Category: Consumer Behavior

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Five Ways to Gain Attention When We Have Attention Spans Less Than Goldfish

We live in an attention economy. One where some of the most profitable companies in the world base their entire business model on keeping you hooked. At its best, our attention can lead us to new ideas, new careers, and moments of mental clarity. At its worst, our attention can drive us to addictions, obsessions, and anguish. We devote our mental activity to something that is one of the core psychological tenants that drives consumer behavior.

Our Limited Attention Span

The attention span of consumers is shrinking dramatically. In the year 2000, the average human attention span was 12 seconds. In 2020, the average was eight seconds, one second less than the attention span of a goldfish.[1]

So what does this mean? One amazing study measured the attention span of online shoppers using an EEG biosensor cap. They found:

  • When under time pressure
    • Shoppers focus on fewer products
    • Shoppers pay less attention
  • When not under time pressure
    • Shoppers focus on well-known brands
    • Shoppers spend about the same amount of time browsing regardless of their level of online shopping experience[2]

So what can we do about this?

  • You can’t be everything to everybody. When you are developing your marketing or product rollout strategies, realize that consumers have limited attention. If you try to promote everything equally, it will give you less time and budget to promote the products or services that are most important to your organization.
  • Brand awareness matters. Consumers focus on well-known brands. This is true in both low-effort and high-effort consumer behavior.

You Are Not Multi-Tasking

Advances in technology have led to some great opportunities for us to reinvent the workplace. However, with all of its positives, it has also led to some challenges that many of us have difficulty managing. As our task lists become longer and the lines between our work lives and personal lines blur, the idea of multitasking sounds like an attractive option to try and keep us on track and to keep us sane. However, our brains aren’t built for multitasking. Numerous studies highlight our inability to perform multiple tasks at once. Instead, our brains engage in task-switching, where we rapidly switch between one task to the next. We’re so bad at this that some estimates find that it takes us 40% longer when we multitask than if we were to try to devote our attention to two separate tasks.[3]

So there’s no such thing as multitasking; a better alternative is single-tasking. Devoting time to a single task can make you more productive. One way that I like to do this (and the only way I was able to juggle a full-time job, grad school, and a kid) is the Pomodoro technique. Basically, the Pomodoro technique is where you devote 100% of your time to one task for 25 mins. When the timer goes off, you stop what you are doing and take a break for five minutes. Rinse and repeat. It works wonders. However, this isn’t a blog post about how to best utilize your time; it’s a post about how our attention spans suck and what you can do as a marketer. Just realize that our attention can and is going to be divided. We’re going to be distracted. We’re going to be on an important Zoom call when our kid walks in.

The Cognitive Miser

Our brains are hardwired to be cognitive misers. This essentially means that we’re kind of lazy. Our brains seek solutions that require the least amount of mental effort.[4] It’s the reason that we have the “For Dummies” series, one-click buying on Amazon, don’t read books, only read headlines, just text and don’t talk, create acronyms, and try only to find answers that support our position. The cognitive miser effect plays a significant role in our short attention spans. And it’s not just in fundamental, everyday decisions like buying toothpaste. Even in important decisions, like where to get a mortgage, the average number of sources we consult is two.[5] Yep, two sources.

So what are the marketing implications? As a marketer, you’ve got to be able to cut through the clutter, grab someone’s attention, and try your best to hold on to that attention while you make your case. You’ve got eight seconds (probably a lot less if you’re trying to get someone’s attention that is “multi-tasking) to try and convince someone to find out more from you.

As a regular guy that is just trying to write about consumer behavior and marketing, I can say that this equation is incredibly tough. It’s a saturated space, and there are so many people that have been writing about these topics for decades more than I have. And either good or bad, I personally don’t have anything to sell. I’m just writing about these topics because I like doing it, and I want to start some conversations with people interested in what I’m talking about. In my job, though, I design campaigns for a company with a well-established value proposition and a recognizable brand within the industry; it’s much easier.

In a high-effort consumer behavior event, the process that a consumer goes through follows five steps. This includes problem recognition, information search, consideration set, purchase, and post-purchase behavior. Just consider the implications of the cognitive miser mortgage study has on one of the most important steps, information search. If the average number of sources that someone consults before making a major purchase is two, if you’re one of the sources that they’re seeking for information, you are halfway to the consideration set. Since the preceding paragraph is sounding really academic, and even I’m starting to get bored with it, let’s look at a real-world example.

Last year I had a 125’ Willow Oak fall in my backyard. However, it didn’t just fall; it leaned. Yep, they call leaners “widow makers” because someone like me likely tends to just grab the chainsaw and have at it. After several rounds of convincing from my wife (who just gave birth) and my father-in-law, I finally stepped into part one of high-effort consumer behavior; I recognized there was a problem. I didn’t think there was at first because I thought I would take care of it. After I realized they were right and probably shouldn’t die trying to take down a massive tree with an 18” chainsaw, I entered step two of high-effort consumer behavior, information search. I spent a couple of searching for tree services near me and making calls. I talked to these companies, read a few reviews, and moved into step three, consideration set. I made 3 or 4 appointments to get estimates. During the consideration set phase, I talked to the estimators and moved into step four, where I made my decision. I’m still in step five, where if one of my other trees falls, I probably won’t call the same company because the experience wasn’t the greatest. They were kind of messy and didn’t do the greatest job cutting the tree into small enough rounds that I could hand-split (which was a request).

This is Fine, but How Do I Get Someone’s Attention?

5. Think in Headlines

People aren’t likely to pour over your piece of marketing, savoring every image and every word, and most people are not going to read everything a long-format piece of content unless they’re interested. I’d be dreaming to think that my audience actually read the first twelve paragraphs and didn’t just skip down to the listicle. As a marketer, you have to realize that this is okay, and it happens all the time. Many people will just read the headlines, so make your headlines clear, concise and portray your entire marketing message. We used to do this thing in the ad agency world called a creative brief. Part of that process was to try and distill the entire campaign into just one thing. Think of it this way, if your audience knew only 7-10 words about what you were selling, what would you want them to know? It’s as simple as that.

4. Create Your Content in Blocks

It’s not just headlines, but scrolling, even doom scrolling through the news is usually built-in blocks. You will typically see a headline, image, preview, or small amount of content. In my experience, this is a really good approach in an email. 7-10 “content blocks” is a great way to view your next consolidated email. By organizing your emails in content blocks, you can distill a massive amount of content in a very small area. The added bonus is that your call to action (CTA) or other embedded links are tracking your users. If you give them just a couple of sentences and they have to click through for more information, you know they engaged with that particular piece of content, and you can adjust your next sales pitch accordingly. A word of caution, don’t be a creeper by calling them to say, “I saw you clicked on XYZ.” Trust me, I’ve gotten these calls, and they don’t last long.

3. Create an Omnichannel Approach

Omnichannel is just a fancy way of saying create a lot of versions of the same thing. For most of my big campaigns, I’ll do a press release, email ad, social media posts, direct mail, and work this into other email content. Someone may see your message in one spot and forget about it. They see it in two spots; you’re closer to getting your message across. Three spots? You’ve gotten their attention. Keep in mind that memory works on source decay, so regardless of what the message is, where they heard, the information will ALWAYS fade before the message itself. Remember hearing that Subway used ingredients found in Yoga mats? I’m guessing you remember that message but forget where you heard it.

2. Talk To Your Sales Team

If you’re in marketing, you probably kick out a lot of content, but I’m guessing that your customer interaction is limited. You may have some really good survey data or a wall of impressive metrics on CLV and CTR, but you’re probably not having the daily one-on-one conversations that your sales team is having. Remember that regardless of how good your marketing department is, they exist for one reason: sales. A marketing department is essentially a sales support department, even when they are the sales drivers. Make sure to share the marketing you are producing with your sales team, not only for feedback but also to make sure that they are communicating the same important points you are trying to do with your digital and physical media.

1.  Refine, Refine, Refine

You’re never done, and you can always learn something. There are some great metrics that you can use for KPIs like time on site and click-through rates in emails that can give you an idea of how to get your customers’ attention in a more efficient manner. When you do this, realize all of the many variables that can be affecting your data. In addition to your message, your data could be skewed by audience segment, day of the week, time of day, holidays, industry events, and more. That’s why marketers should get involved in A/B testing to continue to refine the messaging.

[1] https://muckrack.com/blog/2020/07/14/how-declining-attention-spans-impact-your-social-media

[2] Shih, D. H., Lu, K. C., & Shih, P. Y. (2019). Exploring Shopper’s Browsing Behavior and Attention Level with an EEG Biosensor Cap. Brain sciences, 9(11), 301. https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci9110301

[3] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/creative-leadership/201811/why-you-can-t-multi-task

[4] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/cognitive-learning-and-skill-deficits/201902/9-signs-you-may-be-cognitive-miser

[5] Stanovich, Keith E. (2009). “The cognitive miser: ways to avoid thinking”. What intelligence tests miss: the psychology of rational thought. New Haven: Yale University Press. pp. 70–85. ISBN 9780300123852. OCLC 216936066.

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A Strange, Brief History of Subliminal Messages in Advertising

It all began in a Fort Lee, NJ movie theater in 1957. Psychologist James Vicary projected images on the screen at 1/3,000 of a second urging viewers to “drink Coca-Cola” and “eat popcorn”. Vicary conducted this study over a six-week period and claimed to have increased popcorn sales by 50 percent and Coca-Cola sales by 18 percent compared to the previous period.[1] Here’s the problem, it was all made up.[2] Yep, when other researchers couldn’t replicate these results, he admitted it was completely fabricated. Since this fabricated study, there have been numerous others that have been conducted. I would guess that everyone reading this believes that subliminal advertising is a thing that has, or at least could work. Why? Well, because it’s used EVERYWHERE. So could it work? Keep reading, I get to that at the end.

