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. |
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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.
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Speak soon,
Tom