A Persuasion Tactic Collapses

Chris Norton 0:00

For years, marketers trusted a psychological principle that shaped entire campaigns. A principle praised in best-selling books, taught in boardrooms, repeated like gospel, until the replications came. And suddenly, it just didn't work anymore.

Phil Agnew 0:15

Yeah, let me start with a disclaimer which will totally invalidate what I say next.

Chris Norton 0:20

If you've ever built a strategy on proven science, only to watch the results fall flat, or wondered what happens when a trusted behavioural tactic collapses overnight, this episode might just save your next campaign. If you already create a really delicious burger, using behavioural science can make people enjoy it even more. Today Will and I are joined by Phil Agnew, host of the top-ranking behavioural science podcast Nudge, a storyteller who brings research to life with real-world case studies and experiments.

Phil Agnew 0:55

Can I explain that to listeners? I think it's really it's one of the ones that I think is most important and and it's not talked about enough by behavioural scientists. So I don't think uh some of your other guests would have mentioned this as much.

Chris Norton 1:06

But what you're referring to is In today's episode, you're going to learn how to spot when a scientific insight is on shaky ground, why even widely taught behavioural tactics can collapse under real-world pressure, and how Phil rebuilt his whole approach to influence using only the ideas that actually work. Let's get into it. Phil Agnew, welcome back to the show.

Phil Agnew 1:39

Thank you very much. Thank you for having me back. First of all, I'm amazed I've been invited back on, really. Um you're a friend of the show now, Phil.

Will Ockenden 1:46

You're you're a friend of the show if you've been on twice. Which uh yeah, great to have you back on.

Phil Agnew 1:50

Am I the first am I the first friend of the show now?

Chris Norton 1:53

No, no, we've got we've got um I think we've got two or three different people we've had more than once, and we've got Ant Cousins is coming back on at the end of this month, I think. And uh Stuart Bruce has been on twice already, or maybe three times, because I used to work with Stuart, he was uh uh uh my old boss. So yeah, um a couple only a few there have come have been uh double guests, so um yeah. Um and I'd point out that your episode is what is I think one of your clips on YouTube for our YouTube is one of the most watched YouTube clips. So whatever you said was absolute gold dust. And Rory needs to look out. You're coming for Rory.

Will Ockenden 2:31

Yeah, no, no pressure for this episode then.

Phil Agnew 2:33

Oh, yeah. Well, that's well, let's beat that. And I love how I love how it was whatever you said, it was gold dust. We've all forgotten. None of us can remember. Yeah, I don't remember what I spoke about last time. Hopefully, the listener does though.

Chris Norton 2:45

Exactly, exactly. So, um, we've got you on today to talk about scientific tactics to make people say yes. Now, I have I've got no scientific tactics to make people say yes, apart from to invite them on the show, that's about it. I can't think of how what what what are the great tools and tips you can give us all to get people to say yes? And I'm thinking from a purely selfish uh element of how can I get somebody to hire my uh prohibition as our PR agency as their PR agency? How do how do we do that?

Phil Agnew 3:16

So let's let's get into that. You want people you're pitching your agency and you explain what you do, and you're you want to tweak how you suggest, how you bring to to market your offer to make more people say yes. Is that right?

Chris Norton 3:31

Yeah.

System One Shortcuts In Marketing

Phil Agnew 3:32

Alright. Um God, just an easy question to start off, isn't it?

Chris Norton 3:38

You're the professional, you're you're the pro.

Phil Agnew 3:42

So what the world of behavioural science will tell you, according to the late great Daniel Caman, Nobel lawyer, and apologies for listeners who have heard this a hundred times before, but when an individual hears your message or your pitch, they will probably use a few shortcuts to try and understand that pitch as quickly as possible. And that is because we all have these two modes of thinking. You have system one, which is this sort of fast, unconscious mode of thinking. It's the mode of thinking you you you you you probably used when you decided to put on this podcast. Because you think, oh, I just always listen to this fantastic show, let's put it on straight away. And then you have system two, which is more considered slow and deliberate, which is the mode of thinking that you use if you're trying to decide whether or not to marry your partner. Or actually, uh I'm sure your partner hopes that you would use system one, but for a lot of people it would be system two. Not for me, of course. Um, and then also system two is what you'd decide if you were deciding whether to take a job or not. Anyway, the point is our brains really hate actually having to think. We don't like expanding, uh expelling the energy that requires system two. We don't like to do it. We'd rather take a shortcut and make a decision on the fly. And these shortcuts in the world of psychology are known as heuristics. So heuristic is a quick shortcut that we will use to decide whether to do something or not. Best example of this. Let's say you are on holiday in Greece on a lovely island in the Mediterranean. You're walking down it'd be nice, wouldn't it? Would be nice.

Chris Norton 5:17

Amazing, especially in March.