The pervasiveness of this idea has infiltrated so many brands and even many areas of pop culture. Why would so many brands try subliminal images and messages if they didn’t work? The Simpsons use it, KFC and Coca-Cola have done it, there are even many famous logos that are intended to have hidden images. And of course, who can forget Kevin Nealon’s character, Mr. Subliminal from SNL’s Weekend Update in the 90’s, who always gave a hilarious parody to the notion that our minds could be controlled by subliminal means?

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However, if we notice something, is it subliminal? I’m guessing the answer to that would be no. Although it’s not illegal, the FCC will revoke the licenses of any company that uses subliminal or deceptive marketing. However, if it’s truly subliminal, how would they ever know? Where is the subliminal threshold in our minds? How much is subliminal advertising being used and is it secretly controlling our minds, turning us into brainless zombie-like consumers? I’m guessing if you’ve ever seen the aftermath of a big music festival, or been to Wal Mart on a Saturday, you might say yes, but don’t fall into the anecdotal evidence trap just yet.

Subliminal Advertising is a Sticky Idea

Dan and Chip Heath’s groundbreaking book, Made to Stick, outlines why so many people believe that subliminal advertising might secretly be controlling everyone’s minds even though that is (probably) not the case. The creepy mind-control idea is one that is sticky, and a sticky idea is one that will perpetuate throughout the cultural zeitgeist. As humans, we really just want a good story and it doesn’t really matter if it is true. Also, there was the whole CIA mind control experiments, MK Ultra, that were actually a thing, regardless if the hat you wear is made out of tin foil or not.

Once you hear about the idea of subliminal advertising and your brain ties it to being controlled into doing something, it’s hard to shake. To add to this problem, consumers experience what’s known as source confusion. Source confusion is basically when you hear one of these sticky stories, forget about it, and when it comes up later, you can remember the story, but not where you heard about it or if it is actually true. Do you remember hearing that KFC officially changed their name to just KFC from Kentucky Fried Chicken because their “chicken” doesn’t actually contain chicken? Or that McDonald’s uses pig fat in their ice cream? Well, these stories are not true, but they remain true in people’s minds regardless of the actual truth. These and many other myths about companies stay in our minds because they are sticky.

These stories are strange enough to be remembered and they’re on the fringe of being believable. They’re the type of story that you could tell a friend and their response would simply be “Yep, I could see that” and the myth spreads. So, the stickiness of the story that subliminal advertising controlling our minds continues to permeate throughout our society, all just because it is a weird and interesting story. But not so fast, there may actually be some evidence that it can impact our behaviors (more on that later).

The 1950s

After Vicary’s bogus “experiment”, he went on to write one of the most influential books on the subject of subliminal advertising, The Hidden Persuaders. This book sold over a million copies and became one of the major influences that shaped our views of the possibilities of subliminal advertising. Should a guy that lied about his experiment be taken seriously? Again, back to the stickiness idea, did it matter? Not really, it was a good story, so it went straight to the top of the bestsellers list and people like me are writing about it 60+ years later.

1960s & 1970s

Well, dust off your tin foil hats again because this is a weird one. Forever ago, TV used to not broadcast 24/7. In the ’60s, before the networks would go off the air, they would play the Star-Spangled Banner, complete with subtitles. However, if you slow those subtitles WAYYYYY Down, you can see subliminal words briefly flash across the screen. You can even try it yourself, slow this down to the slowest setting on YouTube, which is 0.25.

There are several series of subliminal words that you can find like: trust the US government, God is real God is watching, and rebellion is not tolerated. That was creepy. Moving on…

In the ’70s, Premium Corporation of America marketed a memory matching board game called Husker Du (not the punk band from St. Paul). In the process, they created a TV ad that showed the gameplay, but they also flashed several frames with the words “get it”.[3] This ultimately led to declaring that subliminal ads were contrary to the public interest.

The 2000s

Who would have ever thought that tobacco companies would try to break the rules? Well, in the early 2000s, Marlboro was a major advertiser in Formula One racing sponsoring the Ferrari team. In 2005, in order to try and subvert an EU ban on advertising cigarettes, they decided to replace their logo with a really strange barcode. Well, if the barcode is blurry, it sort of looks like the Marlboro logo (sort of). Nice try Marlboro. Years later, they tried this other approach by creating a “company” called Mission Winnow (win now:). So, it’s a new strange company and if you are curious enough to look it up online, you’re going to land on a website owned by Phillip Morris. Is that subliminal advertising? Again, people noticed it. It’s not completely hidden, so probably not. Is it subversive and right up a tobacco company’s modus operandi? Absolutely.

In 2007, in an episode of Food Network’s Iron Chef America, a McDonald’s episode flashed across the screen. Both McDonald’s and the Food Network claim that it was a glitch. Check it out for yourself:

In 2008, KFC was pushing a chicken sandwich called the KFC Snacker. In one of the closing shots, you can see a dollar bill hidden among the lettuce. They claimed that they were running a contest for the first people that spotted the dollar, but the contest was never announced until they started hearing about people accusing them of subliminal advertising. Again, is it subliminal if you can see it? Check it out here:

Also of note, check out @kfc on Twitter. They follow 11 people: Herb Scribner, Geri Horner (Halliwell), Melanie Brown, Emma Bunton, Mel C, Victoria Beckham, Herb J. Wesson, Jr., Herb Waters, Herb Dean, Herb Sandek, and Herb Alpert. If you don’t get the joke, you might claim that they’ve engaged in some form of subliminal advertising, but I presume you weren’t born yesterday.

Special Categories:

Hidden Messages in Logos

I’m guessing that you probably know about most of these, but I think that if nothing else, the artistry for pulling off the hidden elements in a logo needs deserves a special mention in a blog post about subliminal messages in advertising. Designing a really cool logo is tough enough, but it’s even harder to design something that looks great and has a hidden message. Let’s get to it.

FedEx

Created in 1994 by Landor Associates, the FedEx logo is one of the most brilliant logo designs ever created. Although it’s possibly one of the most boring looking logos (on the surface), it has a hidden message. What hidden message? Well, the arrow between the E and the X. Once you see the arrow, you can never unsee the arrow.

Baskin Robbins

I actually did a case study on this in one of my MBA marketing research classes, but in 2007, Baskin Robbins was feeling the heat from people like Cold Stone Creamery. In addition to a logo redesign, they were considering complete store redesigns. Their new logo design featured the 31 making up the B and the R of the logo, which is a nod to their original claim to fame of having 31 flavors. Something you might not know, they actually have something like 1,300 flavors now, the 31 flavors was originally created in the ’50s and was built on the idea that someone could have a different flavor for each day of the month.

Toblerone

Toblerone originated in Bern, Switzerland, which is a city that is famous for bears. They were able to integrate a hidden bear in the mountain in the logo.

Toyota

The Toyota logo is in a category all its own. There’s not really a hidden graphic or anything, it’s just that you can spell the name of the company with the shapes in the logo. Go ahead, try it.

There are other really cool hidden items in logos, I just didn’t include them because I couldn’t find any good legal photos that I could use to illustrate. If you’d like to see more, check out the following:

  • The word MOM in the collar of the Wendy’s logo
  • Two people sharing a bowl of salsa in the Tostito’s logo
  • Bike rider (possibly on steroids) in the Tour de France logo
  • Hidden Hershey’s Kiss hidden in their logo
  • Pin in the Pinterest logo
  • The bird in the Atlanta Falcons logo makes an “F”
  • The M and the B in the Milwaukee Brewers logo

Backmasking

Depending on how deliberate it is, backmasking is either a technique or in most cases, it’s just pareidolia, like seeing a face in a tree or the virgin Mary on a piece of toast. Backmasking is essentially where you play a record backward and it reveals a hidden message, or someone finds something that sounds pretty vague, they say that it says something, and then a bunch of people start believing they heard the same thing. I use the term record, and not song, because this phenomenon really took off in the ’60s and 70s when you could literally take the turntable and spin the record backward. I actually did this a bunch with my Led Zeppelin records as a kid when I heard about this. Sometimes it’s deliberate, sometimes it’s borderline, and sometimes it’s probably just a coincidence.

Here are some examples:

The Beatles

In 1966, The Beatles kicked off this technique on the song “Rain”. When played in reverse, you can hear, “Sunshine … Rain … When the rain comes, they run and hide their heads”. The White Album sparked the Paul is Dead conspiracy (that he died in a car crash and was replaced with a lookalike and that’s the reason they stopped touring). For instance, when you play Revolution #9 backwards, you hear “turn me on dead man”, and when you play “I’m So Tired” backward, you hear “Paul is a dead man, miss him, miss him, miss him”. Actually, this kind of makes Revolution #9 actually makes sense…

Led Zeppelin

Stairway to Heaven is one of those songs that was intertwined in the now-debunked Satanic Panic era of human history. The famous line is “here’s to my sweet Satan”, although I tend to hear, “Yish de maze we zaydin”. Now I loved Led Zeppelin as a kid, but if you really want to have a conversation about subliminal messages and Led Zeppelin, let’s discuss their huge catalog of “borrowed” work and how Stairway to Heaven sounds eerily similar to the song Taurus by Sprit.

