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SD#18: Elastic thinking, sad songs and Peckham’s formula

May 15, 2022

Hi friends,

Welcome to another edition of Seven Dawns, your weekly newsletter on marketing, productivity, psychology and more. As the newsletter is still in it’s infancy I will experiment with the way I send you ideas. Do let me know if you like or dislike something you see.

Our seven ideas this week:

1. (Marketing) Billions of dollars are spent every year on display that either reaches bots or reaches fake websites

The adtech industry is the crème de la crème benefactor and victim of all of this. Billions are being wasted due to ad tech fraud and poor data being used. When Peter Weinberg, Global Lead of LinkedIn B2B Marketing Institute, asked Dr Augustine Fou, the world’s leading expert on ad fraud, the simple question: ‘‘If the situation is that bad, is it true that digital marketers are reaching the wrong people?’’ Dr Fou said “No, it’s much worse than that. The problem isn’t that marketers are reaching the wrong people. The problem is that marketers aren’t reaching people at all.”
 
To solve the above, marketers need to shorten their supply chains. As evidenced by the ad tech industry, the further away from the publisher you are – the more the chances are that your data will be a product of fraud. You have to move towards first-party data. Secondly – and I know this might be a hard one – talk to real human beings. Thirdly – accept that a portion of your data will become outdated every year.
2. (Psychology) Most hapiness and the experience of peace is the result of a subtractive process

“Happiness is best dealt with as a negative concept… the ‘pursuit of happiness is not equivalent to the ‘avoidance of unhappiness.’ Each of us certainly knows not only what makes us unhappy…but what to do about it.” – Nassim N. Taleb in his book Antifragile. We are terrible at predicting what will make us happier but it’s obvious what makes us unhappy so rather than pursue something that likely won’t actually improve our well-being, focus instead on eliminating the things that make us unhappy and the net result will be increased happiness.
3. (Psychology) Elastic thinking is what you need when the circumstances change and you’re dealing with something new

Logical analytical thinking is good when you’re trying to solve a problem you know or have seen before.
 
Elastic thinking is about stretching your mind and using ‘bottom up’ processing in the brain rather than the top-down executive functions that drive analytical thinking. It encompasses a range of processes including, but not confined to, neophilia (an enthusiasm for novelty), schizotypy, imagination, idea generation and divergent thinking. BBC
4. (Marketing) In a business culture which is obsessed with measurement, there is a risk that the need for accountability makes marketing valueless

Marketing sits at the crossroads between creativity and analytics. Storytelling and data. You can find all sorts of people within marketing departments and I think that makes it great. But… there is a change within the wider business environment that is impacting marketing as well – the obsession with measurement. Such obsession is not necessarily a bad thing. We’ve become better at measuring what works and what doesn’t. We’ve become pretty good at predicting future prospects. We’ve even built AI algorithms to elevate our data usage beyond what humans can do. That is all amazing. But marketing has a part of it that operates in the unknown.
 
In the words of Les Binet:
’advertising increases sales & margins
by slightly increasing the chance that people will choose your brand
by making the brand easy to think of and easy to buy
and creating positive feelings and associations
via broad reach ads that people find interesting
and targeted activation that they find relevant’
 
Some of the above can be measured quite easily. A lot cannot. But we know it works. And the moment we become obsessed with measurement, that pushes marketing to a dangerous area of valueless.
5. (Psychology) People listen to happy songs 140 times, to sad songs 800 times. We as humans are drawn to to other beings suffering as we want to help them

We as humans are drawn to other beings suffering as we want to help them. Susan Cain’s new book Bittersweet explores our relationship with melancholy. Sometimes it’s the melancholic nature of the singers’ voices that opens us up. The artists can succeed in transforming pain into beauty, and there is a profound joy in that.
6. (Marketing) Peckham’s formula – your initial share of voice should be 1.5 times the desired market share of year 2

Peckham’s Formula posits that when you launch a brand you should set its advertising budget based on your desired share of market. Specifically, your initial share of voice should be 1.5 times the desired market share you want to achieve by the end of the brand’s second year. The Formula itself is based on some pretty significant empirical analysis. Peckham spent almost 20 years studying the relationship between what grocery brands spent on marketing communications and the subsequent market share they achieved. And, as such, Peckham was the first marketer to connect the dots between a brand’s share of voice and its share of market in a formal, prescriptive way. Mark Ritson via Marketing Week
7. (Marketing) Most people know how and where quality brands advertise and what quality brands feel like

One of the biggest tasks of advertising is instilling trust in brands in the people. It is also the largest benefit of advertising. People look for signs of whether they can trust a brand. Just like you look for signs if you can trust a restaurant won’t give you food poisoning – e.g. if there are loads of people in it, it gives you a good indication that you won’t be throwing up the food a moment later. Advertising gives that social sign and humans are surprisingly good at distinguishing quality ads and where they should be. If you see someone advertising in the London underground station, you know that they had to pay a decent chunk of money to get there and they won’t waste it by producing a crap product.

Fun things to click on:

This artist’s series of countryside GIFs are perfect for spring. A monster length Twitter feed of hard-to-believe facts. 10 things we learned from the world’s largest study on kindness.

Thanks for reading! If you have any learnings you’d like to share with me, or disagree with any of the ones above then do drop me a message.

Loving this newsletter? Then why not share it with your friends.

Speak soon,

Tom

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SD#17: Gen Z, online data and the Pratfall effect

May 8, 2022

Hi friends,

Welcome to another edition of Seven Dawns, your weekly newsletter on marketing, productivity, psychology and more. As the newsletter is still in it’s infancy I will experiment with the way I send you ideas. Do let me know if you like or dislike something you see.