Dynamic Social Proof That Converts

Phil Agnew 5:19

Yeah, go on. So imagine you're there in March and the weather's absolutely stunning. There's loads of people there. You're walking down the Timberno, it's the sun's setting, you're trying to decide what restaurant to go to. And one west restaurant is pretty much entirely empty. There's one table taken up by a couple who are looking a little bit worried about their food, and a really pleading waiter standing outside desperate to get you in. You see that restaurant. The other restaurant has a queue out the door, tables are full, and the waiters aren't even bothering to try and get you in the door. You don't need to think critically about that decision. In fact, nobody really would. Nobody would actually go and look at the menu and say, oh, this one has food that we prefer, or this one's got a price point that we're after, or we said earlier today we really want to try the moussaka, so let's go to this restaurant. You don't do that critical thinking. You don't engage system two, you just use system one, you use a heuristic. In this case, that heuristic is social proof, which is follow the actions of others, and you of course queue for the restaurant which has the queue out of the door. And this seems like a unique example, but it actually happens for pretty much 95% of the decisions that we make. Everything from what restaurant should I go to today, what podcast should I put on, what sneakers should I buy, um, where should I take my partner for a date this weekend? You're pretty much using these heuristics all the time. And people who are buying software agencies, recruiting, you know, the types of firms that are similar to the firm that you guys run, will use heuristics when they make that decision, which means all of the topics we'll talk about today can also be used to try and influence that decision. Social proof being an example. You know, you can tell people we are the most popular agency within our space, if it's true. And if it is true, that will make them more likely to buy. If that's not true, you can find another way of using social proof. There's this wonderful study. It's a great study because it's done on Americans, I believe, in Texas, and trying to encourage them to eat more vegan food, which you can imagine is probably the hardest people to persuade to take that action. I don't think about me. The researchers in this study, they went to the people queuing up outside this restaurant and they basically told each different person a different spiel and then measured how many actually went on to eat vegan food. So half were told a sort of social proof line, which was did you know that 30% of Americans are now trying more plant-based options? Which is kind of good, right? You're saying, oh, 30% of Americans are trying it. But it's not the majority. It's not saying most Americans are trying it. So they came up with a different slogan for the other people. And rather than saying 30% of Americans are trying this, they say more Americans than ever are trying plant-based food. Would you consider trying one today? And that second one, which is what they call dynamic social proof, it's showing a trend, a change, a movement, a direction, that was way more effective at getting people to actually eat plant-based food somehow. I think the amount who ate it went from uh 10% in the control to 33% in that variant. So significant difference. So if your agency is growing at a rate which is faster than the compet competitors, you could say that. You could say, you know, we are the fastest growing agency in our space. More people than ever are picking us, never before. Fewer clients than any other agency are leaving us. They're sticking with us for. So there's all these different ways you can apply it, there's all these lateral ways of thinking of it. Um, and I don't want to go into too much detail. I mean, do you want me to just spend the next 60 minutes going? Because I can keep going if you want.

Chris Norton 8:52

The listeners are loving it. I will say that when I was looking at your your website, I had a look at your website because I know that you went full time. For those of you, um, I mean, I know Oliver introduced you already carefully, but that you're you're you went full time. Is it about 12 months ago?

Phil Agnew 9:07

A bit longer than that, more like it's a it's it's almost two and a half years actually. But yeah, I did go full time.

Chris Norton 9:12

Two and a yeah, is it really?

Phil Agnew 9:13

January 2024 was when I left um Buffalo.

Operational Transparency Builds Value

Chris Norton 9:16

And um yours was always the one that I one of the ones that I always listened to because I love the little stories and the way that you break it down. It's very different to this show, obviously. And I love the way that you you break it down and and everything. But I've just literally this morning, because we've for a bit of research, we've done some research obviously for this chat. Yeah, and uh I went on to the nudge um uh URL and I was going through your newsletter and it said you've literally used nudges on every single bit. It's like um I need to it said um oh I need to f I'll find I'll find the the the the you'll you'll know because you've probably done 15 different ways of doing it, haven't you? Um I'm gonna read it out um when I find it uh because I was reading it, I was like, that's clever. You've literally used social proof, haven't you? So you oh I know the one that I saw. It was the the fact that you spend 19 hours that was it, you spend 19 hours writing this newsletter every week. And that's because the perceived bias of extra work into something, which is what it uh means that you feel like you're getting a better product, which is why Gordon Ramsay has open kitchens, because you can that's why everywhere's got open kitchens now. You see the the chefs doing the work and you see the work that's going into the product, therefore you feel like you're getting a better product. Exactly.

Phil Agnew 10:29

That can I explain that to listeners? I think it's really it's one of the ones that I think is most important, and and it's not talked about enough by behavioural scientists, so I don't think uh some of your other guests would have mentioned this as much. But what you're referring to is is is known in the world of behavioural science as operational transparency, which is a very fancy way of saying show people behind the scenes. And so in this test, it was run in a canteen in Harvard by a researcher called Ryan Buell, and they they put in these cameras, one in the kitchen where the food was being cooked, and one in the actual restaurant. And they had iPads which could on demand show people inside the kitchen and show the chefs inside the restaurant. And when they turned on these cameras, they found that not only do the chefs cook better meals because they can see customers enjoying their food. So they have this direct link with the customers, but the customers enjoy the food more as well because they can see the effort going into it. Operational transparency has many more applications there, because Ryan Buell went on to do a study with kayak. Do you know kayak? It's the um it's basically Google search for holidays, a bit like uh Expedia or the other ones, booking.com. Anyway, kayak.com has kind of been killed by Google like most things, and definitely will be killed by AI. But back in 2011, when he ran this study, it was quite important. And what kayak would do is you would search for a holiday to Greece, if we continue on our analogy of going to that Greek taverna, you would search for a holiday for Greece, and a loading wheel would come up and it would slowly go round in circles and try and find holidays for Greece. And Ryan Buell said, Well, let's try and show people behind the scenes. Let's try and apply a bit of operational transparency. So they created a variant of that loading wheel, which didn't just have a white page and a loading wheel. Instead, the page showed the actual website looking through all of the different airlines, all of the different days, all of the different prices. And you could see it saying, We're searching flights from British Airways, we're searching flights from Ryanair, we're searching flights from EasyJet, we're looking at hotels in the Marriott, we're looking at all these different things, working really hard. They compared the two and they measured how many people actually went on to book a holiday, and they find that when the loading wheel shows the effort, more people go and book the holiday. More interestingly, they can make that wait longer. They can make the loading wheel spend not 10 seconds finding the results, but 20 seconds, 30 seconds. And people are still more likely to book if they show behind the scenes.

