Kris Safarova  00:45

welcome to the strategy skills podcast. I’m your host, Kris Safarova, and our podcast sponsor today is as usual, strategytraining.com and if you want to strengthen your strategy skills, you can get a gift from us, the overall approach used in well managed strategy studies, and you can get it at firms consulting.com, forward slash overall approach. You can also get McKinsey and BCG winning resume, which is a actual resume that we worked on with a client that led to offers from McKinsey and BCG. And it’s a great example to take a look at and see how you can improve your resume. And it is actually an amazing template to use at any level of seniority, even if you are very senior, and most of our listeners and clients are so make sure that you check it out. And something new we are doing for our podcasts and other videos that we produce on YouTube is we now put together key insights, action items and transcript, so you can have it as a download and make the most of the session. And you don’t need to take notes while you’re driving or working out and so on. So you can get it at f, i, r, M, S, consulting.com, forward, slash, action. Once you go there, you will get into our community, and there you will find all the downloads. That’s all the housekeeping. And today we have with us Michael Aaron flicker. And Michael Aaron was a guest earlier this year, and I’m looking forward to dive deeper into discussing his work. And if you don’t remember, he is a behavioral science strategist. Sounds amazing, very, very interesting area to focus on in life, and he has built multiple Inc, 5000 recognized companies. Michael Aaron, welcome.

Speaker 3  02:32

Thank you so much for having me excited to be with you all today.

Kris Safarova  02:37

So in your recent book, hacking the human mind, you and your co author covered a lot of critical things that leaders need to know about, and I wanted to dive deeper today and extract some key things that people need to know. So maybe we can start with the insight you had about how people believe a product is less effective when it claims to achieve many things. And you refer to it as goal dilution effect. And basically it means that a single, clear purpose increases credibility and confidence. What our listeners need to know about this?

MichaelAaron Flicker  03:12

You know, it’s a fascinating topic, because as business folks, as people that run businesses, or that run brands. We love our jobs and we love our industries. And the most natural thing to do when you have so much energy on a topic is you want to just tell everybody all the great things that are about your brand or your business, and when it doesn’t land the way you hope it would, it sometimes could be a little befuddling. Why? When I told you all the amazing things that my business can do, do you not get excited about it? And so we always look to behavioral science to help us understand the world around us, to understand human beings, not in the way they claim to act, but in the ways that they actually behave. And so this one that you’re calling out is called the gold dilution effect. And we start every study with a story. So let me start with the story. I’ll tell you a little bit about Five Guys Burgers and what they innately understood that’s now backed up by some pretty interesting science. So five guys, burgers, it’s 1986 founder Jerry Morrell and his four sons are on the Maryland boardwalk, and they’re walking down the boardwalk, and they’re talking about the oldest son whether he should go to school or whether he should start his own company and skip going to college. And as they’re having this discussion, they’re noticing that along the boardwalk there’s food shop after food stall after food stall, but only one of them has a line wrapping out and around and down the boardwalk. And they’re thinking, Why? Why does thrasher’s fries have such a long line when all the other. Stalls of a very short line, or no line at all. And Jerry Morel, the father, had the insight. Maybe it’s because they only do one thing, and they do one thing so well they only make french fries. And so Jerry and his sons decide, let’s make a company in that same image. We’re going to make Five Guys Burgers named after the five of us, and we’re only going to do burgers and fries, we’re not going to do chicken, we’re not going to do salad, we’re not going to do ice cream. And if we’re only known for one thing, maybe people will believe we’re the best at it. So today, five guys is a global franchise, 1800 stores, 1.6 billion in sales, and they still no chicken, no ice cream, no salads. So that was an interesting insight Jerry had, but there’s actually a lot of really interesting science that comes behind it, and the the most clear study comes from University of Chicago, in 2007 they gave information describing how to eat tomatoes and when you eat tomatoes, it could achieve either one goal, helping prevent cancer, or the study said it could achieve two goals, preventing cancer and reducing I degeneration. And so they show participants these two different options, and they were asked to rate how effective eating tomato was at preventing cancer. Strangely, the people that rated eating tomato as 12% more effective at preventing cancer when it was given as the only benefit compared to when it was listed as both helping with cancer and with ID generation. So it’s not logical, but people are more confident when just one advantage is presented. And that really holds true. If a company only sells soap Well, their soap must be really great. If Bombus only makes socks, their socks must be really good. And there’s data to back up that focusing on one thing instead of many really is going to be received by humans, is more true.