ELO

After being pulled into the controversary and being accused of satanic messages in their music, ELO explicitly placed some backmasked tracks on the instrumental, “Fire on High” that says (in crystal clarity when played backward, “The music is reversible, but time is not. Turn back! Turn back! Turn back! Turn back!” They even doubled down on this further, when they released an entire album called Secret Messages.

Others

There are so many others to choose from, it’s hard to pick but here are the artists, the song, and the backmasked message that can be heard:

  • Pink Floyd – Empty Spaces – “Congratulations. You have just discovered the secret message. Please send your answer to Old Pink, care of the Funny Farm, Chalfont”
  • The Waitresses – The Smartest Person I Know – “Anyone who believes in backwards masking is a fool.”
  • B-52’s – Detour Through Your Mind –  “I buried my parakeet in the backyard. Oh no, you’re playing the record backwards. Watch out, you might ruin your needle.”
  • Devo – Whip It – “Hey come over here!”
  • Weird Al – I Remember Larry – “Wow, you must have an awful lot of free time on your hands”
  • The Simpsons – Drop da Bomb – “Join the Navy” (This was from the episode where Bart joined a boy band and had a hit song with the repeated lyric “Yvan eht nioj”.)

So, does backmasking even qualify as subliminal messaging? Does it fit the theme of the article of “subliminal messages in advertising”? I would argue that it could qualify for both. For the messages that are gibberish when played forwards and clear when played backward, these are deliberately placed by artists, often just to have fun. These are definitely not subliminal. This is just taking the track and reversing it. However, when there is clearly no gibberish played forwards, there’s a chance it’s subliminal, although it’s likely just pareidolia. However…listen to Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust” backward and I would have to say, that might actually be a subliminal message.

Is it advertising? Well, sort of. For many of the bands that either did this deliberately or just got accused of adding messages to their songs, it’s generated a ton of PR. Any press is good press, right? The best part is that they didn’t have to spend anything extra to generate the buzz. Have I ever mentioned how musicians are inherently the best marketers? PS, read between the lines of this article and let me know if you can find the hidden message.

Why Do I Think Subliminal Advertising Could Work?

The Elaboration Likelihood Model

Thirty years after The Hidden Persuaders was written, a couple of researchers, John Cacioppo from the University of Iowa, and Richard Petty (not the drives real fast guy) from the University of Missouri-Columbia published a paper that would completely change the way that we study consumer behavior. The Elaboration Likelihood Model describes two distinct methods of persuasion: central-route processing and peripheral-route processing. Central-route processing occurs when the receiver of the message has both the ability and motivation to think about a message. Central-route processing occurs when the recipient is thinking about the content of the message and carefully considering the pros and cons of selecting a particular product.[4] Think of evaluating a new car, or a home. This type of reasoning involves central-route processing.

Peripheral-route processing, however, is when the consumer doesn’t think very much about their purchase. During this type of processing, a purchase is made for reasons other than the strength of the arguments. Think of grabbing a snack or choosing a toothpaste. Unless you’re a crazy person, you don’t spend much time evaluating all of your alternatives on low-effort items that you pick up at the grocery store. With peripheral-route processing, a consumer is more driven by unconscious influences and the environment and simple beliefs about a product or a brand. During low-effort consumer behavior and peripheral-route processing, feelings, and emotions toward a product can be swayed by a consumer’s mood, attitude toward an ad, or just being familiar with the brand.[5] Yep, it can be that easy. If you like a product or an ad or are even just exposed to an ad enough times, you could be influenced to purchase the product.

So What Does This All Mean?

So this is where it gets interesting. In one respect, we know that we prefer familiar products over unfamiliar ones, and this can be done by repeated advertising or messaging.[6] On the other hand, we have numerous studies that are unable to recreate the success from the Vicary “study”. So, I guess this raises several questions, what counts as subliminal? Does it need to be noticeable to the consumer? Is 1/3,000 even noticeable? How many frames of video would you need for this to have an impact? What frequency would you need to combine with a noticeable amount of subliminal advertising to make a statistically significant impact on someone’s purchasing behavior?

Since you can’t prove a negative, it is impossible to say that subliminal advertising or subliminal messages have no impact. What could be said is that there are no credible studies that show that any type of subliminal advertising had the intended effect on the advertiser. To prove that subliminal advertising or messaging worked, you’d have to create a really clever lab or field study. Well, it turns out that a few studies have actually shown that subliminal influence had long-term effects on decision making[7], can change our mood[8], and showing logos subliminally can actually alter our brand behavior[9]. There are more but come on, I’m not doing a doctoral dissertation literature review here…

So it has been shown to change people’s behaviors and if you dive into a research library’s database, you can find a bunch of credible studies. This leads me back to one of the original questions if it’s truly subliminal, how would anyone ever know? How would the FCC catch an advertiser that is using subliminal advertising? I’m personally not willing to believe that many advertisers are actually doing this. I’ve worked in marketing for 15+ years and I’m about to get a marketing certificate in an MBA program and I can tell you that the topic of subliminal advertising gets very little attention. I don’t think it’s happening that much, but it’s certainly happening and has happened for decades. Does it have much of an impact on our behavior? That’s something that I can’t really definitively answer.

[1] Fullerton, R. A. (2010). “A virtual social H-bomb”: The late 1950s controversy over subliminal advertising. Journal of Historical Research in Marketing, 2(2), 166-173. doi:http://dx.doi.org.prox.lib.ncsu.edu/10.1108/17557501011042533

[2] Broyles, Sheri J. 2006. Subliminal Advertising and the Perpetual Popularity of Playing to People’s Paranoia. The Journal of Consumer Affairs.

[3] https://www.nytimes.com/1973/12/27/archives/subliminal-ad-pops-up-in-national-tv-promotion-but-mr-choate-stated.html

[4] Cacioppo, J. T., & Petty, R. E. (1984). The elaboration likelihood model of persuasion. Advances in Consumer Research, 11, 673.

[5] Consumer Behavior P 129

[6] Baker, William E. “When Can Affective Conditioning and Mere Exposure Directly Influence Brand Choice?” Journal of Advertising 28 no. 4, Winter 1999. pp. 31-46

[7] Ruch, S., Züst, M. A., & Henke, K. (2016). Subliminal messages exert long-term effects on decision-making. Neuroscience of consciousness, 2016(1), niw013. https://doi.org/10.1093/nc/niw013

[8]  Monahan JL, Murphy ST, Zajonc RB. Subliminal Mere Exposure: Specific, General, and Diffuse Effects. Psychological Science. 2000;11(6):462-466. doi:10.1111/1467-9280.00289

[9] Muscarella, C., Brintazzoli, G., Gordts, S., Soetens, E., & Van den Bussche, E. (2013). Short- and long-term effects of conscious, minimally conscious and unconscious brand logos. PLoS One, 8(5) doi:http://dx.doi.org.prox.lib.ncsu.edu/10.1371/journal.pone.0057738

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Mind Share – The Currency of the Future

This is an article about addiction. It’s a new kind of addiction. One that isn’t as taboo as substance abuse. It’s not one that you would go to a treatment center for. It’s not one that you’d see on Intervention, but make no mistake, advertisers want to make you addicted and keep you addicted. It’s also an article about economics. The currency is your time and attention. This is an article about something I am calling mind share, which is the amount of attention and time that you pay to something.

From an economic standpoint, the same principle applies to your attention that applies to your dollars. Economics is based on scarcity. Value is simply the equilibrium of the supply available and the quantity demanded. However, whereas you could always make more money, you will never be able to take back your time. Unfortunately, we already live in the Black Mirror future where advertisers know how much you are worth to them based on how much you engage with their brand and this attention can be quantified with a dollar amount.

The old-school way of quantifying attention is called CPM, which basically means cost per 1,000 impressions (using the Latin reference of M=1,000). While an advertiser is much better served with a CPC or cost-per-click type of model, a lot of advertising platforms still use the CPM metric as it takes less of the burden off of the advertising medium. However, there are so many other ways of measuring your attention. It’s not just impressions, those are cheap. Engagement is worth so much more than impressions. As an advertiser, I really don’t care too much about how many people see my ad, although that’s nice. I care if someone is actually doing something with what they see. While impressions are a passive medium, engagement is active and engagement=mind share. So why is engagement so valuable? Well, your engagement, your…addiction, is worth a ton of money.

They Call Your Addiction “Average Revenue Per User” (ARPU)

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Facebook and other social media companies make money from your engagement. They do this by advertising to you. They make money off of your clicks and you only click if you are engaged. So they created the cute term “average revenue per user”, or ARPU. I’m guessing they made an acronym so they didn’t have to think about it as much. They didn’t have to think of the things that you’d have to do to increase that number. They didn’t think of how manipulating the platform would impact someone’s mental health, but I digress…

The more ways you can become engaged, the more likely you are to click. Interested in a robot vacuum? Maybe you join a social media group dedicated to different types of robot vacuums. This keeps you on the site. It keeps you engaged with the community. From an advertising perspective, it puts you into a potential target bucket of people likely to purchase a robot vacuum soon, and increases your likelihood to click on an ad that is targeted to you. The more you do this inside the platform, the more valuable you are to them. The more you do this outside of the platform, the less valuable you are.

In November, Facebook reported a $7.26 quarterly ARPU. To put this into perspective, Snapchat’s ARPU was $2.12, Pinterest was at $0.90, and Twitter was estimated at $5.68.[1] So Facebook makes about $30 per year off of you. Although it doesn’t seem like much, take that $30 multiplied by 2.7 billion monthly active users and you get one of the largest brands in the world built off of getting and keeping your attention. If this quarterly ARPU drops just by a dollar, that’s an annual loss of 10 billion dollars, which is far more than most companies make annually. That’s more than the GDP of 49 distinct countries.