Chris Norton 12:52

That's mad.

Starbucks Speed Backfires On Loyalty

Phil Agnew 12:52

So same thing is true for your food. You know, if it takes longer, but you can see the chef doing the work, you're more likely to value it. And in fact, there's I'll finish with one great example. It's this um it's this amazing news news article about Starbucks, again from the early 2010s. Rory Sutherland shared it in uh in a conference. He it's this study, it's this uh article from the Wall Street Journal, and it talks about how in the early 2010s the Starbucks baristas were caught were taught how to do something called parallel pouring. So this is where you um can create essentially one barista, can can work on four lattes at once. You get two double espresso going, four cups underneath, big jug of uh dairy milk, little jug of oat milk. You can get four on the go at once, and you can basically serve four people within almost 30 seconds. And the economists behind Starbucks said, this is an amazing idea. We'll be able to serve people quicker, customers will be happier, we'll be able to get more revenue, they'll be more loyal. And what they find is almost the exact opposite. Nothing of nothing what they predicted happened other than the baristas got faster. Customers weren't more loyal. In fact, customers returning went down, and customer satisfaction dropped as well. And when they looked into it and they interviewed customers, they said, Yeah, previously the barista would spend like two minutes working on my drink. And now I get now I see them working on the drink and it takes like 30 seconds and they do it with a bunch of other people. And they didn't value the actual latte as much. They thought it was worse quality in the same way that if you go into the barbers and get your haircut and it takes 30 seconds, you're gonna think it's a shit haircut. But if they take half an hour and give you the exact same haircut, you'll think it's fantastic. And so Starbucks removed that policy. They now ban their baristas from parallel pouring, and customers are more loyal and they enjoy the coffee more.

Chris Norton 14:44

But it takes longer to get a coffee.

Phil Agnew 14:46

But it takes longer to get a coffee.

Will Ockenden 14:48

So um, Phil, coming back to getting people to say yes, because I think that's worthy of a of a deeper discussion.

Phil Agnew 14:54

Yeah.

Will Ockenden 14:54

Um are you saying even in the complex B2B sale, um you know, the the the the assumption is people use system two thinking in a complex B2B sale, but are you saying actually they in many cases it's system one thinking? And that's driven by social proof. So the more social proof we can we can amass, whether that's reviews, um, you know, those kind of growth statistics you mentioned, that is gonna kind of nudge people or shift people into system one thinking uh in which they're gonna make a quicker decision.

Phil Agnew 16:50

Yeah, but it's it's it's not just social proof. I think all of the heuristics that psychologists have discovered can affect very high-level B2B decisions. And you know, another one is the power of reciprocity, which is the idea, and all of us are taught this from a young age, which is if somebody does a favor for us, we feel compelled to return the favor. There's an amazing 1980s study by Dennis Regan run in an art gallery. Participants are brought into the art gallery, they meet a what they think is a fellow participant. Now, if anybody listening is lucky enough to get brought into a psychology study and they meet who is called a fellow participant, I'll tell you right now, that's that isn't a paid actor. That is not a real person because always in these studies, the other fellow participant is actually a paid actor, as it was in this case. And the fellow participant, what people perceive to be the fellow participant, they're walking around, they're under the guise of meant to be racing the art, they're looking at the racing the art. Halfway through, the fellow participant, actually actor, walks out, buys themselves a Coca-Cola, and then buys another one and comes back and says, Oh, I just went to get myself a Coke. I thought I'd get one for you as well. Do you want one? Offers the Coca-Cola. They do the rest of the art reviewing in the art gallery, and then at the end, which the participant believes is not related to the experiment at all, the fellow participant slash actor says, Oh, just by the way, while I've got you here, I'm selling tickets, raffle tickets for my local charity. You wouldn't want to buy a couple of tickets for you. And what he finds, Dennis Regan, in this experiment, is when that actor offers the Coca-Cola, does that person a favor. People buy two times as many raffle tickets, far outweighing the cost of the Coca-Cola, compared to when he doesn't offer the cost of Coca-Cola. And look, you might say, look, Phil, that's a that's a Coca-Cola and raffle tickets. This isn't a big deal. This doesn't affect massive decisions. But there's a really interesting study by HMRC, which has been cited in in Steve Martin's books, which tried to convince bankers to donate a whole day's salary. Now, bankers, as you know, make a lot of money. They're not the most generous. They might be the most generous people in the world. Who knows? But donating a whole day's salary as a banker is quite a lot. In the study, they did it, used lots of different tests to try and get them to donate. The one that actually encouraged the highest amount of people to donate was just giving them a small bag of sweets. So that's a tiny bit of reciprocity in order to allow for a much more.

Will Ockenden 19:15

Some ideas for our next I'm getting some ideas for our next pitch, Chris. Are you?

