the kind of face, the figurehead of the company. I wake up with, I wake up with nightmares that someone gave me a taste of my own medicine. You know, it tastes awful and it works. So what they did very cleverly was emphasize foul taste because they knew that people tend to have this sense of trade-offs in their mind that a brand can't be all things to all people. So if you say you taste amazing, people assume, well, you're probably not as potent. Whereas if you admit you taste foul, you've got, you know, bad taste, people assume your efficacy has, has, has gone up. So the key thing to use this bias, which differentiates A mediocre use from a brilliant use, is to think what is your core strength? And then is there a mirror weakness that you could admit to which would emphasise that strength? Now, there is experimental evidence that supports this, so he's not quite so well known as some of the other academics we've we've talked about. But Gerd Bonner at Bielefeld University ran a brilliant study in 2003 and he shows people ads for a fictitious Italian restaurant, divides the participants into three groups. And the first group just CA AD which makes positive claims about the business, essentially emphasises it's got this lovely cosy atmosphere. And when people rate the quality of that business, I think it was a 7 point scale, the average rating is 4.29 higher. The better. Second group of people, they see that same description about the cosy atmosphere. But then the ad also admits to a weakness or a flaw in the restaurant. But crucially, the floor is unrelated to the positive. So it talks about the cosy atmosphere, but then says we don't have any dedicated parking spaces outside. And you see this very small improvement. Maybe it's from that credibility point, maybe it's just from the the humanness of admitting a floor, but it's very, very small. It's they go up to 4.515% improvement. But then this idea of the power of a related floor people, the third group, they see the same discussion of the cosy atmosphere, but this time the ad also mentions that unfortunately we can't accommodate parties of more than four people. Now, that weakness of not being able to accommodate big parties is completely intimately related with coziness. You know, it's a demonstration of the smallness of the restaurant and when the weakness is linked to the benefit, that's when you get the biggest effect. That was the group that had the highest rating for the restaurant. So there that group rated at 5.62 out of seven, whereas remember just saying the positive stuff was 4.29. So there is this 31% increase in appeal of the restaurant if you admit to a related flaw. So the thing I think brands can learn from Buckley's is don't just randomly pick a floor you want to be spending an awful lot of time. Think about what is the ideal floor for your particular brand. Speaker 1 And maybe to drive home the point, if you believe that people are going to fill in the blank anyway, they're not just going to receive your messaging, your promotional messaging with 100% belief they're always going to fill in. But here's the counterbalance. Here's the the balance by giving them the counterbalance first, by saying here's this law and here's the mere strength we're giving them the we're giving them the setup already. And we know what we've covered for a long time, that humans are a little cognitively lazy. They're not going to do the extra level of investigation, interrogation if we give them something to set up. So if we give them a really believable flaw, like Buckley's taste terrible. If we give them a believable flaw like this tiny restaurant is cozy and so they can't take more than four seats, 4 diners at a time at the table, we're really giving them that interrogation that they are likely to do anyway. But we're giving them the best version of that interrogation that gives us the best flight and puts us in the best in the best area. So if you believe people are going to be evaluative in their analysis, then it only behooves us to give them the best version of that evaluation. Is that is that fair? Speaker 2 I think that's, I think it's a lovely way of putting it. People know that products can't be perfect. They can't be all things to all people. There are always trade-offs. So that's the assumption people are coming to your communications with. If you just tell them the amazing things, you've left it up to them to work out where the the negative is. And they might assume the negative lies in a very important area if you steer them. If you tell them where the negative is evative area is actively while you can steer them towards a an area of only limited consequence. So absolutely do not assume. The best thing to do is just list all your positives. If you do that, your audience will be thinking about for themselves where the negative lies. Better to be proactive, better to steer them. Speaker 1 Certainly the data shows if you steer them and the and the and the jackpot is if you steer them with where you have a nearer strength, then you've given yourself a double benefit. A you've removed the interrogation they were going to do on your promotional claim anyway. And B, you've given them a positive to to balance it out, which is going to, which is going to give you a better outcome than not addressing it at all. Speaker 2 Yeah, and and and you mentioned burned back earlier. You can see the same thing with with VW. They had famous lines like ugly as only skin deep. Now, why would a car brand tell its