Our seven ideas this week:

1. (Marketing) Brands can gain trust by admitting a flaw, it is called the Pratfall effect. It doesn’t even have to be a big flaw

The pratfall effect explains that when we see somebody that we hold in high esteem make a mistake or error, they appear even more likeable. Equally, when we see somebody that we don’t hold in high esteem make an error or mistake, we like them even less. The pratfall effect can be transferred over into brands and businesses that occasionally make mistakes, or sell products that aren’t deemed perfect.
If you have a great product that does all the right things for your target market, it might be worth highlighting some of your weaknesses as a hook for your product. What is seen as a weakness by some, can be made into a positive for others, as well as showing your human side. Expensive products can be labelled as ‘worth it’ or ‘luxury’. For example, Stella Artois has long used the strapline ‘Reassuringly expensive’. Einstein Marketer
2. (Psychology) Framing your mind into positive thinking can increase overall wellbeing

Research has found that positive thinking can aid in stress management and even plays an important role in your overall health and wellbeing. It can help combat feelings of low self-esteem, improve your physical health, and help improve your overall outlook on life.
 
Positive thinking does not necessarily mean avoiding or ignoring the bad aspects of life. Instead, it involves making the most of the potentially bad situations, trying to see the best in other people, and viewing yourself and your abilities in a positive light.
 
Some strategies to become better at positive thinking include being mindful of your thoughts, writing a gratitude journal, and using positive self-talk.
 
While there are many benefits to thinking positively, there are times when it might not be. In some situations, negative thinking can lead to more accurate decisions and outcomes. verywellmind
3. (Marketing) Small brands can grow by scaling up sales activation

I’ve written extensively in this newsletter about the work of Peter Field and Les Binet. How you need both, brand building and sales activation, to succeed in marketing and grow a business. There have been some strong arguments emerging against their work that I should do due diligence to discuss.
 
And the truth is that although the work of Field and Binet is right about how advertising works, it’s often wrong about what the real world looks like. The real world teaches other lessons. One is that many brands get years of significant growth by scaling up short-lived sales activation. Another is that following a brand-building path is too costly for some advertisers and too risky for many others.
 
Communications can drive growth, and brand-building is the only way to sustain it over the long term, but it is hard. Commissioning a great creative and putting a lot of money behind it may be a route for growth but as a piece of advice, it is not helpful. CMOs need to know how, and importantly they need to know how to make the whole thing a lot less risky. In the real world, that’s where success comes from. magic numbers
4. (Business) There are more similarities among crossword fans, meat-eaters or extroverts than Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers

Do generational groups such as Gen Z even exist – or are they the marketing equivalent of a horoscope?
 
Anyone masochistic enough to read several millennial and Gen Z trend reports will encounter the same word again and again: paradox. These generations are made out to be conflicted on almost every issue. They hate social media, they love social media. They don’t believe in brands, but they queue for hours outside Supreme. They are the most sceptical generation ever and yet they embrace astrology. For every fact about Gen Z and millennials, there seems to be a corresponding counter-fact. The truth is that these ‘generations’ are simply random collections of people who share no special connection beyond being born within two decades of each other. Just because half the world is female and half male, it doesn’t mean the average person has one testicle. BBH-labs
 
And I just had to include one of my favourite writers Bob Hoffman’s quote on this ‘One of the great idiocies of the marketing industry is the belief in the uniqueness of generations — Gen X is this…Millennials are that…Baby Boomers are the other. It’s all bullshit generated by researchers to sell their “expertise” and maybe a few more research studies along the way.’
5. (Psychology) Claims made in public are more trusted. This applies to marketing too

It is difficult to trust sources these days. The digital world is filled with fake news, questionable claims, research methods and so on. It is no wonder we look for signs of whether we can trust the source or not. It seems that claims being made in public are one of those signs that help us trust a source more than others. This might apply to a spokesperson doing an interview, as well as a marketing claim on an advert.
6. (Data) Only 50% of online gender data is correct. The second most accurate metric is age which is 25% time correct

We like to think that all data is good data, but the sad reality is that it is not.
 
In 2019, MIT, GroupM, and Melbourne Business School set out to test the accuracy of programmatic data, focusing on the two most commonly used data points in B2C marketing – age and gender.
 
They found out that the gender metric is accurate only 50% of the time. In other words, marketers would be better off flipping a coin. What’s worse, it turns out that gender is the most accurate metric out of all of them. For age, the accuracy drops down to 25%. The more niche you go, the less accurate the data becomes.
 
What does all of this mean? Well, a study from IBM found that poor data quality costs U.S. businesses just a small sum of $3.1 trillion per year. In B2B sales, that poor data quality is responsible for wasting over 27% of sales team time. Here’s my full take on it
7. (Marketing) For marketers, it is important to have good relationships with finance as that will help push the long-term agenda

Marketers and finance don’t always get along. We (the M’s) like to bring brand value and codes into presentations. Whereas our counterparts like hard numbers, calculations that make you shiver like a nail scratched on a blackboard. But finance decides our budget. There is a reason why finance is unofficially being called the boss of marketing. And that’s why it is important marketers refrain from using jargon and abbreviations and brand value within their presentations to finance. Speak their language. Numbers. Cold facts. Based on your estimates, how much this budget will deliver. And importantly, showcase how long-term brand building campaigns can drive future revenue growth.

Fun things to click on:

Struggling to find what to watch? Here’s Movie of the night to your rescue. Principles for dealing with the changing world order. The idle doodles of Tolkien’s newspapers.

Thanks for reading! If you have any learnings you’d like to share with me, or disagree with any of the ones above then do drop me a message.

Loving this newsletter? Then why not share it with your friends.

Speak soon,

Tom

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SD#16: Stress, marketers’ cohesion and junk mail

May 1, 2022

Hi friends,

Welcome to another edition of Seven Dawns, your weekly newsletter on marketing, productivity, psychology and more. This time I am trialling a shorter version of the newsletter – one or two-sentence snippets that you can take away as learnings. Let me know what you think.

Our seven ideas this week:

1. (Marketing) Marketers as a profession have the highest group cohesion score, meaning our opinions are similar and we confine ourselves to an idea bubble. Look for ways to diversify the group with that you share your ideas
2. (Psychology) Stress in short bursts is good for the brain. The problem arises when it becomes constant, constant stress can turn into acid.
3. (Marketing) Billions of dollars are spent every year on display advertising that either reaches bots or fake websites. The ecosystem is so ingrained in turning a blind eye that little is being done to fix it.
4. (Growth) Whenever you feel like criticising anyone, remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you had.
5. (Marketing) Tracking people and directing personalised messages at them is direct marketing – which we used to call junk mail
6. (Quote) When one tells you something is wrong, they’re almost always right. When one tells you how to fix it, they’re almost always wrong. Neil Gaiman
7. (Marketing) Real people, real stories, real images produce some amazing marketing.