Kris Safarova  07:06

Michael Aaron, and so what would be your recommendation for a company that has deep expertise in various areas and they currently offer various services? For example,

MichaelAaron Flicker  07:17

we would say, really focus on the buyer, and what their problem is that they’re coming to you for while. They may have a lot of different things they have needs for generally, each buyer is going to have a top force ranked prioritization of the most important thing. And if you focus your messaging and your creative of explaining how you’re really excellent at that one thing, compared to saying the 12 things that your product does, it will be more believable and be more memorable. So we would say focus on segmenting your audiences and then focusing on the key message to each of those audiences, that is the thing you are best in the world at. And if you do that, it’s more likely you’ll be believed by your buyers.

Kris Safarova  08:03

And would you say that, similarly, if an individual has expertise in many areas, they should still hide it and focus on one thing that people are coming to them for at this point in time.

MichaelAaron Flicker  08:15

I think for sure, we don’t want to hide we don’t want to dismiss that being great at a lot of things matters. But if you’re asking how humans naturally behave, if you say you are best at one thing, most of all, they’re more likely to believe that, and that’s what the data shows. So if you’re going to present yourself in your resume, you’re going to present yourself in a interview, making sure you have a key thesis, a top thing that you’re best at, with some supporting points. That would be our recommendation. Rather than saying you’re good at five things, equally good, that’s where we would say. We should watch out from saying you’re equally good at a whole lot of things that’s less believable based on the data,

Kris Safarova  09:03

and when people applying this advice from this insight, we now discussed, where do they struggle?

MichaelAaron Flicker  09:09

Generally? Because it’s counterintuitive, because it just feels like adding and adding must be more effective. We often see people struggle to carry this insight all the way through to the final presentation or the final go live of the advertising. We see that people, in the end, they just want to share more. And there’s other insights where sharing multiple things might be effective, but if you’re asking, what will be most believable, if you can focus on one thing that would be where you’ll do your best work.

Kris Safarova  09:44

Let’s talk about pricing. What is it about point 99 at the end of price that makes it more attractive, and other things associated with it that we need to understand

MichaelAaron Flicker  09:55

so pricing could fill an entire book in human psychology and. And I think if you step back from pricing and you look at some of the larger lessons of behavioral science, it helps give more depth to our insights about pricing. And most famously, Daniel Kahneman said that thinking is to humans like swimming is to cats, they can do it. They just prefer not to. And so we can think as humans, but we are biologically evolutionarily programmed to do as little thinking as possible. This is great stat that the brain weighs 2% of your body mass, but uses 20% of the calories in your body. The brain is an energy hungry part of your body, and so evolutionarily, as we have developed over 10s of 1000s of years, hundreds of 1000s of years, where we can make shortcuts, mental shortcuts. We are saving energy, and we are literally becoming the survival of the fittest. So back to pricing. Pricing is not absolute. Humans look for relativity to understand the value of the price. In our book, we focus on Red Bull, which has got a great example of this, but there’s many examples. Red Bull was a product developed in Thailand, and when they wanted to launch it, they had a challenge. They had a new to the world product, an energy drink, that no one else had on the market, but when they went to the canning facility, it was going to come in a 12 ounce round can that looked just like soda. And the founders of Red Bull had this insight that if they launched Red Bull in the same 12 ounce round can as Coca Cola, Pepsi and Dr Pepper, they would be compared to them, not only from the product rtbs, but also on the price. So instead of launching Red Bull and around 12 ounce soda can, they picked a slot a slimmer, taller can that actually had less fluid ounces in it, and they launch it instead of line price with soda at $1 a can, they launched it at $2.50 a can. When you walk to the shelf and you’re looking to say, is this product? I’ve never heard of this new product called Red Bull before. Is it worth this price? Your first instinct is to say, well, what can I compare it to? And because they had energy boosting properties as all of their messaging, and because they had a can that was not easily to compare to all the other soda cans on the aisle, they broke the comparison between them and regular soda. And because of that, they were able to command 250% more, $2.50 versus $1 so it’s a lovely example of how first and foremost, price is a relativity game. And if you can create a difference in your price, if you can break the comparison, your pricing can be more your pricing can be more under your own control, rather than in the domain of the consumer, trying to compare you to something else

Kris Safarova  13:29

very interesting. And what are your thoughts on ending a price in seven versus point 99

