Mia Fileman 0:05
Life's too short for crap marketing.
The "Got Marketing?" Podcast is for marketers, business owners, and entrepreneurs who want marketing that's fun, accessible, and meaningful.
Join me, Mia Fileman, for inspired chats with my favourite marketing insiders about marketing that works; campaigns that inspire; and the fads, fakery, and false prophets to avoid.
Hello, friends! Welcome back to the "Got Marketing?" Show!
Understanding humans and our flaws is at the heart of effective marketing. Science plays a key role in marketing, especially the science of psychology. Many platforms, tools, trends promise to revolutionise marketing, but the reality is humans and how our brains tick remains largely the same.
In this episode, we're going to chat about human behaviour. We will explore three fascinating behavioural biases and unpack recognisable campaigns that tap into this bias into order to influence customers.
To do this with me, there was only really one choice of guest, and that is Dan Monheit - the CEO of Hardhat. The intersection of marketing and behavioural science is Dan's jam. In fact, he's got a whole episode about jam on the Bad Decisions Podcast that I highly recommend you listen to straight after this one.
Now, a word of warning - this episode discusses applied psychology and how it can be used to influence customers. These are serious tools - not to be abused. Marketers who have weaponised psychology have given the rest of us a bad name.
Marketers and snake oil salesman are often lumped together. That's like a dagger in my heart as I have dedicated 21 years of my life to the noble profession of marketing. With that in mind, let's get into it.
As I said, my guest today, Dan Monheit is the CEO of Hardhat - Australia's foremost creative agency built around behavioural science. Dan is on a mission to help more business leaders, marketers, and brands understand why people do the thigs they do.
His expertise in this space has seem him present on the topic to thousands of people - both locally and at major international events, including South by Southwest in Texas.
Welcome to the poddy, Dan Monheit! I'm so thrilled you're here!
Dan Monheit 2:33
Hey, Mia! So good to be here! I'm a long-time listener, first-time caller. Excited to be on here with you!
Mia Fileman 2:40
I'm so happy to hear that!
There's a really cool story about how we got to make this happen. I run a Facebook group. One of the people in my Facebook group posted a link to a Smart Company article that you wrote about the water in a can - Liquid Death, is that what it's called?
Dan Monheit 2:58
Yes, such a good brand.
Mia Fileman 3:00
Such a good brand!
I read this oped in Smart Company. I was like, "First of all, this is so good!" Also, the writing was exceptional. Then, I tapped on your link in Smart Company and read half a dozen other of your Smart Company articles. I discovered you had a podcast. I binged the podcast on the weekend.
Within two days, I was this super fan and reached out to via LinkedIn - best social media channel ever! - and said, "I think we should absolutely get into this on a chat on a poddy." You graciously said yes, and here we are!
Dan Monheit 3:38
Here we are! It's probably been less than two weeks since all that happened.
I think this is my first podcast I've done which came with a warning at the start of it. Who knows what we're in for? This is going to be great!
Mia Fileman 3:48
Totally! Let's get into it!
First of all, what is a behavioural and cognitive bias? I think we should probably start with that before we dive into discussing three of them.
Dan Monheit 3:58
Start with a nice and easy one. What is a cognitive bias?
If I may, I might wind out a couple of steps because behavioural biases - as we're going to discuss them today - are part of a field of study called behavioural science or behavioural economics. This is a field of study that has been around since the 1950s.
In the '70s, it has developed oceans of evidence based on thousands and thousands of peer-reviewed studies that help us understand why people do the things that they do, especially the weird, irrational things that they do.
At the core of behavioural science is - I wouldn't even say an "acceptance" but - a two-armed bear-hug embrace of the idea that we are nowhere near the rational decision-makers that we would like to think we are. In fact, most of our choices are made based on biases, based on emotion, based on the context within which we make those decisions.
One of the key findings of behavioural science are these things called heuristics or biases. A heuristic or a bias is a common psychological quirk that impacts our decision-making, often resulting in us doing something that does not make perfect rational logical sense.
If you're an alien looking at us from outer space and you've observed how we go about our days, there are many, many things that we would do that you would think to yourself, "What is this person doing? Why is this person standing outside a full restaurant when there is an empty restaurant across the street waiting for them?"
There are lots and lots of these sorts of things, and behavioural biases - which I think of as the cheat code of the game of sales - help us understand these things.
Mia Fileman 5:25
Fascinating!
You and I agree on this, but this is absolutely so fascinating because we're really getting to the core of what makes us human, and those flaws and quirks, and the shortcuts that we take. It's all subconscious, right?
Dan Monheit 5:40
It is.
Most of the decision-making that we do in a day is subconscious or unconscious. We don't even realise that we're doing it. As marketers and advertising people, our professions are to help influence choice. It seem crazy that more people are not as obsessed by this field of study as I am because this is a whole world of evidence about why people make the choices that they make.
Mia Fileman 6:02
I put it down to there's just not as many people who are as big as nerds as us.
Dan Monheit 6:09
Possibly!
There is a lot of research to get through for this, but we'll try and keep it light-hearted today. Keep it breezy.
