SD#37: Jargons, data and mimetics
September 25, 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) Based on the premise that “memories generate sales”, research from Ehrenberg-Bass urges B2B marketers to build “wider, fresher networks” by tapping into the power of category entry point Linking brand messages to key buying situations can increase customer acquisition and retention, proving the “accountability” of B2B brand marketing, according to new research from the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute Collaborating with LinkedIn’s B2B Institute, the research suggests brand messaging can become fully customer-centric by focusing on category entry points, the cues customers use to access memories when faced with a buying situation. These cues are both internal, such as motives and emotions, and external, including location and time of day. “Category entry points are not about the brand, they’re about the buyer,” the report’s author Professor Jenni Romaniuk, associate director (international) at the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, tells Marketing Week. To identify the category entry points, Romaniuk suggests considering the different motivators customers consider, from the emotions attached to a purchase and who else is involved in the decision-making process, to timing issues. Marketing Week |
2. (Philosophy) The inability to cope is not always a political problem We have generational trauma. We are living through a global pandemic. We are literally neurodivergent and a minor. We are riddled with climate grief. We are, for one reason or another, unable to cope. There is a strain of discourse that insists an inability to cope in one’s day-to-day life is in almost all cases a political problem or even the primary political problem. By volume, the most examples are on social media. Sometimes it’s an elaborate hypothetical in which asking a disabled person to make alternate arrangements and forgo ordering Instacart groceries for one day of a strike is tantamount to a genocidal program. Capitalism is the reason we sometimes tie our identities to material status objects. Capitalism is the reason we want to be paid for writing. It is capitalism that makes you feel bad that you didn’t learn to bake sourdough during quarantine. When living “under capitalism” becomes a catch-all explanation for what you can’t manage — whether that’s getting on the metaphorical treadmill or stepping off it — it assumes the nature of a complaint to an adjudicating authority. Since capitalism has impressed such impossible conditions on us, we can’t reasonably be expected to deal with it until they improve. But in fact, there is no one to adjudicate between you and capital, no one to say yes, that is too much, let’s reassign this project. There is no political program that will release you from the necessity of doing more than you should have to or feel capable of doing, in politics as in every other part of life. Clare Coffey via Gawker |
3. (Writing) Jargon is like cholesterol – there’s a good kind and a bad kind The fabulous Ann Handley on using jargon: Jargon is like cholesterol—there’s a good kind and a bad kind. Good kind: – When jargon and buzzwords signal belonging to an audience. You understand your audience. You are using insider terms familiar to them. – When jargon is shorthand for a shared mindset. Bad kind: – Jargon that masks incompetence, insecurity. – Jargon that’s “the language of business.” – Time to shouty-cap the same point in a new bullet: THERE IS NO LANGUAGE OF BUSINESS. There is only language people use with other people. – Jargon and buzzwords are the chemical additives of content: You can use them from time to time. One or two used sparingly might help. But add too many of them and the whole thing becomes toxic. Ann Handley |
4. (Data) Data fails more often than you think Consider the case of the infamous Reinhart-Rogoff paper “Growth in a Time of Debt” which contained a major Excel error. Reinhart and Rogoff’s work showed average real economic growth slows (a 0.1% decline) when a country’s debt rises to more than 90% of gross domestic product (GDP) – and this 90% figure was employed repeatedly in political arguments over high-profile austerity measures. However, this 0.1% decline was inaccurate because an Excel formula hadn’t been dragged down properly. After fixing the formula, the 0.1% decrease became a 2.2% increase, completely changing the paper’s conclusion. This error made headlines because of how influential the paper was. According to Google Scholar, it had been cited by more than 4,500 other academic papers. And many of those academic papers were cited by thousands of other academic papers, and so forth. A long chain of ignorance from a single Excel error. Data can also mislead when it describes a subset of what you are actually trying to analyse. Or when that data is derived from a process that changed over time. Or when it’s collected through dubious ways. Of Dollars and Data |
5. (Marketing) Make your messaging appeal to customers by being different and distinctive How do we make our message more attractive and appealing to the end user? This can apply to both visual elements and the messaging itself. We know it’s hard to capture attention in a wildly cluttered environment. The oldest study addressing this was coined the Von Restorff effect. Lists of three-digit letters or numbers were given to the participants, as found here: VEM, AKE, 164, MNH, KLI, PLO. People were asked to recall as much as they could. It was overwhelmingly clear that when provided with lists of letters, it’s the short series of numbers they remember, and vice versa if the three letters were put amidst a series of numbers. Humans notice what is distinctive. Being different and distinctive pays off. Marisa Crimlis-Brown |
6. (Psychology) Mimetic learning is a type of social learning in which we observe the actions of others, and then develop similar behaviours ourselves We all know that children learn through imitation. They observe and then mimic their parents when learning how to speak, perform new motor skills, and interact with others. What you may not know is that mimetic learning is a lifelong process. In adulthood as well, the way we behave is heavily influenced by how others conduct themselves. It continues to happen in our workplace too. The first type of mimetic learning is through learning from a live model. For instance, if you notice a colleague completing a project in a succinct, organised manner, then you may mimic their actions to complete your tasks similarly. Another way that mimetic learning occurs is by observing a verbal instruction model. Rather than directly witnessing the behaviour, your colleague might describe the behaviour so that you can emulate it. With verbal instruction, the framework is provided, but you must learn to adapt your behaviour accordingly. Ness labs |
7. (Career) But mimetic traps can force us to continue on a path that brings us no happiness Brian Timar wrote of his experience of falling into a mimetic trap: “I’ve been a graduate student in physics for almost three years, but I only recently figured out why. I had to tackle a simple question do so ‘Why does this matter?’ I realized that I’d never forced myself to answer this honestly. As Paul Graham has pointed out, these systematic gaps in conversation should raise suspicion — they often indicate when you’re wrong about something important. I was wrong in thinking that my work mattered to me, and I avoided asking myself this question because I knew the answer would be painful. I ended up in physics through stubbornness, and an unusual willingness to suffer for the sake of grades. When multiple people are striving towards a shared goal, they often rank themselves by progress within their peer group. This was my mistake — I swapped an absolute goal (figuring out how bits of nature work) with a relative one (scoring higher on tests than my classmates). Later, when I found myself unhappy, I couldn’t leave without feeling like I’d lost something. That social capital sunk cost was the first part of the trap I found myself in. The second was a positive feedback loop that encouraged me to spend ever-increasing amounts of time on my work. Humans inherit convictions mimetically from each other — we learn what to value by imitating our peers. As my desire to excel academically grew, I spent greater amounts of time in and around the physics department… Although quitting would have made me happier, I felt like I had nowhere to quit to. My tunnel vision left me with few concrete notions of alternative pursuits, and without a destination, I could not seriously contemplate leaving. That’s the mimetic trap in a nutshell: it hurts to leave, and there’s nowhere to go. Brian Timar |
Fun things to click on:
25 and a half ways to get things done by KesselsKramer. Luminous images of space nominated for Astronomy Photographer of the Year. 15 images every investor needs to memorise.
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