Chris Norton 19:19

Can I reverse engineer that as well? So I've literally just last night me and my wife finished watching, going back to the culinary example, Gordon Ramsay's latest documentary, which is all about his new restaurant, which is great PR, six episodes all about his bloody restaurant now. How stressful he is. It's called Lucky Cat, right? So if you haven't seen the documentary, it's called Lucky Cat. It's obviously Gordon Ramsay, it's the biggest, it's the highest, one of the highest restaurants in in the UK. I believe so. Anyway, it's in London. The view's amazing, right? And it's Asian fusion type food, Gordon Ramsay to to the to the hilt. It's a beautiful food in a beautiful setting. He's really I think they've spent I think they spent £100,000 on launching it for one night. The place is it it's cost a fortune for him to build it. Anyway, it's called Lucky Cat. And I during the show they talk about the cost, his wife talks about how much it is per person to go into the restaurant. I believe because I was quite intrigued, it's like 250, 300 quid a head, which is a lot. But if you go into Gordon Ramsay, you're expecting a big hit, aren't you? Anyway, but the interesting thing on the reciproc how do you say it again? Say it again. Recipe. Reciprocity. Reciprocity. These guys have gone for dinner at Gordon Ramsay's restaurant and it's lucky cat. And you know those Chinese cats, the Oriental cats that do that? He's got like these mini, he's got the whole place, he's got like obviously they're they're bespoke to the restaurant, but for every single place, they've got like a little uh gold cat where you sit down. I mean I'm I'm making it sound a little bit, it's not that tacky, they look really nice. Anyway, he obviously launches the restaurant. You I I was intrigued in the PR launch of it and how they did it and everything. It's really interesting. And then he sees his manager the day after, or the or a couple of days after, and 10% might have even been more than 10%, it was at least 10% of guests had stolen one of the lucky cats from the because I think they'd said they'd lost 300 of them already, and because people were obviously going out for this big expensive dinner and then nicking a Gordon Ramsay lucky cat, which is quite entertaining, isn't it?

Phil Agnew 21:18

Yeah, but do you reverse? I guess the question is, do you think they factored that in? Because I think if they were good hospitality hosts, they would almost have created the lucky cat in order to factor that in. I I kind of like a bit like the the Virgin Atlantic salt and pepper shakers, they they're famously sort of factored in. You're you're almost meant to nick them, or at least that's how people view it.

Manipulation Versus Better Experiences

Will Ockenden 21:42

I'm I'm convinced, you know, beaver town um beer glasses, which are beautifully designed, you know, they must get stolen all the time. And I'm sure that is a I mean, I don't know what uh behavioural bias that is, but um, yeah. So so it what this what at what point does this become manipulation? And I think that's something we touched on before, because I sort of half jokingly said to Chris then, you know, I'm I'm getting ideas for our next pitch. So clearly, yeah, bags of sweets for all the attendees, give them a diet coke, all this stuff, you know. Play them from the moment they walk in the door. But it's not that's not that's not the right attitude, is it? I mean, at what point does it cross over to manipulation? Is there a danger of that?

Phil Agnew 22:22

So um maybe let's go back to the example, this Gordon Ramsey example, because I think what it is an example of potentially is this is this idea of the peak end rule. And the peak end rule is a good one to explain if things are manipulative or not. The peak end rule basically says that people, when they reflect on an experience, remember the peak, so the highlight of the experience, and they remember the ending and they pretty much forget the rest of it. And the study behind this was a Daniel Kahneman study by um Daniel Kahneman, I've been 1993 study with Barbara Fredrickson. And the study is amazing. They get students in a room, they bring them in, and they ask them to put their hand in freezing cold water. It's really uncomfortable. You know, if you imagine actually getting into an ice bath, just putting your hands into ice cold water is not an enjoyable thing. Uh 50% of the students are asked to keep their hands in the ice cold water for 60 seconds. And then another 50% of the students, and these are in separate rooms, they're different populations, they don't see each other, they keep their hands in the water for 60 seconds. Then they are asked to put their hands in very cold water, just not s as cold, so slightly warmer, but still uncomfortable for an extra 30 seconds. So one group, 60 seconds in painfully cold water, another group, painfully cold water, 60 seconds, plus 30 seconds in still painful water. Kahneman asks both groups, how much would I have to pay you to repeat the experiment? How likely are you to repeat the experiment? And he finds something completely counterintuitive. The people who should be most wanting to repeat the experiment are the ones that only had 60 seconds worth of this horrible experience. But the ones who actually are more likely to repeat the experiment are the ones who had the happier ending, the slightly better ending, the slightly warmer water ending at the end. And restaurants apply this really well. They understand this. So flat iron in London, steak restaurant. When you leave flat iron in London, you're given these little pair of ornamental steak knives. They say, give this to the waiter as you leave. You give it to the waiter as you leave, and you are surprised by a small cone of salted caramel ice cream. You go away, you feel great. You feel like those individuals in the warmer water experiment, right? You've had a nicer ending. And your memory of that restaurant is good. Now, you could look at this and say this is manipulation. You could say you are manipulating people to enjoy that restaurant experience more because you have given them that happier ending, because you're applying a principle. But what Phil Barden would say is there is no neutral. There is no world in which you're not being nudged one way or the other. If you don't give them an ice cream at the end, you're just making the experience less enjoyable. And for what reason? For the reason that you think it's unfair? Is it unfair to be nice to people when you're serving them? Is it unfair to put all of your effort and hard work into creating a really nice dish so they enjoy it? Is it unfair to give them a bit of ice cream at the end? Now, you could say maybe the one thing you could say is if you've got an awful restaurant, if you're literally serving dog food and you're then giving people a load of ice cream at the end to somehow manipulate them to make them think that the food was really enjoyable, then yeah, you could say that's the case. But people aren't that dumb. These heuristics have they they have effects. They're tools you can use to amplify an experience, or if you're not if you don't use them to dampen an experience, but they're not going to dramatically change the experience. You can't give someone an ice cream at a McDonald's and just make them think it's a Michelin-style restaurant.

Will Ockenden 25:46

I wonder how many people intuitively do this stuff as opposed to you know, so so the you know, the the peak end rule, you've got five guys as well, haven't you? You know, which give you an extra yeah, extra serving of fries. And I I've experienced the flat iron ice cream and it's great. But I wonder, as you know, as a restaurateur, if you just want to give people an amazing experience, or what they've got the mints in Indian restaurants, haven't they? Mints and the um the heated face. I love that.