Mia Fileman 6:14
Briefly, how many biases are there?
Dan Monheit 6:19
One of the things that hasn't happened in this field yet - because it is a relatively recent field of study - is we don't have a periodic table of behavioural biases yet. It's still something that is a work in progress, but there's somewhere between 200 and 300 of these biases that have been researched and documented.
As you'd imagine, within that 200 to 300, there's a small subset of maybe a dozen - maybe 20 - that really get the lion's share of attention.
Mia Fileman 6:46
At this point, I want to say that, since there are 200 to 300 biases, Dan and I have chosen three. A lot of effort went into choosing those three. We are going to talk about the first bias which is the effort bias, then we are going to talk about a really recognisable campaign that puts this into action.
Dan Monheit 7:09
I see what you did there!
Mia Fileman 7:11
Do you?
Dan Monheit 7:11
Yes.
Mia Fileman 7:15
I love that you do that on your podcast. I totally stole that.
Dan Monheit 7:19
That's all right!
How do you want to do this? Do you want to start unpacking what this is?
Mia Fileman 7:23
Tell me what it is. What is the effort bias?
Dan Monheit 7:25
All right.
Effort bias is a tendency that we have to assume that, the more effort that has gone into making something, the more valuable that thing is. There are lots and lots of studies that have been conducted to demonstrate this bias. They all follow a fairly similar format.
The one that I will talk you guys through is one from 2004. It was done by Kruger et al. In this experiment, participants were brought in, randomly split into two groups, and each group was given an identical set of poems to review.
The groups were asked to read these poems and then rate them on a series of attributes, including the level of enjoyment they felt reading the poem, the overall quality of the poem, and how much money they thought a poetry magazine should pay to publish that poem within their wonderful pages.
Clearly, in 2004, poetry magazines were still a very big deal - a little before Google took over.
Now, the only difference here was that one group had been told that these poems had taken four hours to write while the other group had been told that the exact same poems had taken 18 hours to write. You guys got there before I did, right? You know how this ends.
The group that had been told that the poems had taken 18 hours to write consistently rated them as of a higher quality, more enjoyable, and worth more money to a poetry magazine when they had been told that they had only taken four hours to write.
This exactly study has been repeated with everything from whiskey to wine to painting to pottery. It doesn't really seem to matter what it is - whether we are experts or amateurs. We cannot separate this idea that, if we perceive lots of effort has gone into something, we think that what comes out must be more valuable.
Mia Fileman 9:05
In this case, effort is a shortcut for quality.
Dan Monheit 9:09
Exactly.
There probably was some point in human history where the two were very good approximation - how "supply chains" were very short. You would be buying bread directly from a baker. You would be buying a sword from a silversmith or a basket from a basket weaver. It was quite easy to see the expertise of a person making it and how long they had been working on this thing for.
Today, most supply chains are impossible to understand. We don't know what actually goes into making a set of AirPods or a pen or a microphone. Even though the effort probably doesn't have an actual real impact on the value like it used to back in the day, it's certainly still something that we have trouble decoupling.
Mia Fileman 9:53
How do we apply this to marketing? How can we use that effort bias to our advantage?
Dan Monheit 9:59
The way to definitely not use this is to make what you do harder - make it more complicated, make it slower, thinking, "If I can show people that this social media post has taken me 32 hours to make, they are really going to like it."
The reason we don't need to do this is (1) it's ridiculous but (2) if you are running a business, a brand, an organisation, there are inherently complicated things happening behind the scenes. What we tend to do - and what we tend to be told to do - is to make everything always look smooth, seamless, and to abstract a lot of the work we do behind the scenes from what the customer sees.
I think the best way we can use the effort bias is to selectively let people see us sweat a little bit. Think of ways to surface and celebrate the effort that is clearly already going on behind the scenes - whether it is to do with our sourcing or our craft or the expertise of the people that work here.
Let people know a little bit about what goes in, and they will think that whatever you are providing is more valuable than they otherwise would.
Mia Fileman 10:56
Fascinating!
There's this prevailing narrative in the online marketing space where I play of this notion that "I work 10 tens hours a week - only 10 hours a week - while sipping mimosas by the pool, and I generated six figures," which seems to go against what is going on in our brains with the effort bias.
How is a comment like that perceived? It's like, "Well, I only work four hours a week, but you should totally buy my online course because it's awesome."
Dan Monheit 11:26
Please let me know where to sign up for this online course!
This is actually a great place for the blanket disclaimer that invariably comes up in every interview and presentation that I do. I should probably open with it. "There is no single bias that works on every person in every context for every type of purchase decision."
As we said, there's somewhere between 200 and 300 of these that work in various ways - sometimes, in cooperation with each other; sometimes, they actually go head-to-head with each other.
Something that is really meaningful for me might be less meaningful for you. Something that's meaningful for me in one type of purchase might actually work against it in another type or purchase. There is room for everything.
Yes, while some people will be turned on by the idea of thinking they can buy a book and then only work four hours a week to make a six-figure income, many others will put value knowing that the person writing that book has spent a very long time doing it, so it must be pretty good.
