Tag Archive for: marketing effectiveness

The Great Hanoi Rat Massacre of 1902 and KPIs in 2023

In 1902, Hanoi had a big rat problem. So someone in power came up with a bright idea – to get the city population involved.

The government decided to pay everyone 1 piastre for each severed rat tail (the tail was seen as adequate proof of the kill).

However, this choice of this “metric” had enormous consequences.

After a few weeks people noticed rats running around Hanoi without tails.

On further investigation, it was found that people weren’t killing the rats and cutting off the tails (they were only doing the ‘cutting off’ part).

Conversely, a number of entrepreneurial types realised that they could make a lot of money by catching and breeding the rats, then cutting off their tails and claiming the bounty.

So, rather than solving the rat problem, the incentive was actually making the problem worse.

Why’s this important?

This story shows us how important it is to choose the right KPIs.

For example, measuring the performance of your digital marketing activity on click-through rate alone, without ever knowing if those clicks come from your target audience, or indeed convert to further engagement or ultimately, a sale.

So be very mindful of the KPIs you set. We know that “what’s measured gets done”, but be sure what gets done aligns to your ultimate goal.

To learn more about setting the right KPIs for your brand, contact me here at wethepeople.

Run faster, achieve more:
The power of the Goal Gradient Hypothesis

The goal gradient hypothesis is a powerful psychological premise, discovered by Clark Hull in 1932.

While watching rats in a maze, he noticed they would run faster as they got nearer to a food reward at the end.

According to Hull’s hypothesis, the strength of an organism’s behaviour is determined by two things: the intensity of the reward/goal and the distance to that reward/goal. As an individual moves towards the goal, the motivation to reach that goal increases.

This means we are more motivated, and work harder, as we approach the final stages of goal completion. For example, we run faster as we approach the finish line of a race.

So, when developing content for customers, be sure to break up the content into bite-sized sections. This increases the chance of your customers getting to the end.

And if you are working on a big project, similarly, be sure to break the project into smaller stages, and watch your productivity boost as you approach the end of each stage! 🏁 🏆

Your campaign might be visible to the eye…. but what about the brain?

Did you know that the human brain brings two types of attention to the world?

The right side is receptive to new thinking and ideas, whereas the left side brings attention to things that are already familiar. If your marketing doesn’t appeal to the correct type of attention that your audience is bringing to the world, then you’re at risk of wasting your marketing budget.

Our guide – What the brain doesn’t see… – will help you dramatically improve your marketing effectiveness by understanding how our brains really work. It even shows how the brain’s physical construction plays a role in the way customers behave, and how they respond to communication messages.

Ultimately, you’ll immediately see how you should and shouldn’t be spending your marketing budget.

Don’t risk wasting your budget on communications that your target audience’s brains won’t respond to.

Let’s get real about artificial intelligence

Understanding its limitations will allow marketers to harness the opportunities.

Artificial intelligence is generating a lot of commentary right now, especially with the advent of more accessible versions such as Chat GPT.

In a way it’s reminiscent of many technological changes that have come before, where an immensely useful technology is hyped far beyond its actual usefulness, before settling down into doing what it is actually best at. Anyone remember blockchain hysteria – at its peak about 5 years ago?

AI is an incredible technology, capable of recognising and replicating staggeringly complex patterns in colossal datasets. It develops this skill by being trained using datasets of the same type which are tagged and targeted to allow the AI to learn the rules that apply.

This ability to apply complex pattern recognition to massive datasets means that AI is making a huge difference to diagnostics, drug development, engineering and probably will to many other things that we haven’t yet thought about.

The interesting thing is, that the skills that make AI brilliant at this type of work, also make it look like it’s brilliant at lots of other stuff. As Jason Lanier, interdisciplinary scientist at Microsoft aka the ”Godfather of virtual reality” or “the Dismal Optimist”, points out in a recent Guardian article, we call it artificial intelligence, but it isn’t really intelligent.

Simulated intelligence would perhaps be a better term.

A limitless opportunity? Not quite… or, perhaps, not yet.

A competent creative brief from a human user can certainly produce interesting results from both an imagery and written word perspective. But this is where the limits of AI become apparent. The AI recognises data as data. The AI’s output is correct so long as it holds true to the patterns and rules that it has learned. It has no clue about the representation of that data in its real-world form.

Once we get beyond factual writing and illustration, the meaning of words and images themselves is often an abstraction. Our reaction to them is often more about how they make us feel, what memories they stir up or what they cause us to imagine than the components of their content. Which is why a lot of AI creative output, no matter how unusual, feels flat. A huge amount of our frontal lobe gives us the power to put ourselves in the place of others, to imagine how they might feel. It also gives us the power to imagine how other people would react to our actions, words and things we create. An ability no AI possesses.

If briefed to do so by a human, an AI can create an image of Donald Trump riding a walrus whilst eating a burger in the style of Van Gogh. Amusing for sure, but it has no way of comprehending what the reaction from a human being to the image might be, or even what the image represents. All it has done, in reality, is to faithfully take the patterns of data that it recognises from its training as images of Trump, a burger, a walrus plus images created by Van Gogh, and combine them into one single dataset which we then see as the requested image. This amusing ability is a side effect of what AIs are good at, even though, at the moment, most commentators seem to be focusing solely on this aspect.