MichaelAaron Flicker  13:36

yeah, there’s a lot of lovely studies on this, and we like to call it charm pricing. And there’s this question, there’s this insight in behavioral science that there’s a left digit bias, meaning, if you show me a price of $4.99 versus $5 your brain puts more emphasis on the four, even though there’s 99 cents after it rather than the five, a number of studies show that it’s much more equivalent to about 25% less. They know 499 is more. More is just one penny less than five. But in their brains, they think it’s much more like 475, 476, and because that four is up front, and we have this left digit bias, we’re much more likely to feel we’re getting a better value and a better deal, even though it’s just one penny less and so. So we would say that wherever you can do to lower the left hand number 4999 is going to be a much more attractive price than $50 so anywhere you can use it to lower that left hand bias is going to have the biggest effects on your on your on your value that consumers think they are getting with you.

Kris Safarova  14:57

Michael, Aaron, and if the price, let’s say, is kind. 67 or 169 or 165 What do you think about those last digits?

MichaelAaron Flicker  15:08

You know, there is work out in the field that talks about round numbers ending in round numbers and ending in very specific numbers. I’m thinking specifically Kris Voss has an amazing book never split the difference. And he talks about how when numbers are round, they feel more they feel more approximate in their in their value, and when they end in like a seven or in a dot 50, they feel much more specific. And when you get to opening bids, it’s better for them to be round, and when they get to very specific numbers, they feel very like it’s the best someone can do. So I would say, based on that theory from the book, never split the difference. The more the more odd the number the seven is going to feel like, more like it’s the lowest price the retailer can offer. A more rounder or a more whole, whole base number, ending a zero ending in five feels like a more of a starting bid.

Kris Safarova  16:11

Makes sense. So the next insight I wanted to discuss is indulgent framing increases selection, and we spoke about how indulgent descriptions boosted vegetable consumption by 25% and also healthy. Restrictive descriptions suppressed behavior.

MichaelAaron Flicker  16:29

Let me, let me tell you all about it. So the original study was wondering whether or not the same product could be changed, whether or not you just changed the words to describe the product. So the study authors go into a university cafeteria and they randomize the description of the vegetable dishes that they’re offering at the vegetable counter. Sometimes they call it just a basic dish. They call it plant based beans and shallots. Sometimes they use a more restrictive name, like light and low carb plant based beans and shallots. Sometimes they use a more healthy positive message, like healthy energy boosting plant based beans and shallots. And finally, fourth, a more indulgent, as you said, sweet, sizzling, plant based beans and Kris be shallots. And what this study shows is that humans have a natural inclination to believe the more indulgent, the more rich the product, the more tasty it’s going to be. And so this study showed that people chose vegetables that use that sizzling, sweet sizzlin plant based beans and shallots, 25% more than when it was its normal name alone. And this has big impact for any restaurant who might be trying to use a vegetarian dish or a low carb dish, rather than focusing on how it’s low carb or low calorie, flipping that and talking about how it’s farm fresh, and you know, and hand walked, will always feel more indulgent and will always be more more appealing to people that want to buy it. And so it really focuses on what will help sell the product, rather than just what people say might sell the product.

Kris Safarova  18:27

And if we are not talking about food, but let’s say it is consulting services. How do we apply it?

MichaelAaron Flicker  18:34

I think the most common way we try to sell consulting services is logical. We say we have over 100 years of experience on our team, on our executive team, or I’ve helped save clients $7 million by changing their business process. But what the data would show is, if you want to be more appealing, if you could show the more emotional, led side, we helped restructure and save and save the company the equivalent of 30,000 jobs, even if that’s the same value as $7 million in savings. The more, the more emotionally led, in this case, the more indulgent way to talk is going to yield you more appetite. It’s going to yield you more interest in it. And so we should always be thinking about the way we can take rational decisions and appeal to the emotional side of the buyer. And so I think we can use that in consulting services to think, what does the buyer really want, and how can we communicate in that in a way that shows the emotional side of the equation, not just the logic and rational side.

Kris Safarova  19:47

That is very insightful. Thank you. So the next one I want to talk about is interrupting enjoyment boosts enjoyment. And you talked about how a break in enjoyment prevents habituation. Making the return more satisfying.

