SD#34: TEA, eSports, persuasive dissent and shamelessness
September 4, 2022
Hi friends,
Welcome to another edition of Seven Dawns, your weekly newsletter on marketing, productivity, psychology and more.
Our seven ideas this week:
1. (Marketing) Making behavioural change easy When marketing goods or services, it’s critical to take any impediments out of the process. We know this of website use – the fewer clicks to purchase, the better – but it’s true of so much more. Psychologist Daniel Kahneman uses a driving analogy to describe behaviour change. He argues that there are two ways to influence behaviour: you can push on the accelerator (boost motivation) or remove the handbrake (remove small barriers). Kahneman argues the most effective way of changing behaviour is often removing the handbrake. So, when looking at your marketing or sales process, what can be changed to make the process simpler for your audience? We see great examples of this with streaming services like Netflix applying the ‘ease principle’ with their ‘autoplay’ function. By automatically playing the next episode, it removes barriers to watching and encourages viewers to continue on their binge spree. Marisa Crimlis-Brown in Sookio |
2. (Productivity) The TEA productivity framework The TEA acronym was coined by entrepreneur Thanh Pham, host of The Productivity Show podcast. After studying many productivity systems, he saw the need for a simpler, more holistic framework, comprised of three key pillars: (1) time, it all starts with the way you manage your schedule, your priorities, and how you invest your time — not only the quantity of time you devote to certain tasks but the quality of this time. For instance, some time investment today may save you lots of time tomorrow. (2) energy, your mind and your body are tools that need fuel. Deep work requires mental and physical energy. No mental and physical fuel, no meaningful productivity. (3) attention, to direct your attention, you need to know what your goals are. Then, you have to sustain your attention by staying focused on the goal and by avoiding distractions. These principles may sound obvious, but it’s easy to get lost in the weeds. Before you start studying complex productivity systems, consider improving the way you manage your time, your energy, and your attention by applying the TEA framework of productivity. Ness Labs |
3. (Marketing) Gaming industry continues to be underutilised by marketers Marco Carreon, VP of brand solutions at Burson Cohn & Wolfe, recently told ClickZ that “Gaming will be central moving into 2023”. The Smartbrief article in which the quote appeared suggests how brands are continuing to enter the gaming space as the sector has grown increasingly through COVID. Back in 2019, I wrote an article about how marketers are incredibly slow to embrace the eSports industry. Only some brands were experimenting within the industry and the examples were few and far between. Lack of knowledge, old stereotypes and internal buy-in have been major challenges to getting marketers to buy into this channel more. One of the ways to achieve that buy-in is to showcase the opportunities that are non-existent elsewhere. If you take Twitch as an example, the platform gives you a chance to see live reactions to the advertisements being played or communicated via influencers. It is a source of organic feedback at a time when other data sources are under increased scrutiny for their validity. Combine that data with analytical tools and you will have a unique source of feedback from the community that will save you thousands of pounds in market research. The highly segmented audience of different games also allows reaching a targeted audience without micro-profiling people through Facebook or Google which gets such a bad reputation for advertisers these days. |
4. (Psychology) Writing as a therapeutic process The research linking writing and health has gained quite a lot of coverage over the last few decades. It’s now a known fact that writing can help us in many ways but it’s always nice to have a reminder. Dr Pennebaker recently reviewed his study from twenty years ago and when looking at early-life trauma, studies revealed that the main issue wasn’t that people experienced the trauma itself, but rather that people who had had any kind of trauma but who kept it secret were those most likely to have a variety of health problems. What was it about secrets that were so toxic? Concealing or holding back powerful emotions, thoughts, and behaviours, was itself stressful. Further, long-term, low-level stress could influence immune function and physical health. If keeping a secret about trauma was unhealthy, it made sense that having people reveal the secret should improve health. In one of the studies students randomly assigned to write about traumas for 4 days, 15 minutes a day, ended up going to the student health centre over the next 6 months at about half the rate of students in the control condition Expressive Writing in Psychological Science |
5. (Marketing) When it comes to marketing return, words can matter just as much as numbers Advertising ROI gets a lot of stick. Professor Tim Ambler from London Business School wants to bury it. Les Binet says using it unwisely will destroy your brand. And even Andrew Willshire, one of the very few outspoken econometricians, says it stinks. But love it or hate it, we can’t live without it. Anyone that regularly talks to CMOs and CFOs knows it. What you get back from what you spend on advertising is something businesses need to know. Or let’s take another measure – cost per acquisition/CPA. When marketers see ‘cost per acquisition’ in Google Analytics or other platforms, many believe it is what it says it is: the cost of acquiring a new customer by spending advertising money on the platform. It is, in fact, nothing of the sort. The dashboards present everyone who clicked on an ad and then went on to buy something as if the sale was caused by that ad. But a large proportion of people who click on online ads were already on their way to buy. Their choice was prompted by an offline ad, a deal, the weather or the economy. This means that ‘cost per acquisition’ is not just a bad label. At best it’s a grave misunderstanding. More likely it’s a flat-out lie. Many marketing metrics need a rework in how we label them. Relabelling isn’t something we should do just for the sake of it, it takes time and commitment, and many of the concepts we use are fine. But for the sake of all the newcomers to come, on something as fundamental as “does it work then?” we really can’t afford to have the labels as problematic as they currently are. Marketing Week |
6. (Psychology) Rules for persuasive dissent It’s hard to be a dissenter. When you question widely accepted beliefs, you tend to experience far more pain than pleasure. People are likely to dismiss your opinions and reject you from future interactions. That’s because groups prefer consensus. They want to have their existing views validated, maintain a predictable environment, and work quickly toward goals. And yet, when you believe that your team or organization is missing something important, moving in the wrong direction, or taking too much risk, you need to speak up. Even if your message isn’t received well in the short term, decisions formed from a diversity of opinions usually lead to better long-term outcomes. Consider Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech. In the three years following it, a mere 33% of Americans approved of the content. But, over time, his public dissent on prevailing views about civil rights for Black Americans, led to big changes in laws and attitudes. By 2011, public approval for the speech jumped to 94%. Harvard Business Review |
7. (Culture) Shamelessness as a strategy The “Shameless” approach is becoming a dominant strategy today. It was first popularized in modern canon by Paris Hilton, who played the “dumb blonde heiress” stereotype so smoothly that everyone assumed she was as stupid as she seemed. Paris didn’t play by the “obvious” rules for famous people. She was widely derided by both media and her peers as at best, a train wreck, and at worst, a self-serving aggrandizer. And yet, people couldn’t stop talking about her. A decade later, Paris is now remembered as the mastermind behind the playbook that’s made the Kardashians, Jenners, and other celebrity socialites so successful. We could see parallels in politics too. People were dismissive of Paris because validating her playbook would mean admitting that they were playing an inferior game. A common critique of shameless people is questioning their intelligence. But one of the most bizarre aspects here is it doesn’t matter how aware that person is of what they’re doing. The concept of a “genius mastermind” is itself outdated, because it assumes that someone needs to be in control. The shameless person is simply a host for a set of ideas, which, like any virus, will continue to propagate as long as there are willing hosts to receive it. Nadia Asparouhova |
Fun things to click on:
100 tips for a better life. A “zero-star hotel” in Switzerland offers sleepless nights to ponder the world’s crises. Mario games teach us that even if something is essentially the same, psychologically it can be completely different.
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