audience it doesn't look very fancy? But I think what they did in a lot of the body copy was say essentially, well, look, you know, we're not beautiful, but the reason we're not beautiful is because we don't prioritize aesthetics. That's what Ford do. That's what General Motors do. You know, at Volkswagen, we are solely interested in engineering excellence. So essentially they use the ugliness as that proof point for engineering excellence. Too many businesses think that people hear what they say. If you just say you're amazing, that doesn't mean people believe you're amazing. You know, you've got to, I think, use some of these tactics to, to translate the benefit and make it more potent, more believable. And admitting to that mirror flaw is one way to do that. Speaker 1 I was just thinking about how as an American, I don't know Buckley's cough syrup, but I do know Listerine, and Listerine uses almost a exact same tastic. They say the taste you can hate twice a day, right? I mean, it's the same concept. Because it's so, it's so effective and it must be not pleasant to rinse your mouth. Speaker 2 With it and there is something there. As an industry we're often obsessed with originality, but you've got Buckley's in Canada using this tactic, Listerine in America There was TCP did it in Britain with very similar lines. You, you. In this particular category. The marketers have taken ideas that have worked really well in one geography. They've identified the behavioural science principle of the heart and they've applied them elsewhere. I think as an entry should be doing that far more rather than thinking every brief we have to come up with an idea of a blank sheet of paper. Let's learn from all those brands that have faced similar challenges in different markets. I think there's a massive opportunity to do that more. Speaker 1 You and I on a completely different area were so it was so fun to discover that in Britain they have the fluent device, the character discover the Meerkat and I had no idea it was the almost same exact character as the American GEICO gecko. I mean, these were same, nearly same industries with nearly the same characters doing nearly the same stunts in their advertising. I mean, you could like layer them next to each other and you would see similar behaviour. Really incredible. Speaker 2 Yeah, absolutely. So I think GEICO created the gecko 1st and crucially you've got this gecko with a a British accent being quite charming few years later. Compare the Market in Britain, which is an insurance comparison site does something remarkably similar. They create Alexander the the Meerkat because they they play on this idea that people are turning up at his website, compare the Meerkat and they are actually looking for compare the market, the insurance comparison site. And he has this very strong Russian accent and he is a carbon copy of the idea and it has been phenomenally successful. And compare the Meerkat were a small player. I think they may be fourth before the Meerkat came along. And now they are by far and away the biggest player in Britain in that particular market. And that isn't in any way to disrespect the agency behind it. In Britain, VCCP, they've worked out what's been very successful elsewhere. They've taken that idea of converting A vague, abstract idea of value for money into a tangible, concrete thing that you can visualise and that makes it much, much more powerful. And then the way they've executed it, their individual bits of creative are phenomenally funny. You know, that is a very, very hard thing to do. They've executed it absolutely amazingly. So I think they had the humility to learn from elsewhere and then the executional brilliance of, of, of you know the what for a 20 year campaign now. Speaker 1 And it's a, it's a final comment on this and then we can get back to all the promotions. But it's interesting to think about when you look for inspiration, mouthwash and cough syrup, you may not look in those categories, but practically they're both things that go in your mouth to have a taste that are leading to an effect. You know, an insurance provider like GEICO and a comparison site of multiple insurance providers, they may not see themselves as in the same narrow category when you go to look for inspiration. So even the point of where you go and look for inspiration or go to look for what learnings you can have, not being so narrow as only looking at, you know, brown alcohol spirits or clear alcohol spirits. That was the only at it's candy. But looking at all things that you eat, you know, can really help widen the aperture and get you the right insights. It's just a nice reminder when you're thinking about how to get inspiration for your promotions. You could be a little bit more broad if you think about the the consumer behavior behind it. Speaker 2 Well, another great use of the practical effect in advertising would be good things come to those who wait at this Guinness line. I might get slightly wrong, but Heinz ketchup, I'm pretty sure a few years earlier, said something remarkably. Which isn't it? The best things come to those who wait. Guinness, one of the most successful lines ever, remarkably similar to a line that a source brand ran a few years earlier. So absolutely you can speak. Speaker 1 Because in Heinz, you have to wait for the ketchup to come out. You know, just like in Guinness, you have to wait for the head to go down after the bartender's first floor. So they both have the same flaw, which is it