240: Hacking the Human Mind by Richard Shotton & Michaelaaron Flicker

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1. 00:00:00 Alright, Mike. Welcome back. It's a new year. We have turned the calendar page to 26 or you have posted your big new year 2026 calendar on the wall over your right shoulder. I can see it back there.
2. 00:00:17 I'm sure that it's already being populated with many, many things for for the year, but we are back and it is indeed including the thing that you have an action item.
3. 00:00:30 For which is craft and commerce. So are you coming? Okay. I talked to Katie about it. I just want everybody to know. Okay. I want everybody to know as I meander around Mike's very direct question and I don't give him an answer.
4. 00:00:44 I talked to Katie about it because of the action item and the follow up item was to talk to Katie about craft and commerce. Here's the way this conversation went Mike. I said Katie. There's this thing called craft and commerce. I think it'd be really, really cool to go to it. It's an Idaho.
5. 00:00:59 It'd be really, really cool to go. What do you think about this? And she said, when is it? So I told her when it was and I, and we had a little thing. She goes, we need to talk about that later. Let's look at some other things and let's figure out our story.
6. 00:01:13 And that's as far as we made it. But what I'll tell you is I planted the seed for craft and commerce. The right, the realistic thing is I think the only way this is going to happen.
7. 00:01:23 The only way you're going to find me at crafting commerce is if I can make it into like a little mini road trip where the people's, the people's come with me.
8. 00:01:33 So the family comes with me and has a good time in Boise and I don't know if that's going to happen. But what I'll tell you is you have thoroughly piqued my interest.
9. 00:01:42 I want to come and now it's logistics. Now I'm figuring out how do I get there? What does it look like? All those things. So thank you for pushing.
10. 00:01:55 I very much appreciate that. And I'll tell you that we have made progress, but not as much progress as you have wanted me to make.
11. 00:02:04 Yeah, well, I mean, Boise is not a big city. So I think it probably is fairly family friendly, but also I also don't know that there's things I would be like, oh yeah, tell your family to go hang out here while you go to the conference.
12. 00:02:20 That's probably happening. That's the biggest challenge of it is I've got a conference in May. Right, crafting commerce would be in June, and then our July is insane.
13. 00:02:31 So it's like, do we want to sign up for that next next thing? I would say at this point, just so I can set your expectations appropriately, and I don't upset you later on down the road.
14. 00:02:42 There's probably a pretty low chance that I'm going to craft and commerce this year. Okay, fine. Yeah, sorry. You know, it's going to be one of those things that will revisit it, but I'm going to say it's probably not the highest chance this year.
15. 00:02:56 All right, all right. I know, but I will live through you in your spirit. I love their website, though, because it says like, will you broadcast this online? And they're like, no, no, we want this to be an in-person conference.
16. 00:03:09 You know, come, like, and I'm like, I love your honesty. I love the way you dedicate and commit to that. So it's a it's a fantastic conference.
17. 00:03:19 All right, so I may as well go with my second follow up item.
18. 00:03:23 I was supposed to read Bandersnatch, and I did not do that. It is still on my list to read, and the reason why I didn't was because I I've told you about this before.
19. 00:03:33 I'm doing this mini seminary thing, and I realized after our last recording how much I needed to read for the spring semester, I essentially have like an additional book a week.
20. 00:03:46 So in addition to what we do for Bookworm and what I do for class, I have an additional book a week for like the month of January, maybe like into like mid February.
21. 00:03:55 And I was like, well, Bandersnatch is out the window, but it's still on the list. My hope is that it gets there. I'd really like to do it.
22. 00:04:04 But it got it got assumed by Athanasius's on the incarnation. That's that's what took that over.
23. 00:04:12 Bandersnatch sounds more fun. It does. It sounds way, it sounds way more fun.
24. 00:04:17 So Athanasius's book was much very similar like meditations by Marcus Aurelius, where it's like these little writings that they group together and then try to like form headings around.
25. 00:04:28 And I just I don't resonate with that style of writing. So yeah, I don't want it all.
26. 00:04:33 All right. Well, I actually bought Bandersnatch and it came shrink wrapped with two copies. So I have two copies of Bandersnatch.
27. 00:04:42 Any reason why? Like you just randomly got a second copy?
28. 00:04:46 No. Well, I bought it via Amazon, but not from Amazon proper. You know, like they have people who sell through Amazon is the only way that I could find the book.
29. 00:04:56 And yeah, when it showed up, I double check the order. I had one. I ordered one book, but it came shrink wrap with two copies.
30. 00:05:06 So it must just have been something from the place that actually shipped it. I thought, you know, should I send this back?
31. 00:05:13 And I'm like, well, they're going to have to pay for the shipping to get it back. I really don't want to have a two weeks of back and forth figuring out what happened here.
32. 00:05:23 So I'm getting I'm going to gift it to somebody. I was thinking the same thing. Like after you've read enough of it to know it's not terrible, gifted to somebody in.
33. 00:05:32 Yeah. Yeah. So we will spread the Bandersnatch news. Awesome. Fantastic. All right, Mike, you had one follow up item and you already.
34. 00:05:40 Yeah, I crushed it. I read a fiction book, everybody. And we talked at length about this in the pro show. So I won't repeat it all here.
35. 00:05:49 But yeah, I read it. I read it in one day. I enjoyed it and I am reading another fiction book. So Corey has turned me into a fiction reader.
36. 00:05:57 Oh, hold on. I mean, we probably shouldn't go to go that far. But what I will say is he didn't yell at me. So the biggest, my biggest worry was that Mike was going to come back here and he's going to yell at me.
37. 00:06:07 And he's going to be like, Hey, that fiction book you recommended was terrible. And I'm never reading another fiction book again, but he didn't do that.
38. 00:06:13 He did not. He hasn't bought several other fiction books to read instead. And I'm currently reading a second one. So, fantastic.
39. 00:06:23 I am a reader reading fiction. Therefore, Corey has turned me into a fiction reader. Yeah, there you go. I mean, like, we're making progress here, everybody. We're making progress here.
40. 00:06:33 All right, speaking of progress. Let's. Oh, one other one other thing we should mention here in the the follow up section because it doesn't really fit with the book, but we got some feedback about the.
41. 00:06:42 Yeah, the book rating system. So we should. We should address this quickly. I will say that this email that we got was very detailed and I completely agree with the approach and appreciate the intention that went into this.
42. 00:06:59 I'm kind of curious what you think about this.
43. 00:07:01 So I loved it. Now, I won't tell you that I think we should adopt every aspect of it. And just so you know, we're going to talk about this in more detail after Mike and I have had a little bit more time.
44. 00:07:11 To talk on the backside. Kind of, you know, figuring out what we want to do. I'm not going to say we're going to adopt every aspect of it, but I think this makes a ton of sense.
45. 00:07:21 Like I the general, the general premise is basically we're too loosey goosey with the rating system and that we need to be more structured with the rating system, which the answer is absolutely you're absolutely right.
46. 00:07:35 Well, okay, so let's just walk through this quick. There's 10, 10 questions that we propose. We're doing it. Engaging writing, structural clarity, core concept strength, usefulness to an average reader, action ability, memorability, thought provoking quality, evidence and credibility,
47. 00:07:48 recommendability and X factor. And then basically the conversion to the five star ratings was if you got zero to one yes is it's one star two to three yes is it's two stars four to six it's yes is a three star seven to eight four stars nine to ten five stars.
48. 00:08:03 So I appreciate that approach. I do not want to do this. I understand that I'm picking random star values willy nilly out of the digital ether and I'm okay with that.
49. 00:08:15 I like that. I like the fact that I can say everything about this book should be for me and I didn't like it.
50. 00:08:23 You could argue that I should be a little bit more strong in my opinions if I'm going to take that approach because I think it's been a while since I rated anything below a three star.
51. 00:08:32 I just I have trouble saying somebody's work that they put their blood, sweat and tears into is is bad.
52. 00:08:45 So I don't know how you want to approach your star ratings, but I think this is interesting to think about and it maybe will subconsciously move the needle a little bit for me, but I reserve the right to not justify my star rating based on completely how I feel.
53. 00:09:04 The big question that you and I need to talk about behind the scenes is, can you and I do different ratings like styles, different rating mechanisms and are we sure are we okay with doing that?
54. 00:09:16 And then how do we communicate that to the audience and that's that's the biggest one.
55. 00:09:20 Well, I think you can you can use whatever justification you want for how you get to your five star rating, but let's just keep it, you know, one to five stars.
56. 00:09:30 That's our commonality is one to five stars and then, yeah, whenever we get there. I like that. I like that.
57. 00:09:36 There's more there's more to come on this we're we're not done talking about about ratings, but what I want to say is I believe it was Mark sent the email.
58. 00:09:44 If I'm if I remember correctly.
59. 00:09:46 Thank you very much because this sparked us to think about the rating system and I thought that was fun.
60. 00:09:52 I enjoy I enjoy thinking about that. It's also good to hear. We could also we could go the other way. We could go Cisco and Ebert and we could just, you know, thumbs up thumbs down.
61. 00:10:02 I would have to have a middle thumb. Like I would have to have the like, see, that's the thing. I have to thing. Yep. I can't go up or down.
62. 00:10:09 We would make it approximately one episode before Cory would be like, I need something in the middle. I need a half.
63. 00:10:16 It's true. I do need to have them. I do need to have them.
64. 00:10:19 All right, we're going to go ahead and talk about a book. We're going to talk about hacking the human mind.
65. 00:10:24 And it's a behavioral science book applied to marketing and advertising. I was written written by Richard Schotten and Michael Aaron Flicker.
66. 00:10:34 The book is, you know, 200 pages. I don't know about you, Mike, but I thought it was a pretty quick read, pretty easy read.
67. 00:10:42 The way the book breaks down is it breaks into 16 chapters with an introduction and a conclusion.
68. 00:10:50 The chapters are actually structured in a way that there is like a brand or a like a context. And I think they're all brands.
69. 00:11:00 If I'm from America, the got milk one isn't really a brand, but it's milk in general. It's the idea of milk.
70. 00:11:05 So there, there are these 16 brands and then they talk about these behavioral science concepts that are within those. So you can think about just in general, there's about two behavioral science concepts.
71. 00:11:15 There might be three and a couple of the chapters. I don't, I didn't write all those down. So you're looking at like 30 something, you know, between 30 and 40 behavioral science principles that are also highlighted throughout throughout this work.