Fun things to click on:

Highrise — Free marketing news and actionable strategies, right in your inbox every week. Guardian’s 100 ways to slightly improve your life without really trying. 4,000 data points on data salaries at top tech companies (hint: they are high). Here is Tinder for cats.

Thanks for reading! If you have any learnings you’d like to share with me, or disagree with any of the ones above then do drop me a message.

Loving this newsletter? Then why not share it with your friends.

Speak soon,

Tom

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SD#15: Challenger brands, logic and career success

April 24, 2022

Hi friends,

Welcome to another edition of Seven Dawns, your weekly newsletter on marketing, productivity, psychology and more. As the newsletter is still in it’s infancy I will experiment with the way I send you ideas. Do let me know if you like or dislike something you see.

Our seven ideas this week:

1. (Marketing) Challenger brands can position themselves against the market leader for differentiation

What do you do when you are number two in a market that is dominated by a big player who shows no signs of budging? Do you fight on the terms that the market leader set out? Or do you carve yourself space as an alternative to the incumbent? Meet Avis – a brand that chose the latter path and ended up creating one of the most iconic marketing campaigns of all times.

Avis was founded by Warren Avis with an $85,000 investment. Throughout the next few decades it changed hands from one owner to another multiple times, but what remained constant was their rivalry and underdog status to Hertz. That changed in the 1960s when the company decided to fully adopt their underdog status with the tagline of ‘We try harder’, putting themselves face-to-face with their rival but also showcasing how they are different, how they can be an alternative choice. What followed was years of growth, building Avis brand to such an extent that they became the market leader in some countries around the world and had to replace the famous tagline.
2. (Psychology) Heavy multitaskers are less efficient at multitasking than light ones

Social psychologist Dr David McClelland from Harvard stated that the people we associate with determine 95% of your success or failure in life. His research came out a long time ago and there were question marks about whether the finding was causation or simply a correlation. It may very well have been the latter, but I think it is worth thinking about how people around us shape our thoughts and feelings.

This doesn’t mean that if some of the people close to us had a bad spell we are suddenly in trouble. After all, those that go through hardship will often learn the most from those experiences and can teach us adversity. We may differ from our closest friends and even our partners in many ways, but more often than not, there will be major areas of fundamental beliefs where our views will coincide. What’s key is understanding how they affect our feelings and taking control of it.
3. (Marketing) Differentiation has been overstated and distinctiveness has been understated. Both are underused

I’ve previously discussed how only 16% of people remember and correctly attribute a TV advert. And that’s for a channel that is known to be more captivating than most others (think display advertising, PPC, which are usually scrolled past without any paid attention). The main way to combat this is to ensure your marketing is differentiated, i.e. you are being different from other competitors in a way they cannot copy you; and being distinctive, that is your brand is clearly recognisable through brand codes (logos, colours, sounds, smells). 
 
The value of differentiation has always been pushed down marketers’ throats and there are good reasons for it. If you can find a way to be different (see learning number 1 above), you can greatly increase your chances of brand success. Distinctinvess has always been more of an ugly distant cousin that people mentioned next to differentiation. It is now clear that the value of distinctiveness is just as great. If people cannot correctly attribute that it was your advert that they saw, then there is little point in running the ad altogether. A brand needs both – clear differentiation and distinctiveness to succeed in the market.
4. (Productivity) Starting a task is the hardest bit. Start small and it will be easy to continue

We discussed the Zeigarnik effect before – our tendency to remember and be affected by unfinished tasks. The tendency to put off difficult tasks that we don’t want to face is almost universal. As it turns out, the moment of starting a task is often so much harder than actually doing the task. Once we get started, there can be challenges (and we will want to switch to something else) … but if we can just start, then half the battle is already won. So getting good at starting something tough can be a powerful skill to master. Set yourself a challenge to do this once every day for at least a week or a month and watch the results. By doing it just once a day, you’ll relieve yourself of the pressure of trying to do it all day long. You can be deliberate about it and find a way of viewing the task that feels powerful and joyful. zenhabits
5. (Problem-solving) Logical analytical thinking is good when you’re trying to solve a problem you know or seen before

We’ve had over a hundred years of corporate history as we know it in humankind’s books. It is safe to say that most problems you will face in your career/organisation already occurred to other people, and companies in the past and we can also say with high confidence that someone already tried solving the problem that you’re trying to tackle. They most likely went through the same steps as you, brainstorming, analysing, looking for the root of the issue, thinking outside the box – all of that has been done. They probably arrived at the same solutions as you are thinking of right now. It’s only natural. 
 
And it’s most likely that their attempts at fixing the problem by conventional logical solutions also did not work (because you would’ve heard about it if it did). So why not try something different? Why not try something that does not make sense? We now know that applying a discount to theatre tickets actually reduces the number of sales it gets. If your challenge is to sell more tickets, you would be better off raising the price rather than the opposite. But no one that started with the issue of ‘we need more sales’ came to the logical solution to raise the price.
6. (Marketing) Share of search could be areplacement for share of voice in the digital space

We discussed several times in this newsletter the significance of gaining share of voice in the market. We know there is a high correlation between your brand’s share of voice and the market share. Grow your voice and your market share will grow. But how do you measure your share of voice in a world that is increasingly digital? 
 