takes a little longer to get to the product that you want. Yeah. Speaker 2 Yeah. Speaker 1 Brilliant. OK. Yeah. So let's go to our third bias. Yeah, third insight that we want marketers to be thinking about as they're saying, how can I improve my promotions? How can I do even better in the promotional pillar? Speaker 2 Yeah, So what we've started with are two surprising campaigns. You know, a lot of people won't have heard of Buckley's cough syrup or the Patagonian tooth fish. For this third example, we pushed even further and thought, well, what experiment is out there that we can't find many great examples of being used, but that is a massive opportunity. So a bias the could be used far, far more often. And this is an idea called the but you are free technique. And I think especially a one to one communications, sales, conversations, direct marketing, this is a really big opportunity that we can apply much, much more. So the experiment comes from Nicholas Gagne, who's at South Brittany University. And back in 2000, he'd done a slightly strange experiment and we can discuss that later. Bizarrely, psychologists seem to love dressing up as beggars. You know, I just don't know what's going on here. There are quite a few studies where psychologists dress up as beggars and then they test what techniques they can use to generate as much cash as possible. So what Kagaine does is he goes out into the street and he tries to get people to give him money. So the control language, he says, excuse me, Sir, would you have some coins so I can take the bus? And 10% of people give him cash and on average he gets $0.48 the next group of people. And this is the but you are free technique. He says, excuse me Sir, would you have some coins to take the so I can take the bus, please? But you're free to accept or to refuse. So it's exactly the same language at the beginning, but he adds on at the end this key phrase. But you're free to accept or refuse. And when he does that, there is a very, very large change. This is one of the largest change we've talked about. Compliance goes from 10% in the control to 48% when he uses the back. You are free technique and average money that people give goes from $0.48 to one. I guess it's one euro €1.04. So you've got nearly A5 fold increase in people handing over money and they give twice as much. So you combine it, you've got this 10 fold increase. Now the argument here is the one of the really, really big drives of human behaviour is this desire to retain a sense of control. Psychologists might say desire to retain a sense of agency. You know, we like to feel that we're in charge of our lives. Now the interesting thing is when again emphasises people have the freedom to say no. In reality he's not changing the setup because of course if a beggar comes to you, you can say whatever you want from, you're not obliged to give them money. So all the game is doing is drawing attention to that freedom. Freedom already exists. It's whether or not the requester reminds the potential donor, and he's experiment suggests if you explicitly proactively draw attention towards autonomy, it increases compliance. Speaker 1 You know, it's interesting you were, you were kind of making light of using the beggar as the example. And it occurs to me maybe it's trying to get at like your natural human behavior outside of a commercial setting, like you're trying to say, like how do humans actually behave when no one's watching when there is no, when there is no money? I mean, there's money on live, but there's no, there's no calculus of a benefit in exchange for the money. You know, it's trying to get at something much maybe more more natural maybe. Speaker 2 Yeah, I, I So I think it's simple for the experimenter. You know, you can put on some shabby clothes and then go and stop people straight away. I think that low level of cost and effort probably appeals to busy psychologists. And then the other thing is the data is more robust than if you've asked some students to imagine a situation. It's really powerful when you're getting people to hand over actual cash. You know, this isn't them speculating. Would they donate? They're looking at actual donations. So I think it's a mix of ease to do, as long as you're, you know, you're not, don't get too embarrassed easily. But there's an element if it's easy to do and it's a reasonably naturalistic setting that people won't think means that they're taking part in a psychology experiment. So I, I think that and, and, and you've got real cash being involved. So those three things, natural, easy and cash involved, make it a powerful experiment. Speaker 1 But we didn't stop there. We pushed ourselves to say, is this provable beyond a very compelling. Speaker 2 Academic study, no. So, so that's why I think the those 3 criteria are important. But you're absolutely right. If you find a single study, especially a single study that sees a massive result, you want to query it both in terms of, well, does this replicate and is that massive result going to be seen elsewhere. So what you really want is other psychologists to have waited a few years and then analyse all the different experiments on a particular technique to see if the findings hold. So he again does his study in 2000. 