Chris Norton 26:12

I was doing when he was talking, I was when Phil was talking, I was thinking yoga, because I I go to man man yoga, Phil, because I'm a very manly man working in PR. And um, I like yoga because it's good for my back and everything. But obviously, I don't like 90%. I like the bit at the beginning where I say hello to everyone, and I know the bit in the middle, the actual yoga bit's horrible, and then the end bit, which is the um uh where you lay down uh shavasna, they call it, don't they? You lay down and you you like you feel incredible, and that's and it you might even fall asleep for a couple of minutes, which is absolutely and and that that's like the the the selling the selling aspect of yoga. So my my thing, Will, is how can we make our client relationships when we've done a project for a client end on a brilliant, you know, like on a on a win? Yeah, should we be handing them a free ice cream, some mints, or should we just let them lay on the floor and go to sleep for a couple of hours?

Peak End Rule For Service Design

Will Ockenden 27:04

Well, it's a good point, but my my point, Phil, was how um deliberate well, as a restauranteur, I wonder how many restaurateurs on one hand just want to give an amazing experience, or whether they're cynically reading up on behavioural science and then map an activity against that. And I suspect a lot of it's done intuitively, isn't it?

Phil Agnew 27:25

Do you know Will Ghidara who wrote the book Unreasonable Hospitality? So I just interviewed him on the podcast on Nudge, because his book is essentially a practitioner's guide to how to apply behavioural science because he goes through dozens of examples about how they built Eleven Madison Park in New York, which became in 2017 the world's number one restaurant, three-star Michelin stars, but also the world's number one restaurant. How did he build this restaurant? He basically didn't focus on the food at all. He was he was co-founder, he knew he ran front of house. It makes sense that he wasn't focused on the food, but really the reason that they stood out was because their hospitality was what he called unreasonable. And he applied the peak end rule. He did this amazing thing, you can read about it in the book, where he hated that the final experience people had at a restaurant was A, paying the bill and B, waiting for their coat, if it was winter, trying to get your coat back. So, how did he make paying the bill easier? He said to me, you know, you can't give the bill straight away because people feel like they're being rushed, and you can't wait because then people are just waiting for the bill. So what he did is he came up with a solution where he gives the bill and then he says, There's absolutely no rush to pay this. Uh, we're just going to leave this lovely bottle of brandy, which we brew with our partner in-house. Leave the bottle on the table. Uh, if you'd like a sort of drink before you go, please help yourself. There's absolutely no rush. What a wonderful way to ease the pain of payment. They have the bill straight away, they can pay whenever they want. Plus, they don't feel like they're being rushed because they've been offered a whole bottle of brandy to drink, by by which nobody basically drank because they were already full and pissed on an amazing fine dining meal. And then with the ticket, with the with the coat check, how do you end up making that more interesting? Well, we'll decided let's try and make a ticketless coat check. Let's try and take people's coats, but not give them a ticket. So people give their coats to the front desk when they come in. They don't really think about the fact that they haven't got a ticket. The front desk then puts them in a in a room which is assigned to their table. So different parts of the room are assigned to different tables. They've they've hired someone in the restaurant to walk around and see when that table is close to finishing their meal. When it is, they move their coats from this big room to the front of the desk. And when they see the individual get up to leave, they then hand them back their exact coat without a ticket check. And most guests sort of realize at that point, oh wow, how do they do that? There's 200 people in this restaurant, I've got my exact coat back, I didn't even give them a ticket. What an amazing peak entity experience. And I say to Will, to like, were you reading Daniel Kahneman? Did you did you like study psychology? Were you like looking at thinking fast and slow every evening to try and apply this stuff? And he said, no, it it just came intuitively to him.

Will Ockenden 30:07

Interesting.

Phil Agnew 30:08

But at the top of the show, before we started, Will, you were saying to me that people really like this behavioural science stuff. And I think one of the reasons why people really enjoy hearing about this stuff is because it's stuff that we intuitively know that make us make our heads nod and think, oh yeah, I've I can think of an example where that has happened to me, but we just don't have maybe the vocabulary or the methodology to apply it in a systematic way. And so this stuff this stuff works, it can be applied systematically if you know what you're doing, but so many practitioners just apply it naturally.

Chris Norton 30:44

Attention to detail from Will Will. Also, he's got an amazing voice, Will Guidara, hasn't he? Because I listened to the audio, I listened to the audio. I think I passed it to you, Will, didn't I? And the audio book, it's amazing. He's got an amazing voice. And all this stuff that you're just saying there, like I'm trying to think because me and Will do a lot of training, as you do. I'm trying to think of how we can make the training with like literally an ending where everybody comes away going, Wow, that's amazing. You can do that to meetings, or you can do it to training, or you can do it to a project where you've just got like an unexpected thing that's the del surprise-I suppose it's the same thing as surprise and delight, which is essentially what Will was doing. Um yeah, it it's not rocket science, it's behavioural science, I suppose, isn't it?

Phil Agnew 31:27

Will actually gave me an example, it was not of an agency, it was an accountancy firm that were on the suburbs of Washington, and people typically drive to the firm, and they hired a valet. Now, a valet costs in the US maybe 30 grand a year, not a massive expenditure for a multinational sort of company. But the valet enabled them to do something really interesting, it gave them the keys to the car of the customers, which meant that they could leave something in the car if they wanted. So every time a customer went for a meeting at this um accountancy firm, they would leave a thank you bag in the car. So when they're driving back, the last experience they have is that that is cheap. Yeah, it's it's so many different ways you can apply this. My mum gave me this amazing example. She was working with uh an ingredients firm, a flavorings firm in India. And this flavorings firm, you know, there's lots of different firms that offer essential oils to flavor products, but this one really stood out in my mum's mind because they planted a tree in her name, and right before she leaves, every time they go out and show her this tree and see how much it's grown. It's just an amazing ending experience. You can think there's so many creative ways to do this. It's not just leave a mint with the bill. You can think about this in really lateral, interesting ways and have a really lasting impact on the person you've got.