Well, Les Binet suggests using share of search as an alternative metric that looks at how prominent your brand is among search algorithms. Share of search results are a lot more accessible to smaller brands as this is usually already tracked from your SEO efforts and can be supplemented by things like Google Trends. And Binet found that there is a correlation between share of search and market share in a similar fashion to share of voice. If you’re a small to medium business, share of search could be the closest metric that you can use as an alternative to share of voice.
7. (Career) Intelligence is a much larger predictor of education and job success than grit

There’s been many articles and studies recently that claim grit is the underlying success factor in your career and education. Well, there’s an alternative view in the house. A recent study suggests that intelligence is actually 48-90 times larger predictor of education success and 13 times of job than grit. Conscientiousness also contributes to success more than grit but only twice as much. Their findings suggest that although grit has some effect on success, it is negligible compared to intelligence and perhaps also to other traditional predictors of success. Sagepub

Fun things to click on:

List of laws of the internet – isn’t it crazy how universal these are? Ever wondered if people in your country have similar dreams to you? Here’s a map of the most common dreams by country. Brain feeling foggy? Here are five ways to clear a brain fog.

Thanks for reading! If you have any learnings you’d like to share with me, or disagree with any of the ones above then do drop me a message.

Loving this newsletter? Then why not share it with your friends.

Speak soon,

Tom

in:

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SD#14: Multitasking, age of innovation and languages

April 17, 2022

Hi friends,

Welcome to another edition of Seven Dawns, your weekly newsletter on marketing, productivity, psychology and more. As the newsletter is still in it’s infancy I will experiment with the way I send you ideas. Do let me know if you like or dislike something you see.

Our seven ideas this week:

1. (Marketing) ESOV takes time! We know it works but it takes years to translate into share of market

You are probably sick of me mentioning the great work of Peter Field and Les Binet on marketing effectiveness. But I’ll persevere. Their earlier work proved that improving market share-of-voice (SOV), i.e. the amount of attention your advertising occupies in the minds of prospects compared to the competition, will increase your market share over time. The key point is that your SOV needs to be higher than your market share. If you have a market share of 5%, then to increase that you should have a SOV of 8-10% to see results. That additional 3-5% on top of your market share is extra share-of-voice (ESOV). The more you have the more your market share will grow. Simple. Hold on, not so simple. Why? Because it takes years for it to take effect. We know ESOV leads to increased market share, but it takes years for it to do its job. Be patient.
2. (Productivity) Heavy multitaskers are less efficient at multitasking than light ones

It feels productive to multitask as we go about our day but new studies show that it can actually kill your performance. Research conducted at Stanford University found that multitasking is less productive than doing a single thing at a time. The researchers also found that people who are regularly bombarded with several streams of electronic information cannot pay attention, recall information, or switch from one job to another as well as those who complete one task at a time. What about heavy multitaskers? Could we become good at it and increase our productivity? Well, researchers compared groups of people based on their tendency to multitask and their belief that it helps their performance. They found that heavy multitaskers—those who multitask a lot and feel that it boosts their performance—were actually worse at multitasking than those who like to do a single thing at a time. The frequent multitaskers performed worse because they had more trouble organising their thoughts and filtering out irrelevant information, and they were slower at switching from one task to another.
3. (Technology) The pace of technological advancement has been much slower than people think since the 1970s

We like to think that we live in the age of innovation. Things are changing rapidly all around us and technology is developing at the speed of light. But is it? If you were living in the 1950s and belonged to the ‘upper-middle class’, more likely than not you were able to afford things that most of your neighbours couldn’t – a fridge, television, a car, a washing machine. These things were unaffordable to many and they were life-changing material. Think about what your life would be like without a fridge? Or a washing machine? Now think about all the things that were invented in the last 40 years. Faster cars, more efficient washing machines, powerful computers (some that even fit into your pocket). You can now fly from London to Sydney without transfers and your seats may be a tad comfier than decades ago. But most things that we have now are improved versions of something invented decades ago. The pace of change has dramatically decreased and I could write a whole piece just on that. As a matter of fact, I did – I wrote an article arguing that Covid-19 won’t change many things and not to blow my own trumpet but I was mostly right.
4. (Marketing) Having two to three marketing objectives increases ad effectiveness compared to none or too many

What drives advertising effectiveness? This is the question that marketing legend Mark Ritson focuses on in some of his work. During his talk at thinktv’s “Media, Marketing & Effectiveness” event at the end of 2019, he drew on research and analysis based on almost 6,000 submissions to the Effies from the 1990s and outlined the 10 most important drivers of advertising effectiveness. At number 9 is marketing objectives. Not just having them but how many you need for your advertising to be effective. Based on his analysis, he found that two to three is the optimal number before success rates begin to dive after five. Trying to assume too many positions and target too many segments is ultimately more difficult to achieve and thus brands should stick to two or three key objectives. Per Hub.tv
5. (Psychology) The language we speak shapes the way we think

Charlemagne, Holy Roman emperor, said ‘To have a second language is to have a second soul’. The principle of linguistic relativity states that the way people think of the world is directly influenced by the language we speak. English speakers name different shades of blue as dark blue and light blue. Russians (and other Eastern European languages) have two distinct words – it can be siniy (dark blue) or goluboy (light blue). Eskimos have at least three different ways to describe snow (even though some claims have said they have up to 50) – whether it is falling, has already fallen or is on the ground. Some Australian aboriginals don’t use words like ‘left’ and ‘right’ instead, everything is described as north, south, east and west. In order to have any conversation with others, these aboriginal tribes need to know their geographic orientation extremely well. This is a consequence. People who speak different languages will pay attention to different things, depending on what their needs are. Languages don’t limit our ability to perceive the world, rather, they focus our attention on specific aspects. How does your language shape yours? And what can you do to influence it?
6. (Marketing) Mass reach works better than targeting, but you need both

I have quoted the great work of Byron Sharp and his book ‘How Brands Grow’ numerous times in this newsletter. Come to think of it, you’re probably getting a free summary of the book just by reading Seven Dawns… One of his main arguments is that mass advertising works significantly better than small, highly-targeted campaigns. And he has plenty of research to confirm it. But my argument is not to try to convince otherwise, it is rather that marketing has a tendency to pick sides but it is at its strongest when we do several things good over one thing great. ‘The long and short of it’ by Peter Field and Les Binet proves that you need long-term emotional advertising as well as short-term activation. We also need the top of the funnel and the bottom of the funnel. Quantitative and qualitative research. As Mark Ritson puts it we need bothism in marketing. While mass reach is more effective than targeted activation campaigns, the combination of both is what truly drives value.
7. (Psychology) Immediate emotions should be managed so they don’t unconsciously interfere with decision making