Mia Fileman 12:23
Awesome. That's a very good disclaimer.
Is there a tipping point? If I tell my audience it took me three hours to write a social media post, won't they assume I'm a really bad marketer because it shouldn't take that long to do it?
Dan Monheit 12:39
I think when the effort hits the point of incompetence, it's probably you've put too much salt on. A little bit is good; too much is not so good.
The idea of this is not to surface everything. It is not to deliberately make things harder. It is to be selective about giving customers a little bit more of a look at what happens behind the scenes.
If you go into a Nudie Jeans retail store, they often have people sitting there, repairing jeans, or making jeans. It reminds you that some real person is doing some real work to craft these garments in front of me that haven't come out of some magical factory somewhere that's 3D printing them.
Mia Fileman 13:15
Great example.
Dan Monheit 13:17
A little slice.
Mia Fileman 13:18
Great example.
What campaign put the effort bias in use spectacularly that you identified?
Dan Monheit 13:27
There are so many good ones, and there are so many places you see this out in the world.
But the first one that always jumps to mind for me is the iconic fisherman versus bear John West ad which is under the umbrella campaign of it's the fish that John West rejects or it's what John West rejects that makes John West the best.
Mia Fileman 13:46
So good. Talk us through that campaign.
Dan Monheit 13:50
Sure!
The idea for this one is that it is all the work that John West does to actually find the best fish that make the fish in the can of John West more valuable and more delicious.
There's this one spot which opens. It looks like a National Geographic documentary. We see bears standing by a flowing river - fishing. There's a voiceover talking about how these bears travel from very far away and how hard these bears work to find only the most delicious tuna.
Unfortunately, that is the exact same tuna that John West wants. Then, we see from offscreen, there's a fisherman in the signature yellow pants, running and basically getting to a slightly comical pub-style fist fight with this bear. He kicks him in the knees, and they smack each other around back and forth.
Eventually, the fisherman kicks the bear in the nuts. I don't know what the swear rating is on this, but he basically kicks the bear in the nuts. The bear bends over in pain. The fisherman picks up the fish and runs offscreen with it.
It's this wonderful non-literal but very entertaining story about the lengths John West goes to get the best fish.
Mia Fileman 15:00
This is insanely clever because fish in a can is pretty commoditised. You go and you stand in front of Woolworths and there's this sea of fish in a can. Generally, people buy whichever one is on special. The cans look the same. The packaging looks the same. They all seem to be yellow. This was so clever.
This campaign has been around for how long?
Dan Monheit 15:27
This has been around for decades. It's gone from the UK to Australia and lots of other markets. It's evolved over the years as well where it's oscillated between less literal like that example - they clearly don't have fishermen going out and getting into fist fights with bears - but, also, more literal.
The most recent version of this done in Australia a couple of years ago talked a lot more about what the characteristics of a fish that got rejected were. It might be the colour or the look of the eyes or things that seem subjective, but I imagine probably do contribute to the overall taste and quality of the fish.
Mia Fileman 16:02
What they've done really cleverly with an insanely memorable tagline is they're trying to - what's the opposite of commoditise? - de-commoditise.
Dan Monheit 16:13
Differentiate?
Mia Fileman 16:14
That's right!
Differentiate that not all fish in a can is created equal and to really create a point of difference in the market where they didn't have a lot of point of differences.
Dan Monheit 16:24
Exactly.
Mia Fileman 16:25
Such an excellent example.
Before we hit recording, I was talking to you about whether I thought that the most recent iteration - which was 2018 - of this campaign would work today because it seemed to focus a lot on the physical attributes of the fish. "The colour is off. Their eyes are off." That seemed really superficial.
I think we agreed that we liked the bear example more because it's less about rejecting this fish because of the way it looks, but it's a better representation - for me, anyway - of the effort bias. It was about the length that John West will actually and also metaphorically go to source the best fish.
Dan Monheit 17:11
Yes, I don't know if it's a really good example, but it might also be a really good example of how the market is commissioning the ads - feel the worldies - at the time. Sometimes, marketers do understandably feel a need to go more rational or to go more descriptive.
It might be what the consumers are telling them. It might be the pressure they're getting from the supermarkets. It might be what's in the media.
But often - not necessarily in times of fear, but - in times of uncertainty, we strangely and perhaps incorrectly push harder towards rational messaging when often it's more like the original - the fisherman meets bear - that provides far more memorability but is a bigger risk for marketers to take.
Mia Fileman 17:47
Yes, totally. I believe that playing it safe is the riskiest strategy of all.
Bring on the bear!
Dan Monheit 17:54
I agree!
Mia Fileman 17:56
"Got Marketing?" is brought to you by Campaign Del Mar - a marketing education platform for marketers and entrepreneurs. Learn practical, repeatable, and actionable steps to market with confidence. Nail your email marketing strategy or join "Campaign Classroom" and learn how to create memorable and effective marketing campaigns.
These are not the kind of online programs where you are left floundering, unsure how to put theory into practice, nor will these programs sit unfinished for months. You can expect hands-on tailored advice, accountability, and a supportive community, and you will walk away with life-long marketing skills.
