Working in marketing, and within a brand agency, means I support the team with comms, messaging, user experience, measurement, and tracking across various campaigns and mediums.
I made it my personal mission to further understand the human psyche after becoming somewhat fascinated whilst reading Google’s ‘The Middle Messy’ with its reference to the six biases of marketing in behavioural science.
I quickly recognised the value and power in understanding consumer behaviours at this level. After all, it's all about human connections.
It’s one thing to know who your audience is, it’s another to know how they think.
And that’s why I like it (and why we use behavioural science to better cater our comms and strategy).
So, when The Illusion of Choice popped up on my feed one day (shout out to my previous boss, Nick) with its 16.5 psychological biases that influence what we buy, I didn’t hesitate to hit that ‘buy now’ button.
My colleagues in the office are bored of me banging on about the various mind-blowing examples and experiments within the book, so I decided to spare their ears for once and share it with you all, here. (You’re welcome, team.)
There’s far too many golden threads of insight, science, and priceless information in Shotton’s book for me to share it all here now, so ultimately (and obviously) I would strongly advise that you read it for yourself.
However, in case you don’t have a copy immediately to hand or need further convincing (how!?), here are my personal favourite takeaways to show you why I’m fangirling so hard.
Make it easy (but don’t make it look easy)
This is about eliminating friction. Even when you think something couldn’t be any simpler, you can usually find a way to make it even more simple.
Shotton’s example of the ‘press for champagne’ button at Bob Bob Ricard epitomizes this perfectly. Most people wouldn’t think that ordering a drink from a waiter and them bringing it to you could be much easier, but they sought to streamline the process. They added a ‘press for champagne’ button to every table. Almost as soon as you pressed it, a glass would appear.
They sell more champagne than any other restaurant in Britain.
Frame it right
Words have the power to change behaviour.
There are a few areas within this that Shotton touches on, including focusing on what people are likely to lose out on, rather than what they will gain, using nouns over verbs and using different descriptive words to frame situations differently.
He provides an example of a brilliant experiment where various people were shown the same clip of a car accident. Different terms were used to describe the speed at which the car was travelling and, as a result, perceptions differed between the groups, despite being shown the exact same clip.
He also notes that using nouns has a greater persuasive power. For example, ‘thank you for subscribing’ isn’t quite as powerful as ‘thank you for becoming a subscriber’.
And in an experiment where people were told they would lose 75 cents a day if they didn’t insulate their house versus others who were told it would cost 75 cents a day to insulate their house, 61% requested more info when told what they stood to lose, versus 39% who were told what they would gain.
Freedom Of Choice
Quite simply, this is based on people not liking being told what to do. Or not do. Giving people a voice increases their willingness to comply. So, when trying to get your audience to do something, provide opportunity for choice, or be less demanding (i.e rather than ‘buy now’ consider ‘spring 23/24 collection’).
The Peak End Rule
Put simply, this is about ending on a high. We tend to remember the most (and least) enjoyable parts of an experience, and the final moments. Minimise negatives and maximise positives.
Shotton recognises that trying to fix everything all at once isn’t the answer here but flipping the most negative experience to a more positive one can often have a considerable impact.
Houston airport is a brilliant case study for this. They kept receiving complaints from passengers about how long they had to wait for their luggage at the baggage carousel, which was an average of 8 mins.
Instead of trying to speed up the process, which would have been costly and timely to achieve, they re-routed passengers from passport control so that it took them longer to walk to baggage claim… about 8 minutes longer. When they arrived, their bags were already there. Hey presto, happy customers. Genius.
I could go on, but hopefully that gives you a little insight to the book. If you've made it this far, I strongly recommend you invest in your very own copy of the book. If you deal with people for a living, you won't be disappointed.