MichaelAaron Flicker  20:02

So we looked in the book at Starbucks and specifically at their product called Pumpkin Spice Latte. And now this is a fascinating product. They come up with pumpkin spice latte almost 20 years ago, and when it launches, it’s a knockout home run. People love the taste profile. They love the they love the flavor, and it’s a smash hit. In fact, in the first 10 years, they sold over 200 million pumpkin spice lattes. But what Starbucks did that I think no one expected, is that they decided to make it for a limited time only. And instead of allowing that product to be on the menu year round, they made a very interesting choice to pull it off the menu and hold it back from folks, and they are not able to buy it almost 10 months out of the year, and that interrupts the experience of being able to get it. And as you might expect, it gives people more of an anticipation that there’s something that they can’t get, and therefore there’s more want that they, that they that they have when they that when it’s back and available. And this comes from a very interesting study based in 2010 in UCLA by a yellow ghanizi at University of University of California, San Diego. And so here’s what they did. They offered participants a gift voucher worth $6 for a free coffee and cake at a local cafe, and they randomly gave participants one of two different vouchers, one expiring in three weeks, and the other one expiring in two months. And what you might expect is that the longer window allowed people more time to redeem the free coffee and cake. But actually, with the longer window, only 6% of vouchers were redeemed, but with the shorter deadline, 33% of vouchers were redeemed. That’s a four and a half times increase. The researchers hypothesized that the small window for action removed any opportunity for procrastination. Customers realized that if they didn’t use the voucher now they would lose out. And we think something similar is going on with pumpkin spice latte. If you don’t go out and buy the drink when it’s released, you won’t be able to get it for a whole nother year. So if you like it, you have to buy it right now. And we think that forced break creates more immediacy and drives more desirability for the product when it’s in market.

Kris Safarova  22:43

And actually, if the voucher was just for three days, they probably would have seen even larger percentage of people

MichaelAaron Flicker  22:50

that would be, what the that would be, what the that would be, what the study would suggest. And surely we see that we’re recording right after Black Friday, Cyber Monday. We see time scarcity used as a tactic to get people to buy on some of the biggest shopping holidays of the year. It’s true that that fear of the fear of missing out, what we call in behavioral science, loss aversion, is very powerful, and it’s a big motivator. So I agree exactly with what you’re saying. What should

Kris Safarova  23:24

our listeners Be careful about when they’re implementing this into the business?

MichaelAaron Flicker  23:30

Especially if you’re in professional services, you have to be careful that it’s still believable. When you’re in manufacturing and you’re in retail, it’s believable that there’s only so many T shirts or pants, only so many sneakers at a certain size. And so when they run a flash sale, it’s easy to understand that they’re going to do it until the product’s all gone. But when you’re in professional services, why should this be a time offer? And in fact, when I’ve done my consulting with large B to B companies, they want to make these time based offers. But I think the buyers very often suss out. Well, if it’s an offer on November 29 it’s probably still going to be an offer on December 2. So we would argue that scarcity can still be applied, but you might want to not use time scarcity and professional services, especially when you’re selling time, if that’s your unit of value, much better to think about. We only have three seats left in this class, and when they’re filled, we can’t take any more, or we only have room for two more clients to onboard this quarter. If you’d like to be a part of it, you have to join now those are more believable metrics that would be a limiter to your to working with you. So I would say believability as the overarching idea, and then think about how to apply it to your industry and your space.

Kris Safarova  24:56

Makes a lot of sense. The next one, I think, will be tricky for people. To think about how to apply. For example, if you run a consulting firm, or you work for a large one, and you run a practice within it, nostalgia reduces price sensitivity, and you spoke about how when people feel nostalgic, social connectedness rises and the importance of money drops.

MichaelAaron Flicker  25:18

This one is very interesting for our logical, rational people listening at home, they would say that classical economists would say, you walk up and you look at an offer, you weigh the pros and cons, and then you make your decision. And what behavioral scientists would say is that’s what we claim to do, but so often there’s more at play, and this power of nostalgia is really a shocking example of it. So the study comes from 2014 la salida is a Professor of Marketing and behavioral science at Grenoble School of Management, and along with her colleagues, she carries out this study. It’s got two parts. Part number one, they asked participants to look at one of two print ads. The first of the print ads was designed to elicit a general sense of nostalgia, encouraging readers to recall a specific memory from their own past, and the second talked about special moments that are yet to happen. Something is going to happen in the future as part one. So they do that experiment. And then in the next part of the experiment, researchers showed participants a booklet of 24 product options, and then asked them to indicate how much they’re willing to pay for each and the products ranged from high value, like motorcycles to mid ranges, like sweatshirts, all the way to small purchases, like a bottle of Coke. And the team found that on average, willingness to pay tripled when participants were feeling nostalgic, and this effect was consistent across all the different items, from simple quick purchases like a can of coke to very high value products like motorcycles. And so why the fact that this occurred is fascinating, but why it occurs is even more interesting. The Psychologist argued that there are two broad ways for people to get what they want in life, either they get it through other people, what you were just calling social connectedness, or they get it through money. So when we focus folks, their mind on social connected, of being socially connected on the nostalgia, it brings this sense of social connectedness to the forefront, and therefore your importance on money wanes. So where we can get people to feel emotionally connected, when we can get them to feel socially connected, they’re going to be willing to spend more, maybe even up to three times more.

