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

Written by

Tomas Ausra

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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