The Brain Science Behind Successful Marketing  ## Metadata - Author: [[The Duct Tape Marketing Podcast]] - Full Title: The Brain Science Behind Successful Marketing - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/8be85126-3b34-47b2-8ef0-49eee88a610d ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Brands Often Use Psychology Unconsciously** - Top brands exploit psychological insights whether they realize it or not. - Start with effective brands and then map the academic science that explains their success. Transcript: Michael Aaron Flicker And what if we said some of the best brands in the world have insights into human psychology that they're taking advantage of, whether they know it or not. So let's take those examples, break them down, understand what they're doing, and then explain some of the science behind it so that you can have confidence using it in your own business For your own brand. So we wanted to start with the brands rather than with the academic studies and make sure that we always ended it with, so what? ([Time 0:02:10](https://share.snipd.com/snip/e60f4bce-ec0e-40f0-a364-884cc1f45b72)) - **Five Guys' Simplicity Came From A Boardwalk Observation** - Five Guys founder noticed a massive line at a fries stall and simplified his menu to burgers and fries. - That focus created a clear identity and scaled into a $1.6 billion franchise. Transcript: Michael Aaron Flicker And that founder, Jerry Morrell, started with an insight that he was just walking along a Maryland boardwalk where he sees one company stall with a massive line when everybody else's Stalls were empty. And Thrasher's Fries on the Maryland Boardwalk had this massive line. And he got to thinking, is this stall that only sells one thing fries doing something better than everybody else that sold burgers and milkshakes and sodas? And so anyway, that's one of the founding beliefs of Five Guys. And even to today, $1.6 billion franchise, they don't sell chicken. They don't sell salads. They don't sell ice cream. They only sell burgers and fries. ([Time 0:04:51](https://share.snipd.com/snip/9ef0a68c-e134-4270-8aa7-6113df8a522f)) - **Make Messaging Imageable, Not Abstract** - Concrete, imageable language makes messages far more memorable than abstract phrasing. - Framing products with vivid images ("a thousand songs in your pocket") increases stickiness and recall. Transcript: Michael Aaron Flicker And a brand that we dissected in the book was Apple, but not all of Apple, specifically when Steve Jobs reveals the iPod and he stands up in stage and he holds the iPod up. And what he says is, it'll be a thousand songs in your pocket. And up until that point, everybody else was saying five gigabytes of storage, 128 kilobytes of this. And so what we got thinking was, well, what's the science behind why a thousand songs in your pocket really connects with people? And the study that we went to was in 1972. Ian Begg, Western Ontario University, recruits 25 students, and he reads them 22-word phrases. Some phrases are impossible amount, rusty engine, flaming forest, and others are apparent fact, common fate. And when he asked the group to remember as many terms as they could, they can recall just about 23%. It's just about one out of five. But here's the observation that matters. They can only remember 9% of the abstract words, like impossible amount, but 36% of the concrete terms, like white horse. That's a fourfold increase if they can picture it in their minds. And so what it teaches us is that great taglines, great phrases conjure an image in your mind. Red Bull, it gives you wings. Eminem, it melts in your mouth, not in your hand. Skittles, taste the rainbow. Maxwell's house, good to the last drop. You can picture what I'm saying as you say it. ([Time 0:08:03](https://share.snipd.com/snip/2b3597f1-936a-4849-a29a-eb5b3ddb1f1d)) - **Specific Numbers Signal Effort And Credibility** - Specific numbers convey effort and credibility more than round figures. - Unusual precision (e.g., 17 or 5,127 prototypes) signals intentionality and convinces audiences. Transcript: John Jantsch The answer is yes. Michael Aaron Flicker The answer is yes. And there's a few things at play here, but the illusion of effort is something that Richard and I are really interested in. And the basic psychological principle here is that by getting to a very specific number, it shows a lot more intentionality and a lot more purpose. There some sort of like psychological trick being played or hack being played by the number 17? We think if we had said 20 of the world's best brands, you know, we just roll right over it. There's some interesting science behind it, but that's why. Yes, we're trying to show specificity. We're trying to show the effort that went into that. And we know that has caught more people's attention because of it. John Jantsch Yeah, 3,000% increase as opposed to 3,217. Way more believable, right? Michael Aaron Flicker In our book, we dissect a brand, Dyson. And I don't know if everybody knows this is a famous vacuum cleaner. James Dyson is the inventor. And when he invents it, his first ad that he puts into the market was 5,127 prototypes to get to the world's first bagless vacuum. He loves it so much in his autobiography. It's the first line of his autobiography. Look at the effort to get that bagless vacuum. ([Time 0:10:51](https://share.snipd.com/snip/71b87681-9a89-4ce2-b24e-e1f0db22fee3)) - **Peak Moments Trump Overall Experience** - Kahneman's peak-end rule showed retrospective ratings depend on peak and final moments, not total pain. - The Magic Castle Hotel creates memorable "peaks" (a popsicle hotline) that drive top-tier reviews despite modest rooms. Transcript: Michael Aaron Flicker And here's how the study goes. The colonoscopy patients are going through an actual procedure, and every 60 seconds, they register their pain level. At the end of the experience, they get two chances to give a retrospective rating. One right after the experience is over, and then another one a month later. And what you find is that those retrospective ratings do not correspond with the total pain level at all. In fact, the retrospective ratings, whether it was the hour after or a month later, coincide with two critical moments. That happened during the experience and the final moment of the procedure. And