In addition to the actual revenue produced per user, you also have to consider the opportunity cost. If you’re not familiar with the concept of opportunity cost, it’s basically the loss of potential gain from doing something else. One economist found that adult Americans engaged with ad-laden content 58% more than they worked in 2019. He also found the amount we consumed this content equaled $7 trillion in opportunity cost[2], or over $33,000 per American adult. So if you were making money instead of scrolling social media, you could be up $30K, but I get it. Part of being on social media is like bubble gum for your brain. For some people, it fulfills something missing like seeing photos of their grandkids or keeping up with their friends. For others, this race for mind share can lead to addiction.

Facebook and Social Media Addiction

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Is Facebook addictive? Good question. Many social media sites use certain tactics that can keep users on the platform and keep them coming back. The most obvious and possibly the most infamous tactic is infinite scroll. The creator, Aza Raskin, now advocates for social media to change their practices has been cited as saying:

“It’s as if they’re taking behavioral cocaine and just sprinkling it all over your interface. And that’s the thing that keeps you like coming back and back and back.”[3]

Many social media websites also use a “pull to refresh” feature, which has the ability to give reinforcements intermittently, much like a slot machine.[4] There are also opportunities for dopamine hits such as other users liking your content and continually engaging in a (probably angry political) ongoing conversation. Our brains crave dopamine. If your brain starts to think that you will get all the dopamine it needs from Facebook, maybe you’ll spend more time on Facebook. There are also push notifications and constant emails giving you updates to keep you from fear of missing out (FOMO). All of these items, again, are to increase your mind share. They’re there to keep you there and keep you coming back.

I can also point out that is there has been a psychological scale since April of 2012, called the Bergen Facebook Addiction Scale. This helped to link psychological problems with the use of Facebook.[5] I can also point out a 2018 study of Portuguese emerging adults (adolescents) that found their most addicted participants used Facebook an average of over three hours per day. These participants showed an increase in depression, anxiety, and interpersonal sensitivity.[6]

Time Distortion

Social media distorts our perception of time. One study found that both low and at-risk social media addiction groups actually had an upward trend of perceived time after abstaining from Facebook for a week[7]. This basically means that they thought time was taking longer than it actually was.

Netflix Addiction

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Remember when Netflix made you actually click on something before it would play? That was nice. Well, there was a long period of time where autoplay was the only way that the platform worked. You couldn’t even browse the selection without everything that you pass by starting to autoplay. When you were done with a show, you didn’t have to do anything. The next show would come up and play, skipping the intro before you can even get a chance to decide if you want to continue watching. Why did they do this? Mind share, that’s why.

I personally think this feature sucks, and apparently, a ton of other people did too which is why you can now turn that feature off. Honestly, I stopped logging into Netflix because autoplay was really annoying and I didn’t even know you could turn off the feature until I started researching the Netflix section of this article, about…10 sentences ago. But yeah, they now made it an option[8] which is pretty amazing. However, you have to do this through a browser. Who watches Netflix on a browser? Weirdos, that’s who. Netflix knows you don’t watch on a browser (unless you’re a serial killer), so they allow you to turn off the feature, but they don’t make it easy.

But let’s get into the mind share for Netflix. Should they really care about mind share? Absolutely, but the reason they care about mind share is much different than the reasons social media sites care about mind share. Netflix needs you to keep coming back so you don’t drop their service. Once you are a customer, the purpose of Netflix’s mind share strategy is to keep you a customer. As customers evaluate their monthly expenses, Netflix has a goal of moving toward a need, rather than a want. How can they get customers to feel an urge so strong that they don’t even consider dropping their service? Creating a greater market share of the customer’s mind, that’s how. They do a great job of creating content that customers cannot live without. Shows like “Orange Is the New Black”, “Stranger Things”, and “Mindhunter” are shows that you cannot get ANYWHERE else so customers feel the need to keep their subscription active.

In addition to current customers, Netflix has had an amazing ability to attract new customers with this same strategy. With the publicity they receive from their regular shows, they’ve been able to continually pique curiosity to attract new subscribers. With their limited run documentaries, however, they’ve found a way to dominate the mind share of both traditional and social media. Shows like “Tiger King” and “Making a Murderer” have been limited-run smash hits. If they can get someone to try to log on to see one of those shows, their goal should be how they could create mind share with a subscriber while they are there. That’s why their algorithms are targeted to feed you content they think you will like. They even show different preview images for the same show to different audiences, based on your customer profile. You’ve got to admit, this is slightly creepy.

One term that is commonly associated with Netflix and other streaming services is binge-watching. Binge-watching could impact your mental health. Seriously, have you ever heard the word “binge” referred to as anything that would have a positive impact on your mental health? One study from the University of Toledo showed that binge-watching increased anxiety, depression, and stress.[9] So what does your brain get out of binge-watching? Well, it’s back to good old dopamine. When you get sucked into a story for a show you are watching, your brain gets a dopamine hit. Since your brain likes dopamine, it will typically crave any source that is known and available.

You’ve Been Targeted

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Your data, everything electronic that can be scraped and known about you, every website you visit, every button you click in an email, every time you swipe on an app that is “swipe tracing”, all of this is being collected and categorized. You probably have a Gmail account. You probably use Google Chrome. Guess why Google is so powerful. Data. You willingly tell them what websites you visit. You trust them with your email. That’s fine, I do too. What do you think they do with that data? Well, create more mind share, that’s what. They try to sell your data to advertisers and keep you on the platform so they can keep selling even more of your mind share back to advertisers. It’s really an endless loop.

You are being targeted not only by your demographics but from your psychographics as well. This includes your attitudes, opinions, values, and your interests. Why? Well, combined with your past behavior, psychographics can be great predictors of future purchasing behavior. They can also give some insight to an advertiser where you might be in the buyer’s journey so they can target you effectively. Ironically, the retail store Target is great at this. You may recall the story from the New York Times in 2012 of a father complaining to a manager at a Target store that his high-school-aged daughter was receiving coupons for maternity clothes from Target. Well, turns out she was pregnant, and Target was able to predict this before her father knew. This was done with a combination of buyer behaviors including unscented lotions, cotton balls, and other supplements which constructed Target’s “pregnancy prediction score”.[10] While I question the validity of the anecdote given in the story, the data analysis is likely pretty accurate.

So why is this important? What should Target try to do with this data? Well, it is obviously great information in trying to make an immediate sale, but from a long-term perspective, it’s better to create mind share. Being relevant to a customer helps increase build a relationship with that customer for the future. In this instance, a woman who is shopping at Target throughout her pregnancy is likely to continue that customer journey well into the early years of the child’s life and beyond. In this case, mind share=wallet share.

I can tell you from first-hand experience, the mind share Target creates around maternity and the early childhood years is strong. Their store brand of essentials for babies like wipes and diapers are much cheaper and in my opinion, much higher quality than national brands. Their baby section is easy to navigate. They have just enough choices to give you options, but few enough that you don’t feel too overwhelmed, especially as a new parent. The prices on their higher-end items like baby furniture and strollers are right in line with what you would find if you shopped for competitive products online. I’m not sure if Target has their baby items priced as loss-leaders, but their strategy of focusing on maternity and baby items certainly has led to a greater mind share for me, which has translated into a sickeningly high level of wallet share.

The thing that is interesting to me is I know they are doing this. I know that they are trying to create a relationship with me (and my family) as a customer. I know they are trying to establish long-term brand loyalty by creating mind share. I know they’re probably manipulating me and walking me through a buyer’s journey that they have defined, but I still fall into the trap. Why? Well, probably because it’s easier. Like just about everyone on the planet, my brain is a cognitive miser, which essentially means it likes to take the path of least resistance. In a situation where I have a lot of baby stuff to buy, or even just grab something and go, am I looking for a perfect solution? Probably not. I’m looking for a solution that is good enough. If it means that the pricing is similar to what I can find somewhere else and I don’t have to go to Walmart, I’m in.

Micro-Influencers

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A micro-influencer is someone that has a niche following. They don’t have a mass following like Taylor Swift, but they have a very dedicated and loyal following for some particular type of follower. For instance, I listen to a podcast called “The Ultra Runner Podcast”. It has a really niche following for crazy people that like to run distances longer than a marathon. This could be 50K, 50 miles, 100 miles, all sorts of insane distances. There aren’t many people that are interested in this type of behavior, let alone, people that like to do this and listen to the show. I would guess they have somewhere around 10,000 active listeners.

The show has been around for around a decade and has had the best athletes in the niche appear to tell their stories. The loyal following of this podcast would be an excellent opportunity to try and advertise something that people that run that much would need, namely shoes. Who is going to go through shoes faster than someone that puts 100+ miles every week on a pair of shoes? Micro-influencers have already created the mind share. They already have an audience. Their fans are loyal. A brand will pay more per potential customer for that level of loyalty than for a much less engaged and targeted audience. Someone with a wider appeal doesn’t have nearly the mind share as a micro influencer’s audience. The reason you’ve heard the term micro-influencer gaining so much popularity in the past few years? They know how to create mind share, and advertisers want to harvest that connection.

