Primal urges.

Also known as
System 1 Thinking.

Imagine your marketing team is asked to develop a campaign to encourage male accuracy at urinals in a busy international airport. Where would they start? Most likely messaging. A slogan. A series of headlines on placards or LED screens above the urinals appealing to men’s sense of cleanliness.

In 1992, a janitor at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport, unencumbered by an advertising portfolio school education or a marketing degree, came up with an ingenius solution. Give men a target. By painting a fly in the urinals, spillage was reduced 80%.

The practical study of human nature is called Behavioral Science. And retailers understand it in a way that few marketers do.

Trader Joe’s puts the flowers in the front of the grocery store, not to sell you flowers, but to sell you everything else. It’s called Priming.

QuikTrip employees aren’t being friendly when they say, “Welcome to QuikTrip.” They’re doing it to reduce shoplifting. People alter their behavior when they know they’re being observed. It’s been called the Hawthorne Effect.

When ChatGPT asks if you want to upgrade to Pro, they offer three pricing options. That’s because they know if they give people two options, 60% would choose the cheaper of the two. But when presented with a low, middle and high, 60% will choose the middle option. This is called Price Anchoring and it works almost everywhere and anywhere.

This is all basic Behavioral Science.

People are most effectively motivated by forces that work on our subconscious.

The best advertising works because it bypasses rational thought (System 2) and appeals to the intuitive, emotional nature of System 1.

Yet most marketers feel they’re being irresponsible unless they make factual, logical claims (i.e. product differentiators).

Tendency says, if you look at the research, this is illogical :)