What’s New Replications And Scandals

Will Ockenden 32:46

My brain's ticking away already. We could um we could have a um a car valetor in our car park. So the client leaves their car and they come back and it's um sparkling clean. There we go. Yeah, good idea. Although people might get upset with that. Some people are a bit funny about what you do to their cars. Um so Phil, how how quick moving is this stuff? And I think you know, obviously you're on the show maybe a year ago. Is is is you know, what's new in the in the world of behavioural marketing? Is there such a thing as the pace of development, or is it the same methodologies applied in new contexts? You know, what has changed in in your mind?

Phil Agnew 33:25

Well, uh stuff has changed, but it's not due for due to technical innovations in the same way that AI is changing marketing in different ways. The the nice thing about behavioural science and psychology is it is the study of the human mind. And the human mind does not change every six months, it changes changes every couple of millennia. You know, the brain doesn't really change, it reacts in the same way. All of the heuristics that I've spoken about today are these evolutionary traits. We learnt to follow the actions of others because if you see a bunch of other cavemen running away from a tiger, you learn pretty quickly that you shouldn't go towards that tiger and you should run away as well, in the same way that you go into the Greece restaurant with the queue out the door. Same with reciprocity.

Will Ockenden 34:12

That's what I'm doing after this show. I'm definitely going on the sky scanner to look at flights of Greece.

Why AI Cannot Replace Real Tests

Phil Agnew 34:16

Definitely do. Yeah, it would do the loading wheel just in the way I've described, because the people the the companies have learned that. But the same with reciprocity. You know, we learn as as again, probably cavemen, hunter-gatherers, that if somebody does us a favour, we return the favour, because that is the the building blocks of human society and the building blocks of cooperation. And without that, we wouldn't have grown into the soap homo sapians we are today. So this that stuff doesn't really change. That said, it is a science. And with every good science, ideas that are proven do sometimes get disproven. So, not in the last six months, but in recent years, I've spoken a lot about Daniel Kahneman in his book Thinking Fast and Slow, he starts that book with a whole chapter on priming. Priming was this concept that individuals could be influenced by seemingly very small primes. So if I said to you words like pension, um, retirement, um, blackpool, and then and then this is a real study, and then measured how long it took you to walk down the hallway. If I had just said those words randomly, apparently I could have subconsciously primed you to walk slower because those words are about older people. Sorry to everyone listening in Blackpool. Um that they that study was published in a peer-reviewed um paper. It seemed to get some traction. Daniel Kahneman had talked about it in this book. It's since been disproven. They've or or they've repeated the experiment enough times to know the effect isn't large enough to bother ever thinking, uh, spending time on it. And and for practitioners, people listening who think, well, how do I know what to apply? A good rule of thumb is if the input is ridiculously small and insignificant and barely noticeable, don't expect a large output. So if let's go back to the social proof example, if you were trying to show social proof by putting a tiny sign on your menu saying we're really popular, that's a tiny, tiny input. You're not going to get a massive output. However, if you have a queue out the door, which is visible all the way down the street, that's a massive input. You get a big output in terms of you'll get a lot of behavior change from that. So that stuff's been disproven. Probably the most interesting other thing that's going on in the world of behavioural science at the moment is the Francesca Gino scandal, is probably what it's known as. Um and Francesca Gino was a researcher who uh published a lot of very interesting studies who have who's since been expelled from Harvard due to allegations of data fraud. And some of the things, hilariously, some of the things she worked on was around honesty and why people cheat. And there's evidence that maybe suggests that she was cheating herself. Um but also the other thing that she worked on was something called the Red Sneakers effect, which some of the listeners might have heard of, which is a study which hasn't been uh brought up in this data fraud scandal. It's separate to that, but still probably should be treated with some skepticism now, which is the idea that if you are standout within your field, she measured people going into a conference essentially, and she looked at what they were wearing. And it was a conference for scientists who are publishing literacy um articles in prominent um papers. And she basically measured how much they conformed to the dress code, which was uh smart, so suit and tie, and how much they didn't conform, so how likely they were to wear things like red sneakers to a conference full of people in black tie. And she basically found this correlation between people who wore red sneakers and those who had really high amounts of uh citations on their articles, which essentially means they're very successful academics. They are highly cited. If they're highly cited, it's like they uh they're sort of the top of their industry. Anyway, she there's a whole scandal around her. There's a really interesting podcast called The Law as It Is, which gives her side of the story, which for people interesting interested should probably listen to that as well. Um but there are some little things that change like that, but you know, in general, human psychology doesn't change that quickly, so not much.

Will Ockenden 38:05

So so you mentioned AI. I'm I'm curious, um, and you'll probably shoot me down on this, to what degree can AI be used to replace um focus group modelling or or or or real-world modelling? So, you know, could could you replace the need to run a social experiment with hundreds of people and use AI modelling to produce similar results, or is it far too early to do that or unethical to do that?