Account-Based Marketing ABM

Possibly the biggest trend in marketing right now is called Account-Based Marketing (ABM). ABM is essentially a diversion from mass-marketing techniques to a more strategic, segmented approach. The basic idea is that your company identifies key accounts within your organization to try to enhance your relationship. This is done with a behavioral-based approach. Generally speaking, it is a fancy lead nurturing system that is based on content. This content could be articles or white papers, videos, or even an audio podcast. Once a potential customer enters the marketing ecosystem (generally your website), AI and some other fancy tools track the person’s engagement with different content on your website. Based on their behavior, they receive the next piece of content, which is a little more relevant, and possibly a little more value for the customer. Based on their behavior, the AI tries to predict someone’s next action. This funnel continues to narrow until there is some type of action, whether it be a lead form filled out, a call to a sales rep, or some other deemed action by the sales team. Some of these software packages are around $25,000 per year or more. What are all of these software platforms trying to do? You guessed it, create mind share. The longer and more items you interact with, the more likely you will be to become a customer.

Wrapping Up

I opened this by saying that mind share is the currency of the future, but the more I wrote, the more I realized that the future is now. And it’s not even the future. This has been happening for hundreds, if not thousands of years. If your customers are not thinking about you, regardless of how fancy your marketing tech stack might be, or how smart your analytics team members are, if you don’t occupy a space in your customer’s brain, you’re sunk. Amazing brands know this and are continually evolving their brand for the ever-changing needs of their customers. Customer needs are not static. There are likely many brands in your niche vying for your customers. They’re trying to figure out how to convert your customer into being their customer. Many companies will stop here. They’ll try to get a customer in the door and make the sale. When you design your strategy, however, realize that the secret to keeping and maintaining your customer relationships is a longer-term approach. The secret that the world’s greatest brands truly understand comes down to two words: mind share.

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/01/facebook-towers-over-rivals-in-the-critical-metric-of-revenue-per-user.html

[2] Evans, David S., The Economics of Attention Markets (April 15, 2020). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3044858 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3044858

[3] https://www.businessinsider.com/silicon-valley-insiders-tell-bbc-how-tech-firms-turn-users-into-addicts-2018-7

[4] https://www.sciencefocus.com/future-technology/trapped-the-secret-ways-social-media-is-built-to-be-addictive-and-what-you-can-do-to-fight-back/

[5]https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/245251#:~:text=Researchers%20in%20Norway%20have%20published,of%20the%20journal%20Psychological%20Reports.

[6] da Veiga, G.F., Sotero, L., Pontes, H.M. et al. Emerging Adults and Facebook Use: the Validation of the Bergen Facebook Addiction Scale (BFAS). Int J Ment Health Addiction 17, 279–294 (2019). https://doi-org.prox.lib.ncsu.edu/10.1007/s11469-018-0018-2

[7] Turel, O., R. Cavagnaro, D. Effect of Abstinence from Social Media on Time Perception: Differences between Low- and At-Risk for Social Media “Addiction” Groups. Psychiatr Q 90, 217–227 (2019). https://doi-org.prox.lib.ncsu.edu/10.1007/s11126-018-9614-3

[8] Mishra, M. (2020). Netflix finally turns off autoplay. B & T Weekly, Retrieved from

https://proxying.lib.ncsu.edu/index.php/login?url=https://www-proquest.com.prox.lib.ncsu.edu/docview/2352237197?accountid=12725

[9] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/313236736_Viewing_Patterns_and_Addiction_to_Television_among_Adults_Who_Self-Identify_as_Binge-Watchers

[10] https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-target-figured-out-a-teen-girl-was-pregnant-before-her-father-did/#51f13a946668

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Build a Brand That People Hate

Think of a brand that you hate. A brand that every time you think about it, you have a visceral reaction. You wish you could exist in a world where that brand does not exist. The Real Housewives perhaps? Maybe the Kardashians? Maybe you hate the entire Bravo TV or E networks? How about Microsoft, or Apple? Ford or Chevy? Peloton? How about the New England Patriots? If you really start to think about brands, I’m guessing that you could come up with more brands that you really hate than brands that you love.

A strong brand attracts a lot of haters. Why? Because it stands for something. Many brands get so concerned catering to everyone’s thoughts, emotions, and concerns that their brand becomes a boring, watered-down brand that doesn’t really mean anything to anyone. Kmart is a great example. While other department stores seemed to find a niche (Walmart for low prices, Target for trendy retail), Kmart has been in a tailspin for years. At the time of this writing, there are only 34 stores left in the US. Kmart was never really a leader, they were a follower.

Does Anybody Hate Kmart?

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Kmart never really found an identity. They had some stores that were named Kmart, some that were named Super Kmart Center, some that were named Big K, some that were named Super K, and that was all just in the early 2000s. They’ve been in a decline for over 20 years and it’s partially because they could never find their identity. Do you hate Kmart? Did you ever hate Kmart? The only thing I ever remember about it is that it kind of smelled like mothballs. Other than that, I never really cared much about Kmart. I’m guessing that most people never really cared either.

GM Tries Not to be Hated

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In my opinion, a similar thing happened to GM’s portfolio 30+ years ago. GM has what’s called a “house of brands” strategy. This basically means that the parent company has many different brand names under the umbrella brand. GM has Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, GMC. Among others, they also used to have Pontiac and Oldsmobile. The original plan that existed in the ’60s for this house of brands included a really smart segmentation strategy that positioned their brands perfectly for their target audience. The Pontiac brand was exciting they had the slogan “We Build Excitement”. They built the GTO and the Trans Am. The Cadillac brand was strictly top-of-the-line luxury vehicles.

The bigger GM grew, the more they tried to create economies of scale. Basically, how could they do things more efficiently? GM started platforming their vehicles. They took the same chassis, and even the same or very similar body styles and tried to market them to different audiences. One common combination they introduced is what is known as the G-body. G-body cars included the Buick Regal, Chevy Monte Carlo, Pontiac Grand Prix, Chevy Malibu, Pontiac Bonneville, and a few others.

While this line of cars was incredibly successful, and in my opinion, created some of the most memorable American cars ever built, the prevailing idea of platforming started to create brand dilution for the GM brand. As the ’90s came around and SUV’s and minivans changed the vehicle landscape, GM didn’t properly maintain a strong segmentation strategy. Most of their brands had a minivan. Every brand had an SUV. Every brand had a luxury vehicle, a sports car, a cheap compact. Their brands had had something for everybody, and they didn’t really stand for anything.

About the Real Housewives

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So you probably didn’t hate Kmart or GM, but how about something like “The Real Housewives”? I’m guessing if you don’t hate this franchise, you know someone who does. If you’re not familiar with the show, first off, congratulations, and second, even eight years ago, it was a half a billion-dollar franchise.[1] It’s a show that, well, let’s just say that it’s pretty much about rich women getting drunk and fighting. This is why people hate the brand. This is also a big reason why people love the brand. There’s a percentage of viewers that tune in just to hate-watch, which is this weird phenomenon where people watch shows just to talk about how much they hate it. This term is so prevalent in society that it’s on dictionary.com. This brand is so powerful that people watch it just to hate it and by doing this, it increases ratings and ad revenue. This only fuels the brand’s success. If people didn’t care so much, it wouldn’t be such a strong brand. If people didn’t hate the brand as much as they do, it wouldn’t be worth a Billion dollars.

It’s Not For You

For this discussion, I want to make clear that I’m suggesting building a brand that people hate which is different than a brand that fails, like a product that breaks easily or a brand that has poor customer service. It’s easy to hate a brand that doesn’t perform to expectations, and a brand that is hated for this reason will ultimately fail. The type of “brand hate” I’m describing is essentially hating a brand that is not for you. The reason you don’t like it is that it’s aimed at a different target audience. Their message is intended for someone else. If you find yourself hating a brand, chances are that a ton of people love that brand. You don’t have to like it. The creators of the brand were able to build something that really connected with a particular group of people. These brands probably don’t impact your daily life, so if you really want to show your dislike for a brand, just forget about it. It’s really no big deal, some people love a brand you hate, and our strange differences are what makes us amazing.

Building a brand so strong that people hate it involves “niching down” to a point where it connects so well with one or two target audiences that anyone outside of those groups doesn’t get it. In these instances, you build a connection so strong that the in-group becomes so rabid about the brand that the out-group is upset that they don’t understand. Slogans like “It’s a Jeep Thing, You Wouldn’t Understand”, and “What Happens in Vegas Stays in Vegas” come to mind. The creators of Billy Bass seemed to have nailed this concept when they identified the novelty Christmas gift segment, likely for males that were even loosely into fishing when they created a product that seemed to have the fastest trajectory from funny to annoying of any product that has ever been created.

People Hates Crocs

Crocs is a brand that people seem to love to hate. There are videos of people burning Crocs, people cutting up Crocs with Scissors, at one point, there was an IHateCrocs.com. Yep, people hate the brand so much that they buy the product just to destroy it. They spend money and time buying domains and producing content just to protest the brand. Just Google “people hate crocs” and you’ll see how people spend their time hating a brand. As I described earlier, this likely only fuels the brand’s success.

Do you know who loves everyone’s hate for Crocs? Crocs, that’s who. After selling 700 million shoes, they’ve built a brand off of being one of the most distinctive shoes of a generation. At the height of their popularity, they had tons of standalone retail stores, a massive distribution network and so many products that veered out of what they were known for: those weird-looking clogs. They started trying to be everything to everyone and like just about every company that tries to do this, they failed. But they didn’t let a little brand dilution get in their way, the refocused and made a comeback.