Learn more at campaigndelmar.com.
That's bias number one - the effort bias.
Bias number two is the licensing effect. What is this, Dan?
Dan Monheit 18:53
The licensing effect is going to play a leading role in mankind's initial fall from grace as the dominant species on the planet because, when it comes to behavioural biases, this one explains so many of the ways we self-sabotage.
At its heart, the licensing effect are the loopholes that we make for ourselves. They are epitomised by the concept of "because I did X, I deserve Y."
Because I went and smashed myself in the gym this morning, I deserve a cheeseburger for lunch. Because I have saved so hard for a house deposit, I deserve new sneakers. Because I have done so well to stay off the booze Monday to Friday, I deserve to write myself off this weekend.
We have this internal bargaining mechanism where we are constantly trying to keep an equilibrium between our virtuous and our indulgent acts. If we've done something really virtuous, we are more inclined to go and do something indulgent.
Go to the gym, more inclined to smash a burger. If you've done something really indulgent - going and having a massive Saturday night - we are more inclined to go and do something virtuous like only eating salads on Sunday because that should square everything off.
Mia Fileman 19:55
Right. It's like permission-based marketing.
Dan Monheit 19:58
Exactly! Do you want to do a quick little detour into the research on this one?
Mia Fileman 20:04
Absolutely!
Dan Monheit 20:05
This study comes to us from Wen-Bin Chiou of National Sun Yat-Sen University.
The study was done back in 2011 after this researcher actually witnessed a colleague eating a very unhealthy lunch after seeing that colleague have a multivitamin in the morning. He thought to himself, "I wonder if this is a one-off or if something as small as having a multivitamin in the morning really can impact people's decision-making through the course of the day."
He constructed an experiment that did exactly that. He recruited participants, randomly separated them into two groups, and kept everything the same except one group got multivitamins in the morning and the other group did not. They observed their behaviour over the coming days and weeks.
What they found - again, not surprisingly, now that you know about this bias - is that the people who had the multivitamin in the morning were far more likely to indulge in poor decision-making.
They were more likely to smoke more, to drink to excess, to turn away from healthier activities like long walks and yoga simply because they had this multivitamin in the morning that they thought was somehow magically counteracting all of these negative effects.
Both groups were also given coupons for lunch on one of the days of the experiment. One option for lunch was a very indulgent buffet. The other lunch option was a very healthy organic buffet. Again, the group that had the multivitamin in the morning were significantly more likely to select the indulgent buffet than the healthy organic fruit-and-veggie one.
The multivitamin in the morning let them license themselves to undertake a raft of questionable decision-making over the rest of the day.
Mia Fileman 21:38
Yes, now I understand what you mean about how different biases affect different people in different ways because - I say this, but that may not be true - I don't think that the licensing effect would work on me in that way because, if I go to the gym, I find I actually eat healthier.
"Let's keep this momentum happening!" versus "Well, it's all shit! It's gone out the window. I didn't go to the gym, and I had a cheeseburger, so I might as well have a beer!"
Dan Monheit 22:11
Yes, it might not be applicable for you in diet and exercise, but it might be applicable for you in work, or it might be applicable for you in spending money. There are lots of places where this can play out.
If you think about spending money, this is almost a hallmark of things like luxury car advertising where most luxury car ads have some version of "because you deserve it" baked into them. There's some notion that you have been working hard, you have been slaving away, doing all of these virtuous things - probably for other people, for a boss, for school fees, for the bank to pay off your mortgage.
"Isn't it about time that you got to drive this luxurious European car?"
Mia Fileman 22:49
Yes, and that, my friends, is how you put the licensing effect into play.
We have two examples we're going to unpack with this one. Right, Dan?
Dan Monheit 22:58
Exactly. Which one would you like to start with?
Mia Fileman 23:00
Let's go with "hard-earned thirst needs a big cold beer."
Dan Monheit 23:06
Yes, I love this because sometimes - like we spoke about with effort bias - you've got to dig a little bit to understand what they're doing here. Other times, they literally take the definition of the bias which I'm sure is not what they did.
These biases are things that great creatives and copywriters have been doing forever, but it is there in plain sight. "A hard-earned thirst needs a big cold beer." It literally says you deserve it. If you have been working hard, you deserve a treat, and the best treat is this brand of beer.
This is an ad that was originally done in the mid-1960's for a Queensland beer. It actually wasn't a VB ad to start with. It was done for Bulimba Gold Top Beer. When they needed to launch a campaign in Victoria in the late 1960's, they said, "Hey! We've got a great ad. It's the same audience. We're basically going to run it unchanged."
You might know this better than me. Is this the longest running ad on Australian TV? Or perhaps even the longest running beer ad in the world? I don't know.
Mia Fileman 24:06
I'm not sure, but it's certainly an advertising and cultural icon. That's for sure.
Dan Monheit 24:12
Yes, it's been parodied. It's been made and remade. It's almost like a second national anthem, isn't it?
Mia Fileman 24:18
Totally.
But what I love about this is the repurposing because I'm big into not reinventing the wheel. If you have excellent creative in the can, please don't go and rewrite the script. It was there for the taking. Bulimba in Queensland isn't the same as Victoria Bitter. It helped VB grow to become the biggest selling beer in Australia.