72. 00:11:29 This is a different style than I was anticipating. Like I had looked at the table of contents, but I really wasn't anticipating it to be.
73. 00:11:39 It's almost like a behavioral science concept book wrapped in a different package, which I wasn't really ready for that. I didn't, I didn't expect that to be this way.
74. 00:11:48 I can't tell you that I didn't like it. It's just a matter of I wasn't really ready for that. But just kind of as I think.
75. 00:11:54 Let's just, let's just call us what this is. This is a marketing book. Yeah, okay. That's valid. Yeah, that's valid. It's written. I mean, the audience, the primary audience is marketers, right? It's like, Hey, if you haven't thought about this concept, use this concept.
76. 00:12:07 If you haven't thought about this concept, use this concept. Or here's what we can learn from, you know, Apple or Hoggendoss or whatever it is.
77. 00:12:13 So as we think about this book, know that going in that like, if you don't care about behavioral science, if you don't care about marketing and applying behavioral science to marketing, you probably shouldn't pick this book up. It's probably not for you.
78. 00:12:29 But I don't know about you. This was a quick read for me. Like, I mean, I just kind of burned through this one. I didn't read it in a day like you did with your with your fiction book. But, but this was a really quick read for me. And I enjoyed it overall.
79. 00:12:43 So what any initial thoughts on it? It is a quick read. I worked with a digital marketing agency. So I am the target market for this book.
80. 00:12:53 But it is definitely a marketing book. It's behavioral science, but also how successful brands have applied that behavioral science to get your potential customer to do what you want to do.
81. 00:13:04 And that I know people are going to have issues with doesn't have to be a sleazy use car salesman type of thing. But just know that going in going in here that that is that is a thing in this book. And I totally get why people have a negative reaction to that, that approach.
82. 00:13:24 It's almost like this isn't what they're doing. But without any sort of caveat, it sort of sets the stage for manipulating manipulating the human decision making process.
83. 00:13:36 I mean, the title doesn't do it any favors hacking the human mind. So we're trying to hack the people who might buy our products and get them to give us their money.
84. 00:13:46 You know, they don't explicitly say that, but that's sort of the vibe. And I think it's a little bit unfair, kind of like the 48 Laws of Power by Robert Green.
85. 00:13:57 I get the same sort of vibe from that. But also, that's not what he's saying either. He's not teaching you how to become a dictator.
86. 00:14:09 But you can interpret it that way if you want. Well, see, and what I like about books like this is I look at these effects or these phenomenon that they're utilizing.
87. 00:14:20 And I say, how have they used that against me? And it helps me to understand, oh, I fell for that. Like, I fell for that. And it makes me like smarter as I move into the next phase of whatever it is.
88. 00:14:32 But then it also can be useful in other ways, too. You know, like, there are things that I want to market to people, not because I want to manipulate or take advantage of them, but because I think it's good and I want them to know and I want them to have that information.
89. 00:14:43 So, yes, like if you come from it as a truly like marketers are evil and they're going to ruin the world, sure, like, yes, like there are some people that are evil and they're going to ruin the world.
90. 00:14:53 But then there's a whole other side of that picture as well that are, you know, how do I not get taken advantage of and then how do I apply this in the right ways.
91. 00:15:01 All right. Without further ado, let's move to the introduction. All right. The introduction is about five guys.
92. 00:15:06 Okay. And what I'm going to do is as I introduce the chapters, I will tell you who the context of it is and then I'll give you a highlight on what the effects were.
93. 00:15:16 You know, so as we work through the chapters, we'll see what the different effects are.
94. 00:15:21 They do not just so as you listen, they do not follow like a rhyme or a reason other than just like, here it is, cool story effect, cool story effect.
95. 00:15:31 Like, so there is no like don't look for a longer thread or any kind of thread other than behavioral science applied to marketing.
96. 00:15:36 So five guys, essentially, five guys is a burger and fries chain started on the East Coast now has, I don't know, I forget the number of locations that they stayed in the book, but it's in the tens of thousands, I think.
97. 00:15:50 If you've ever gone to five guys, like, I can't walk out of five guys and not spend 75 or $80 for, you know, my wife and I and four kids.
98. 00:16:01 It's crazy expensive, but they give you free peanuts. So there you go. There's, there's five guys in a nutshell, burgers and fries.
99. 00:16:09 The, the concepts that are, that are talked about here are goal dilution effect. The be, yeah, so the primarily goal dilution effect is the one in the first one.
100. 00:16:20 And the goal dilution effect is focusing on one and only one product, right, and trying to like really narrow down on that one thing that you care about.
101. 00:16:31 So in the five guys example, it's how did we make the best burger and fries out there? Like, how do we be known for the best burger and fries out there?
102. 00:16:40 And we don't want to do all the other stuff that everybody else is doing. So they, they use that as a way to introduce the concept of the book.
103. 00:16:48 And then they also go into in this chapter, the second concept that I was searching for when I was introducing the chapter was they also talk about a little bit about behavioral science, you know, combines ideas from psychology, sociology, economics, neuroscience.
104. 00:17:00 Basically, it's scientific research and this is what we're going to do. And then they introduced the book to us. So this introduction chapter not only hits five guys, it hits goal dilution effect, but it kind of tells us what they're going to do in the book.
105. 00:17:11 Yeah, and I think that's about everything that you need to say about any of these chapters. So, yeah, we can probably, as we go through these, just here's the brand, here's the effect.
106. 00:17:27 And then maybe we talk about the effects, but the goal dilution effect. Yeah, I think this is pretty simple. It's really people tend to believe a product or service is less effective when it claims to achieve many things.
107. 00:17:36 So five guys is successful because they do. One thing, burgers and fries. And I think that's that's the big takeaway there. Now, again, like all of this is through the lens of marketing. So I think the implicit action item here is when you are telling your story, your brand message, you got to keep it simple.
108. 00:17:58 And no checklists, like no specifics on how to do that. Just, hey, here's a case study, essentially, a mini case study. There was a cool quote from this section that I jotted down there by Daniel Kahneman.
109. 00:18:10 He says, thinking is to humans what swimming is to cats, they can do it, but they prefer not to.
110. 00:18:15 That's hilarious. Yeah, that's hilarious.
111. 00:18:18 So when I was reading this book, I couldn't help but try to apply it to a bunch of different areas of my life and say like, okay, how does goal dilution effect actually manifest in what I do or where I work or church or whatever it might be?
112. 00:18:32 Did you do the same thing? Like, we don't have to talk about it in detail, but like, did you do the same thing where it's like almost immediately turned it back on you or no?
113. 00:18:41 I did not. Maybe that's because I've had experience in the marketing world that that's kind of where I left it. I think you probably could do that.
114. 00:18:51 However, I think depending on the context, there's limited usefulness with that approach. I think there's some context where it just doesn't apply.
115. 00:19:03 And you got to have some skill with discerning what context these concepts can be applied to.
116. 00:19:13 I think they're not as generalizable as a lot of other stuff that we might read.
117. 00:19:18 Alright, you ready to go to chapter one? Yep, let's do it.
118. 00:19:21 Craft mac and cheese. Now, I have no idea where the audience sits on any of these ideas or any of these topics, but craft mac and cheese is a boxed noodle that you put into a pan heated up real quick.
119. 00:19:36 And then when I was growing up, Mike, and I, you know, when you and I were growing up, the cheese was a powder that you put into there and it had the strangest orange color ever.
120. 00:19:49 Like, I mean, it was not a normal, natural, cheesy color. It was like a, it wasn't neon orange, but it wasn't, it wasn't natural orange. Let's just say that it definitely wasn't a natural orange color.
121. 00:20:01 As the years have transpired, it's gotten a little more yellow, I think, right? So it's gone from orange to more yellow, like cheesy.
122. 00:20:08 I don't know. I can't stand this stuff. So we don't have it in our house. Yeah, we don't either. I haven't eaten it in, you know, 20, 30 years, however long it's been.
123. 00:20:15 But what I can tell you is I loved a good craft mac and cheese when I was growing up. So the idea here is craft was trying to figure out a quick and easy kind of meal for busy people.
124. 00:20:29 And I believe they even went as far as to say busy moms, as they were trying to figure out this quick and easy meal for busy moms.
125. 00:20:35 So what they talk about here is that the phenomenon of expectation assimilation in how we expect or we get what we expect to get, right? So we kind of bring these ideas together and we say, oh, I'm looking at a boxed macaroni and cheese.
126. 00:20:50 The bar isn't super high on that, right? Like we're not thinking about like, you know, grandma's Italian noodles. We're thinking about, you know, like, okay, this is coming out of a box. So therefore, I don't want to say we lower our expectations, but we like align them with with what we are.
127. 00:21:06 And I mean, I do this all the time, right? Like, okay, I look at that thing and I'm like, well, it's not the most, you know, expensive thing that's ever existed in the world.
128. 00:21:14 But I'm also not trying to buy the most expensive thing. I'm trying to buy the thing that'll get it done for now, you know, like Harbor Freight. I don't know if you ever shopped at Harbor Freight.
129. 00:21:22 But like, I don't expect this to be the highest quality tools in the world, but they'll get the job done, at least for a little while. So that's one. The other one is, I'm going to have trouble saying this.
130. 00:21:31 Peridolia. Yeah. Peridolia. Okay. And basically, Peridolia is the idea of like, you buy a new car and then you see that car everywhere where you never saw the car before, but then you like, you buy it and you're like, oh, there's a Toyota.
131. 00:21:50 I think that's, I think that's a slightly different effect. So this one is the bias where we see faces in an unlikely places.
132. 00:21:57 Oh, you're right. I'm sorry. I got mixed up. I got mixed up on the peridolia. Yeah, which is kind of the thing on the box is the macaroni makes the smiley face. And so, hey, look, it's friendly.
133. 00:22:07 Yeah. Yeah. Forgive me. Forgive me. I completely, I completely botched that one. So, so those are the two, the two concepts in, in the craft mac and cheese section.
134. 00:22:16 And it's all wrapped in a pretty story about craft mac and cheese. So I don't know, Mike, what do you have? What do you have to say about those two ideas?
135. 00:22:22 Well, the, the first one, the expectation, assimilation, the way that this gets applied in this chapter is craft mac and cheese has been around for a while.
136. 00:22:31 But moms in particular view this as like an easy thing that I can make. It's sort of like comfort food. And so they experience guilt by giving their kids craft mac and cheese because cheese is a powder and not good ingredients, obviously, but I don't have time to cook. So I'm just going to do this.