Apply human expertise to artificial intelligence and you’ve got a powerful marketing tool.

Now, there’s another side effect which is just as interesting and possibly more useful. Using AI to collect information may free us (at the moment anyway) from the almost unnoticed restrictions that social media and search algorithms use to filter what we see. Ask an AI to summarise information on any particular subject and it is likely to give a different answer each time. This element of randomness mean we have to use our judgement when choosing between the options.

Going back to more core uses, particularly in marketing, AI is already proving very helpful by picking out patterns in customer purchase and behaviour data, looking for trends in market and customer quantitative data etc. Some interesting uses are emerging which involve facial and expression recognition. These are designed to look for emotional responses in video of market research respondents as they are being exposed to various stimuli. There may be applications for taking a master campaign and creating multiple executions in different formats and languages… ready for QA by a human! After all, nobody wants to see a toothpaste ad where the model has two rows of teeth, in the style of the Xenomorph from Alien. Take a look at some AI-generated imagery of human faces and you might be very surprised at how often this actually happens.

Using AI for commercial creative purposes may have more serious consequences than xenomorphs obsessed with dental hygiene. Predictably, several lawsuits alleging breaches of intellectual property rights have already been launched, one notably by Getty. It seems likely that regardless of whoever or whatever does the scraping of the source material, it will likely be the final user who is found liable for any breaches of IP rights legislation.

It is, of course, fascinating to discuss the future AI-related demise of poets, artists, copywriters, and art directors but to spend too much time doing so risks missing out on the real opportunities offered by what AI is good at right now. Whilst, of course, still having fun with the side effects.

 

 

 

So you’ve set yourself a New Year’s resolution…

So, you’ve set yourself a New Year’s resolution… That’s great, but how do you turn this expressed desire into a real, lasting improvement? The evidence for successful adoption of New Year’s resolutions isn’t encouraging. According to Forbes overall success is about 8%.

However, before we abandon any hope of self-improvement let’s look at ways we can change our habits. Erasmus wisely said that “A nail is driven out by another nail; habit is overcome by habit”. This view is supported by our increasing knowledge in neuroscience.

Why we form habits

We form habits, essentially, to save precious energy. The brain consumes energy at 10 times the rate of the rest of the body per gram of tissue. Even at rest it uses around 20% of the total consumed energy of the human body. So, anything that automates processes and reduces that demand is of great evolutionary benefit. Habits are about short cuts. The more often we repeat them the more likely it is that we will do it the next time without even thinking about it. They are automated processes that, with each repetition, are wired further into our neurons.

So how do we form good habits?

  • Step 1:  Understand what triggers your current habits
    To change a habit, you first need to recognise what triggers that response? Does receiving a deadline for a major project trigger immediate procrastination?

  • Step 2:  Decide which behaviours you would like to become your new habit
    For example, would you like to replace the procrastination with an immediate period of outline planning? Be very specific.

  • Step 3:  Decide how you will reward yourself for each successful new behaviour
    Rewards are important. The establishment of habit is closely linked to dopamine reward, which is often how we get into bad habits. Problem gambling is strongly linked to this mechanism. Augmenting the brain’s reward system helps establish the new habit.

So, try this…

Imagine you’ve received a deadline. You’ve immediately done some rough planning and role allocation. Try going out and getting a coffee or having a 5-minute walk… or something else simple that you enjoy doing. Repeated often enough, your brain will rewire your neurons to create a new habit to replace the old one, giving you the best chance to be one of the 8% who succeed over time.

Good luck!

Got a technology question? Steve Jobs still has the answer.

A client recently asked us for our opinion on which technology software solutions could best support the creation of customer journey mapping within their company.

It reminded me of a famous Steve Jobs YouTube clip from the 1997 Apple worldwide developer conference. There he was, in his trademark black polo neck, perched casually on a bar stool, taking questions from the floor. There’s a good chance you might have seen it too as it’s been watched by millions of people.

One man in the audience stood up and says: “Mr. Jobs; you are a bright and influential man” (so far so good) but then he added, “…it’s sad and clear that, on several counts, you don’t know what you are talking about. I would like you, to express in clear terms, how say, Java addresses the ideas embodied in OpenDoc…”

Essentially, what this man was saying to Steve Jobs was: “you don’t understand the technology”. His answer to the challenge was: “You’ve got to start with customer experience and work backwards to the technology. You can’t start with the technology.” And everyone knows how well Apple grew under Steve Jobs.

And this is perhaps the best answer to any question that starts with “Which technology can help us with…?” We are often involved in meetings where it becomes clear that there’s a belief, a hope, that technology might answer a bigger strategic need. But that’s a dangerous place to be. The only way to effectively answer the “which technology…” questions is to first ask “what are the needs we are trying to meet – and what is the customer / user experience that we are trying to create?”.

At wethepeople, we believe that understanding people, and how they behave, must always come first. We build marketing strategies and campaigns using techniques based on how our minds have evolved to function. If you are interested in how wethepeople can accelerate the effectiveness of your marketing activity, and indeed help you to answer the big technology questions, then get in touch.