We make thousands of decisions every day. From what to buy in the grocery shop to how to park the car and buy a ticket. And emotions are usually central to how we make those decisions. The part of your brain that is responsible for expressing your emotions (the ventromedial prefrontal cortex) is also involved in decision making. And contrary to what we might think, decision making is improved because of our emotions not in the absence of them. To improve our decision making we can practice emotional control, differentiating incidental emotions (those that happen in the background and have nothing to do with the actual decision, e.g. the mood you were in); and integral emotions (those that are caused by the decision itself, e.g. anxiety from the choice you have to make). Per PsychologyCompass

Fun things to click on:

The weather forecast in emojis around the world. Clive Thompson made an online tool that lets you see only the questions in a piece of writing and it is truly remarkable – try it with a piece of writing you’re reading. What you should know about Ukrainian language.

Thanks for reading! If you have any learnings you’d like to share with me, or disagree with any of the ones above then do drop me a message.

Loving this newsletter? Then why not share it with your friends.

Speak soon,

Tom

in:

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SD#13: Decision-making, internet and unhappiness

April 10, 2022

Hi friends,

Welcome to the thirteenth edition of Seven Dawns, your weekly newsletter on marketing, productivity, psychology and more. As the newsletter is still in it’s infancy I will experiment with the way I send you ideas. Do let me know if you like or dislike something you see.

Our seven ideas this week:

1. (Marketing) Only 16% of people remember a particular TV ad. Marketers must codify everything to make it count

Only 16% of advertising is both recalled and correctly attributed to the brand (according to a study by the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute of 143 TV ads[2]) suggesting 84% of ad spend could be going to waste if that’s replicated in the real world. It’s another sobering reminder that your audience doesn’t care about your advertising, so you’d better make it distinctive enough to make an impact and be well-branded enough so people remember who it’s from.
2. (Business) Decision-making in most companies can be deeply flawed

Most business problems that involve decision-making are usually solved using two lenses – market research and standard economic theory. Together they are supposed to provide a complete view of human motivation, the issue is that they are often misleading. On the market research front, I’ve previously discussed how people do not behave the same way they answer those questions. Standard economic theory on the other hand tries to contemplate not what people say they want, but what we think they should want. Behavioural economics has shown that this often provides an incomplete, and sometimes highly misleading, view of human motivation, often blind to things that aren’t quantifiable. Standard economic models will always assume that the way to improve travel is to make it faster, and the way to improve food is to make it cheaper or more plentiful. And so on. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with this – except that it can often blind you to less logical, more creative solutions. Rory Sutherland
3. (Internet) Today’s world portrays the internet as this overly positive place and any idea otherwise is irrational

Web3 seems to be gaining momentum and discourse over the last couple of months. People are getting hyped up and while my knowledge of it is incredibly limited, I do believe they have grounds to be hyped. But when one talks about the positives of something new, they naturally tend to also focus on the negatives of the previous iteration. In this case, it is the Web2 that brought to our world some of the largest organisations of the world, creating more content than anyone could ever consume, dividing our society in several ways and also allowing independent creators to showcase their work. It used to be unimaginable for me to think that Web2 could ever be thought of as negative and to argue one’s case would seem irrational. But as we move towards something new, I realise how it hasn’t been all sunshine and rainbows.
4. (Relationships) Relationship success is mostly determined by what the two of you create within it rather than as individuals

That’s the big takeaway from a landmark study that explores what makes relationships successful, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Scientists have sought to understand what makes for a good relationship for decades. But most of those studies only measured a few variables at a time. This study analysed information on more than 11,000 couples, drawn from 43 data sets that tracked those partnerships for an average of a year, to determine the extent to which they could predict the quality of relationships and what measures would best predict that. CNN
5. (Marketing) Good marketing always has the basics of market orientation, strategy and tactics

Today’s marketing world tends to be swamped with tactics (communications). But any good marketer who started with the 4Ps (product, price, place, promotion) knows that it should only take up a small part of one P – promotion. Good marketing consists of starting with the research, defining different audience segments, who you are going to target, who you are not going to target, what message do you want to send to them, how will you do it, where and with what budget and only then delving into execution.
6. (Mindfulness) Most unhappiness is the result of a compulsive focus on the past and the future

Our minds like to be busy. They especially like to be busy with thoughts about the past, worrying about things we could have done differently. And our mind likes to be busy with thoughts about the future, feelings of uncertainty, and anxiety about what might happen. Mindfulness and meditation are there to make us present and focus on the here and now so we can understand how we feel outside the realms of the past and the present.
7. (Marketing) Through online search, people tend to embark on two different types of activities – exploration & evaluation

Most marketers tend to map customer journeys trying to understand how their target audience ends up buying the product. This is a completely rational thing to do. There are usually a number of customer journeys that come out of the process and digital channels (such as online search) play a big part in them. If Greg decides he needs a pan, he might do a quick search online to find out what brands sell pans. This way he would embark on exploration. Shelly on the other hand wants to buy a laptop and she knows several brands that sell laptops. She might choose to research the different laptops sold by Dell or Asus and compare them, in this case, she uses online search for evaluation. Marketers tend to overvalue online search for the exploration stage while undervaluing it for the evaluation phase.

Fun things to click on:

Matt Shirley makes funny charts and graphs about pretty much every social interaction you’ve ever had. Die with me – the chat app you can only use when you have less than 5% battery. Write a line of text and hear it turned into music with Typatone.

Thanks for reading! If you have any learnings you’d like to share with me, or disagree with any of the ones above then do drop me a message.

Loving this newsletter? Then why not share it with your friends.

Speak soon,

Tom

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SD#12: Sameness, deep work and bothism

April 03, 2022

Hi friends,

Welcome to the eleventh edition of Seven Dawns, your weekly newsletter on marketing, productivity, psychology and more. As the newsletter is still in it’s infancy I will experiment with the way I send you ideas. Do let me know if you like or dislike something you see.