Kris Safarova  27:58

Can you elaborate on how can someone utilize this in consulting? For example, they run the consulting firm.

MichaelAaron Flicker  28:06

We want to always use these practices as insights to understand how humans naturally work, and then we can use them so that we understand how to work better with human behavior, rather than against it. So all of these insights are meant to help you be more aware of how people make decisions and how you can work with them. For consultants, if you have a way to make a more human connection with the person that’s buying your services, you may think that that makes them like you more, and that makes them, therefore more willing to give you a break on the deal, on the on the offer you’re making. That’s not actually what the science says is happening. Really what the science says is happening is if they feel social connectedness to you, then their sensitivity to pricing goes down. So some people might ask about your kids, they may ask about your family. Others may share golf games together or share musical experiences together. But where you can build social connectedness in your in your consulting practice, the data shows that there will be less pricing sensitivity when it comes to raising the cost, when it comes to talking about your cost and raising the price. So I think what we want to teach folks that are in consulting practices is, how can we use this knowledge that humans are going to be less price sensitive when there’s higher social connectedness in order to do better work and hopefully attain better pricing premiums when you’re working with them.

Kris Safarova  29:46

And I want to say, and it goes without saying, for all our longtime listeners and our clients that we always do all of this with intention to add value to the world and to clients, and we only. Can use those tricks. So to say, if we feel what we are offering is in the best interest of this person, and they will be much better off with us versus with a competitor who has inferior product,

MichaelAaron Flicker  30:11

acting ethically is always a good principle in business and a good way to control yourself. And it’s interesting in behavioral science, that question of, How much am I influencing somebody intentionally, how much I influencing them subconsciously? Is a is it? Is it? Is an open question. So Richard and I like to refer to what we call the publicity principle, sometimes also called the grandma principle. I’ll explain both sides. But the publicity principle basically states, if someone revealed what you were doing, would you be ashamed or embarrassed by it? So if they wrote up a whole story about what you did in order to close this deal, and you would be embarrassed. Probably a good idea that you shouldn’t use that that behavioral bias, or that trick or same thing. If you had to tell your grandmother the way you landed that big account and you used some bias that you’re not proud of, then that’s probably a good line that you shouldn’t cross. So you set out the right gold standard. We’re only going to do things that add value, and we’re only going to advocate when we feel we’re the best product on the market. And I’m adding a layer that there’s a pretty simple way to know if you’re acting ethically or not, which is essentially using your own moral compass, compass, as if it was made public in front of others. How would that make you feel? And so I think those two can be complimentary.

Kris Safarova  31:34

Kris, yes, if it was printed on the cover of New York Times, how would you feel? That’s the rule. The next one is also tricky to apply in consulting, and by using example of consulting, because then it is easier to apply to other spaces as well, humor grabs attention. You mentioned that humor boosts attention, positive emotion, brand, attitude and willingness to pay. And you also mentioned that it’s using ADS has sharply declined.