Dan Monheit 24:48
What's amazing is that the cultural context at the time which is one of the biggest advertising categories in the market was not really advertised. People would just order a beer.
There weren't really brands. There weren't brand personalities. There weren't brand ads. But there was talk of a big UK beer brand launching in Australia. I think CUB realised, "We better do something. We better create some brands." I think that's how this whole campaign was born. It is wonderful to see it during still until today.
Mia Fileman 25:16
Yes, and I think it's important to note that, obviously, it includes the licensing effect, so that underpins the campaign idea. That's the creative strategy part of it. But then, the voiceover, the music, the copywriting, the rhyming also plays a really integral role in the success of this campaign.
Dan Monheit 25:39
Absolutely. I know you're a big fan of the idea of distinctive brand codes and you know how important it is to nail those and keep them consistent.
You really do have to respect the VB marketing team because every marketing director comes in, and the first thing they want to do is change the agency, or the second thing they want to do is change the campaign, and the third thing they want to do is change the packaging.
While VB have wavered over the years, I think they have experimented with new formulations and changed the packaging a little bit, they have kept it pretty bloody consistent for a very long period of time.
Mia Fileman 25:39
Yes, I actually read a really interesting stat about it that the guy that recorded the initial voiceover - John Mayon - tragically died. However, his family have said, "You can actually continue to use all the recordings." They have digitally remastered his voice for more recent campaigns.
John Mayon never said, "On tap." He has never said those words on recording. But they have managed to pull it from previous recording to get him to say those words.
Dan Monheit 26:43
Technology for the win! Artificial intelligence!
We will have a hologram of him doing these ads until the end of time!
Mia Fileman 26:48
Totally! What's the second example?
Dan Monheit 26:53
It feels like the perfect complement for VB. It's at one end of the spectrum.
On the other end of the spectrum, we have got L'Oréal - "because I'm worth it."
Again, this is a long-running incredible campaign. One of those ones that we all wish we had done. Again, it talks right into that licensing effect that you are worth it. You have clearly done something, and you deserve to look wonderful using this product.
Mia Fileman 27:22
Totally! I actually have a little bit of insight into this because I worked in the marketing team for L'Oréal for three years.
Dan Monheit 27:29
You say it so nicely! I say it like a bogan. "L'Oréal, mate!"
Mia Fileman 27:35
It was drilled into us, Dan.
In 1971, a 23-year-old female junior copywriter - her name was Ilon Specht - was sick of writing commercials from the perspective of the male gaze. Interestingly, every ad - up until that point - was narrated by a man.
You would see an ad for hair dye. It was the husband saying, "Doesn't she look fabulous?"
Dan Monheit 28:07
That's embarrassing.
Mia Fileman 28:09
So bad! I have a quote from her.
"My feeling was that I'm not writing another ad about looking good for men," she said. "I sat down, and I did it. It was very personal. I can recite to you the whole commercial because I was so angry when I wrote it."
That is how "because you're worth it" was born.
Dan Monheit 28:29
So good. It's still today, right?
Mia Fileman 28:33
Yes, absolutely - though it has changed. It started as "because I'm worth it" and then it was actually Heather Locklear who said, "I don't want it to just be about me. I want the audience to feel that they are worth it," and they changed it to "because you're worth it."
Dan Monheit 28:51
Nice.
Mia Fileman 28:52
Yes, so nice.
Dan Monheit 28:53
I hear not only has this been around for decades. I think this has been translated into something like 40 languages.
Mia Fileman 28:58
That's right.
Dan Monheit 28:59
It's a universal truth.
Mia Fileman 29:02
Absolutely! Totally! Timeless notion - for sure!
That brings us to our last bias - the peak end rule. What is this?
Dan Monheit 29:14
The peak end rule is all about experiences and how we remember the experiences that we have. While we think that what we want in life are great experiences, what we really want out of life are great memories. We all want to look back on our lives as these incredible stories filled with inspiring chapters.
Memory is a really interesting tricky thing because we all experience roughly 16 hours of stuff every day of our lives, but we don't remember most of it. We remember bits.
There is this idea that we have an experiencing self and a remembering self. The experiencing self is us who is recording this podcast, who is going on that holiday, who is calling up about this insurance quote. Then, there is the remembering self which is us some point in the future that remembers some small snippet of this.
One of the founding fathers of behavioural science - perhaps even the founding father - is a gentleman by the name of Danny Kahneman. Over the course of his career, he has been obsessed with this idea of the experiencing self and the remembering self and the interactions and interrelationships between the two of them.
Over the course of his career, he has designed many experiments to help us understand how these two selves work with each other. One of these studies involved participants coming in and being given headphones.
These headphones played audio tracks comprised of variable annoying sounds. The sounds varied from a one-out-of-ten mildly irritating noise all the way up to a ten-out-of-ten horrific "this is the worst thing I can ever imagine hearing."