Crocs had a resurgence with a fashion trend called “ugly fashion”. Ugly fashion is not just a clever name, it’s, well…it kind of reminds me of “Saved by the Bell”. Mismatched clothes, plaid suit jackets, loud colors, oversized shirts, ugly fashion, and Crocs were a perfect match. The company saw this trend, realized their failure of trying to go mainstream and doubled down on their clogs. Now you can get all sorts of crazy Crocs. You can get Goth Crocs, KFC Crocs, bacon and egg Crocs, donut Crocs, you can even get Grateful Dead Crocs.

About Nickelback

I’d be remiss if I spent the time to write an article about brands that people hate without touching on Nickelback. Nickelback hate is real. They’re possibly the most hated band on the planet. Why? Well, I don’t really know. Let me be clear, I don’t like Nickelback. I think they suck, but I think there are objectively worse bands on this planet. I’ve also heard first-hand accounts from people that say they were really good to their fans when they met them in person. So why all of the hate? I’d like to think that I know, but there are people waaaaaaaayyyyy smarter than me that have tried to figure this out. Some explanations include that they lack any type of authenticity, they don’t really stand for anything, they are only trying for commercial appeal, etc.

These explanations sound to me like a band that is trying to be everything to everyone. As I explained, this is typically a bad strategy as it lacks brand direction. But as I also explained, a strong brand is a brand that some people hate. What if a TON of people hate the brand? Well, maybe that’s what we’re seeing with Nickelback. Are people “hate listening” to Nickelback? Is there a Nickelback “silent majority”? I’m guessing that 50 million record sales into their career, Nickelback is okay with people hating their band. If you build a strong brand, you should be okay with all of your haters too. If you hate Nickelback, it’s okay, they’re not for you. Your hate is just fueling their success. You could just forget about them.

So, How Does This Work?

To build a brand so strong that you have haters outside of your target audience, you need to build an amazing brand. So how do you do this? Well, unfortunately, there’s no one formula or process that you can follow that will immediately create a strong brand. Anyone that tells you any different is either lying to you, trying to sell you a book, or more commonly, both. Anymore, they’re more likely to be trying to sell you an online course on how you can create a strong brand for the low, low price of only $199 and if you act today, they’ll throw in a side of snake oil. There are so many shifting factors to consider like economics, changes in consumer behavior, other entrants to the market, and competitive pricing pressures.

Good brands don’t exist in a lab. They’re living and constantly evolving in the real world. There are, however, a few best practices that we know help.

Know Thyself

Although it sounds really basic, many brands struggle with an identity crisis (see GM or Kmart examples referenced earlier).

Some of the most common traps that I typically see are:

  • Trying to be who they want to be instead of who they are
  • Trying to be their competitors

Knowing what you do well is critical and positing those brand differentiators is key. If you’re not doing that, your message is NEVER going to connect. Think of this extreme example. If a brand like KFC discovered that all of their competitors were becoming really successful with selling salads they might want to get into the salad game. Even starting to sell salads seems a little strange for a brand that is known for fried chicken, biscuits, and mashed potatoes. However, if they REALLY wanted salad market share and started neglecting their core business to focus on salads, they would struggle. They’d be facing an identity crisis, which many brands struggle with daily.

Most brands just don’t completely change direction like in the KFC example, it happens more gradually. This often happens when a company continually introduces new product lines without the proper support. With economies of scale approach, most administrative staff would typically handle both new and existing initiatives. When this is done without bringing in the proper additional support personnel, existing product lines can get diluted, new product launches don’t get the proper attention, and a company can lose sight of its foundation. In many cases, this takes years and the support erodes so slowly that the team that is managing the product or products don’t even realize the impact until it is too late. As I pointed out earlier, it happened to GM, it happened to Kmart, it happens everywhere. Knowing your strengths and “niching down” to really connect with your target audience is key. Be different. When your competition zigs, you should zag, otherwise you’ll just be another Kmart.

Know Your Customers

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Just as important at knowing yourself is knowing your customers. Have you built a customer profile? Do you know your customer demographics? Do your customer psychographics? Do you know what impacts their decision on whether or not to buy your products or buy your competitors’ products? Do you know their typical buying journey? How long is their sales cycle? What problems can you solve? How can you be of service? It’s likely that if you have more than one product, this is different for every distinct segment of your market.

Do your products fall under the category of low-effort consumer behavior or high-effort consumer behavior? Although brand awareness is critical to both types of behavior, knowing how the brain processes these decisions is key to help map out your buyer’s journey.

A customer’s needs are constantly changing and evolving. Their buying behaviors and preferences are always developing. Are you keeping up with their needs and wants? If not, you will quickly find yourself outside of the category of a brand people hate and into the category of a brand no one cares about.

Don’t Suck

Another thing to consider are the elements of your brand. Your name, logo, URL, packaging, taglines. Make sure these don’t suck. They don’t need to resonate with everyone but make sure they resonate with your target audience. Also, make sure your products and customer service don’t suck. If not, people will hate your brand for all of the wrong reasons. Make sure you attract haters for all of the right reasons.  

Encourage Your Haters

The next time you think about your own brand, think about how many people hate your brand. It could help you discover and embrace the people that love your brand. To your brand, those are the people that matter. That audience is going to make your brand strong enough for people to hate.

You can find out more about niche marketing here.

[1] https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/real-housewives-bravo-andy-cohen-cover-278072

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Why You Still Want That Rolex

How Rolex Sells Watches by Creating Problems

I was 16 years old when my dad came home from New York with a gift. He opened his bag. “I thought you needed a new watch”, he said and handed me this gorgeous silver and gold watch.

“Woah, this is a Rolex,” I was surprised. At 16, the only thing I really knew about Rolex was that they were expensive. How expensive? I had no idea, but I probably shouldn’t be wearing this to my job at the grocery store where I pushed carts and stocked shelves.

He just kind of laughed. My mom laughed too. “It’s not real,” he said.

“What do you mean, it’s not real?” I asked. Still, I had no idea what was going on. Well, he didn’t get me a Rolex. As my friend Brendan put it, he got me a Fauxlex. Yep, a fake Rolex. It looked real to me, but I was pretty clueless. I’d never seen the real thing. Now, I’m almost 40 and I’ve still only seen a few real Rolex’s. At least, I think they were real.

I really didn’t care that it was fake. I thought it would be impressive if I could pull one over on someone. I wore it to school. I wore it to work. I didn’t really fool anyone. It clashed with my hoodies, Led Zeppelin tee shirts, and my giant green Doc Martens. Since it wasn’t fooling anyone, I leaned into the joke. I wore that Fauxlex everywhere until it finally met its demise falling 3 feet onto the concrete when I was banging on the glass at a minor league hockey game. It never really worked ever again.

Even at 16, I knew one thing about the Rolex brand. It’s what Rolex has built their brand on for over 100 years. A Rolex was a sign that you had “arrived”. You wore a Rolex because you could wear a Rolex. I knew that even at a time when a watch was more necessary than it is today, that the Rolex brand didn’t really fit much of a practical need. My Folex told time just as well until it broke. So how had they made such an aspirational association with a clueless 16-year-old when I wasn’t their target audience?

Photo by Carlos Esteves on Unsplash

Rolex Creates Problems

Problems. As marketers, we’re pretty good at creating them. It’s a technique known as poisoning the well. The strategy is thousands of years old. You essentially tell someone their well is poisoned and that you are the only one that has the antidote. In high-effort consumer behavior, problem recognition is the first step in the purchasing journey. However, some products that involve high-effort behavior do not necessarily involve a practical problem, so problems have to be created. The way marketers typically create problems is by telling you that what you have is not enough. They then make a promise that what they are selling will make you fill in the blank: (happier, healthier, thinner, more successful, etc.)

So, how does Rolex do this? Does anyone need a Rolex? For that matter, does anyone ever really need a watch? Seriously though, there are ways to tell time all around us. We have clocks on our phones, tablets, in our car, just about everywhere. So how does a company like Rolex still exist? Does anyone need an archaic, analog device, that costs $7,500 for the “base” model? Although they have built a strong brand for over 100 years, how does a product thrive to be a $5 billion-dollar company when by all accounts, it should be on its way to obsolescence? Rolex has done what every high-effort consumer behavior expert dreams of doing. In my opinion, they nailed step one of creating problems.

One of their messaging strategies involves the same tactics any motivational speaker uses to get you to buy their products. It’s the “dress for the job you want, not the job you have” method. This strategy is on full display in their “Every Rolex Tells a Story” campaign where they feature people that have “made it”. Check out this ad with James Cameron.

https://youtu.be/RgpoRGq3oBs

So what did they do here? Again, it’s the “dress for the job you want” tactic. Wow, James Cameron. Who doesn’t want that kind of success? Since he’s doing an ad for Rolex, the watch must have somehow contributed to his success, right? They’re planting the seed that James Cameron and everyone else that is part of this campaign can attribute their success to Rolex. The beauty of what they are doing is that they are communicating that message (associating success with Rolex) without overtly saying this. If you hadn’t thought of what they were doing with this type of ad, would you be able to recognize this tactic? Maybe, but Rolex isn’t relying on their advertising appealing to logic. They’re relying on their advertising to appeal to emotion.

They do a fantastic job of convincing affluent consumers that if they don’t have a Rolex, they haven’t arrived. This strategy has been so successful that the basic concept of their messaging has never really changed. Rolex spends big money advertising in high-net-worth sporting events, publications, and websites. The way they advertise relies heavily on indirect normative influences. They realize that the person that is purchasing the Rolex is heavily influenced by the group of people they associate with. It’s the whole “if your friend jumped off a bridge, would you?” lecture that your mom gave you when you would blame your behavior on your friends. It’s not an uncommon strategy. For example, many companies do this with an overarching message of sustainability. Toyota does this with Prius. Burt’s Bees does this with everything they sell. Rolex just has a much smaller niche, and in my opinion, they do it better than anyone else.