137. 00:22:48 And they talk about the world's biggest blind taste test where what they did to shift expectations around the quality of the ingredients in craft mac and cheese is they just replace them.
138. 00:22:59 And people continued to eat it. They had healthier ingredients in them, but kind of trade off there is healthy ingredients obviously means it doesn't taste as good.
139. 00:23:06 So they changed the ingredients. Nobody noticed. They didn't tell anybody for several months. And then they said, Hey, by the way, we have healthier ingredients and you didn't even notice you've been eating them for several months, which not the way I would, I would do it, but whatever.
140. 00:23:22 They mentioned that if you have to reveal information that could create negative taste perceptions, do it after customers have had a chance to sample the product. So it's pretty clever.
141. 00:23:30 I think I agree. I don't. I don't think I buy into the paradolia. Like, I just don't see faces, you know, in places and I don't know if like, I see how they use it and advertising.
142. 00:23:44 Yeah. I mean, I'm looking down here at my, my Mac and, you know, the Finder icon has a smiley face in it. Right? Well, that doesn't necessarily draw me to, you know, the Finder icon, the headlights of a passing car.
143. 00:23:57 I don't think they look like a, like a thing. So like, this one didn't get me as much as, as other things.
144. 00:24:04 So yeah, that's, that's fair. I think it probably certain people are more, I was going to say susceptible, but maybe I, I don't know, like they, they experienced that and are maybe more affected by that than, than others, because I'm, I'm the same way where I don't, I don't really care, but I also know people who are like, Hey, look, it's a face.
145. 00:24:20 Yeah. Exactly. Okay. Ready to go to pumpkin spice lattes.
146. 00:24:25 Let's do it. All right. So chapter two is Starbucks pumpkin spice lattes. So pumpkin spice lattes have a history to where they're only offered.
147. 00:24:33 I think it's like September through October or something like that. I forget what the actual dates were on when they're offered, but they're only offered a certain time of the year.
148. 00:24:40 September to November. And, and Starbucks makes a big deal about this, right? Like it's pumpkin spice season. And if you go into the store, I mean, it's just all over the place.
149. 00:24:50 So the principles that they say Starbucks are relying on here are scarcity. The fact that pumpkin spice lattes are not going to be around forever.
150. 00:24:58 You need to get it while it's, while it's here. Right. And, and you, you don't want to miss out, essentially. Now this ties to other principles later on in the book, which is the idea of false scarcity, but we'll get there.
151. 00:25:09 That's way at the end of, at the end of the book. Okay. There's another one that is like habituation. Right. So bitch habituation is basically like, as we form the habit, we think it's like,
152. 00:25:19 I don't know if it, we think it's less interesting or less cool, or we think that the thing is less novel. So therefore, when they pause us from drinking Starbucks pumpkin spice lattes, we then want it more when it comes back in the, in the, you know, fall or whatever.
153. 00:25:36 And the last one is nostalgia in nostalgia is basically like it brings us back to this memory that induces some positive feeling. And these are the concepts that they, they outline around pumpkin spice lattes.
154. 00:25:47 I can tell you that I don't mind a pumpkin spice latte. But by no means do I like, you know, come September or November, am I like, Oh, yes, pumpkin spice.
155. 00:25:59 Amazingness. I can't wait. Now, before I go too hard on poo poo and Starbucks pumpkin spice lattes, Trader Joe's has a pumpkin pancake.
156. 00:26:10 And it uses the, it uses the exact same principles. I would 100% the exact same principles, Mike. It's only around in the fall.
157. 00:26:20 Yeah, it runs out. They sell out of it really fast. And they get me on that every time the pumpkins. Yeah. So it's, it's, it's way beyond everybody has stolen Starbucks marketing strategy with the pumpkin spice stuff.
158. 00:26:36 Yeah, there's pumpkin spice everything. And it's always the same time. And I think another effect here is the nostalgia principle. So that pumpkin flavors is kind of connected in people's minds to holiday get togethers, which I don't like pumpkin either.
159. 00:26:51 So not a big deal to me, but that makes sense to me. I will tell you that I hate pumpkin spice latte season with a fiery passion.
160. 00:27:03 We were at a, we were at a soccer game this fall and was talking to somebody about fancy coffee and one of the parents overheard me talking about it and is like, oh, you know, we go to students point all the time.
161. 00:27:18 Or should I stop by the Ruby cafe? Ruby's the roaster where we did the tour and I was on the web page at one point. So we've talked about it before. And I was like, well, I don't know. It's like really fancy coffee. It's kind of expensive.
162. 00:27:33 I'm like, well, you know, I like good coffee. And I'm like, well, let me put it this way. If you get excited about pumpkin spice lattes, Ruby's not for you.
163. 00:27:44 They were kind of offended by that. That's exactly the thing I thought of you though. I was like, listen, Mike likes fancy, like, well roasted coffee. He does not want pumpkin spice, right? He does not want a bunch of flavoring and chemicals in his coffee.
164. 00:27:58 No, interesting marketing principle though. And one of the things I like about this book is the stories that they tell like they craft these narratives about the brand and they always share some details that I didn't really know. So they talk about the Starbucks being a combination of a Moby Dick character
165. 00:28:16 and an 1800s town, which is kind of cool to see how Starbucks actually got its name and how that influences the maritime style logo and all that kind of stuff. So those little details from the different case studies I really liked.
166. 00:28:33 Yeah. You and I read these books so differently, right? Because you pull out the details from the case studies and I'm more just like grabbing, like, fact about phenomenon, fact about phenomenon. It's so cool to see how differently you and I read these books.
167. 00:28:49 And I'm sure the listeners can tell, right? Like, oh, Mike had a lot of nuance in Corey's really.
168. 00:28:55 All right, let's roll to chapter three. Chapter three is Snickers and Snickers. Again, just in case we have any international people in the audience that may not know or people who aren't familiar with candy bars because I don't know why you're not familiar with candy bars, but you might not be.
169. 00:29:13 It's a, it's a chocolate candy bar with like a nougat inside caramel and then peanuts. And the idea is that Snickers candy bars make you less hungry, right? So the slogan that around Snickers is hungry, why wait?
170. 00:29:32 Right. So it's like, oh, okay, you're hungry. Grab our candy bar and you won't be hungry. And then it talks about in the story, it talks about the fact that they went to a marketing campaign that like shows these people and they're like completely cranky or mad or angry or whatever it is.
171. 00:29:48 And then Snickers, why wait? They get us, they get a candy bar and they turn into a nice, like normal human being again. And like that was one of the, one of the routines that they had in. And I mean, they're still doing this. Like, these are still the marketing campaign for Snickers.
172. 00:30:02 So the, the principles here that they're going to hit on are the intention to action gap and the fact that we often have the intention to do something, but then do we ever make it to action.
173. 00:30:12 So that's the like, why wait point of this. It also ties into the trigger moment where it's like, oh, there's this key idea or this key thing that helps you turn into concrete action.
174. 00:30:23 Okay, and we could tie this into if we had time or if we wanted to take the time, we could tie this into BJ Fogg's work or like a bunch of other things right in terms of how we how we do this.
175. 00:30:34 But we create these cues, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah. Then there's also the thing, I think called the vampire effect, right, where basically you make jokes that are unrelated to the brand and then that can actually backfire on you.
176. 00:30:51 And they can pull you away from from the thing that you actually wanted to show them.
177. 00:30:56 And they would tie this also in with with incongruity. I think they gave a good example of the vampire effect and incongruity, but for the life of me, I don't remember what that example was.
178. 00:31:05 I just remember thinking, oh, the vampire effect. I've experienced that before. I, and I agree it pulls you completely out of it.
179. 00:31:12 Yeah, I can't remember what the, the example was there, but the vampire effect just sounds weird. Yeah, it does. It does. The intention to action gap.
180. 00:31:26 That's the big principle that I liked from this where we often feel take action despite our intention to do so and that's kind of at the heart of the you're not you when you're hungry ads because we know we should eat something.
181. 00:31:39 We don't eat something. And so kind of the brilliance of those ads is that it's going to instantly fix things when you have a Snickers bar.
182. 00:31:48 I will say that is that I understand the effectiveness of their current, their current advertising. However, the best Snickers ad of all time does not fit into this category. Okay. I put a link in the, the show notes, but there was this, this ad from, I don't even know how long ago where there's people dressed up as Vikings and they're like at a gas station, getting food.
183. 00:32:14 And as they fill up their car with gas and someone has a Snickers, he's got like a toga and like leaf crown on his head. Snickers is like sound the feasting horn and then the Viking in the background was like, and then as he brings the horn down.
184. 00:32:28 He knocks the Snickers bar out of the guy's hand onto the ground. It's like the feast is ruined.
185. 00:32:37 I can't do it ever so much. I can't do it ever so good. So good, so good laugh every time I see it.
186. 00:32:45 But yeah, again, like the thing I like about this chapter is something to do with the principles. It's really about how Snickers was started by Frank and Ethel Mars in 1930 and named after their favorite race horse that had recently passed away.
187. 00:33:02 It's really wild that I never, never would have, you know, heard anywhere else. Yeah.
188. 00:33:07 Yeah, it's really wild. Okay, I'm ready to move on from Snickers.
189. 00:33:11 All right, let's do it.
190. 00:33:12 All right. So chapter four is Apple. They hit on Apple back in the iPod days. So they go back to the iPod and it's a thousand songs in your pocket.
191. 00:33:23 And that was the message that Apple came out with because at the time there were still compact discs and there were these other players that had really bad storage.
192. 00:33:34 But Apple came out and said, "Hey, we're going to put a thousand songs in your pocket." And the principle here is called concreteness.
193. 00:33:40 And it's idea that we recall concrete things. So when people thought of the iPod, they thought of songs in their pocket.
194. 00:33:46 Yeah, so did you ever have a non-Apple branded MP3 player prior to the iPod coming out? Okay, so this probably was effective for you.
195. 00:33:56 I was kind of curious if this makes sense to people who had never grew up with the Zunes or whatever.
196. 00:34:02 That's what I had. I had a Zune of one point and then you got the iPod and you just realized how much better it was.
197. 00:34:09 It was just unbelievably better than the other technologies that were out there. So then the next principle they'll come in is what they call a fluent device.
198. 00:34:21 And it describes a fictitious character or characters created by the brand to use as the primary vehicle across the campaign.