Participants would come in. They would be given headsets. They would listen to these tracks that would go up and down of these varying noises. They would then take their headsets off, and the researchers would ask the participants, "On a scale of one to ten, how annoying was what you just heard?" which is a question about their memory.
They didn't ask them during the listening experience. They asked them at the end. "On a scale of one to ten, how annoying was what you just heard?" What they found was quite interesting. What they found was that, rather than people's answers being correlated with the average level of annoyance, they were far more closely correlated to the peak levels of annoyance and how the tracks ended.
If you were being given an audio track that started at a one or two out of ten, jumped up to a ten, back down to a two, back up to a ten, and then ended, even though mathematically the average was maybe a four or five, you were far more likely to remember it as an eight or nine out of ten.
What Kahneman and his team deduced from this was that not all parts of an experience are created equal when it comes to forming memories. In fact, the peaks, the emotional high or low points, and the way things end are what shape how we remember them.
Mia Fileman 31:47
Question. Did they have to listen to "This is Frank Walker from National Tiles"?
Dan Monheit 31:52
Very possibly!
I always think about Fran Drescher in early episodes of The Nanny as my ten out of ten, but Frank Walker from National Tiles is possibly on there as well although this research may have predated that.
Mia Fileman 32:05
Gosh! So annoying!
Dan Monheit 32:08
Yes!
Mia Fileman 32:08
How do we use this - or not use this - in marketing?
Dan Monheit 32:12
The first thing that's really important with this is to acknowledge that it exists - to acknowledge that there is a way that people remember experiences. We can either be accidental about that or we can be deliberate about it.
We work with universities around their open days. At the end of an open day, people are going to say to the person who went to it, "Hey! How was that open day that you went to?" We can either leave it to chance as far as what they will remember, or we can deliberately try and create an emotional high - hopefully not a low point - that we know has a pretty good chance of lodging in their memory.
That's philosophically how we think about it.
The other consideration philosophically is that there is a lot of pressure - especially for people who work in customer experience and user experience design - to create these outstanding end-to-end experiences. In reality, that's a complete waste of time.
It's well-intentioned, but it's a complete waste of time because, actually, what we should be doing is looking for one or two points of that experience - preferably towards the end - and thinking about how we can make those 15 out of 10 moments while ensuring there's nothing diabolical along the way; knowing that, if we can do that, we will create a far more memorable experience than an outstanding but ultimately bland and forgettable eight or nine out of ten across the board.
Mia Fileman 33:32
I couldn't agree more.
Dan Monheit 33:33
That's a lot. I think I jammed a lot in there, but it's a big bias.
Mia Fileman 33:37
Totally!
I say this all the time to my customers - not all interactions with your brand are created equal and you need to identify those moments that matter and make sure that those are satisfactory and that those experiences exceed expectations. But what are they? Know what those are. That's really key. If you don't know, I've got a really difficult way to figuring it out - pick up the phone and ask somebody.
Dan Monheit 34:02
But that's true.
The other thing you can do is you can create them. I think some of the best examples of using this bias are from organisations creating peak moments. Perhaps a couple of quick examples.
There is a very expensive restaurant in Melbourne called Vue de Monde. If you find yourself eating at Vue de Monde, you have probably been on a waiting list for at least six months.
You get to the end of a meal there; it's been a 15-course degustation, wine-matched meal, incredible ambience, overlooking the Melbourne city skyline, incredible service, and then the meal goes to end how all meals end which is you put your hand up and you ask for the bill.
Obviously, the difference at Vue de Monde is you pause for a moment to reflect on the small family sedan you could have purchased in place of the meal that you've just eaten. Nevertheless, you put your credit down because you can't even do a runner. You have to go down an escalator. It would be very difficult to dine and dash at Vue de Monde.
You put your credit card down. You pray that it goes through. It does. You get up to leave. The people at Vue de Monde know that this is no way for one of the best dining experiences of your life to end, so it doesn't end there.
As you pass the counter to head to the elevator to go back to your car or down onto street level, you are given a small bag marked as "for the morning after." This bag must cost them - I'm going to go out on a limb here and say - $4.00 on a $4,000-plus bill.
Inside this bag are a couple of little brioche rolls, some free-range eggs, some instructions for how to make perfect scrambled eggs in the morning, and this is the thing that people remember - this little $4.00 gift bag that people get. This is what they talk about. This is what they publish to social media because it is this unexpected emotional high point right at the end of the experience.
The thing is it's not just Vue de Monde that have realised this because every kid above the age of three knows that it doesn't matter how good or bad the birthday party was. It's what's in the lolly bag that counts. If you don't get your lolly bag game on flex, the party is not going to be remembered well whatever you happen to have put on.
Mia Fileman 36:04
Such a good example because it plays into one of my favourite marketing tactics which is surprise and delight. Give people something they're not expecting. Yes, this is at the end of the dining experience, so it fits the peak end rule, but it's also a very normal moment that matters in the customer journey which is a financial pain point.
Dan Monheit 36:26
Exactly.
Mia Fileman 36:26
Any time you need to hand over the credit card is a moment that matters.
You don't even need to pick up the phone and ask your customers that. We are telling you that, at that point of purchase, at that time that you need to put down the card, you need to find a way to offset that, so that they are happily putting down their card.