MichaelAaron Flicker  32:05

So this idea that humor can help separate you from the pack is really a, I believe, a human experience that we all have felt. And I think one of the the things that we as strategists, as folks that really care about the academics behind it ask is, in what way does this work? So Leo Burnett, a famous ad man of the 20th century, once famously said, if you don’t get noticed, you don’t have anything. And so getting noticed, separating yourself from this crowd is something humor does very well, because humor is a proven way to grab attention, and one of the evidence that supports this comes from a 2009 meta analysis from a European University in Frankfurt. And there they reviewed 38 high quality papers about the benefits of humors in ADS published between 1960 and 2004 and what they uncovered were some really interesting statistically significant findings attention, which has the strongest positive correlation among a host of other benefits, comes At the top of the list with humor. So when you use humor in ads, in order you get a higher attention towards your brand, a higher attitude towards the brand, lower negative emotion, higher positive emotions, higher purchase intent and higher attitudes towards the brand. And so we want to use humor to separate ourselves, and ideally the best humor is the humor that catches attention, separates you and reinforces a value of your brand, because humor that just makes you laugh, that has no connection to your consulting practice, to your brand, could be what we call the vampire effect. It can draw away the focus from what we really want people to focus on. So if you think about like a very famous brand, Snickers, they want people to choose their peanut rich, protein packed candy bar to meet the need when you’re hungry. So they came up with the campaign, you’re not you when you’re hungry. They had Betty White of Golden Girls fame transform into a football player and get hit when she was not when she was hungry. And so they use humor to separate themselves from the pack, but that humor is all about how Snickers solves your hunger needs. So our recommendation is you want to use humor to grab attention, and the best humor to use is the ones that somehow support a brand claim that you have, somehow reinforce a brand promise that you make. So when you’re. Can do that you’re on the path to really having a successful formula.

Kris Safarova  35:04

And can we think of an example that would be applicable for consultants?

MichaelAaron Flicker  35:08

Let’s see, it’s an adjacent concept to humor for consultants, but in all my time in business consulting, there’s a lot of effort and emphasis put on being perfect and presenting fully baked ideas based on scientific principles with all of the proper testing. And that’s important, and you should do that. But if you want to be more likable by your clients, we have a principle called the pratfall effect that’s really very interesting, and it shows that a small blunder can actually make you even more likable. So the Stella the study is done by Elliot Aronson in the 1960s and he records someone answering questions to a quiz, and they’re very, very good at answering the questions to the quiz. They get 93% of the questions right, and after they finished answering the quiz, by mistake, they spill a little water on themselves. They take that recording and they split it to two groups. One group, they show the recording of just the answers being given, and they cut it right before the accidental spill of water. And the second group, they show the entire recording with the accidental spill of water, and then they ask to rate the participants, how likable the participant is. 55% more likable when there’s a small blunder, when they when they drop some water on themselves, when they make a little mistake. And what we learn by that is that a little bit of a of a blunder can make you a little bit more likable. But here’s where this really gets interesting and gets powerful for us in business, if you can make that blunder, that little admission of guilt tied to something you are excellent at in the world, it becomes much more powerful. So Guinness famously used this in their line Good things come to those who wait. Guinness takes longer for the head of the stout to go down. So everybody knows that orders a Guinness at a bar that they’ve got to wait longer. They took that, that thing that everybody knew about Guinness, and they turned it on its head, and they said, Well, that’s because we’re extra quality. Avis famously said, We’re number two, so we have to try harder, right? They took that they were number two to hertz, and they turned it into a positive that because they’re number two, they’re going to try harder. Or famously, Listerine, the taste you hate twice a day. It’s so astringent, the taste of Listerine, it must be working. It must be good for you. So there’s all these examples where you can use a little blunder, a little bit of bad and turn it into a mirrored strength for your brand and so for consultants, I don’t think we’re advocating that they, at the end of their business presentation, spill water on themselves, but I think we are saying that taking something everybody already knows is a flaw and finding a way to admit it, talk about it, and make it a mirrored strength is going to make you more likable and more believable.

Kris Safarova  38:25

Makes a lot of sense. The next one is connectedness. You mentioned in the book that people remember concrete ideas. So for example, everyone remembers 1000 songs in your pocket, and concrete images create instant grasp ability. How would we apply it again to consulting?