199. 00:34:29 So this would be the Geico Gecko or Tony the Tiger or something like that. Now, I don't remember how they connected Apple with the fluent device.
200. 00:34:40 Do you remember how they did it? Was it the people dancing around with it?
201. 00:34:44 Yeah, it was just the outline of the people with the white earbuds dangling from their ears, but you couldn't see their faces. It was just the illustrations.
202. 00:34:53 I hated that marketing campaign. I did too. I hated it. I was like, "Oh, these are so terrible. I can't stand this."
203. 00:35:02 But I like other ones. So this idea of the fluent device actually makes sense is when you see that character, you're like, "Oh, it's going to be an ad for whatever it might be."
204. 00:35:11 And then the last principle that they'll talk about here is the idea of optimal newness that basically we're trying to figure out what is the closest thing that...
205. 00:35:24 What is the Maya, the most advanced yet acceptable?
206. 00:35:27 Yeah. The thing people understand, the thing that they can use, the thing that they're fluent with, but it pushes them to the next edge.
207. 00:35:33 And I think this is how we tie into modern-day Apple is essentially the iPhone, the most popular Apple product that they have.
208. 00:35:44 It doesn't dramatically change every year when they do this, but they try to push certain things forward.
209. 00:35:51 So the biggest one I can think of right now would be Touch ID to Face ID.
210. 00:35:57 It's still the phone. It's just a new way to get into the phone that's a new feature.
211. 00:36:02 And I think this principle, the most advanced yet acceptable is really, really key, because if they change too much, everybody loses their mind.
212. 00:36:11 Everybody's like, "What? My phone is completely different, and you ruined me."
213. 00:36:15 And whether it's Google or Apple or whoever's making the big change.
214. 00:36:19 So these were the core principles that I pulled out of the Apple chapter.
215. 00:36:24 Well, the thing about the most advanced yet acceptable, I feel like the application of this is when you have some breakthrough technology
216. 00:36:36 and you have to connect it back to something that people are already familiar with.
217. 00:36:40 I wouldn't use the feature for that. I think it really fits new technology categories.
218. 00:36:49 So the example they share in the book is Thomas Edison inventing the light bulb, where it had about the same brightness as a gas lamp,
219. 00:36:56 which is what people were familiar with.
220. 00:36:58 So because people had these gas lamps with these shades, they had shades on the electric lights.
221. 00:37:03 It wasn't necessary, but it just helped connect the dots for people's brains.
222. 00:37:08 I feel like that's kind of what's missing in a lot of ways with AI right now is there are some early adopters who are like,
223. 00:37:18 "Yeah, I'm going to jump in and figure all this stuff out," and they like it because it's new and shiny,
224. 00:37:22 but most people are like, "I have no context, no reference point for any of this, and so I'm wary of it."
225. 00:37:31 And again, this is the thing with the book.
226. 00:37:34 It's really, if you're a marketer and you have something that's new, you've got to figure out a way to tie it back.
227. 00:37:40 The right thing at the wrong time is the wrong thing.
228. 00:37:43 There's some point within the Apple example here, the Newton, which was like a palm pilot or precursor to the iPad,
229. 00:37:52 which actually was pretty technologically impressive, the way it recognized your handwriting and all that stuff,
230. 00:37:57 but people had no context for it, and Apple's like, "Here's this thing," and they're like, "I don't want this thing."
231. 00:38:03 People would want it now, you know, that tablets are a thing now, but back then, they couldn't connect the dots.
232. 00:38:10 They couldn't see how it would actually benefit their lives, and that's the challenge as a marketer,
233. 00:38:16 as a brand trying to get your message out there.
234. 00:38:19 All right, let's go to chapter five, Amazon Prime or Costco or Sam's Club,
235. 00:38:27 or anybody that actually has you tie into this kind of subscription model.
236. 00:38:32 So in this situation, they're talking about Amazon Prime and the fact that you pay this fee up front,
237. 00:38:38 right? So you've paid this membership fee or whatever you want to call it,
238. 00:38:42 and now the core principle that they bring in is -- oh, sorry, I should talk about Amazon Prime first.
239. 00:38:47 So Amazon Prime gets you free shipping, faster delivery, yada, yada, yada.
240. 00:38:51 There's all these benefits. It gets you prime video, it gets you something with Kindle, I don't remember what it is.
241. 00:38:57 It gets you music, but it's a very terrible form of Amazon music.
242. 00:39:01 So there's all these things that you buy into, and a lot of places have this.
243. 00:39:06 But the core principle that they bring out here is the sunk cost fallacy.
244. 00:39:10 It's like, oh, well, I should buy from Amazon because I've already paid the membership fee.
245. 00:39:16 And, you know, so therefore, I've already sunk some money into this,
246. 00:39:19 and therefore, is it the best price? Doesn't matter. I should buy from there because I've already paid the membership fee.
247. 00:39:24 The second principle that they'll bring out in this one is called charm pricing,
248. 00:39:28 which is basically where you like end the price in like a nine.
249. 00:39:32 So instead of it being $135, it's $134.99.
250. 00:39:37 So I don't know, Mike, I think it's been a while since you bought a house, but like, if you look at houses,
251. 00:39:42 they'll do this a lot with real estate where, oh, we want to sell our house for $500,000.
252. 00:39:47 So what do we list it at? We list it at $4.99, $9.99, because then it doesn't, you know, the searching mechanism,
253. 00:39:53 and it seems like a smaller number, even though it's really just $1 off of $500,000.
254. 00:39:58 So these are the two core principles that they bring out in the Amazon Prime.
255. 00:40:03 I don't really have a lot to say on this one. I don't know if you do or not, but I'm ready to roll.
256. 00:40:08 All right. Yeah, the charm pricing is interesting, although I'm not sure.
257. 00:40:14 I've heard some statistic that actually the numbers that end in sevens are the most effective.
258. 00:40:20 I have no idea what the difference is, but I think there probably is something to that.
259. 00:40:28 And I definitely am that Amazon user who's like, "Well, let's see if we can get it there first."
260. 00:40:33 Most of the books I buy are from Amazon for that specific reason, because the difference is a lot of times,
261. 00:40:41 for books, you know, I hear someone recommend a book and if I don't buy it immediately, I forget about it and I don't buy it.
262. 00:40:47 So I've just developed this habit that if someone I respect recommends a book, I'm going to buy it on the spot.
263. 00:40:52 And then at that point, I want minimal friction involved in the process.
264. 00:40:57 So getting it anywhere else is just not even an option because it's way more of a pain.
265. 00:41:04 And they do a good job. I feel like their latest thing is when you're looking at stuff, you know,
266. 00:41:10 "Do you want to bundle this with your upcoming delivery?" Like, "Oh, I could just squeeze this in before it leaves."
267. 00:41:18 Okay, you know, they're masters of this.
268. 00:41:21 The fact that they've trained me to only like to never expect anything to take longer than two days,
269. 00:41:27 like that's the problem is like waiting for anything now is like a challenge for me.
270. 00:41:31 It's like, "Oh, it should only take two days because Amazon only takes roughly two days for pretty much everything."
271. 00:41:37 All right. Now, this was the first chapter six is the first brand that I was completely unaware of.
272. 00:41:44 I don't know if you knew of this brand, Mike, but I did not. It's Aperol. Aperol. A P-E-R.
273. 00:41:52 I don't drink, so this isn't for me.
274. 00:41:54 Yeah, no, I had no idea, right? It basically is an alcohol or a liquor brand, right, that, you know, was...
275. 00:42:04 They wanted to increase its dominance in the market, I guess, if you will.
276. 00:42:10 So the principles behind this were social proof. Basically, what they wanted to do is they wanted to show this drink.
277. 00:42:16 And if I'm remembering, Mike, correct me if I'm wrong, this was like the orange. It's like super orange, isn't it?
278. 00:42:21 Yeah, that's the distinctive color, which they say creates social proof when you see this all over the place.
279. 00:42:29 And they had a special glass for it, so it's like if you saw people with the special glass, with this orange drink in it, everybody knew like that's what it was.
280. 00:42:38 And then the other principle, so that's the social proof principle, and then the other one was averted gaze, right, that...
281. 00:42:46 The way I have it defined is if the purchase or use of the product is invisible, you need to make it more visible.
282. 00:42:51 So you need to get people to like avert their gaze and see this thing.
283. 00:42:54 There are tricks to getting people to do that, and these two ideas kind of come together is how do we get people to look at our thing, and then how do we make them feel like they're missing out because they're not doing it?
284. 00:43:05 Or, you know, this is cool because so-and-so is doing it.
285. 00:43:09 And you see this all over the place with a bunch of different products.
286. 00:43:13 Feeding the FOMO.
287. 00:43:14 Yep.
288. 00:43:15 Feeding the FOMO.
289. 00:43:16 Yeah, like I said, I don't drink, so I'm not familiar with this product at all, so this was the one that I carried the least about.
290. 00:43:23 Like I read it and it was like, okay, whatever, right, like social proof, averted gaze.
291. 00:43:27 Yeah.
292. 00:43:28 Okay, Hagen-Daz.
293. 00:43:29 So chapter seven is Hagen-Daz, and this one might have caught me the most off guard and like got me because I had never even thought about the fact that you would just make up a foreign brand just to make your products sound cooler.
294. 00:43:44 This, yeah, I don't like that they included this one. I mean, if your goal is to talk about marketing in a way that does not make all marketers seem like sleazy people who all they care about is making a buck.
295. 00:43:56 You should not include a case study on someone who just picks a random country and picks a word in order to manipulate people to buy something that they wouldn't have bought otherwise.
296. 00:44:07 Like, this is so, this is so, I can't think of another word besides sleazy, like, deceitful, I don't know.
297. 00:44:16 Like, if you're from Denmark, go ahead, like use the term, but don't just choose Denmark as the country of origin because it's the only country that saved the Jews during World War II.
298. 00:44:26 No.
299. 00:44:27 I mean, so Hagen-Daz just so everybody's aware, it's an ice cream brand. They've been around for a very, very long time. They were trying to become more popular.
300. 00:44:38 So they picked a country, they made up some words, and they said we are Hagen-Daz, right? We are the premium luxury ice cream brand Hagen-Daz.
301. 00:44:50 So the idea is the core principle around this is foreign branding. Like, what do we do? We want to seem different than we are.
302. 00:44:58 So we put a, you know, we put a foreign name to it, right? Like, in, okay, like, I guess, I just, I would never think to do this.