Dan Monheit 36:43
Yes, and what's brilliant about this is it happens after you pay.
I think about our experiences playing out like this in front of the scrolling Facebook timeline. The last thing that you have is this scary credit card experience, but then the next thing that they jam in there is this wonderful surprise and delight moment which pushes the memory of paying away and it trumps it with something more emotionally charged and more positive.
Mia Fileman 37:09
Totally! Amazing!
We're going to talk about "Mac versus PC" as a campaign that deploys.
Dan Monheit 37:17
Yes, not only the caveat but the explanation out there that the thing with behavioural science as a field of study is it doesn't discover things. It identifies and codifies and documents things that exist and helps us understand what they are so we can replicate them.
Again, these are insights that great creative people have long known. I don't think that the people who wrote "Mac versus PC" went through a list of behavioural biases and said, "This is the one we're going to use." Nevertheless, it's a wonderful example.
I'm not sure if people remember the "Mac versus PC" ads from the early 2000's, but there were a lot of them. They were quite hilarious. They featured a guy who looked like Mac and a guy who looked like a PC, standing next to each other, talking about the various features.
I might let you do a better job than I have of explaining how the ads worked, but what was brilliant from a peak end rule perspective was, at the time that this happened, for most of us, if we had grown up with computers, we had grown up with PCs. Unless you had some weird auntie who was an artist, you probably had a PC growing up - if you had a computer at all.
Looking back on it, my memories of PC ownership feel okay. I remember playing games on them. I remember my friends coming around and them playing games. It was all pretty positive. Then, this relentless series of ads came out, reminding me about all of these other negative peak moments I had with PC ownership.
We'd buy things from overseas and they wouldn't work with our computer. Or it would come in seven different boxes and a massive set of instructions to work out how it all worked. Or we would get viruses. Or we would buy a new printer and not understand how to install a driver to make the printer work. All these things!
I'm watching these ads, saying, "I guess I do remember all of this stuff." Despite my initial feeling that PC ownership was great, in hindsight, it was actually pretty terrible a lot of the time, and maybe I would be open to looking at something different.
Mia Fileman 39:06
They're trying to rewrite your memories.
Dan Monheit 39:08
Yes, or at least rekindle the ones that I have suppressed.
Mia Fileman 39:12
Right.
This is a great campaign example because I'm fascinated with archetypes. What they have done with this is they have personified a brand.
If PC was a person, what would he or she look like? They have actually gone and done that. If Mac was a person, what would they look like? They would look a little bit like Steve Jobs, right? That's exactly what the person in these campaigns looks like. Then, there's a little bit of an old-fashioned fuddy-duddy vibe happening with the PC.
I thought that this was really great in terms of bringing to life brand archetypes.
Dan Monheit 39:50
It also completely rewrote the rule book on how to do side-by-side comparison advertising. Historically, you would never do side by side. You would never compare yourself to the competitor. You just ignore them. But if you do find yourself in a situation where you are compared to a competitor, you are attacking them and you are undermining them.
What this did was it did it in such a gentle friendly but still undermining way that it felt okay that Mac was calling out PC for being terrible, but nobody thought Mac was mean which is quite brilliant.
Mia Fileman 40:26
Because I think that, when you incorporate humour, you can get away with almost anything.
Dan Monheit 40:30
It wasn't really humour at the expense of PC. He was this slightly clumsy, endearing IT guy that we all know somebody like that. Anyway, they absolutely nailed it. They don't even need me to tell them that.
Mia Fileman 40:44
Totally! Great!
Those are our three biases. We have the effort bias, we have the licensing effect, and then we have the peak end rule. We are going to end with an honourable mention of the spotlight effect.
Can you tell us briefly what the spotlight effect is?
Dan Monheit 41:04
Absolutely.
The spotlight effect is the idea that we consistently overestimate how much attention other people are paying us.
We walk down the street. We trip over and spill our coffee. Then, we spend the rest of the day, thinking, "Oh, my goodness! I'm such an idiot! Everybody is probably still laughing about that stupid person they saw trip over and spill their coffee everywhere."
In reality, most other people didn't notice; if they did notice, they probably didn't think about it for more than three seconds because - guess what - they're actually really busy thinking about themselves.
Very quickly, there's some research. I think the researcher's name was Gilovich. The study that they constructed was getting students to put on ridiculous embarrassing T-shirts and sending them through a crowded classroom.
Before they went into the classroom, they asked them what proportion of the students they think would notice their ridiculous T-shirts which, in this instance, these bright yellow oversized shirts with Barry Manilow's face blown up on them.
You put a university student in a bright yellow shirt with a Barry Manilow face. You send him through a crowded classroom. You ask them, "What proportion of your peers do you think will notice this?" On average, people thought 50 percent of people would notice. They surveyed people afterwards. In reality, how many people noticed Barry's new shirt? Around 25 percent of people noticed.
Mia Fileman 42:20
Wow!