Our seven ideas this week:

1. (Marketing) ROI forces marketers to focus on short term results. This in turn harms creativity.

There is no shortage of focus on return on investment (ROI) in marketing departments. The metric invaded corporate structures like an evil parasite and makes everyone dance to the same tune as if controlling us like a puppet doll on strings. The issues with focusing on ROI are various and numerous, especially when used outside the realms of short term metric evaluation. It forces us to optimise and optimise and optimise till we start throwing up nonsense deciding that the best ROI can be achieved by simply stopping that activity. ROI can be even more harmful to creative campaigns. Creativity cannot be measured in the realm of ROI. It can barely be measured in any marketing metric and attempting to do that will eventually lead to the complete dullness of all campaigns. Keep ROI to short term activation campaigns.
2. (Copywriting) People know what you do, you have to sell them on who you are

I read Cole Schafer’s newsletter Honey Copy every week. Cole is a brilliant copywriter and turns words into playful magic that you can sing in your head. What I learnt from his writing is how he focuses on describing experiences and perceptions of the world more than he talks about himself and what he does. It is quite dull to say ‘I am a writer’ but saying ‘I sit down every week in a dusky bar with my pen and paper to probe words while I sip my glass of whisky’ kind of puts an image in your head of the type of guy writing it is.
3. (Business) Sameness is commercial suicide

People love to benchmark themselves to others. We love it so much that we helped create one of the largest companies in the world (Facebook). The habit transcends itself to business life too as we look for inspiration from what others are doing and try to copy them. The problem is that if you copy someone’s work, you are automatically abandoning the chance of ever being the best. In the best-case scenario, you will end up second best. At worst, the idea will vanish from business journals as people ignore another version of something they have seen. Sameness is commercial suicide.
4. (Marketing) There should not be a divide between brand and performance – the two complement each other

A number of years ago the work of Peter Field and Les Binet revolutionised marketing by showing how brand campaigns are equally or more important than short term activation campaigns. The subsequent years meant a refocus on brand and a fracture ruptured between the two. People started arguing for brand campaigns, others for activation. What was missing was ‘bothism’, as termed by Mark Ritson. Both are necessary for the successful marketing of any company. The brand campaigns (long term) plant the seeds that will eventually turn into trees and bear fruit. Activation (short term) campaigns are there to pick the low hanging fruit.
5. (Productivity) Deep work will become one of the best skills for future talent

As described by Cal Newport in his book, deep work is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. It is a skill that lets you quickly process complicated information and produce better results in less time. In today’s world, we are engulfed in a chaotic frenzy of e-mails and social media, which hinder our way to deep work. One thing that will set future talent apart from others is the ability to get back into the zone of deep work. Cal Newport
6. (Productivity) Career athleticism will also shape future talent

It’s time to face the fact that career progression is not linear. Platforms like Fivver, Task Rabbit are allowing work to be organised in new ways, resulting in a more part-time, distributed, flexible, short-term workforce. Career athleticism will build skills for multiple settings and environments. Building structure out of autonomy, leading through ambiguity, and creating vocation will be essential. The Hill
7. (Marketing) Sadly (and unfairly) to small companies, brand size contributes to around 18% of advertising effectiveness

When one starts the journey to create an advertising campaign it is only natural to start by thinking about what will increase the success of the campaign. Standard choices that come to mind first, such as the channel that the campaign will run on, the precise selection of the target audience, or even how you set your budget between these factors, are not that important. The most important and vastly outweighing other factors is creative execution which will increase your advertising effectiveness 12 fold. And the biggest contributor to advertising effectiveness is brand size and its share in the market which will increase the effectiveness 18 fold.

Fun things to click on:

GyShiDo – the art of getting shit done. 40 animators from around the world collaborated on a 2-minute video called Pass the Ball. Hidreley Diao uses AI to capture what historical figures would look like if they were modern people.

Thanks for reading! If you have any learnings you’d like to share with me, or disagree with any of the ones above then do drop me a message.

Loving this newsletter? Then why not share it with your friends.

Speak soon,

Tom

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SD#11: Placebo effects, productivity and brand purpose

March 27, 2022

Hi friends,

Welcome to the eleventh edition of Seven Dawns, your weekly newsletter on marketing, productivity, psychology and more. As the newsletter is still in it’s infancy I will experiment with the way I send you ideas. Do let me know if you like or dislike something you see.

Our seven ideas this week:

1. (Marketing) If presented with a very good deal for your potential buyers, explain to them why it can be so good (the negatives). People will more likely believe you then

We, as consumers, like a good deal. We go crazy during days where we can snatch a very good deal (black Friday, Amazon days). But when the deal looks too good to be true, we don’t trust it. Where’s the catch? Why is this deal so good? One way marketers can bypass this is by explaining why it is so good or what the company had to sacrifice to make it so good. When Domino’s revamped their whole pizza recipe they admitted that they did it because of all the comments about their pizza tasting like cardboard. While it is tough to admit the negative feedback your product receives, if you do it publicly you will get extra trust as well as an explanation for why you are changing things.
2. (Psychology) Placebo effects might work because they are logical

Placebo effects have been known for centuries, but how and why they work was a bit more of a mystery. For a long period of time placebo effects were considered a sign of failure, as pharmaceutical companies used fake pills in clinical trials to show the effects of real drugs. But if our bodies produce a similar response to the placebo pill as the real drug, then trials can only conclude that they don’t work. We now know that placebos work even if we know that we are getting a ‘fake’ pill. Taking an empty pill can lead to reduced levels of anxiety, depression, pain. But it can’t be all illogical. If your doctor said that he has an extremely effective medicine to cure your cancer and you can take it as many times as you want and you can also choose the flavours of blackcurrant or strawberry, it just wouldn’t sound right. We tend to believe that all things good for us must taste awful. Placebo effects have to follow the regular patterns too.
3. (Copywriting) Numbers don’t move people, storytelling does