High-effort consumer behavior, like the decision to buy a $7,500 watch, relies on problems. Sometimes, though, your problem involves a legitimate need. You need a car for transportation, your computer quit working and you need to finish your work, or your phone battery won’t hold a charge anymore and it can’t be used for more than an hour off of the charger. Although the way that you arrive at the problem when there is a legitimate unmet need is different than a manufactured problem, the way you buy things is the same. Rolex is just amazing at creating perceived problems that only they can solve. It doesn’t really matter if the problem is real or not.

Photo by hassan mehdi from Pexels

Consumers are Lazy

Once a problem is realized, the second step of a high-effort behavior is to look for information on how to solve your problem. This type of search could really be anything. It could be internal, like remembering past experiences or ads. It could be external, like getting a referral from a friend or researching alternatives online.

You might think that we put in a lot of effort into making a major purchase but that’s not really the case. There’s a term in cognitive psychology called the “Cognitive Miser”. Our minds are considered to be cognitive misers. This essentially means that when we make decisions, we’re sort of lazy, regardless of our intelligence. In general, we would much rather put in little effort to solve our problems than putting in extra effort and meaning. (Stanovich, 2009)[1]

This can’t really be true, can it? Yep. It’s true. What’s one of your biggest monthly bills? I’m guessing you said mortgage, well, either that or daycare. You would think that we do a considerable amount of research when finding a home lender, right? Nope. Definitely not. Our brains want to take the easy way out and find a solution that is good enough. One major study found that the average number of sources the consumer consulted when selecting a place that was likely going to determine the amount of their largest monthly expense…was two. (Lee & Hogarth 2000)[2] Yep, two. Let that sink in.

This can’t really be true, can it? Yep. It’s true. What’s one of your biggest monthly bills? I’m guessing you said mortgage, well, either that or daycare. You would think that we do a considerable amount of research when finding a home lender, right? Nope. Definitely not. Our brains want to take the easy way out and find a solution that is good enough. One major study found that the average number of sources the consumer consulted when selecting a place that was likely going to determine the amount of their largest monthly expense…was two. (Lee & Hogarth 2000)[2] Yep, two. Let that sink in.

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Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

How Can You Use This Information?

Alright, let’s say you’re a marketer and your potential customer realizes there is a problem, whether you created the problem or not. The next step is to be able to nail the information search portion of the high-effort consumer behavior journey. Now you know the secret that all good marketers know. If consumers only check out two sources before they make a purchase, and one of those sources is yours, you’re pretty much halfway there. So, the question is, how are you going to provide this information? Is it going to be through video? An informative blog, or series of blogs? Email to a customer curated list? Social media? Old-fashioned snail mail?

For a well-defined niche market, I usually take an omnichannel approach. This is a just fancy way of saying all of the above. Why? It doesn’t take an in-depth analysis of consumer behavior to understand that people are all different. While some prefer reading in-depth articles, others will skim just for the key points and takeaways. Some need the information delivered directly to their email, some want it sent to their desk, some want to watch an informative video, and some would prefer the interaction and community found on social media. This has been especially effective when you are dealing with a niche market because regardless of the medium, you are not dealing with massive media budgets. The types of markets I work with max out around 5,000 target consumers. I often work with targets of 500 or less. That takes a pretty targeted media approach, one where you can cover just about every type of communication for a pretty reasonable budget.

Can You Combine the Two?

Realizing that consumers are lazy, Rolex has done an excellent job in combining both step one and step two. Their advertisements create problems but they offer solutions. The solution, conveniently, is to buy their watches. One clever headline reads: “A Rolex will never change the world. We leave that to the people that wear them.” As a consumer, this plays to my ego and I just realized that I have a problem. I want to change the world, but I’m not changing the world. Bingo, step one of high-effort consumer behavior, check! How about step two? Well, they just told you. People that change the world wear Rolexes. Are we that gullible? Maybe. Maybe not. Are we that lazy? See Cognitive Miser theory.

What’s Next?

Once we realize there is a problem and consume information on how to solve that problem, we reduce our alternatives down to a few. This is typically 2-8 alternatives, which we often call the consideration set[3] (Allen et al., 1991). However, if you’ve already built your brand to be a frontrunner like Rolex, if you get to this stage, you’re going to have a higher probability to make the sale.

The final steps involved in a high-effort purchase are the actual purchase and post-purchase behavior. The interesting thing about the post-purchase behavior of Rolex customers is that the product is so coveted that the owner will always want it to be seen or noticed. By wearing a Rolex, they’re walking advertisements for the brand. Given the price point of the watch, it is highly likely that the person wearing it is monetarily successful. This perpetuates everything that the brand stands for.

Takeaways

For high-effort behavior, the first step in the customer journey is to get someone to realize there is a problem. Once that problem has been recognized, a consumer tries to find a way to solve that problem. Then, they narrow their choices and buy a product. How can you help them along the way? If you can do this as well as Rolex, you can roll the first two or three steps into one, giving you a greater likelihood of being chosen over your competition.

[1] Stanovich, Keith E. (2009). “The cognitive miser: ways to avoid thinking”. What intelligence tests miss: the psychology of rational thought. New Haven: Yale University Press. pp. 70–85. ISBN 9780300123852. OCLC 216936066.

[2] Lee, Jinkook & Hogarth, Jeanne M. Consumer Information Search for Home Mortgages: Who, What, How Much and What Else? Autumn 2000 Financial Services Review, Volume 9, Issue 3. Pp. 277-293.

[3] Shocker, Allan, Ben-Akiva, Moshe, Boccara, Bruno and Nedungadi, Prakash. 1991. Consideration Set Influences on Consumer Decision-Making and Choice: Issues, Models, and Suggestions. Marketing Letters: A Journal of Research in Marketing, Vol. 2, No. 3: 181-197.

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How Your Brain Hijacks What You Buy

And That’s Not Necessarily a Bad Thing

For a good portion of my career, I fell into the trap of thinking that good marketing was driven by great advertising, so I would spend all of my time focusing on how to create a good ad. I’d carefully try and choose an image with stopping power, a clever headline, compelling ad copy, and a call to action. I’d do this over and over with mixed results, never thinking about the psychology of consumer behavior and how to use it to make my job easier.

Although I was also really interested in psychology, I had never tried to understand the psychology of why we buy what we buy. It wasn’t until I started getting interested in consumer behavior that I really started to understand the key elements of how the brain works. Having an understanding of consumer behavior allows you to apply an understanding of why customers choose certain products to the building blocks of marketing: product, price, place, and promotion. Fully understanding these concepts can give you an edge to be a better marketer, or just help you grasp why you do what you do.

Low-Effort Consumer Behavior

Consumer behavior is a fascinating topic. There are two main ways that your brain processes purchasing decisions, central-route processing, and peripheral-route processing. In central-route processing, you engage in what’s known as high-effort behavior. This is just a fancy way of saying that you think deeply about your purchases. Peripheral-route processing, however, considers little thought (Petty & Cacioppo 1986: 191).[1] It’s the reason that you only buy name-brand peanut butter. It’s the reason you’d never overpay for milk or butter. Ironically, it’s the same reason you’d never be caught buying cheap wine.

You have very little control over how your brain manages peripheral-route processing, so the best that you can do is to try and understand how it works. Typically, low-effort consumer behavior products are everyday items (think groceries, toothpaste, toilet paper — if you can find it), although they don’t have to be. These are purchases that you make every week, if not every day.

Heuristics — The Things You Do That You Don’t Realize

Low-effort purchases rely heavily on heuristics, which is just a pretentious way of saying shortcuts but hey, it makes you sound smart…so we’re going to use it! Heuristics are so subtle that you probably don’t even realize that you are using them. Although they can lead to bad habits and are prone to errors, the fact that you use heuristics isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Think about it, you’d be living a pretty miserable life you agonized over what kind of butter you should buy or spent an hour comparing toothpaste. Consumers just don’t have time to worry about trivial items and although they can be prone to error, heuristics help us manage our time without us having to do much thinking.

Types of Heuristics

Price

Price-related heuristics are incredibly common. If you’re a cheapskate like me, for many low-effort items you buy the cheapest item available. This type of purchasing is commonplace for grocery staples like cans of vegetables, bread, and milk. However, if you again are like me this can translate beyond low-effort items and you end up buying the cheapest (vacuum, cooler, lawnmower, coffee maker) every year for the rest of your life. Earlier I mentioned that heuristics are prone to errors and this is exactly why they don’t always work.

How Marketers Use This

A strategy based on being the low-price leader is one that rarely allows your brand to ever increase your prices in comparison to the market or to gain any value. Committing to being a price leader in a category can be a dangerous strategy that should be based on favorable volumes and variable cost structures. Many companies will attempt to temporarily interrupt lower-priced competitors by offering coupons or sales. This allows them to potentially disrupt a customer’s brand loyalty or purchasing habits. It’s sort of like saying to the consumer, “Hey, you know that brand you always buy sucks, so try ours. It’s better and worth a higher price.”

Brand Loyalty

Brand loyalty is another low-effort purchasing heuristic. Brand loyalty often occurs when we have tried a certain brand and had a great experience. Until that brand lets us down, or we have a better experience with a different brand, we will likely maintain that brand loyalty. It’s the reason that you buy Oreo’s and not “chocolate sandwich cookies” because, well Oreos are great, and chocolate sandwich cookies are trash.