303. 00:45:07 Well, see, that's the thing is like, I don't think that's the big takeaway. That's the case study that they chose, which is weird to me.
304. 00:45:15 But, the larger point is that language acts as a lens for how we interpret things.
305. 00:45:20 So if you are from that country, lean into it. Yeah, go for it. That's cool.
306. 00:45:26 I liked the, they share the Japanese definition of Atari, means to hit the target. Like, that's cool.
307. 00:45:37 And I, I like that as a someone who grew up in the, the 80s and was fascinated by the, the Atari.
308. 00:45:45 I feel like I can make that, that connection there. But when the whole basis for what they're talking about in the chapter is someone who literally just pulled some words out of the air to make it seem like they were from this place.
309. 00:46:04 And they go as far as to say, your job as a marketer is to pick the language that creates the most positive interpretation.
310. 00:46:13 And what I'll tell you is like, I agree with your job as a marketer is to tell the truth and create a value proposition that your ideal customer is willing to trade for.
311. 00:46:24 It is not to get somebody to be convinced to be a customer and give you money so they can buy your overpriced ice cream.
312. 00:46:32 They will never eat agandaz again.
313. 00:46:34 They went too far because like you just pick the language. It's like, oh, well, what language do we want to use this language? Right? Like, that seems like a cool, like good language.
314. 00:46:41 Anyhow, so we're going to get off our soapbox here. We're going to move on to, on to the next one.
315. 00:46:46 But I, that was a very interesting chapter to me. I was kind of taken aback when that, when that happened.
316. 00:46:53 Okay, the next chapter, chapter eight is going to be Red Bull. So Red Bull is an energy drink. The story behind Red Bull was they were trying to come into the market with a, I'm trying to remember, was it like a soda competitor or a coffee.
317. 00:47:09 So in 1982, Dietrich Matasich, I don't know how to say his name, had what is called a crotting dang, a non-carbonated blend of caffeine, sugar, taurine and B vitamins that was a favorite among Thai workers.
318. 00:47:23 And he's like, this is amazing. So they rebranded it to Red Bull in order to appeal to a global audience. And I think that makes sense.
319. 00:47:33 And, and side note, complete tangent. I can't stand the name Red Bull. I've never liked it. Like, I've never liked the slogan, Red Bull gives you wings.
320. 00:47:42 I've never, so you got this energy drink. And sure, it's very popular, especially in sporting, extreme sports, those kind of things. I mean, it's become very, very popular.
321. 00:47:52 They, they advertise all over the place. They sponsor really crazy things like people jumping out of, you know, space balloons and, you know, skydiving off mountains or whatever.
322. 00:48:03 They also do a thing, Mike, I have to, I really hope you know this. Are you familiar with Flutehagen? The Red Bull Flutehagen? Okay.
323. 00:48:11 So they will create man powered machines that they launch off a platform and they have to glide as far as they can before they crash into the water.
324. 00:48:22 Okay. And that's the whole event. Like, like, it's just people running their man powered machines or like peddling them or whatever it is.
325. 00:48:30 And then trying to glide as far as they can off of that. They also do soapbox races. So like, I mean, I love some of the stuff Red Bull does. It's fantastic.
326. 00:48:38 But okay, the principles behind Red Bull, price relativity. So what they were competing is, is people had an expectation for energy in cans and how do they come in at a higher price point.
327. 00:48:50 So what they did was they changed the shape of the can, right? So the fact that we didn't have that relative, oh, a soda, which looks like this sort of a can, you know, however tall it is and however round it is.
328. 00:49:00 We want to do a skinny or taller can. And then because we did that, we can adjust the price and we can change people's conception of what that would be.
329. 00:49:08 And then the next one was cost signaling, right? That we offer this or we give you this for a higher price, which means it's better.
330. 00:49:18 And it's this idea of the more expensive, the better. So these were the two principles that they highlighted here in the Red Bull chapter, which I think are legitimate principles.
331. 00:49:26 And I can see how I've fallen for that sometimes or how companies have tried to use that at different times.
332. 00:49:32 Yeah, I actually like the marketing and the advertising for Red Bull. Red Bull just isn't my thing. I've had Red Bull exactly once and that was when I needed to pull an all-nighter in college and get a paper done.
333. 00:49:43 And I'm not, I don't like energy drinks. So if this is not for me, but I think what they do with it is pretty brilliant and I don't think it's deception like Hagan Daz, so whatever.
334. 00:50:00 Okay, so we go from energy drinks to beer. So the next one is Guinness and Guinness is a European beer for the life of me. I think it's Irish, if I'm remembering correct.
335. 00:50:17 And basically the two principles around this are the Prattfall effect. And basically, if we admit a flaw that people will find it more appealing. So if we come out and we admit that there's this thing that is wrong, then people will kind of come to us and say like, Oh, we understand.
336. 00:50:37 You admitted that thing, which they then tie into another principle called the stolen thunder technique and they tie this into law lawyers and in a trial where it's if you admit the thing that you would expect people to know, you're stealing the thunder of them finding out like, Oh, ha ha, we got you.
337. 00:50:55 It's like, no, no, you admitted it. And then you move forward. And there's this positive perception of that of that evidence that should have gotten you, but it didn't like you knew it and you admitted to it.
338. 00:51:06 I can't remember how Guinness did this at all. Like I did not write down the details of like why Guinness was the connection here. So hopefully you did.
339. 00:51:15 Well, the potential downside, they say of again is that it takes almost two minutes to pour, but they lean into it with good things come to those who wait.
340. 00:51:24 I think that's a stretch to apply it to this principle, to be honest, waiting two minutes for your beer is not a big deal. Maybe it is to some people, but I feel like this is the wrong case study to use to communicate this.
341. 00:51:45 This prep, prep fall effect. I don't have another one off the top of my head, though. That's better. That's the thing.
342. 00:51:54 Well, and I guess it was so unremarkable. I didn't even remember it like at all, you know.
343. 00:52:01 Yeah. Trying to think. So I think I probably have something like this on my life HQ page, by the way, because people ask about whether life HQ, they can use it on a mobile device and the technical answer is yes, but in the FAQ, I basically say, no, you shouldn't.
344. 00:52:22 Because all of the workflows are built for the desktop. Now, people don't read websites anyway, but I think something like that is a better example.
345. 00:52:37 I wish I had another popular example that I could use here. Maybe I'm off my rocker. Again, I don't drink, but does waiting two minutes for a drink? Is that a big deal to some people? Are you picking a beer based on how quickly you can get it out of the tap when you actually get the bartender's attention? I don't think so.
346. 00:52:56 I don't know. Obviously, there's something there else they wouldn't have put it in, but I can't. You're not going to get a beer like this from a tap in a convenience store.
347. 00:53:07 It's not like Italy with the cappuccinos where you just down one and you're on your way. Yeah. I agreed.
348. 00:53:15 Okay, you ready to move to 10? Chapter 10? Yeah. All right. So for those who follow along, there's 16 of these, so we're getting through it. Liquid death.
349. 00:53:26 Okay. I said I didn't like Red Bull. I loathe. And I have always loathe the brand name Liquid Death drives me baddie.
350. 00:53:40 I don't like their art on the cans. I don't like the name of their product. I don't like it is. And for those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about when I say Liquid Death, it's water.
351. 00:53:53 It's water in a can. So they sell water in a can. They call it Liquid Death. There's a whole backstory about why they called it what that was. They wanted to be more edgy. They wanted to do all this stuff.
352. 00:54:07 Well, let me tell that because I think that's fascinating. So Mike Cesario was at the 2009 warp tour and he found that all the bands that were playing their punk rock bands were drinking water from monster cans because no one wants to be the sissy who's drinking water,
353. 00:54:27 though they knew they needed water, not monster in order to do what they needed to do. So that got him thinking like, well, what if we made water acceptable for this group to drink?
354. 00:54:41 And he mentions punk rock branding is different than every other brand out there that's kind of inherent in the nature. I'm not punk rockers. So correct me if I'm wrong here, but you want to be different. You want to stand out.
355. 00:54:53 So that's where the name Liquid Death comes from. Now, I agree. You know, just seeing it in the grocery store or the convenience store. I'm like, that is stupid. However, having now, having heard the story behind it, I'm like, that's genius. You go guy.
356. 00:55:10 I think it's cool. I'm not going to drink it. You know, I'm not the target market, but all of the stuff that he talks about where like the VON restore effect, which is the fact that we recall what's distinctive. The cans look like beer cans.
357. 00:55:25 The red sneaker effect where nonconformity when nonconformity signal status. I mean, that is, you know, the punk rock thing that he's talking about.
358. 00:55:35 I mean, if your whole thing is nonconformity and you want to pick commodity like water, I think that's that's incredible. Could you pick a more boring product to try to take that approach with? Yes.
359. 00:55:50 I mean, it's it's brilliant. I kind of kind of surprised that it worked as well as it did. But I mean, yeah, I think it's I think it's a cool case study at least.
360. 00:56:02 Yeah. So the last one in this chapter is called the mere exposure effect. And it's basically this idea of you create like a profile, you know, of what would liquid death do? That's the, that's the quote.
361. 00:56:14 And we have a preference for things by becoming familiar with them. So, you know, there's this idea of, you know, as the more we're exposed to something, the more we think about like, oh, how that thing would do, do something the, the more attached we are to it.
362. 00:56:28 Yeah. Let's go to Dyson. Dyson is a premium premium high end vacuum cleaner. And then they've also gone into fans. So just normal like blow wind around or blow air around fans.
363. 00:56:47 So they, they, they talked about the relentless engineering and how like how much detail they went into designing this thing and all that stuff. So 15 years and 5127 prototypes.
364. 00:57:02 So, so this gets into the idea of the illusion of effort. Like we worked so hard to develop this vacuum cleaner. And because of that, we can charge you with so much so much more money and it's so much more of an effective thing.
365. 00:57:15 And the one that I thought was interesting in this one was the fact that you could see it like they were the first one of the first ones to come out with the clear catch, you know, for all the dust and dirt where before you just go into a bag and go into like a paper bag in the vacuum.
366. 00:57:28 And the idea of you're seeing the dirt being pulled up out of the carpet and you're watching it swirl around in that in the vacuum cleaner, which I think these are, these are really interesting principles.
367. 00:57:38 And worry about this because it's an illusion of effort. Right. So, yes, like I can put in 15,000 prototypes and have a product flop. And all I did was work really, really hard for nothing. So like be careful of that.