Business leaders often go into presentations, showcasing their ideas and arguments and come out baffled why it did not elicit a response from the people they wanted. The issue is that you need someone to be involved in an emotional way to get their buy-in. To move someone using numbers is a gargantuan task. However, humans are all moved by storytelling. People love a good story. Whether the story is in an advert, a local newspaper, a clickbait article, or a recent novel, we are captivated by stories. Find a way to incorporate storytelling into your work that needs a response and watch the results.
4. (Productivity) Productivity is not only about doing more but also about doing what matters

To-do lists can be addictive. I love ticking off tasks on my to-do list. It feels productive, it feels good to go away knowing you completed x number of tasks. Yet despite ticking off loads of tasks during the day, we might feel like we haven’t actually done much. Choosing the tasks we complete can be equally important as making sure we tick them off. Former President Dwight D. Eisenhower developed a time-accountability matrix splitting the tasks that need doing based on importance and urgency (four quadrants). Another productivity method I’ve been using is starting the day by writing down the top 3 tasks for the day that I feel like I need to accomplish by the end of it. If I do them, I can safely say the day was productive. Extra tip, we spoke previously how making a tiny start with a task will make us go back to it.
5. (Business) Market orientation is about understanding your product and serving it to the right audience

Marketing orientation (different from market orientation) is a business approach that can dictate many processes within the organisation. It is usually dictated by upper management and determines how new products are created and then subsequently promoted. Market orientation is one of those approaches. It focuses on analysing the target audience and then looks at innovation to decide what products could satisfy the needs of consumers. Companies like Amazon and Coca-Cola are great examples of this. Jeff Bezos famously wrote to a big sample of his customers in the early days asking what products they would like to see more of. The variety of responses led him to create Amazon the way we know today. On the opposite on of the spectrum is product orientation, where companies improve a product and then look for ways to promote it.
6. (Business) To build a team you need to be clear on business objectives and the environment you are operating in

When faced with hiring decisions, humans tend to look for ways to minimise risk. It is only natural as the decision can be costly, plus make us look like a fool. To step away from those emotions, it is imperative to take a step back and look at the business objectives that you are trying to achieve and what environment you are operating in.
7. (Marketing) Brand purpose cannot be used by every brand in every market

There’s been a lot of talk about brand purpose over the last few years in marketing journals and conferences. A wave of speakers proclaimed that every brand needs brand purpose in this new era of marketing and hoards of business jumped on the bandwagon to ride the wave. Unilever is one of the largest examples. It reached a tipping point earlier this year when a super influential investment analyst Terry Smith told Unilever it has lost its plot because Hellman’s mayonnaise does not need a brand purpose. There’s also been a lot of research into brand purpose and whether it works, with Peter Field’s study in 2021 as one of the most famous examples. But instead of looking at others and what other brands are doing, marketer’s best choice would be to look at their brand and see if such a marketing communication tactic makes sense to them. Review your market, your category and the role your brand plays within it. Review if brand purpose would allow for distinctiveness and differentiation in the space. And then make the decision.

Fun things to click on:

Send your future self a letter; might be a prediction, a goal, or a letter about something that happened today you dont want to forget. This podcast delivers juicy and utterly banal gossip about people you’ll never meet.

Thanks for reading! If you have any learnings you’d like to share with me, or disagree with any of the ones above then do drop me a message.

Loving this newsletter? Then why not share it with your friends.

Speak soon,

Tom

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SD#10: creativity, the tale of two Henry’s and intellectualisation

March 20, 2022

Hi friends,

Welcome to the 10th edition of Seven Dawns. Your weekly newsletter on marketing, productivity, psychology and more. As the newsletter is still in it’s infancy I will try to experiment with the way I send you ideas. Do let me know if you like or dislike one way over another.

Our seven ideas this week:

1. (Marketing) Creativity is a bigger contributor to marketing campaign success than medium/channel

Choosing the channels through which you will reach your target audience is a necessary step in marketing campaign strategy. Marketers like to think that choosing where you will find your audience is often crucial to your campaign success. Research has shown that advertising creativity can have a significantly larger multiplier effect to success than the channel or any other factor (apart from your company’s market share). It is still essential to use several channels, but what they are might be less important than we like to think.
2. (Advertising) Advertising professionals are the least trusted people

According to Ipsos research, advertising executives are the least trusted people by the British population. Less trusted than politicians or estate agents. Reading this as a marketer is daunting. Nurses, librarians and doctors topped the list of the most trusted professions. Marketing professionals being so disliked I believe has slowly led to our profession desperately trying to find ways of making it more honourable sounding, which led to things like brand purpose.
3. (History) The tale of two Henry’s in motor car production

Less than a decade ago, we marked the 150th anniversary of the birth of Henry Ford and Henry Royce. Two men who had a profound impact on motor car production, yet in vastly different ways. Henry Royce was a modest mechanic, who introduced remarkable standards of engineering excellence and the manufacture of internal combustion engines. He was known for relentless perfectionism rather than inventiveness. Henry Ford, on the other hand, developed a simple, economical car at the same time as he pioneered mass production and new manufacturing processes. The fact that by 1927, Rolls-Royce produced almost 8,000 of their most successful Silver Ghost models, and Ford produced over 15 million Model T, yet both companies enjoyed similar success speaks volumes.
4. (Productivity) Make the best thing to do, the easiest to do. Make the worst thing to do, the hardest thing to do

We all want to tick off our tasks quickly and efficiently. One mind trick to do so is to make the best things to do, the easiest. The worst thing to do, the hardest. Want to stop ordering takeaways all the time? Why not delete the apps and make yourself order through the web next time or force yourself to always pick up the food instead of having it delivered. Want to make sure you go for a run early in the morning? Why not prepare all your gear the evening before or, even better, sleep in your running gear? All you will have to do in the morning is get up and run.
5. (Economy) Recessions tend to have a small rebound before going back down

Also known as a double-dip recession or a W-shaped recovery, these types of recessions often have a recovery period that is quickly followed by another recession. Major economic shocks, debt, or new public policies affecting price, employment, or production can often lead to such a second recession. As we enter a period of uncertainty with inflation on the horizon, geopolitical events, and the after-effects of Covid-19, it will remain important to watch for how our economies will recover.
6. (Psychology) Intellectualisation – using reason and intellect to avoid feeling our emotions

