Marketers are an inherently curious bunch, forever questioning how the ins and outs of modern marketing work. In truth, we should be just as curious about the other side of the equation, getting to the bottom of how people work, including the subconscious behavioural biases shaping thousands of our daily decisions.
The astonishing power of behavioural science to inspire behavioural change was brought to the fore during the pandemic and credited for everything from increasing mask-wearing and keeping people home, to vaccine uptakes and social distancing. Still, the marketing industry has been slow in adopting findings from behavioural science, despite every marketing brief ultimately being a behaviour change brief.
With 2023 just kicking into gear after the summer holidays, now is the perfect time to up your behavioural science game.
Creatively, it’s easy to get clever and conceptual with our messaging. Unfortunately, while witty can win the pitch, straight talk wins the consumer, especially with our ever-shortening attention spans. A 2020 study from Microsoft Canada found the average adult’s attention lasted just eight seconds, down from 12 seconds 20 years earlier.
I’m referring to the use of abstract versus concrete language here. Humans find it far easier to understand and remember ‘concrete’ concepts and ideas.
Big black sheep.
Say what? I said big black sheep. Not only did you most likely hear the words in your mind, but you probably also visualised a big black sheep. The ‘concrete’ concept of a big black sheep, now living in your brain, benefits from dual encoding: it exists in a verbal code for language and a nonverbal code for mental imagery. While connected, they are stored in two different parts of our brains, making it far easier to retrieve them down the track.
Compare this to ‘whimsical journey’ — an abstract concept that’s vague, hard to grasp and challenging to ‘land’ in our mind. It’s difficult to picture, difficult to file and difficult to remember.
A great example of concrete versus abstract messaging came from Victoria’s Transport Accident Commission (TAC). After decades of promoting the .05 message (don’t drive if your blood alcohol level is above 0.05), the organisation accepted this concept was far too abstract for people to understand. Few people could confidently say how many drinks would put them over the limit, especially knowing they’d have to factor in their height, weight, gender, the types and size of the drinks, and how recently they’d eaten for it to be accurate.
Instead, the TAC chose to separate the activities of drinking and driving altogether, shifting to a concrete message of: “Drinking. Driving. They’re better apart”. The new message is easily understood and encourages people to leave the car at home whenever they consume alcohol, even if they intend to stop at one or two drinks.
Brands should be particular in what they want the consumer to remember or the action they want them to take. Spell it out. Make it shorter and more straightforward. Don’t leave people guessing about your priorities.
However, to ensure you’re working with a truly concrete concept, remember that you have to be able to visualise it. The best and most successful campaigns turn abstract emotional concepts into tangible, concrete ideas that can be remembered months and years after they run.
Each year, marketing trend lists emphatically tell us that consumers will prioritise brands that favour purpose-led marketing, whether at an environmental or a social level. For example, Kantar’s 2022 Sustainability Sector Index found 97% of consumers across 32 countries report they want to live a sustainable lifestyle, and almost half (47%) globally say they have stopped buying certain products or services due to their effect on the environment or society.
However, when considering purpose, marketers should be aware of a cognitive bias known as temporal discounting. This is the idea that we reduce the value of something the further it is in the future. While we all want to be better global citizens, the hazier and further away a future benefit is the less value we assign to it, and the more likely we are to exchange it for something in the here and now, especially in terms of price, quality or value.
It makes sense that we’ve been wired to prioritise today over tomorrow. For most of human history, anything long-term was a long shot at best. Even though in 2023, tomorrow is a safer bet than it’s ever been, our bias towards short-term incentives holds true.
So when deciding whether to buy Australian-made or non-Australian-made, organic or non-organic, ethical or non-ethical, despite what they may say, people tend to gravitate towards the option that gives them the best short-term outcome.
However, it’s at that tension point that opportunity exists. One of the reasons for the success of brands like Patagonia, Thank You and Who Gives a Crap has been their ability to fulfil a short-term need of social signalling. With the tap of a credit card, you too can show you’re a respectful citizen by wearing a Patagonia t-shirt, demonstrate your moral compass by drinking ethical water, or show off your good deed credentials by wiping your butt with a sustainable loo roll. While I’m all in for chasing your brand’s purpose, remember short-term signalling helps tomorrow’s purpose move units today.
Businesses and brands have traditionally been advised to keep their messy backstage areas strictly off-limits to their consumers. However, a heuristic known as the effort bias dictates otherwise. In 2023, consider giving your consumers an access-all-areas (okay fine, access-more-areas) pass because, in our minds, effort is a mental shortcut for quality.
The effort bias describes how we ascertain the quality or worth of an object by our perception of how much time and effort went into it.
Don’t be afraid to let your consumers see a little more of the sweat, effort and mess behind the scenes. Think artisans tinkering away in workshops located centrally in stores or kitchens in restaurants being on full display to the public, demonstrating the skill and effort that goes into creating delicious dishes. A fine example of surfacing effort is Campbells declaring its Real Stock is “slow cooked for up to 3 hrs” on its packaging.
Similar examples can be found across luxury watch brands (which request at least a month to service a timepiece), couriers (which allow you to track every step of your parcel’s journey) and comparison websites (that deliberately take a second or two to longer than they need to before returning your results).
Promoting the time and effort that has gone into a product automatically makes consumers assume it is of a higher quality. And the best part is, there’s undoubtedly already plenty of time and effort going into what makes your brand what it is. Rather than adding more, take advantage of the effort bias by surfacing and celebrating what’s already happening below the surface. As value will be a highly prized commodity this year, share the complexity that invariably already exists in your product, service or business, and consumers will appreciate the effort and value you even more.
Dan Monheit is a behavioural science expert and owner of Hardhat. His recently released book, The Why, The Book, is available now.
Dan Monheit is the CEO of Hardhat, the creative agency built on behaviour. Dan is on a mission to help more business leaders, marketers and brands understand why people do the things that they do. His expertise in behavioural science has seen him present on the topic to thousands of people, both locally and at major international events, including SXSW in Austin, Texas. His recently released book, The Why, The Book, is available now via Amazon.