Two Sided Arguments Beat Hype

Phil Agnew 38:31

Yeah, let me start with a disclaimer, which will totally invalidate what I say next. Because my disclaimer is I'm not probably not the person to ask. I don't know about enough about AI and I don't know enough about market research. But my point is absolutely not. So take all of that with a pinch of salt. Because I basically think for two reasons. One, I don't think focus groups are the most none of the studies I've referenced today come from focus groups because it's not a reliable way to gauge, it's not as a reliable way. You can use focus groups for lots of good things, but in terms of gauging behavior, it's not the best way. All of the studies I've spoken about today have involved randomized controlled trials. So you get two groups of people, different populations, and they have the almost the same experience except for one variable, and then you measure the difference in behavior. The reason AI can't replace randomized controlled trials is because the world is chaotic. There is any number of different elements that could influence us. And it will be probably impossible, I imagine, for AI to replicate a chaotic world. So let me try and give an example. Um what would be a good example at the moment? Authority bias, for example. We follow the actions of people in authority. Um if you are an American, and we're recording this on the 4th of March. If you're an American, if you had seen an ad which featured a um jet pilot who works for the US Air Force promoting painkillers, on Sunday, you might have really loved that ad because you think I really admire the US Air Force. I think what they're doing is fantastic. But if you're a left-leaning Democrat on Wednesday, when we're recording this, after those same US Air Force have bombed several sites across Iran, you might have a totally different reaction to that ad. And that's where it will get so hard for AI to gauge these things because the world is chaotic, things are constantly changing, and unless no human can have a constant idea about everything that's every thought that's going on in someone's head, the only way you can check these things is by actually testing it. And this is an important point. Everything I've shared today, don't take as as evidence that you should obviously apply this without actually checking it for yourself. These are peer-reviewed studies that give you a really good indication as to what will work. It's better than gut instinct, and it's better than, oh, my competitors doing this, so I'll copy them, or my boss told me to do this, so I'll copy that. It is better than that stuff, but it is not foolproof. If you want to apply social proof in your business, try and find a way to test it. Try and find a way to see if it works. You know, I I do this myself with my Reddit ads, for example. I did an ad where I had loads of images, an image of my logo, um, and then I created a variant where it had loads of reviews of people saying nice things about me, and then also the image of my logo, and that variant did better. I've done subject line tests as well with comparing social proof without social proof. So don't take it as golden that it works for you. The world is chaotic, it might not work in the way you expect, it might change from one day to the next, and you have to keep testing this stuff out for yourself.

Chris Norton 41:44

I was gonna say, I saw you shared something on LinkedIn the other day to go back to your social proof example that you've just given there, like where you've given your reviews. And it was um, I can't remember which brand it was, but it was basically the worst review of them of the product, and they they were using it as an endorsement of how good their product was, and it's the worst review. What were I can't remember which pretty brand it was.

Phil Agnew 42:05

For for the listeners, this is it's an American um bottled water, except they can their water brand. It's called Liquid Death, and they're famous for this. Everybody who's a marketer will know of it. Everybody who's not a marketer in the UK will have never heard of it and think, what the hell are you talking about? Because it's got this incredible marketing where they basically market it as if it's a craft beer slash heavy metal band. They have a slogan which says murder your first. They sell it in a can rather than a bottle because it's easier to recycle. Um, and they did this famous Facebook ad, which basically included a review which said, I would never drink this water. Um, they should never use language the way they do. It looks ridiculous. And I wrote a post which explained why this ad counterintuitively is actually quite effective. And it I I cited this, I think, quite interesting study, which again had randomized control trial. And in the study, different groups of people are trying to be persuaded about an argument. So one group of people is told a one-sided argument. So, for example, England are gonna win the World Cup because uh Thomas Tuchel's the best manager, Bellingham is is the best midfielder, Harry Kane's the top scorer in European football. Uh so that so England are gonna win the World Cup. That's a one-sided argument. Other group of people are told a two-sided argument. So they hear that England are gonna win the World Cup because Tuchel's the best manager, Kane's the best striker, Bellingham is the best midfielder, but our defense isn't as good as it could be. And if if we don't win, it'll probably be because we don't know which centre backs we're gonna play and we haven't got a good pairing. When individuals, again, different populations of people hear those arguments. Interestingly, the ones that are the most convinced, the ones that actually think England will win the World Cup, are the ones who hear the jewel arguments, the two-sided arguments, when they hear the pros and the cons, the pros and the weaknesses. And this goes against conventional economics, goes against conventional marketing, goes against what the textbooks tell us, which tell us list three benefits and that's it. Whereas in reality, what seems to work better is if you list your three benefits, you have a really strong brand, but then you reveal a weakness as well. And it's not just liquid death that notice, ma might have you either love it or you hate it. Avis say we're second, so we try harder, Buckley say the taste you hate twice a day. All sorts of different brands use this. They understand that by showcasing a flaw, it can make people enjoy the product more. Guinness is now the UK's number one pint, and I'm fairly certain it is directly linked to the fact that they make a real point of the fact that good things come to those who wait. There is a weakness there. You order a Guinness, the barman will hate you and your mates will be drinking before you, but that weakness indicates a strength. It takes longer, so it must be better. Some people hate Marmite while others love it. Avis and number two, so they try harder. So highlighting these flaws, it it it's not something that you should just exclude because the market tech the marketing textbooks have told you not to do it. As liquid death have shown, sometimes sharing a weakness can be really beneficial.

Chris Norton 45:05

Also, it was dead funny. So what and that too, yeah. And talking of marketing flaws, Phil, you've put you've put one in your notes to us about the a mistake that you've made where you were were making a um you spent hours and hours and hours shooting a YouTube video. Do you want to explain to Tell us a little bit about what you did.