Intellectualisation is a defence mechanism during which people use reasoning to distance themselves from emotional challenges at hand. A person who lost their spouse might focus all of their energy on funeral arrangements and logistics instead of acknowledging grief. In some instances, it might be completely fine to put off an emotional burden, but if not addressed over time, they can build up and interfere with our daily lives.
7. (Copywriting) Express your most important idea in the shortest sentence

In a book, article, or essay, filled with long sentences, a short one arrives like a gift. It surprises you. Almost slaps you in the face. Like a gunshot on a dreamy summer afternoon. It would be a mistake to call a short sentence a simple one. Although grammatically simple, they usually have complex ideas or sophisticated concepts. But they also have power due to their brevity and agility. Expressing your most important idea should be short but powerful.

Fun things to click on:

A search tool for weird old books. RhymeZone is like Google for rhyming words, if Google went to the Apply the candor test to meaningless corporate jargon. An 8-year-old slid his handwritten book onto a library shelf, it now has a years-long waitlist. A relaxing, fun, single purpose website with ethereal sounds of water and music.

Thanks for reading! If you have any learnings you’d like to share with me, or disagree with any of the ones above then do drop me a message.

Loving this newsletter? Then why not share it with your friends.

Speak soon,

Tom

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SD#9: simplicity, brand loyalty and creative thoughts

March 13, 2022

Hi friends,

Welcome to the ninth edition of Seven Dawns, your weekly newsletter on marketing, psychology, productivity, and more.

Our seven ideas this week:

1. (Marketing) People choose Brand A over Brand B not because it is better, but because it is more good. Or in other words, it is less likely to be bad. Let’s imagine one day you need to go to Azerbaijan for a business or leisure trip and after the first day, you get food poisoning. Disastrous. The following day you still need to eat and you’re stuck with having to make a choice. On one end of the street, you have a local Azerbaijani restaurant, which didn’t bother with a Google Maps listing yet; while on the other end of the street you have a Subway. The local place could elevate your taste buds to mount Everest levels or it could handcuff you to bed with an even worse food poisoning. With Subway, you know it won’t be the best food in the world, but also you are fairly certain it won’t give you food poisoning. You most likely go with the latter. Most of our purchasing choices are made to find the option that is least likely to be bad.

2. (Psychology) Why is simple so hard to get right? In the words of Steve Jobs “Simple can be harder than complex: you have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.” Leo Tolstoy said, “There is no greatness where there is no simplicity, goodness and truth”. The beauty of simplicity in all areas of life is hard to overstate. There is also an evolutionary reason for it. Our brains are hardwired to make quick decisions and simplicity makes it so much easier for them to do their job. Whether you think of web design, PowerPoint presentations, copywriting or your mobile phone functions, the law of simplicity remains the same. Psychologists even have a word for it. Cognitive fluency – the ease or difficulty of completing a mental task.
3. (Marketing) Loyalty programmes can have a negative impact more often than not. Another revelation from the great work of Byron Sharp and Ehrenberg-Bass Institute. If you look at the source of sales growth, in the majority of companies it derives from new customers and repeat customers. Some marketers believe that keeping a current customer is much easier and cheaper than acquiring a new one and loyalty programmes should be employed. However, the impact of loyalty programmes is often overestimated. They have very little impact on the behaviour of regular customers. You’re mainly rewarding customers who would have bought from you anyway, whereas the real brand growth will come from increasing mental and physical availability of your brand.
4. (Copywriting) Speaking of simplicity, it can also be applied to the art of copywriting. Best writers put big ideas into simple words. That does not mean that the idea is dumbed down. On the contrary, it encourages the reader to find details that were left out. Ernest Hemingway was a Michael Jordan playing on the court against kindergarten pupils when it comes to writing things simple. “The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water” as the old man himself wrote.
5. (Creativity) I’ve written extensively on how we are suffering a creativity crisis in marketing. There are many reasons why I believe that is happening. The fact we’re not giving our brain the space it needs to come up with creative ideas is one of them. David Ogilvy, the advertising genius from the golden era of marketing, did not write a single advertisement in the office and there are good reasons for that. Our best ideas come when we give our brain some space to do what it wants. It might be in the café, in the shower or during a walk. It won’t come confined in an office environment, between four white walls, staring at your computer screen.
6. (Psychology) National Institutes of Health researchers found that we tend to remember some words more than others. Interestingly, this does not depend on how often words appear in written language or if the words were more concrete. Instead, results showed that more memorable words are semantically similar or more often linked to the meanings of other words (words like “pig”, “tank”, and “door” are recalled more often than words like “cat”, “street”, or “stair”).
7. (History) I broke my phone screen a little while ago. I usually keep my phone in the safe place of my right jeans pocket and on that day it rested cosily in the designated pocket. I wish it didn’t. I lifted a small sofa and the sharp edge of its foot navigated its way to hit my phone with intensity the likes of a 7.0 magnitude earthquake would not have seen. The screen shattered, but luckily a nifty repairman was able to bring the phone to life by placing a shiny brand new one for a hefty sum. I’ve recently learned that replaceable parts were only incorporated into our lives from the 19th century. They were popularised by Eli Whitney as he used interchangeable parts to assemble muskets in the first years of the 19th century. Before this time, each gun had to be made by hand and if it broke, one had to go to a skilled craftsman to get it repaired. Interchangeable parts meant that guns could be repaired with a set of new parts within minutes. The invention later spread to other areas of our lives and now gives many items we own a second and third life.

Fun things to click on:

A search tool for weird old books. RhymeZone is like Google for rhyming words, if Google went to the Rhyming Gym and jacked itself up on things like searching via number of syllables, meter, beginning letter, and more.

Thanks for reading! If you have any learnings you’d like to share with me, or disagree with any of the ones above then do drop me a message.

Loving this newsletter? Then why not share it with your friends.

Speak soon,

Tom

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