368. 00:57:52 The other one, the last principle that they, they tend to hear is monadic testing and it's basically like we're just going to continue to test this and we're going to split people into groups and test and split people into groups and test.
369. 00:58:04 And I think that companies are doing this all over the place now that they're, they're switching us, they're flipping us their, they're putting us into these groups and they're showing us things in different orders and they're, especially online.
370. 00:58:14 Like I think this is more easy to do online.
371. 00:58:17 But there, these are the principles around Dyson is this engineering the effort and then the testing the constant testing.
372. 00:58:26 So the illusion of effort, I think that's the one that's worth discussing because that is, that exists in business too.
373. 00:58:37 There's a quote I can't recall who actually said it, but it was something like, you know, they, they came and they, the consultant shows up, turns a screw sends the invoice for $10,000.
374. 00:58:51 And the company's IRA is like, we paid you $10,000 to turn a screw.
375. 00:58:56 He's like, no, you paid me a dollar to turn the screw.
376. 00:58:58 You paid me the rest for knowing which screw to turn.
377. 00:59:01 Yeah, it was, it was another one is Picasso drawing the sketch on the napkin and charging the people a bunch of money for it.
378. 00:59:07 Yeah.
379. 00:59:09 He also, or they actually talk about AI in, in this chapter as well, which I think that's interesting and there's a couple different parallels here. It's not 100% clean application, but using AI can make things fall short of that illusion of effort at people's minds.
380. 00:59:25 I think it can be interpreted the other way too though, like using AI and whatever I get back from it is insanely valuable because AI did it.
381. 00:59:35 So the illusion of effort, I think the, the big takeaway from that is the value that you get from something really should not be connected to how much effort went into it.
382. 00:59:47 You need to be able to understand the value of something purely for what it is and what problem it solves, but bringing AI into it kind of adds another dimension because that's the, the hot tool that people are going to try to use to solve every problem that they can.
383. 01:00:04 That they can under the sun. And, yeah, I think still early days with AI, obviously, but it's, it's interesting. You know, I think that there's a lot of value that can be created by someone who knows how to use AI in a specific way.
384. 01:00:25 And there are certain things that AI cannot replicate. And so the, the big thing there is going to be identifying what is actually valuable with these technological tools that we have access to.
385. 01:00:38 And again, that kind of loosely ties back to the illusion of effort, but not real cleanly that that's where my mind went though and how it got my wheels turning.
386. 01:00:47 Nice. Nice. All right. So chapter 12, we're going to go to Facebook. And I feel like you can't talk about Facebook without talking about them manipulating you.
387. 01:00:58 Maybe that's just my bias, but we quickly get into the dopamine idea and kind of where Facebook started and how it evolved and then the big flip in the whole system was the like button.
388. 01:01:10 And as soon as the light button entered the, entered the thing, now we get this dopamine system. It's like, I post something and how many likes do I get? And do I get likes from the right people?
389. 01:01:18 And I'm waiting for the first principle they call out here is the uncertain rewards.
390. 01:01:23 We're motivated to behave in a particular way when we're not sure what the reward is. And this ties into a concept. And I can't remember, I think you and I read it. I can't remember if you and I read it or not.
391. 01:01:33 But did we read a Michael Easter book about the gambling and the casinos and how the slot machines do uncertain rewards? And that's why I had a Michael Easter book, but I can't remember which one it was.
392. 01:01:44 I'm almost positive. It was in that it was in that book. But basically he talks about the fact that that's how slot machines work is this uncertain reward thing keeps you pulling the handle keeps you pulling the handle is at any given time, I might hit big at any given
393. 01:01:57 time, I might go viral, you know, whatever it is. So then they talk about a regret lottery. I thought the regret lottery was really, really interesting that it's basically you only get a prize if you meet certain criteria, like making a purchase or liking
394. 01:02:14 and sharing or whatever it is. And you don't want to miss out on that. So you don't want to have regret that you could have won. Oh, but you didn't do the things that made it possible for you to win.
395. 01:02:26 And then the last principle that they would call it is here is make it easy. That basically we need to make all of these systems to have the least effort possible for us to continue on.
396. 01:02:38 And I believe the example on this one was continuous scroll. The idea that we could just keep flicking that thumb up, keep flicking that thumb up and it would just keep feeding things and just keep feeding things to us on social media.
397. 01:02:50 I never am a fan of Facebook. Like I just didn't like the whole premise of this chapter. I get a negative kind of connotation anytime Facebook comes up, even though I think we can learn a lot from them.
398. 01:03:04 I just think it's a struggle for me.
399. 01:03:07 Yep, this is a Nikki chapter. Yeah, so the creation of the like button, that's the really significant event that happened here.
400. 01:03:19 I would encourage everyone if you have not watched it yet to watch the social dilemma. I think it's free at this point.
401. 01:03:25 And it's a whole bunch of people who were involved with the creation of these social media networks, basically now saying what we did was terrible and we would never have done it if we knew we were letting the cat out of the bag.
402. 01:03:36 Not that, you know, I'm on social media. I build my greater business on social media. So it's not that the stuff is evil and you shouldn't touch it with a 10 foot pole, but it's you should go into it with your eyes open and recognize that the system is working against you.
403. 01:03:53 And yeah, the fact that they're working so hard to engineer that system is kind of creepy.
404. 01:03:59 Yes it is. Yes it is. 13.
405. 01:04:03 Aperol was the one I was completely unfamiliar with.
406. 01:04:05 Klarna was probably the next one that I had a little less familiar with, but it's a payment processor.
407. 01:04:11 So Klarna takes payments and then I know they'll do like interest free plans or, you know, pay overtime type plans.
408. 01:04:20 I don't really remember much of the context of Klarna beyond that other than it had to deal with pricing and taking funds and, you know, payment processing for folks.
409. 01:04:30 Yeah, I mean, that's basically it that we tend to value things stronger when the payoff is right now instead of in the future.
410. 01:04:39 So they let you defer payments and split them up, making customers less price sensitive.
411. 01:04:43 And then like, just give me your money. I mean, I've probably used Klarna at some point in the past.
412. 01:04:52 So it's not, I don't have anything against them specifically, but I kind of wish that this didn't need to exist.
413. 01:04:58 Yep, the two, the two principles that they come, they offer here are the present bias.
414. 01:05:04 We tend to give stronger weight to payoffs and the here and now rather than equivalent or higher payoffs in the future and then temporal reframing or they call it the pennies a day effect.
415. 01:05:12 Your customers have a strong tendency to place undue importance on the headline number, neglecting that they might.
416. 01:05:17 And I see this all the time when I teach students about mortgages that they look at that number and then when you throw in interest rates on top of that, they are just shocked.
417. 01:05:28 They're like, oh my gosh, I'm paying, I would end up paying $150,000 more.
418. 01:05:33 And I'm like, yes, like that is, they're trying to get that number down and they're going to drive that interest rate up and, you know, and that's just the nature of the game.
419. 01:05:41 But I thought these two principles were very real and we see these all over the place.
420. 01:05:47 I think that's one of the things I see throughout all of these is it's so easy to see how these are enacted in our world and how we've been exposed to them.
421. 01:05:56 100%.
422. 01:05:58 Okay, 14. Chapter 14 is Got Milk. So basically, the Milk Producers Association, right, teamed up and said, we need people to drink more milk.
423. 01:06:11 So what are we going to do? We're going to make a campaign and this is the Got Milk campaign.
424. 01:06:17 And all I can think about, the whole time I see the headline Got Milk is I can think about the commercials and people had the gigantic milk mustache.
425. 01:06:26 The gigantic milk, like celebrities had the gigantic milk mustache, random people had the gigantic milk mustache.
426. 01:06:32 So this is what they would call the messenger effect.
427. 01:06:37 This is the idea that the messenger matters and we've, we've read about this in other places where, you know, appeal to authority type of a thing where it's like, we're going to try to go get those people.
428. 01:06:46 And regardless of whether they care about milk or milk at all, the fact that they are popular and they are saying that they like milk.
429. 01:06:54 Yeah, like, okay, we're going to, we're going to go with that.
430. 01:06:57 So that's like influencer endorsement kind of stuff and this still happens all over the place.
431. 01:07:01 The next one is the loss of version idea and the fact that we are motivated because we don't want to lose out on something.
432. 01:07:11 So we're motivated because, you know, and I can't remember the context of this one.
433. 01:07:15 Do you remember the context of how they tied lost milk?
434. 01:07:18 Milk is almost always a companion to something else, like the bowl of cereal, dipping your cookies and milk, whatever.
435. 01:07:24 And so you don't want to pour your bowl of cereal and then remember that you don't have any milk in the fridge.
436. 01:07:30 So you better get some now.
437. 01:07:32 I just got milk.
438. 01:07:33 Hey, that's spot on.
439. 01:07:34 I mean, like, let's just be real about this.
440. 01:07:36 If I'm going to eat some cookies, I should have that milk beside me.
441. 01:07:39 If I'm going to pull boy cereals, there's no way I put water on the cereal.
442. 01:07:42 Come on.
443. 01:07:43 Yeah, so this one is fascinating to me because of the way that they got to this campaign because they mentioned that the origins of this campaign 70% of people already drank milk and 88% of the time when they drank it, they drank it at home.
444. 01:07:59 So that led to the discovery that it was almost always a companion to something else.
445. 01:08:03 And so they couldn't just, you know, here's all of the values of drink or all the benefits that you get when you drink milk.
446. 01:08:09 So you should really drink more.
447. 01:08:11 It was, they anchored it to things that they were already doing.
448. 01:08:14 Yep.
449. 01:08:15 And then, like, you should make sure that you always have some in the fridge.
450. 01:08:19 And then they combined that with the messenger effect into a very effective, uh, very effective campaign.
451. 01:08:25 But I think this is brilliant because they had to really kind of get to a place that wasn't obvious in order to create all that messaging.
452. 01:08:33 I agree.
453. 01:08:34 All right.
454. 01:08:35 So now we go to Kentucky Fried Chicken.
455. 01:08:37 So that is a very popular, like, would you call it a fast food chain?
456. 01:08:40 I think it's a fast food chain.
457. 01:08:41 Oh, yeah.
458. 01:08:42 Yeah.
459. 01:08:43 So it's a very popular fast food chicken chain out here in the United States anyhow.
460. 01:08:50 And it pressure fries chicken, right?
461. 01:08:53 So that's kind of what it was, what it was known for.
462. 01:08:56 And there's a couple of different ones that they talk about through here is the information gap.
