Sean M Everett
Precisionist & Class Clown
SeanMEverett.com
Evolyte.com
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Behavioral Decision Making
I wrote this in May of 2010, and after doing some Google Analytics research of what drove the most traffic to my personal website (seanmeverett.com), it was far and away this post. I’m actually ranked in the Top 10 on Google for the phrase “behavioral decision making”, so I thought I’d re-post without any edits to keep it front of mind, and also share with you.
I’ve been thinking about the human decision making process lately, especially as it relates to influencing actions in sales situations. I’m specifically interested in the non-logical, subconscious drivers and how businesses can exploit this knowledge for their own profit.
In layman terms, how do you get someone to spend more money on your product or service without him/her realizing it?
Note: I’ve left much of the technical and scientific background out of this post for the sake of simplicity and conciseness. If you’re curious about digging deeper in this area, feel free to give me a shout on twitter or through the contact form and I can send you the relevant academic research.
First, The Background
If you’ve ever seen print ads from 50 or 100 years ago, you’ve seen the direct (e.g., “Eat at Joes”), and often less effective, methods that were used. They started to get better by tying in spokespeople and/or expertise. Painfully inaccurate comes to mind…
The real insight came when FMRI studies were conducted (basically MRI scans of your brain to see which areas were activated while decisions are made). Researchers in behavioral marketing found that while people will give logical reasons for explaining purchases, it’s actually the subconscious, emotional reasoning that drove their behavior.
Second, The Emotional Drivers
Take, for instance, the marketing for Coca-Cola. If they simply showed you the features and benefits of Coke, you would never buy it:
“Buy new coke featuring brown food coloring, sugar water, and carbonation!”
Instead they focus on the experience of drinking Coke. A major example you’re likely familiar with is the “Coke Side of Life” campaigns that play before movies showing three teens drinking Coke while their environment changes from a movie theater to a forest, consistent with the movie they’re watching. In a nutshell, Coke is saying subconsciously that if you’re going to watch a movie, you need to drink Coke to get the best experience. Smart, eh?
Ok, that’s an obvious example, but what about a more subtle example? Enter the genius of Alka-Seltzer. Yah, who’d of thought…
Introducing The Champ: Alka-Seltzer
The marketing/sales Money Mayweather wizards that got everything right: Alka-Seltzer. Let’s break down their tagline for a minute, which, by the way, is only peeling back one layer of this perfectly marketed onion:
Plop, plop, fizz, fizz, what a relief it is!
- Sound: this is so genius I need about an hour to describe all the nuances…I’ll keep it brief. Studies have shown that consistent sounds exponentially increase consumer awareness and therefore sales (think of the Intel Inside 5-tone dings at the end of all their commercials). Alka-Seltzer’s genius was to translate the sound into print (and they did it before scientific evidence was ever produced)!
- Usage: the tagline also showed consumers how to use their product. Plop ‘em in, watch ‘em fizz, and boom goes the dynamite.
- 2 Versus 1: did you notice how each of the tag line, print ads, and tv ads always show two tablets being used, not just one? Guess what, this simple move made consumers think that it required two tablets for relief and subsequently doubled their sales overnight!
- Emotional Tie-In: finally, note the last part of the tagline. They directly tie their product to the emotional and physical benefit of relieving heart burn so you can relax again. Who doesn’t like relaxing? What other product can you think of with this strong of a tie to heart burn?
The lesson is pick one emotional attribute your product solves and create a tie so strong that when anyone thinks of that emotion, they immediately think of your product!
The Now: Current Behavioral Ads
If you’ve been following the huge internet/tech battle between Adobe and Apple, you may have come across the Ad adobe published today (from Engadget post):
If you’re reading Engadget today (and let’s be honest, you’re reading it right now), then you might have noticed that Adobe has launched a pretty full-force campaign to call out Apple on its anti-Flash mission. If you don’t know what we’re talking about, it’s the advertisements that start with “We [heart] Apple.” Along with the web ads, the company has also snagged a full page in today’s Washington Post to address the battle in which the two companies have been engaged. All of this links back to a new statement from Adobe, as well as an open letter from founders Chuck Geschke and John Warnock (“Our thoughts on open markets”), addressing Apple’s recent spate of clear and direct attacks against the company and its products.
Mel Gibson, He Likes Freedom
Now, what Adobe has done is pretty clever. They’ve actually thrown Steve Jobs open letter back in his (and Apple’s) face using an emotional response. They’re relating to customers to who love Apple (not trying to compete against the brand) to get these customers on Adobe’s side. THEN, they go on to tug at our “freedom” heart strings circa Mel Gibson’s Braveheart (though he looks a little constipated)…
Anyways, the lesson here is that you need to connect with your customers on an emotional level and express empathy for their concerns (or maybe educate them on what some of those concerns should be). If you’re successful at this, then slowly, over time, you can even convert the most die hard competing fans to come to your side.
Don’t believe me? Let’s put it this way. Only a few short years ago, most of the US population was referring to Apple as Mac-in-trash. Now they’re the darling of Wall Street with a market cap bigger than Microsoft, and have produced the two most innovative products probably ever.
Million Dollar Question: How Can I Use This Info?
This is the place where damn near every blog post stop shorts or fails, and it f*ing continues to piss me off. I’m going to do my best to describe in three simple and actionable, yet detailed steps how you should use this information to drive your own top-line revenue growth (i.e., make it rain and make babies cry <– duh).
First, a disclaimer. As you can see from the various real-world examples I outlined above, much of the detail for why these things work are extremely situational dependent (see: Alka-Seltzer discussion). Unfortunately, I can only give you the somewhat theoretical next steps since I don’t know your company, brand, or product/service as intimately as you, so I’m going to continue to use The Champ Alka-Seltzer (“AK”) as an example. Here we go…
- Features, Benefits, & Use Cases — sit down with your business partners and brainstorm the various features and benefits of your product and relate them to actual use cases. For AK, this is reducing the negative symptoms associated with heartburn and indigestion from eating triggering foods, like an entire Lou Malnatis deep dish pizza (Chi town!).
- Emotional Aspects – now, brainstorm all the emotional aspects of your product solving those specific use cases and rank according to prevalence in the marketplace from highest to lowest. For AK, this is the relaxation and relief feeling after the burning sensation is reduced or removed. There are also sub-emotional benefits like knowing you can eat an entire deep dish pizza without worrying about the awful side effects (aside from the high cholesterol, obvs).
- Sensory Overload — finally, you want to bring each of the above together in the most simple explanation possible for your customers. Be sure to use an unused or very low prevalence emotional tie-in so your customers relate that emotion only to your brand. For AK, this was the “plop, plop, fizz, fizz oh what a relief it is” tagline. This jingle included the sound effects too, which you get extra bonus points for doing, but is often extremely difficult to execute effectively.
I promise that if you do these things, you’re going to be lightyears beyond your competition, especially if you’re running a startup or small business. Most of these folks simply don’t have the resources, mental capacity, or see the value in emotional decision making.But you do, don’t you, cuz all you do is win! So go put your hands up, and make em stay there! (Please note the horrible DJ Khaled reference. Kthanks.)
