Don't Make Things Harder

Trawling through my Twitter feed today I found an environmental intervention by McDonalds aiming to nudge people into disposing of litter more thoughtfully.

At least I think that’s what it’s aiming to achieve. Honestly I have no idea. Judge for yourself: the McDonald’s Bag Tray.

Signalling Virtue

This week has been marred by controversy surrounding a campaign by Protein World, in which posters of a thin, fit woman with the tagline: “Are You Beach Body Ready?” were used to advertise weight loss formula in London.

Unsurprisingly, the posters received backlash from those who believed they glorified an unhealthy perception of what a ‘beach body’ should look like. However, this perception has been around for decades, so why is this comparatively tame iteration receiving so much negative attention?

False Causation

What do horoscopes, psychic perceptions, and palm reading have in common? The Barnum effect, in which we falsely believe that certain statements are tailored especially for us, but in reality could apply to a general population.

A particularly interesting example of this surrounds lunar cycles, a myth that exists to this day. The lunar effect, as it’s known, is the belief that certain events occur more frequently when there is a full moon. Why do we believe this?

Caring Companies

The other day I received an email from coglode.com updating me on a new cognitive bias that had been added to their ever-growing registrar: the Noble Edge Effect. In short, it describes the tendency to perceive socially conscientious companies as superior to those that are not.

How fitting then, for the recently slaughtered Fresh in Our Memories ANZAC campaign from Woolworths to come along and demonstrate that manufacturing social conscientiousness can do the exact opposite, while crashing and burning spectacularly.

Validation | Social Proof

Everything we do is driven by the need to accomplish goals. These drivers can be hardwired, internally motivated, or socially derived, but what they all have in common is that they trigger certain behaviours.

Many theorists argue that certain drivers take precedence over others. Gad Saad argues in favour of four evolved instincts that drive our need to consume. Maslow’s well-known Hierarchy of Needs demonstrates that certain needs must be fulfilled before other, ‘higher order’, needs are considered.

Social drivers, too, have been scientifically studied. Social proof is a phenomenon often used by marketers to drive conformity to a particular behaviour, but can be difficult to leverage. This is because social proof is a complicated pattern of behaviours influenced by the need for validation.

Mapping Doings

Last year’s Behavioural Economics guide contains a dandy little behaviour map, grouping similar behaviours together in on a simple axis. I’ve slightly adapted it to the version below, in my own scrawl.

This is useful for marketers trying to figure out what the type of behaviour is they’re looking to change, as it will have some influence on the direction of strategy. Elaborations within.