so Kahneman calls this the peak end rule. So that's kind of interesting. Like this is where academics stops. Right. What does that mean for brands and marketers? There's a LA hotel called the Magic Castle Hotel. It was featured in Chip and Dan Heath's book, The Power of Moments. And the Magic Castle Hotel has top 5% of all TripAdvisor hotels in LA. 94% of their reviews are very good or excellent, better than the Four Seasons and Beverly Hills. But what's surprising about this hotel is it's a 1950s motel. David Decor, mediocre rooms, small swimming pool in the courtyard. But what have they done so well? And what does almost every review talk about? They have a popsicle hotline in the pool. And you pick up the phone, day or night, and they will bring out on a silver platter as many popsicles as you'd like to eat.'s a peak moment in a average hotel and that makes everybody love Going there and everybody loves to dial the phone so thinking about how you can use what would otherwise be a very hard to advertise la motel and make it into a all-star in the city you don't Have to redo everything in fact, if you could just come up with something that everybody loves, a lot more people will be endeared to you. ([Time 0:12:43](https://share.snipd.com/snip/9e908252-caef-4922-98ca-f7e4681b6d4c)) - **Design Small, Memorable Peak Moments** - Create small, unexpected peak moments that cost little but stand out. - Be intentional and consistent in delivering those moments to build affinity and word-of-mouth. Transcript: John Jantsch Ingredients is it's kind of unexpected. Michael Aaron Flicker Like, who does that? I think you're right. Right? Yeah. I mean, I think the point of the peak is that it stands apart from everything else. If they had just the softest pillows, somehow you think it might not make as much of a difference, but something fun and social in a courtyard surrounded by all these relatively uninspired Rooms, it kind of, it stands out. John Jantsch Yeah. And I think the beauty of that message, I mean, obviously it's a hotel, they've got a different application, but almost any business could do something like that. Michael Aaron Flicker Couldn't they mean something that just really has somebody go you got to see what these guys did i think it can be a customer experience like that it could also be we had a guest on our podcast A few weeks ago and they were talking about every month they go to this shore town and when they get there they always go to their favorite restaurant and the favorite restaurant has, You know, flowers on some of the tables, but whenever they come in, he brings over the flowers and places it on the table. They sat at, and they say, now the table's ready for you. It's a small act. It's intentional. He's just using a little vase with three flowers sticking out of it, but it makes the person feel special. That's a peak moment that requires no extra money, requires no grand strategy, but it does require intentionality and consistency. ([Time 0:14:55](https://share.snipd.com/snip/2a9ab0a2-8835-4ab1-a979-2b40bf3ffa8c)) - **Behavioral Biases Are Tools, Ethics Decide Use** - Behavioral biases are neutral facts about human decision-making, not inherently malicious tools. - Awareness and ethical intent determine whether marketers use them responsibly or exploitatively. Transcript: Michael Aaron Flicker First of all, that these insights into human behavior and human psychology are facts. And understanding them is first about understanding why we are naturally prone. You know, we have a quote from Kahneman in the beginning of the book, humans, thinking this to humans like swimming is to cats. They can do it. They just prefer not to. Humans naturally want shortcuts. We naturally want to make, we want to think as little as possible to get to the decisions we need. So first, understanding these is about understanding human humanity and human psychology. Second, we write books for everybody to read so everybody can be aware of them. So we're educating marketers about how they can use them for positive ends. And we want consumers to understand that these are our natural leanings and inclinations that we got to be aware of. But yeah, for sure, there's ethics in behavioral science, like there's ethics in marketing, like there's ethics in AI. ([Time 0:16:43](https://share.snipd.com/snip/62c3d3d4-876e-4b0e-b128-3720e9ba2c38)) - **Combine Research With Small Tests** - Learn the academic science behind behavior and pair it with observation to increase marketing success probability. - Run small tests or simple observational experiments to validate ideas before scaling. Transcript: Michael Aaron Flicker Here in America, it's a much more nascent budding place. The approach of behavioral science and how it could improve marketing. Lots of material online, lots available, of course, including our book. But in order to get started, I think you have to have an interest in the academics and the science that powers why we do what we do. If you're a marketer that believes everything's done on hunches or on gut instinct, it's going to be hard to embrace this type of marketing because this is based on belief that you can Decode human behavior through science and through observation. It's not that you can guarantee what's going to happen, but you can make your campaigns more likely to be if you use this science-backed thinking. So we're increasing the probability that you're going to have good outcomes in your marketing. John Jantsch The flip side of that mindset, though, is measurement, right? I mean, understanding, okay, if this is our hunch, if this is our hypothesis based on research, how do we prove that we were right? Michael Aaron Flicker And has that become a stumbling block for a lot of folks? We would say that there's a massive industry around consumer insights that has its place for some marketers. But for every marketer, doing tests and seeing the outcomes, everybody can do. So if you are an e-commerce based or a web based, A-B tests are very easy to do. If you're not, we would advocate for observational research. Do something and see what happens. And you can do that on a small scale and you can watch the outcomes and then you can continue to innovate or go down this path. ([Time 0:18:34](https://share.snipd.com/snip/53eca863-7179-41e3-add4-0c83b628502d))