MichaelAaron Flicker  38:45

Absolutely so I’ll tell very quickly the study, and then let’s apply it to consulting. So the study comes from Ian Begg at the University of Western Ontario. It’s 1972 he recruits 25 students, he puts them in a room, and he says, Here’s a list of two word phrases. I’m going to read them to you. Try to remember as many as you can and write it down when we’re done. And so he gives a list impossible amount, Rusty engine, white horse, subtle fault, 20 of those two word phrases. And at the end, study participants could recall on average 23% okay, that’s pretty cool. But what he observed was that people remember just 9% of the abstract phrases like impossible amount or subtle fault, but they could remember 36% of the concrete terms like rusty engine or white horse. And that’s a four fold increase in memorability just by making those terms something you could picture in your head. As you said, the idea is we that concrete images are four times more likely to be remembered than abstract images. In brand marketing, we see. This all over the place. Red Bull gives you wings. It doesn’t give you energy, it gives you wings. Eminem melts in your mouth, not in your hand. Skittles Taste the rainbow. Maxwell House good to the last drop, where they can draw a picture in your head, you’re four times more likely to remember that image and that brand. So how can we apply this to consultants? Consultants love to talk in academic terms and intellectual ideas, the pursuit of perfection. I have no idea what that means. You know, a universal balance. You know, these are concepts that require intense thinking, lots of mental cycles, brain cycles to decode what we mean by them. And our argument here is, the simpler that we speak, and the more concrete the ideas are, the much more easily they’ll be able to be remembered, and the much better they’ll be for your clients to take with them. So where you can draw a picture in people’s minds, where you can use words that are concrete pictures that people can remember, the more effective you will be in your presentations, and the better your consulting will be received.

Kris Safarova  41:13

In case you have it on top of your mind. Do you have any examples of phrases like that for something closer to consulting?

MichaelAaron Flicker  41:21

IBM ran a famous campaign for their cybersecurity product. Cybersecurity really abstract. They really, you know, we do firewalls, we do threat response. How can they make that concrete? And they came up with the campaign, every second counts. So rather than talking about data breaches, rather than talking about malicious actors, they emphasize they wanted everybody to focus on every second of downtime costs hundreds of 1000s of dollars, and so they didn’t use real stories of actual incidents, where they told stories of people that were hacked and how it was solved, to take this abstract idea of cyber risk and make it visceral and real. So they got authenticity and social proof, because there’s people doing it, but they also made it concrete by talking about how every second counts and something you can imagine a clock ticking, and really seeing how every segment counts in a threat response, that’s one that comes to mind. Amazing.

Kris Safarova  42:25

Thank you so much. So we just have a few minutes left. I want to ask you, out of all the ones you have in the book, and I think we may even discussed it last time, but maybe your opinion changed since then. Maybe what are the two three that you believe are the most powerful, let’s say for consulting firm. To keep in mind,