463. 01:09:01 And we, we know there's something to know, but we don't know what it is.
464. 01:09:06 Okay. And this tied into like the recipe, you know, the kernels.
465. 01:09:10 11 herbs and spices.
466. 01:09:11 The kernels secret, right?
467. 01:09:13 And bushes, baked beans does the same thing where they're like, you know, the only the dog knows bushes, baked beans recipe.
468. 01:09:19 Uh, so then the second concept would be, um, the zig, our Nick effect.
469. 01:09:26 There you go.
470. 01:09:27 It's like a Nick effect.
471. 01:09:28 Yeah, it's our Nick effect.
472. 01:09:29 Okay.
473. 01:09:30 Um, and the fact that, uh, the mystery isn't resolved also makes it more memorable.
474. 01:09:33 Or we remember this because we won't know that like it's locked in the vault somewhere.
475. 01:09:37 We're never going to get that.
476. 01:09:38 Uh, was this where they tied into the Disney vault?
477. 01:09:41 Or okay.
478. 01:09:42 So they tied into the Disney.
479. 01:09:43 Oh, that was also a price scarcity to at some point.
480. 01:09:45 It's like these are going to go away, uh, which is, uh, yeah, cause then we get into the idea of, uh, scarcity and false scarcity.
481. 01:09:51 You know, the fact that, um, we're going to give you this deal, but we can't sell too many of these.
482. 01:09:57 And you see this in other places as well, like a limit.
483. 01:10:00 You can only buy 10 of these, you can only buy four of these, you know, whatever it might be is this false scarcity.
484. 01:10:04 But really they don't care.
485. 01:10:06 Like they'll sell you as many as they can, but they just want to drive, you know, false scarcity.
486. 01:10:09 So those were the, the core ideas in, in this chapter.
487. 01:10:13 Yeah.
488. 01:10:14 I like the 11 herbs and spices being a secret.
489. 01:10:16 And then some of the, the narratives that they, uh, that they told with that.
490. 01:10:22 So it wasn't that Kentucky Fried Chicken was telling these stories, but people were trying to.
491. 01:10:27 There have kind of been these old wives tales about the 11 herbs and spices are in vials locked in a safe,
492. 01:10:35 somewhere, you know, and the recipe only exists in one location and no one really knows where it is.
493. 01:10:44 This person knows half.
494. 01:10:45 This person knows half kind of a thing.
495. 01:10:47 Yeah.
496. 01:10:47 Yeah.
497. 01:10:48 Yeah.
498. 01:10:48 They really make it seem like these are national secrets that are being protected.
499. 01:10:53 Really it's we're making fried chicken.
500. 01:10:57 Whatever.
501. 01:10:58 I'm not a fan of Kentucky Fried Chicken.
502. 01:11:00 So do with that, which you will.
503. 01:11:04 Interesting example, because I feel like the 11 herbs and spices being a secret.
504. 01:11:10 I like the, the narrative that's being told with that, but they completely left out the part where they had to change from Kentucky Fried Chicken to KFC because I don't remember why.
505. 01:11:21 There was some specific reason why that was a bad thing and a cultural no-no.
506. 01:11:27 But yeah, we want what we think we can't have and limit drives demand.
507. 01:11:32 That's where they talked about the Disney vault, which always kind of bugged me.
508. 01:11:35 I was like, this is completely arbitrary.
509. 01:11:37 Why, why are you doing this?
510. 01:11:38 And then all of a sudden, oh, the vault is open.
511. 01:11:41 You can sign up for Disney plus.
512. 01:11:43 Yep.
513. 01:11:44 Whatever.
514. 01:11:45 I mean, I pay for it.
515. 01:11:46 So it is what it is.
516. 01:11:48 But I agree. I agree. It's like, you know, it's, it's just, um, not genuine.
517. 01:11:54 That's the way I want to say it's, it's, it's not genuine because it's like the vault really isn't closed.
518. 01:11:57 You're just doing this for marketing, but it does.
519. 01:11:59 People do it all the time.
520. 01:12:00 They're not by no means.
521. 01:12:01 Yeah.
522. 01:12:02 Last chapter, chapter 16 is Pringles and Pringles are a crisp, which is what I learned in this chapter is they are not a chip.
523. 01:12:11 They are a crisp because a chip has to be made with, you know, X percent of potato and Pringles have a lower percent of potato and other things, right?
524. 01:12:21 Which they use to then mold into, I forget what the shape is, but I remember like having studied the shape in math classes.
525. 01:12:29 They have large amounts of carbohydrates in addition to that slice of potato.
526. 01:12:34 Yep. And then there's a, there's a special shape to them that way they stack in the can appropriately and they don't break and then they come in the tube.
527. 01:12:43 So there's a lot of different interesting things about Pringles and how they were developed.
528. 01:12:47 The, the least interesting thing to me was they don't know where the name came from.
529. 01:12:52 Isn't that, isn't that true?
530. 01:12:53 It's like it might have been the guy's last name or something.
531. 01:12:55 I forget, I forget how it went.
532. 01:12:57 But, uh, but I was like, Oh man, I want to Pringles to have like a really cool name.
533. 01:13:01 Yeah, it was Mr. Pringle, but I don't remember why the, the thing that it was interesting to me about the name was just the crisps versus the chips.
534. 01:13:09 Yeah. The buy it, uh, the biases or the, you know, principles within this are the key to heuristic suggest that we trust rhyming phrases more than non rhyming ones.
535. 01:13:19 So Mike, what is the Pringles rhyming phrase?
536. 01:13:22 Once you pop, you can't stop.
537. 01:13:24 Once you pop, you can't stop, right?
538. 01:13:26 So once you pop, you can't stop and it's like, the funny thing is I knew it as soon as we talked about Pringles that had run through my hands and once you pop, you can't stop.
539. 01:13:33 Uh, and the idea is the popping of the top of the, of the can.
540. 01:13:36 Now, and then the next one was, um, synesthesia, uh, that, um, when a sensory pathway is stimulated, uh, that generates a response in another one.
541. 01:13:46 And I think this is a really cool idea that I've, you know, experienced a bunch of different times.
542. 01:13:51 You get that smell and it brings back nostalgia or you hear that sound and it, and it, you know, triggers something else for you.
543. 01:13:59 Uh, and I, I think I remember this being like the crunch of the chip.
544. 01:14:03 Uh, and that, like, you know, triggered you to like want to eat more of them or whatever it was is, you know, you got this, this unique crunch that's different than potato chips.
545. 01:14:12 So, uh, that's pretty much all I have for the Pringles, Pringles section.
546. 01:14:16 Again, I think they're, they're okay.
547. 01:14:18 I was getting fatigued at this point, you know, I was like, how many of these are we going to do, right?
548. 01:14:22 You know, because we're, we're into chapter 16.
549. 01:14:24 So I don't know if you have anything else you want to add.
550. 01:14:26 Uh, no, a lot of crunch of the chips being, that's associated with freshness and customers, but otherwise you basically hit it all.
551. 01:14:33 Okay.
552. 01:14:34 All right.
553. 01:14:34 So then we, we round out the book with the conclusion.
554. 01:14:36 Um, the, the symbol wise effect is basically this idea that, um, new eyes tend to, new ideas tend to be ignored.
555. 01:14:44 Until they can like rise to the highest level and they give the incredibly disheartening example of,
556. 01:14:52 you know, mothers dying in labor wards because the doctors would come from the autopsy.
557. 01:14:59 You know, from doing an autopsy and then they would deliver the babies and the babies would get bacterial infections and, uh,
558. 01:15:04 symbol wise was like, Hey, we should change the way we're doing it.
559. 01:15:08 We should have the doctors wash their hands and people were like, no, we're not going to do that. Like that, that's crazy town.
560. 01:15:13 You know, you, you young, you young crazy doctor. Uh, and, you know, like, so I think that's an interesting, um, principal.
561. 01:15:21 And then they kind of get into these reasons why behavioral science, um, matters or why they work and why they're so persuasive.
562. 01:15:28 Uh, persuasive impartiality, intellectual credibility and then in plain view.
563. 01:15:32 So impartiality, I don't believe this. Like, I actually don't buy this. I think this is kind of messed up.
564. 01:15:39 Uh, but they're run by researchers interested in seeking truth.
565. 01:15:42 Yeah, but they're also run by researchers interested in doing other things as well and they're run by companies interested in doing other things.
566. 01:15:50 So I don't think it's as noble as, as it's made out to be intellectual credibility.
567. 01:15:54 Studies are conducted by researchers at some of the most prestigious universities. I grew that. Um, I think that's, that's interesting.
568. 01:16:00 And then in plain view, there are no black boxes to the experiments. I can, I can buy that as well. So they kind of just give you a general roundabout about social behavioral science.
569. 01:16:11 Yeah, but I think, uh, the last one, the in plain view, there isn't a lot of times a set. Um, what's the scientific term hypothesis, maybe? Like they, they don't necessarily, they're not exactly forthcoming in.
570. 01:16:29 What they're hoping to prove by the experiments. So a lot of times you're left with historical events that yes happened in plain view, but then you have people spinning their own narratives out of those, those, uh, events and the facts don't necessarily equal truth.
571. 01:16:47 Yes. Um, what's another way to say it? Uh, correlation does not equal causation. It's not equal causation. Feel like there was a lot of correlation in this book that they were interpreting as causation or presenting as causation, which, um, I don't know.
572. 01:17:03 I guess I just read enough books at this point to know to sniff that stuff out, but not a strong conclusion, in my opinion.
573. 01:17:10 I agree. I think, and I think that's a good insight that the correlation causation thing. I, I didn't think about that. That's a, that's a good takeaway.
574. 01:17:17 All right. So we're ready to move to action items. You'll notice that neither Mike nor I have said the action, the words action item until right now.
575. 01:17:27 I will start because it's my book. I have zero action items out of this book. Done. Like, I, I don't feel bad about it. I'm okay with it. There are no action items coming out of this book.
576. 01:17:37 I'm maybe I'll read band or snatch it, right? Because, uh, there's just nothing. No action items. Mike, did you, did you get any out of this?
577. 01:17:45 No, I have zero desire to hack somebody's human mind. So.
578. 01:17:50 Do you, do you see yourself using any of these principles, you know, with practical PKM or any of that?
579. 01:17:58 Um, I'm sure some of the principles, I think zero of the principles as they are described in this book. Like, I, I study marketing. I'm fascinated by the concept.