2012 Christopher Carpenter at Western Illinois University decides there's enough papers now that he can run this meta analysis. He looks at 42 studies which have tested the but you are free technique and he finds absolutely and not the same scale that was found in the original experiment. It does drop back slightly, but he finds in a variety of settings a variety of requests. If you emphasize someone's freedom, they are more likely to do what you want. So yes, first study done this like bizarre setting, but we've got enough studies now that we know this can work in in commercial settings too. Speaker 1 And as you're sharing this, I'm thinking about all of the, all of the different ways this is used even in like the charity sector when asking for donations. But even in D the CE commerce, you know, when you're, when you're at a bakery and they offer you a free sample, you're, you're, you're free to accept it or not, but it's, you know, it, it, it gives you that, that, that better sense. Or when you go to AD to CE commerce site and they say sign up for our newsletter or, or you're free not to or the, the, the other one that comes to mind is when you go to a local news website all across America, They said, we see you have your ad blocker on, but please turn it off or you're free not to support us. A little bit deeper, a little bit more of a push. But in all these instances, they're just reminding you, you have a choice and let's see what you do. But you know, they, they, they're reminding you of that choice, which of course you had. Speaker 2 Anyway, so the there's a local coffee shop quite close to me and the the guy that works in it is just like a genius salesperson. So it's a, it's a brand called Cafe Nero and they do a regular thing of you go in and you order your cappuccino are flat white and they say well it's £3.40 of flat white or for an extra 30 pence you can have the Brazilian beans. Now straight away. That is a really well behaviourally science informed business principle because they do it in every single shop. There's an idea called price differentials. If you say to someone flat white is £3.40, you can have a fancy bean for £3.70, you'll get fewer acceptances. If you say 340 or an extra 30 pence for the fancier beans, you get much better acceptance. So talking about price differentials rather than price totals encourages premiumisation. But what the barista, the local coffee shop does usually always says, well, you know, it's up to you, you're free to accept or not. So, so I think often people that work in a customer facing environment, they're paying attention to what they're doing. They notice these things work through trial and error. They might never have heard of the academic study, but through trial and error they've worked out what gets that extra extra spent. So yeah, Cafe Nero I think is a lovely example of of someone applying it. Speaker 1 There's a slightly different instead of studies that come to mind a lot in the 1990s and early 2000s in America, you would receive a letter from a nonprofit and in it, it would have a penny or it would have a thicker with your return address from this was a very common technique. This is a little different than what we're talking about here, but it's got a similar insight about gifting with the expect, you know, that then creates an expectation of return. Maybe you could explain that a little bit. We could talk about how they're different because they're, they're similar in their execution, but they're a little bit of a different insight, right? Speaker 2 You're Roy. So I think the principle they're applying there is reciprocity. So that is the idea that if we receive a gift, and this is true across the world, whatever culture people are in, if you receive a gift there is an obligation to return the favour at a late date. Childini wrote Influence back in 1984 and originally had six key principles of persuasion. Later issues now have a 7th, but one of those 6 was reciprocity. And what you've just described I think is a powerful way of charities to to harness that. You give people the gift of the penny and then you think you will recoup more cash in more generous donations in response. There are experiments that back that up. I am struggling from the academic's name. I think it might be Kessler, but we'll put it in the the show notes and we'll see if I'm right or not. But what the basic setup does, I can remember. So they send out thousands upon thousands of direct mail pieces asking people to donate. Some people get a letter talking about such third world poverty. Other people get the same letter but a free postcard and it's positioned as being a gift from the children of Dakar. Other people get same letter and five postcards. And what they see is absolutely there is a nice big statistical significant uplift in donations with one postcard, even bigger one if you get 5. So that and they far offset the cost of including the postcard. So their argument was this is reciprocity at work. If you actively give someone a a generous gift, that person then feel was obliged to return the favour. So charities couldn't apply this very, very powerfully. Speaker 1 I think it's just so helpful to hear that difference and to think about like, you know, there's so much in our power when we're trying to get effective promotions and these differences there's, there's related or at least similar insights that you can choose from about what's going to be most effective in your situation. Speaker 2 Yeah, you could say they are linked by a generosity of spirit. You are giving something in both occasions on the but you are free principle. You are giving people an easy get out. In the reciprocity example, you're giving them a physical gift. Now both of these gifts