Dan Monheit 42:21
We tend to not just overestimate but double the attention we think other people are paying us. There's a big lesson for brands in this that, when we think we're being brave, when we think we are the brand wearing the bright yellow Barry Manilow T-shirt and everybody is going to notice, at best, half of what we think will happen but, in reality, it's probably far less than that.
Mia Fileman 42:41
"Oh, my god. I'm going to go on Instagram, I'm going to post about it, I'm going to go viral, and I'm going to be famous."
Dan Monheit 42:46
Exactly.
Mia Fileman 42:48
If only!
Dan Monheit 42:50
Yes, exactly.
It would work except that everybody else is thinking the exact same thing. That's the problem.
Mia Fileman 42:56
Also, the average reach of an Instagram post is 1.42 percent. Good luck with that!
Dan Monheit 43:05
Exactly.
Mia Fileman 43:07
The brand that you instantly think of with the spotlight effect is...?
Dan Monheit 43:11
This one is slightly similar to the L'Oréal example but, in this instance, we are talking about Maybelline. There's that wonderful line which is "maybe she's born with it; maybe it's Maybelline." It's this suggestion that this is what other people are saying about you.
We're not going to tell you that you're not the centre of everyone's universe. We're actually going to play into the idea that you think you are. As you walk past, there is a really high likelihood that other people are gossiping and whispering and saying, "Is she born with that? Or maybe not?"
I think it's a wonderful idea to play into something that our brains already tell us happening - whether it is or it is not.
Mia Fileman 43:49
The pronunciation was chef's kiss. I'm going to say that now.
Dan Monheit 43:52
Thank you! I've been working on it!
Mia Fileman 43:55
Maybelline is owned by L'Oréal. I was the senior brand manager for Maybelline New York. That's the brand that I got to work on. I love it. It's always going to have a very special place in my heart. You have absolutely nailed the internal narrative behind that tagline and how iconic it was.
I went on a Reddit deep-dive.
Dan Monheit 44:18
Uh-oh! Dangerous!
Mia Fileman 44:19
To see what people thought of it.
As Reddit communities eat each other alive, there were people like, "I think what they are trying to say is that Maybelline cosmetics are so natural, you wouldn't know the difference between whether she's naturally beautiful or wearing cosmetics." I'm like, "Dudes! That's not what's going on here!" Everyone jumped on there going, "That's not what's happening here!"
It's the fact that everyone's turning to look at her and that that's the effect that Maybelline cosmetics gives you.
Dan Monheit 44:55
Yes, if that's what people believe is going on in their head, in all of our minds, we are all the stars of a movie about our lives, and everybody else is supporting cast. If that's people's internal narrative, far be it from us as advertisers to tell them that's not true.
"Hey! If you're going to be the star of your own movie, you might as well look good doing it."
Mia Fileman 45:14
That is such a good point. I really love that.
Interestingly, "maybe she's born with it; maybe it's Maybelline" was retired in 2014 but - like all good things - it is back as a TikTok challenge which I fricking love!
Dan Monheit 45:29
Of course! Wait. Tell me more. What happens in said TikTok challenge?
Mia Fileman 45:34
It was like a call to arms for creators to jump on and use the original audio of "maybe she's born with it; maybe it's Maybelline" to show their makeup videos. So many massive creators have jumped on this.
It started with Emily DiDonato who has been a Maybelline brand ambassador since I worked at Maybelline in 2008 - and I think even before that. She kickstarted it. She's a supermodel or a model. I don't know what the difference is, but she kickstarted it on TikTok. Then, some TikTok creators jumped in and TikTok did its thing.
I love that about TikTok - what's old is all new again. It has reintroduced this new generation of consumers to these iconic slogans like "maybe she's born with it" or "because you're worth it" or "got milk?" - all of these, I love them!
Dan Monheit 46:31
I feel you because running an agency where the average person in here is at least 15 years younger than I am, there are so many cultural references that myself and a few of the other now-old types have. The young kids have no idea what we're talking about, but - at least through TikTok - they might be able to catch up and have some idea what we're banging on about.
Mia Fileman 46:52
Yes, let's hope!
Dan Monheit 46:54
Yes, exactly.
Mia Fileman 46:56
Dan, it has been an absolute pleasure. I thoroughly enjoyed this conversation with you.
I highly recommend to everyone listening to go and check out the Bad Decisions Podcast because Dan and his guest in some of the episodes, Doctor Mel, they go into each heuristic in detail. There's an entire episode about each heuristic.
If you are massively nerding out on this like we are, then I really recommend that you do that.
Of course, head over to hardhat.com.au to check out what Hardhat are doing in the creative advertising space.
Dan Monheit 47:33
Brilliant! Hey! Thanks, Mia! I've had a wonderful time!
Good plug at the end - peak end rule! I will definitely look back on this interview fondly and remember that you gave the podcast a plug and the agency a plug. There's really nothing else I could wish for.
Mia Fileman 47:49
Thank you so much, Dan!
Thank you!
You listened right up until the end, so why not hit that subscribe button and keep the good marketing rolling?
Podcast reviews are like warm hugs. They're also the best way to support a small business. You can connect with me, Mia Fileman, on Instagram or LinkedIn. Feel free to send me a message! I'm super friendly.