580. 01:18:09 I do think that there's ways to do it ethically. And then there's ways to just get the sale. And I've read books and, and, uh, encountered ideas that fall into both of those different descriptions.
581. 01:18:23 One of the best ethical approaches to this, I think, is actually one that we covered for bookworm. And it was Simple Marketing for Smart People by Billy Broaz.
582. 01:18:34 Uh, I, I'm always trying to develop my copywriting skills. But when I do that, I'm trying to just communicate more clearly what problem I'm trying to solve and how I'm trying to solve it.
583. 01:18:47 I'm not trying to pull on every emotional lever that I can in order to get you to click the button.
584. 01:18:55 Yep. It makes sense. Makes complete sense. All right. Let's go to style and rating. We are going to continue with the usual method of style and rating, which is however Mike and I want to determine the rate.
585. 01:19:07 I mean, if you want to go down the list, you can give it a, give it a test drive. I do not want to go down the list on this. Okay. Uh, so style.
586. 01:19:16 I enjoyed the stories. I thought it was interesting. Um, I can't tell you that I thought any of them were, you know, overly amazing and groundbreaking and, you know, uh, that I'm going to really remember explicit details of them later on down the road.
587. 01:19:34 I thought the style was fine. They, they wanted to tell you about these behavioral science principles, and they wrapped it in a package that was more interesting than a textbook.
588. 01:19:44 So like that's kind of the vibe I get for the style of this is they wanted to tell you about these 30 something principles and a way to do that was to, you know, tell you it in a case study format.
589. 01:19:57 Um, here's an example and let's tell you about this principle in the example. Here's an example. Let's tell you about the principal example.
590. 01:20:03 So I'll get to my rating right now, because really there's nothing much more from a style standpoint that I have to say. Oh, it was a quick read. Easy read. I didn't have any struggles with the language that was used or they weren't too academic and too
591. 01:20:18 heady. They weren't too informal. It was pretty rich right down the middle. And because of that, my rating for this book is going to be a three.
592. 01:20:25 It's, it's right down the middle. It's pretty good. I know we're one to five. So three is in the middle. I want to go two and a half, but that that's too low. So this is just a three. I mean, it's a flat three for me, not bad. If you want to learn about behavioral science in the context of marketing, pick up the book.
593. 01:20:42 If you don't care about that. And what we talked about does not sound interesting to you. Let this one go. Let it fly right by and pick a different book.
594. 01:20:50 Okay, so I'm actually going to do both approaches here. I'll use the checklist first. Okay. Okay. Engaging writing was the book written clearly and captivating or entertaining with it made you want to keep reading.
595. 01:21:01 Yes. Structural clarity. That's one. Yes. Did the book have a clear structure sections chapters progression that made an argument or journey easy to follow? I feel like that's a yes.
596. 01:21:10 Core concept strength. Did the book present a case for an idea as a head solid coherent and not obviously contracted by basic logic or evidence? I would say yes.
597. 01:21:19 Usefulness to an average reader with the core idea is be practical or beneficial for a typical rear and everyday life. Yes. That's for action ability to come away with at least one concrete action going to implement.
598. 01:21:28 No memorability. Can you clearly remember and summarize the key ideas without looking at your notes a week later? I would say yes. There's some things that I've already mentioned from this, this book just in casual conversation.
599. 01:21:39 Thought provoking quality. Did the book challenge your assumptions and/or make you reflect even if you disagree to parts of it? Yes. So that's six. You're at six.
600. 01:21:48 Six out of seven. Did the author provide credible support research case studies clear reasoning rather than just opinions and anecdotes? I would say yes.
601. 01:21:57 Recommendability. Would you honestly recommend this book to a friend or colleague with similar goals or struggles or are there better books you recommend for this one? That one I'd say no. Next factor was there's something unique about the reading experience or ideas or just a feel you had about the book that is worth noting.
602. 01:22:12 I don't know how to answer that one. I'm just going to say yes because I think it is unique. So that puts me at eight, which is right between four and five stars. This is not a four star book.
603. 01:22:21 In fact, I think as we mentioned earlier, I think the argument could be made that I should probably be a little bit more opinionated in my ratings.
604. 01:22:33 So I think I'm going to with this one. I think past Mike would have met you at three stars. I think this is a two star book.
605. 01:22:41 And the reason being that the way that these principles are packaged, I feel like there's a very implicit message here for marketers who want to manipulate people's behaviors.
606. 01:22:54 The title doesn't, I mean, that's not true, but the title hacking the human mind. My mind does not need to be hacked.
607. 01:23:01 My potential customer's minds do not need to be hacked. They just need to be aware of my product and if it is the right thing for them, then let's do business.
608. 01:23:09 I think I think if they had to title the book something different, you'd have rated it three.
609. 01:23:13 Probably. Probably I have issue with that title 100%. So yeah, I'm going to rate it two stars. And that's not to say that these ten questions, by the way, are bad.
610. 01:23:28 But I think it highlights something for me, which is there's an intangible quality to a rating that I can't put my finger on sometimes.
611. 01:23:37 I know because I've read hundreds of books. Oh, this is a four star book for me is a five star book for me, three star book for me.
612. 01:23:43 I will continue to try to get better at communicating my justifications for those ratings. And there probably are some specific, you know, guidelines we should use when we're sharing our, our ratings.
613. 01:23:57 So all that to say, I appreciate the email here, Mark. And I think I still need to, I still need to marinate on this and figure something out.
614. 01:24:07 And I don't know that there's going to be a real clear, you know, mathematical formula to the rating.
615. 01:24:14 Sometimes, you know, just using action items as an example, sometimes I know this is going to be a life changing perspective changing book, and there are zero action items from it.
616. 01:24:23 Sometimes the crappy books, I find a couple of action items from. So, yeah, I really don't know, but I can tell you that this book I did not really care for.
617. 01:24:35 I guess if I was going to recommend a different book, right, what's another book that simple marketing for smart people was is one.
618. 01:24:42 In terms of behavioral behavioral science and what's the term you used earlier? Shoot. You used it a bunch of times.
619. 01:24:56 I'm not familiar. I think, so another mark has been trying to get me to reread the new version of "Influence", but Robert Chialdini, I remember reading the original version a while back. I feel like that would probably be a better book than this one if you are interested in these concepts.
620. 01:25:14 Again, maybe the same arguments I made about, well, it's a manipulation handbook, yada yada, not that this is, but that's how it can come across.
621. 01:25:23 And a title like "Hacking the Human Mind" does it absolutely zero favors.
622. 01:25:27 So, yeah, this just wasn't my cup of tea. I did like the stories, the case studies of the companies were interesting, kind of panicked out from just about every single story that they told.
623. 01:25:37 I have to tell you, though, now that we've worked through this, I kind of want to go back and see if those are true.
624. 01:25:47 I've been experimenting a lot with AI in the last year. I feel like the way some of this stuff reads is, give me a case study on whatever to support this point.
625. 01:26:07 And I don't want to believe that that's the approach that they took, but I do know that that is out there. So, whether or not they took that approach, I think, is sort of irrelevant.
626. 01:26:20 Your job as a creator of quality information is to stand out from the AI slot, and the fact that I have a question about some of this stuff is not great.
627. 01:26:30 Yeah, that never crossed my mind. So, that's interesting. That's interesting to think about. All right, Mike, let's put "Hacking the Human Mind on the Shelf." What's next?
628. 01:26:41 Next is "Intentional" by my friend Chris Bailey. And I have read this book. It is now available to the general public.
629. 01:26:52 I won't get someone to share anymore about it until we actually talk about it. But as I will reiterate, I am friends with Chris.
630. 01:27:00 I will review this book as impartially as I can. And in no way, Corey, do I expect you to just because I liked it?
631. 01:27:09 No way. No way. No way. I mean, I'm going to give you my true and honest rating on that. If I don't like it, I'm going to tell you that.
632. 01:27:17 All right, cool. I think it is going to be a fun conversation, though. Awesome.
633. 01:27:22 After that, we will read "The Overthinkers Guide to Making Decisions." And this will be by Joseph Nguyen.
634. 01:27:31 Okay, so that's the next book after that. Mike, do you have any gap books between now and next time?
635. 01:27:38 Well, I have gap books, both from last time and for this time, I guess. In the brochure we talked about me reading fiction, so I'm actually reading a fiction book currently after the one that I finished that you told me about last time.
636. 01:27:51 So I'm reading "Red Rising" by Pierce Brown. I also finished prior to this "Ghost Town Living" by Brent Underwood, which was not a fiction book, but sort of read like a fiction book.
637. 01:28:01 So Brent Underwood is the guy who bought the Siro Gordo "Ghost Town" outside of LA. And there are, I think, 15, 16 chapters here, which are basically just stories that happen to him with the people that he met in that area while he was restoring this "Ghost Town."
638. 01:28:20 That's awesome. And it's a fascinating book.
639. 01:28:22 Yeah, it's awesome. I can't remember what I heard of that story of him buying that "Ghost Town." It might have been from you or a podcast or something like that, but it's a really cool... I would love to read that book. That book sounds really interesting.
640. 01:28:34 Yes, I recommend it.
641. 01:28:36 Alright, I will be reading "Not the Most Exciting Book in the World," except it's interesting. It's just not flashy. It's called "Pastoral Theology and the Classical Tradition" by Andrew Purves, and it's about pastoral theology. So that'll be my, that'll be my gapbook.
642. 01:28:54 Alright, for those of you who are pro members, we want to thank you so much for being a pro member. It really just helps us as we deal with the cost of the show.
643. 01:29:04 And just your support is what helps us more than anything. So, if you guys are interested in becoming a pro member and getting access to the pro show, it'll give you a longer ad-free pro show.
644. 01:29:15 It'll give you the bootleg version of the show, which is released right after we record the show. There's a wallpaper there.
645. 01:29:22 Mike's posted his reading master class for the pro members, which is awesome.
646. 01:29:27 Mike, how long is that thing? A couple hours, right?
647. 01:29:30 I think it was just shy of three hours, yeah. So, it's an awesome benefit. It's $7 a month to become a pro member, and again, it just helps us with the cost of the show.
648. 01:29:41 So, thanks for those who are members and those who are considering becoming members. You can go to patreon.com/bookwormfm or bookworm.fm/pro.
649. 01:29:49 Either way, you can go there to become a pro member.
650. 01:29:52 Alright, if you are reading along with us, pick up Intentional by Chris Bailey, and we'll talk to you in a couple of weeks.