of either freedom or physical products, they create almost counterintuitive, slightly paradox as a greater income. So I really like these, you know, sometimes I don't like, you know, hard sales and I feel about awkward, especially for my own kind of consultancy or business. So knowing that you could be true to your own characteristics of maybe being a little bit more introverted, a little bit less hard and pushy and emphasize freedom. Now I like this both as a a technique for it's effectiveness, but also I feel it fits with the style of how I'd like to behave. Speaker 1 I think that's lovely because there is different tools that support different styles as well. And so, you know, it's not only just about do I know enough of the case studies, enough of the academics, enough of the examples to apply to the business case. It's actually, do I have the right style that matches the brand tone? Do I have the right style? Yeah, please. Speaker 2 Yes, yeah, because you're absolutely right. The academics will try and hold everything equal, then they'll do a test and then they'll, you know, use respirosity or not use but you're free or not use humour or not. But of course, you know, let's say you're a person, I'd be particularly good at this. You know, let's say I read a study which is all about, you know, making a, a joke encourages people to give you more money. Well, that might be great in principle, but if you're not particularly humorous or you don't like fucking jokes, then it's going to fall flat. You've got to pick the experiments that either match the features and context of your business or brand or on that one to one aspects that reflects you've got a bit inner self. And I I would think about all these behavioural science experiments as this giant range of tools that you can pick up. You don't have to use all of them. You've got to have that insight and knowledge about your own self to make sure you pick the right one. Speaker 1 Yeah, it it, it, it just reminds me, well, with the episodes all about promotion and how we can communicate with others to persuade them to buy more of our brand or believe more in our, in our, in, in our product. And that consistency matters. Having a tone, having a having being consistent, being true to the brand gives you that consistency in market. There's a lot, a lot of knock on benefits. We've talked about the mere exposure effect. We've talked about other things where just being consistent, being reliably the same has a lot of benefit at the end of the day. And so being, you know, it's, it's so easy as a marketer or as an agency to want to keep trying new things, keep changing things, but finding that one right tone, finding that that one right set of tactics and reliably using them, I think just makes your brand more powerful in the market. Great, great. So we wrap up our big our big discussion today. Speaker 2 Yes. So what we covered, we've come three big things. We have talked about the power of language, how that can often be underestimated. And we talked about the Loftus and Palmer car crash study, which showed that people do not interpret reality neutrally. They interpret it through a lens of the language that's used to describe it. So if you change the language of how you describe your products, you'll change people's perception, you'll change their actual experience. So we talked about commonplace examples of being able to apply that, say vintage, not second hand, say sold out, not out of stock. That was the first experiment and that was related to the story of the Patagonian 2 fish. We then talked about the idea of the pratfall effect. So the idea from Elliot Aronson, 1966. If you admit a flaw, you become more appealing. But we really focused in not on that study that we've covered a few times, but one we talk about far less frequently, which is the GERD Bonner study, which says it's really important to identify the right floor that you admit. You need to be picking a floor that mirrors the core strength you want to convey. So in the case of Buckley's, which we've talked about a length, if you admit that you are foul tasting, people assume, well, you must be pretty potent. You admit foul taste, you benefit in terms of perceived efficacy. So be very, very careful. I spend a lot of time thinking about what's your core strength and then go out and look for that mirror weakness. And then finally, we talked about an underused principle, the but you are free technique. This is the idea that people want to retain a sense of agency, a sense of control. So if you are ever offering a product to someone or an opportunity to up to upgrade, remind them they don't have to buy it. Remind them that they have the freedom to say no and paradoxically, remind them of that freedom. And then more likely to say yes because they don't push back against your overly aggressive approach. So three big opportunities that I think listeners should, you know, spend a bit of time thinking how they can apply for their particular brand. Speaker 1 Thank you, Richard, and thanks for the great conversation today. If you found this episode in this miniseries helpful, please share it with others that are excited to learn more about marketing and the way behavioral science can help make better marketing today. We'd like you to thank you for listening and please share or comment and follow our pages so that we can reach more listeners just like you. Until next time, I'm Michael Aaron Flicker. Speaker 2 And I'm Richard Chilton. Thanks for listening.