How Marketers Use This

The only reason to have a brand is to build market power and that market power is directly tied to the loyalty that you create with your customers. Your brand should represent something. It should give your customers a reason to not only choose your products but to return to your brand. Building loyalty ultimately strengthens your customer lifetime value and can decrease your customer acquisition cost. That’s fancy marketing speak for “your customers will pay you more money and you will spend less getting new ones”. In addition, the intangible asset of a strong brand can help financial analysts determine the future value of a company. A strong brand commands a higher price over a longer period of time. Another thing to note, a brand has a target audience. It’s not for everyone. If you build a strong enough brand, you may have people that hate your brand, and that’s okay as long as you have people that love your brand. A watered-down brand that tries to appeal to everyone appeals to no one.

Habits

Photo by Andres Siimon on Unsplash

Habits are different than brand loyalty. Although they involve continual purchases, sometimes of the same brand, they don’t necessarily involve loyalty to that brand. A habitual purchase can be the corporate coffee that you drink every day or the junk food from the vending machine that you buy in between meals. It can even be the really bad morning radio show that you listen to every morning. The main difference is that a habit doesn’t require a strong preference for the brand that is being purchased. Habits also involve little evaluation of other options and little information seeking for other alternatives. Habits make decisions easier because it reduces our risk when we have purchased the item several times in the past and it has satisfied our needs (Hoyer, MacInnis, & Pieters 2018).[2]

How Marketers Use This

Marketers of low-effort products spend a lot of time either trying to create or break a habit. Companies that have habitual buyers are always trying to maintain a cycle of perpetuating a customer’s habits. Grocery stores may attempt to maintain a habit of a customer returning to their store by honoring coupons from other stores or matching their prices. If a marketer is trying to break a customer’s habit to get them to purchase their product, they may offer a lower price than a competitive product or offer free samples. If you’re a tobacco company, you might try to do evil things like advertise to children or say that more doctors smoke your cigarette than any other cigarette.

Emotions

Photo by Sydney Sims on Unsplash

Your emotions also have a profound impact on the way you make your purchases. When you are emotionally connected to a brand, you are buying it because it makes you feel good. One example might involve purchasing a Tom’s of Maine product because of their corporate commitment to sustainability. Another example might be buying a local brand as even though the product might be similar to other brands, we might feel better about supporting local members of their community. Your emotions can also cause you to make altruistic choices like donating to charities. Your emotions can also drive you to eat a pint of Ben and Jerry’s you eat when you are having a bad day, or if it’s just a Wednesday.

How Marketers Use This

Companies can attempt to appeal to emotions by adopting a cause that aligns with their product. They may also position their advertising with certain imagery and advertising copy that focuses on how the product makes you feel instead of simply listing the features and benefits. For instance, a pizza restaurant may run a commercial that represents togetherness with images of a family watching a movie. One thing to keep in mind, however, is that several studies have shown that different emotions mean different things to different people (Mogilner & Kamvar, 2012). [3] The challenge for marketers is to determine the temperament of their customers and to understand how emotions impact their purchases.

Unfortunately, consumer’s emotions can also be manipulated by strategies that are purposefully made to misinform the customer. One of the most popular types of this type of manipulation is misleading packaging. A common example is labeling unhealthy foods as fat-free. While this may be true, this label often shows up on foods that are loaded with sugar or sodium. A marketer may believe that a consumer has a negative association with the word fat, and by labeling their product fat free, they are implying that the food is a healthy option. This makes you feel better about your decision.

Normative Influences

Normative influences occur when other people guide our choices. This can be a direct influence, like purchasing something that your kids want. This could also be an indirect influence, like buying a brand because a friend or a group you belong to tend to buy that brand (Hoyer, MacInnis, & Pieters 2018). An example of an indirect influence might be buying an overpriced luxury car because everyone you know, or at least the Jones’s, have one.

How Marketers Use This

Since the person making a purchase isn’t always the decision maker, marketers need to consider advertising to all appropriate audiences. This is why there are so many commercials for cereals and toys during kid’s shows. Even though they are not making the purchase, they are a direct influence on the purchaser. To reinforce an indirect influence, a brand could institute a referral program.

Representativeness

Photo by Preankhan Gowrypalan on Unsplash

The representativeness heuristic is a way that our brains try to link things that are similar together (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974). [4] This is the heuristic that is the reason that hilarious knock offs and intellectual property lawsuits exist. In marketing and branding, this often occurs when a consumer compares a brand to a prototype, or category leader (think Coca Cola for all colas, Kleenex for tissues, and Band-Aid for bandages).

How Marketers Use This

The most common way that marketers use the representativeness heuristic to their advantage is to mimic the prototype brand. Private-label brands often try to make knock offs, like Dr. Thunder, Panburger Partner, Mountain Lightning, and Butter It’s Not. Although these brands are pretty hilarious, they do a great job capitalizing on imitating the prototype and take advantage of a representativeness heuristic.

Availability

Photo by amirali mirhashemian on Unsplash

The availability heuristic happens when a consumer views the probability of having a good experience with a product on how easy information about the product is to recall (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974). For instance, you could have a friend that told you that every time they order from a certain pizza place, they get her order wrong, the pizza was cold, and it took two hours. Would that make you want to place an order with that restaurant? Probably not. This story may influence your future decisions.

How Marketers Use This

To address the availability heuristic, a marketer can try and reinforce the information if it is positive or reframe the information if it is negative. In 2010, Domino’s pizza took extreme steps to address the availability heuristic that their pizza was garbage. To regain credibility, they completely changed their recipes, focusing on their ingredients and flavors (Brandau, 2010).[5]

Humans Are Variety Seeking

For low-effort purchases, unless you are the type of person that has an entire closet full of plain white shirts, you probably seek variety in your purchases. This is the reason there are so many flavors of yogurt, ice cream, soft drinks, and even bread. One study showed that this is particularly true when repetitive purchases are viewed as negative. The boredom of repetition triggers the need to seek variety (Fishbach, 2011).[6]

How Marketers Use This

Coupled with a strong brand, a company can take advantage of a consumer’s need for variety by introducing new items. This could be something like new flavors or seasonal items.

Wrapping Up

Heuristics are a way for consumers to make quick decisions about items that don’t require a lot of thought. They’re almost like a built-in time management system for our brain. They’re not necessarily good, but they’re not inherently bad. At best, they can save you a lot of time and opportunity cost making decisions that would not have a negative impact on your life. At worst, they could lead to habits that turn into harmful addictions. One thing is certain. Your low-effort purchases, which make up most of what you buy, are governed by heuristics. These short cuts are something that are generally out of your control. By understanding the way consumers think about these low-effort decisions, marketers can create more demand for their products.

[1] Cacioppo, J. T., Petty, R. E., Kao, C. F., & Rodriguez, R. (1986). Central and peripheral routes to persuasion: An individual difference perspective. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51(5), 1032–1043. https://doi-org.prox.lib.ncsu.edu/10.1037/0022-3514.51.5.1032

[2] Hoyer, W., MacInnis, D., & Pieters, R. (2018). Consumer Behavior (Seventh Edition). Cengage Learning: 180–199.

[3] Mogilner, C., Aaker, J., & Kamvar, S. (2012). How Happiness Affects Choice. Journal of Consumer Research, 39(2), 429–443. doi:10.1086/663774

[4] Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1974). Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases. Science, 185(4157), 1124–1131. Retrieved August 2, 2020, from www.jstor.org/stable/1738360

[5] Brandau, M. (2010). Domino’s do-over. Nation’s Restaurant News, 44(5), 44. Retrieved from https://proxying.lib.ncsu.edu/index.php/login?url=https://search-proquest-com.prox.lib.ncsu.edu/docview/229384734?accountid=12725

[6] Fishbach, A., Ratner, R.K. and Zhang, Y. (2011), Inherently loyal or easily bored?: Nonconscious activation of consistency versus variety‐seeking behavior. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 21: 38–48. doi:10.1016/j.jcps.2010.09.006

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One-Minute MBA Concepts - High-Effort Consumer Behavior: Decision Making

High-effort consumer behavior involves central-route processing, meaning that it takes a consumer a conscious effort to change or to form their attitudes about your product. High-effort purchases are often thought of as cars, homes, or other high-priced items, but they aren’t always determined by price. High-effort behavior consumers follow a specific, five-step process. This involves: 1. Problem recognition 2. Information search 3. Evaluation of alternatives (often called the consideration set) 4. Purchase decision and 5. Post-purchase evaluation.[1]

In high-effort behavior, depending on the consumer and their habits, a typical consideration set ranges from 2–8 alternatives.[2] Marketers of high-effort consumer behavior need an in-depth understanding of each step of this decision-making process for their brand to be part of a customer’s consideration set. A high-effort marketer’s typical day involves trying to get their target consumer to recognize a problem by introducing an incongruence between their actual state vs. their ideal state. Basically, we try to create reasons for them to want something better than what they currently have. In my experience, however, the really good high-effort marketers understand cognitive miser theory and are experts at information search. This approach is less about style, and more about substance. They are experts at providing information that helps their consumer solve a problem.

What’s been your experience with high-effort behavior?

[1] Hoyer, W., MacInnis, D., & Pieters, R. (2018). Consumer Behavior (Seventh Edition). Cengage Learning: 180–199.

[2] Shocker, Allan, Ben-Akiva, Moshe, Boccara, Bruno and Nedungadi, Prakash. 1991. Consideration Set Influences on Consumer Decision-Making and Choice: Issues, Models, and Suggestions. Marketing Letters: A Journal of Research in Marketing, Vol. 2, №3: 181–197.