MichaelAaron Flicker  42:46

yeah, one that really struck me in the writing of the book doing all the research for the book is we often say colloquially, every word matters. But there’s some science behind this that, to me, really has left a lasting impact. So the story comes from the late 1970s there’s an American fish importer named Lee Lance, and he’s trying to convince restaurants all across America to take in this new dish that he has discovered, and no one will take in this fish that he knows is perfect for the American palate. And he comes up with this insight that, you know what? Maybe the problem is not the taste of the fish. Maybe the problem is the name of the fish, Patagonian toothfish. What’s its name? And he says, I’m going to rename it Chilean sea bass. And when he renames it Chilean sea bass, it immediately becomes a smashing hit, a 30 fold increase in consumption of Chilean sea bass during the 1990s alone. And it’s really a masterclass in thinking about how the words we use may have unintended consequences. And the fish industry, funny enough, has lots of these examples if you say dolphin fish, my American ears, here’s flipper. Everybody’s favorite dolphin rebranded as Mahi Mahi. Now I think it would be great in tacos. You know, mud bug linguini sounds not appetizing at all, but rebranded as crawfish, and now it sounds delicious crawfish linguine. So there’s really this question of, like, what is the unintended consequences of the words that we use, and how can we and how can we make sure we choose the words that make the biggest impact? And if that feels a little abstract, I’ll just share one study on this first one that I think will really make a difference for everybody. So the study is 1974 it’s Elizabeth Loftus and John Palmer at the University of Washington, and they have this insight that one word can make a big difference. So here’s what they do. They show a clip of a cross of a car crash, and it’s those car crash where you see the car hurtling towards the wall. Wall. It hits the wall, the airbag goes up. And the challenge for those watching the clip is, how fast was the car moving when the accident occurred? But the trick, the twist in the experiment, is that they asked the question slightly different to each group. Sometimes they asked, How fast was the car moving when it smashed the wall? How much was it? How fast was it going when it collided, bumped, hit or contacted the wall? When they used the word Smash, they thought vehicles were traveling at 40.5 miles per hour versus though, and they used the word contact it, the guess was only 31.8% so sorry, 31.8 miles per hour. That’s a 27% difference in the speed they’re estimating by just changing the verb they used to describe hitting the wall. So words matter a lot, and they have an outsized impact on the way people perceive their their their world and their options. So how do we apply that to consultants and to people that are in knowledge based work? We know the words we’re choosing because of all of our schooling, all of our industrial experience, and how we want to describe it just perfectly. But often our buyers are light users of our industry are somewhat knowledgeable about the topic. We may be choosing words that leave a totally different impression on them than what we intended. So really thinking about how the words could be received, I would say that’s that’s number one, most interesting thing that I took away from writing the book, I probably have one second one, if you’d be interested. Definitely there’s a concept in behavioral science called the illusion of effort. And Dyson. James Dyson famously wrote that there was 5127 prototypes that he did of the Dyson DCO, one vacuum before he made it perfect, before he was ready to launch it. That specificity of that number has an unusual effect on us humans. It’s so specific, it reads as more believable. And so this illusion of specificity, this narrowing, and how much effort went into this product, makes us feel more open to the idea that it’s working. And while this is kind of interesting to hear. There’s really some interesting there’s really some interesting science behind it. And it comes from, and it comes from a study done at University of Illinois, urbane champagne in 2004 they recruit 138 participants and split them into two groups. Both groups were given a poem to read called order by Michael von welgen. One group were told that it would took the poet four hours to write the poem. The second group was told that it took the poet 18 hours to write the poem. And next, the participants rated the poem on a scale of one to 11, one I hated it, 11, I loved it. And then they were asked to estimate how much money they thought the poet the poem would earn when it was sold to a Poetry Magazine. So two questions, the results revealed that people who thought the poem took four hours to compose gave it an average rating of 5.8 but those that heard it took 18 hours scored it a 6.4 that’s a 10% uplift just by being told the same exact poem took longer to write than you thought it did. And second, they gave it a 90% increase in value. They thought it would be worth $95 for a sale at the magazine, rather than 50. So when we portray high effort, we humans naturally give it a higher quality rating and a higher perceived value rating. That has a lot of impact. For consultants, we would tell folks, do not hide your work. You don’t have to go through every detail of what you did. But if you show the effort, you show high effort, it is much more likely to be rated favorably and actually to have a higher perceived value. Maybe an add on point here, and when you use AI, you have to be very careful that AI doesn’t lower the perceived effort. So if you say, look how smart I am. We used AI to gather all these data and insights, the initial human reaction may be, well, then this was low. Effort for you, you didn’t really try that hard. So if you’re going to use AI in your professional consulting, you might want to take extra effort to show how high effort it was to prompt the AI correctly, to go through so much data and make sure the quality was right. If you show your effort that went into using AI, you can counteract that initial reaction that man, maybe this isn’t as high value as I would have hoped.

Kris Safarova  50:26

And it goes without saying that the effort needs to be there if you’re going to be displaying it to your customers and clients. Well said. Michael, Aaron, thank you so much. This is such an amazing discussion. I really enjoyed it. I really appreciate you sharing all this with us. Where can our listeners learn more about you? Buy your book anything you want to share.

MichaelAaron Flicker  50:45

Thank you so much. So the book is called hacking the human mind, the behavioral science secrets of 17 of the world’s best brands. You can find it on Amazon or wherever books are sold across the country. And to learn more about the behavioral science insights that we’re using to help grow businesses and to help grow brands, please go to consumer behaviorlab.com the consumer behaviorlab.com that’s where we have a podcast, we have links to the book, and we also have a master class where we teach these principles that anyone can sign up for. And of course, I’m on LinkedIn, always excited to connect and talk about these principles with anybody who has any

Kris Safarova  51:28

interest in it. Michael Aaron, thank you so much again for

51:32

being here. Thanks for having me. Our

Kris Safarova  51:34

guest today, again has been Michael Aaron flicker, who is a behavioral science strategist, and he has built multiple ink 5000 recognized companies, and his book is hacking the human mind. And I hope you guys enjoyed the episode. You will get transcription of the episode as well as key insights and action items from the episode. If you go to firms consulting.com, forward slash action. And you can also download the overall approach Houston well managed strategy studies at firms consulting.com forward slash overall approach. And McKinsey and BCG winning resume, which is a resume that got offers from both of those firms at firms consulting.com forward slash resume. PDF. Another gift we prepared, which is a brand new one, is some key reasons why people I ignore leaders I ignore in meetings, and you may be able to fix some issues that you currently have in the way you may be communicating, and you can get it at times consulting.com forward slash on the room. Thank you so much for tuning in, and I’m looking forward to connect with you all next time.