Tag Archive for: reward mechanism

The Great Hanoi Rat Massacre of 1902 and KPIs in 2023

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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

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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?

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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.

Get the guide

Let’s get real about artificial intelligence

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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…

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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!

How being distinctive helped a new chocolate company enjoy run-away success

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You just might have heard of Tony’s Chocolonely – a relatively new chocolate company. And you might be wondering how its success relates to healthcare.

Tony’s was set up in 2005 by a Dutch journalist who was determined to make chocolate 100% free from the use of child labour. To raise attention to the issue, he even took himself to court for knowingly buying chocolate made with slave labour.

Now, with a turnover of €70 million, Tony’s Chocolonely is the biggest chocolate brand in the Netherlands. It has a market share of around 19% and growth of 27% compared to last year.

Clearly, the purpose of the company has been key to its success. For consumers, an association with a worthy cause means a great deal. But we all know that purpose alone is not enough for an unknown brand to make this scale of impact.

What else drove the success?

Well, Tony’s Chocolonely blatantly ignored the rules of what chocolate bars should be like. Their first bar was red – a colour that few other manufacturers have ever chosen for plain milk chocolate.

Furthermore, the chocolate itself is divided into a random pattern. So it looks unlike any no other chocolate bar. This unequal pattern is deliberate – it represents the inequality at play in the global cocoa production industry. The flavours are unique too – including Milk Caramel Sea Salt, Dark Milk Pretzel Toffee and White Raspberry Popping Candy.

So what can healthcare learn from this?

There are several key take-outs for brands looking to get noticed by healthcare professionals.

As with all brands and sectors, your story really needs to mean something to your audience. Tony’s did this by being authentic. Remember the old adage: No sound bites without substance.

Most importantly, however, is the need to be distinctive. Being distinctive allowed Tony’s to penetrate a mature market packed with numerous “stronger” competitors.

By being distinctive, brands in any industry can draw the attention of customers and influencers and open their eyes to the reasons to choose us over the competition.

Why do customers sometimes seem blind to your new messaging?

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Ever wondered why customers haven’t noticed new information about your brand? Why it’s so difficult to change an established position in their minds?

Maybe it’s not because they won’t, it’s more that they can’t.

Our evolutionary history has always been about us as a species, learning and trying new things. But if that had been done without limits, the sheer number of failed experiments would have killed us all off long ago. That’s why there are guard rails built in to prevent this.

Once we’ve found something that works for us in a particular scenario, we tend to use that as our default position. This reduces the need for repeated risk taking, which could be prejudicial to our surviving long enough to reproduce.

Enter the uncertainty principle and negative transfer.

The uncertainty principle (not the Heisenberg one) states that people will pay more attention to stimulus that’s unfamiliar to them. They don’t recognise it and can’t predict what it means. So they will continue to pay attention until they feel that they know what it means.

At this point they not only stop learning about this particular stimulus, they are actively inhibited from doing so through negative transfer.

A common example of this is drivers who learned to drive in an automatic car. They often struggle more with a manual car than those drivers learning to drive for the very first time.

This concept is incredibly useful from a marketing perspective. If you are a major market leader, having your customers in a state of negative transfer is perfect as they aren’t looking to learn anything new about the problem you are solving for them.

So, if you want to communicate something new about your brand, you’ll have to do it in a way that your customers notice in order to push them back into uncertainty. Beware though, introducing the uncertainty principle at this point could destabilise your whole position, allowing your competitors to gain attention.

Find out how wethepeople can help you to use these principles and improve your communications whilst avoiding some of the pitfalls.

Implementing the reward mechanism to encourage behaviour change

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As grown-ups in the 21st century, we are all patently aware of what we should do to live a healthier life. So why is there still a large proportion of the population that seems unable to do the right thing and make the correct decisions for their health?

A couple of things in this statement bear further scrutiny.

First is the vaguely judgemental tone employed by those of us involved in the healthcare industry to express our frustration. We tend to do this when large swathes of the population don’t take their medication, won’t increase activity, won’t eat the right food and won’t quit smoking. However, our judgment is often based on what we would do. This assumption makes us victims of what’s known as the false consensus effect. This is an attributional cognitive bias where we believe that our own personal beliefs, opinions, behaviours, likes and dislikes are also normal for most other people. Unfortunately, that bias is often reinforced by reflection from our friends and colleagues in our industry. The reality is very different.

The truth is that only a small proportion of the population actually spends its waking and working hours thinking about its health. Now let’s look at it from another, incredibly obvious, point of view. A lot of positive health behaviours, especially those that many people REALLY need to adopt, aren’t particularly attractive. Why? Simply because they often involve doing less of stuff that people like and more of stuff that they really don’t want to do.

Which brings us to the second thing.

Rewards are only rewards if they feel good to people. Again, from a healthcare industry perspective, what could feel better than a new personal best on a Strava segment, or smashing my 25,000-step record on Fitbit? Quite a lot, as it turns out. Non-health obsessed people (i.e. most of the population) are constantly expected and encouraged to replace things that have a built-in reward with something for which the reward is completely and utterly intangible. Reducing the odds of something bad happening at some unspecified time in the future does not get those dopamine juices flowing in quite the same way as a nice carb and fat laden meal, a drink, a cigarette or a Victory Royale in Fortnite. Tragically however, none of these aforementioned delights will do much to improve anyone’s type 2 diabetes, for example…

The key to making differences here is to make rewards for healthy behaviour relevant to the audience in whom we are interested, rather than to us. Harnessing the reward mechanisms in our brains is very helpful here. The interesting thing is that the way we process reward doesn’t appear to differ for real or virtual rewards. Creating surrogate, virtual rewards that are immediate for healthy behaviours is a powerful way to reward behaviour change. The most important thing to do here is to define rewards that our audiences find attractive and to keep changing and adding to those rewards over time to maintain interest.

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The Great Hanoi Rat Massacre of 1902 and KPIs in 2023

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