Effort Bias Experiments In The Wild

Phil Agnew 45:23

So at the top of this show, we spoke about what is known in the sort of industry as the input bias, which is this idea that the more effort you put into something, the more people value the effort. We spoke about the studies with the kitchens. I think that's enough to explain how that works. I created uh an episode of Nudge where I thought I'm gonna test this and I'm gonna try and apply this while I create two YouTube videos. So I created two YouTube videos which were on the same topic. It was me playing quite an obscure geography game. You're now gonna think, well, Phil, that's why I didn't go viral, but quite an obscure geography game called GeoGuessr. And in the game, I basically try and beat a high score. In one of the videos, I show all of my effort. So I show these time lapses of me spending hours trying to beat the high score, hours studying, hours trying to work on it. And then I create another video where I just show the final result, me beating the high score. I published both on different channels, both with the same, very similar titles, very similar descriptions, and essentially said to the listeners of the episode, let's wait and see. Let's let's all now look and see which one gets the most video uh views. I imagine it will be the one where I showcase my effort. And I was, to be fair to my, I was proven right. I think the one which which showcased the effort had more views, but the problem was neither of them got more than a thousand views. So it was like sort of tiny numbers. It definitely wasn't a viral video. And I think the important point to remember there is that behavioural science, marketing psychology, it gives you a really good lever to amplify the work you're already doing. If you're re if you're already a fantastic author, finding ways to apply behavioural science will make your writing even more impressive. If you're if you already create a really delicious burger, using behavioural science can make people enjoy it even more. I am not great at creating viral YouTube videos. I've had a few, but definitely not viral YouTube videos about obscure geography um games. And so that one, it really didn't work. But to my credit, I didn't give up that. I'm really, I really love this idea of the more effort you put into something, the more you get out. And I did a follow-up experiment, and it wasn't really an experiment, but that's called an experiment, so it sounds a bit more fancy. Where I was talking at a conference and I we I really wanted my talk to be the the best con the best talk of the day. And so I thought all I have to do is is make people believe that I've put a load of effort into this talk. So how do I do that? How do I do that? I could stick a load of gifts under each of the seats, or I could um spend ages making really fancy slides. But then I thought, really literally, what's the most literal way of putting effort into giving this talk? Or what's the hardest way I could get to the conference? I could hike. So the day before the conference, I decided to hike 61 kilometers to Poole in the south of the UK. 61 kilometers is a marathon and another half marathon on top of that. Um, I had to have my laptop in my rucksack on my back, so I got awful back pain. Um, the most ridiculous blisters, blisters that had their own center of gravity, essentially, hiked for the whole day, got there, prepared my slides in like the two minutes before I got on stage, gave the presentation, and the presentation was all about the psychology of effort. And I was sort of being quite meta and being like, you know, I put a lot of effort into this and showing all of the sort of funny things I saw on that hike. And the guy who organized the conference, Mark Masters, I emailed him afterwards. I said, you know, you've got to tell me what people thought. And he said, Yeah, that was the most popular talk of the day. People really loved it. Well done. Point proven. And look, that's a pretty ridiculous way of applying that. But I think it does prove that the more effort you put into something, the more value you get out of it. And even though it didn't really work for me on my YouTube videos, for something that I'm a bit better at, which is giving a conference talk, I it really did work.

Chris Norton 49:19

I mean, you've not got me inspired to go out and hike 65 odd miles to do talk. That's impressive though that you did that.

Will Ockenden 49:26

Let's hike to our next pitch, Chris. I think I think we're sold on that.

Chris Norton 49:29

Yeah, maybe not.

Will Ockenden 49:30

Good idea. This is fascinating. It's great to have you back on the show, and and there's just so much um I think people will be really inspired listening to this. You know, and the the feedback has been, as we said at the start, you know, behavioural science is a topic that people are just so engaged with, and some of these examples are amazing. And and what's quite interesting is they're practical and actionable, aren't they? You know, you there's there's immediate methodologies you can apply to your own business, and people will be listening to this thinking, right, I'm gonna yeah, I'm gonna hike to a hike to my next meeting or sort of give out free Coca-Cola, whatever it is.

Chris Norton 50:07

Is anyone listening to it thinking they're gonna hike to the next meeting? I challenge that theory, William. And and Phil's pointed out that the people respect dual dual views, don't they, Phil?

Phil Agnew 50:18

I think look, look, the hiking, the hiking one is tongue-in-cheek. It was inspired by this Australian YouTuber called Bo Miles, he's a great YouTuber, and he gave a a talk at a university and he canoed there, and it took him like three days. And there's this image which is like stitched into my sketch into my mind, which is him dragging the canoe through the university halls. It's just like ridiculous, and he's covered in dirt, so cool. But you don't you can be creative. There is an endless number of ways that you can showcase your effort at the next pitch that doesn't involve you rolling up with wellies up to your knees covered in mud. You could print beautifully designed pamphlets with the client's logo on it, which explain how you can help their business. You can, you know, bring more people with you. A team of five that are really well polished definitely showcases more effort than a team of one. You can put more time aside, you can get there early, you can spend more time on your slides. It's all sorts of different things you can do to showcase your effort. It doesn't it it's just fun to think of the creative ways. And for me, a creative way was to hike to a pitch. But next time, I'm at the same conference this year, and we're we're talking about doing something dramatically different, which I can't talk about because it's a secret.

Chris Norton 51:37

But if anyone out there sees Phil on a unicycle uh flying across, uh you'll you'll know you heard it here first. Um, Phil, um if people want to get hold of you, how how do they do that? And and are you available for parties and bar mitzvahs?

Phil Agnew 51:52

Parties, bar mitzvahs. Um yeah, no, I'm I'm Phil Agnew, I'm on LinkedIn, like Chris was saying, and I post once a day about silly stuff on there. But uh I run a podcast, and if you like this podcast, you might like my podcast. It's also fighting for the top of the marketing charts. So that's one of the reasons I'm on here to try and fight these guys for the number one spot because you've been up there for too long. But um uh it's uh it's called Nudge. Search for Nudge, you'll see an orange logo, and that's my podcast.

Where To Find Phil Guest Picks

Chris Norton 52:23

Yeah, thanks so much for coming on, mate. I've got one we've got one last question. So you you've been on it twice now, and um both times brilliant. Um, if you were us, who's the next guest that you would have on the show? And why? And you can't say we should have preempted you with this question because we asked you last time. So uh I think you said Rory last time. Uh we uh we've managed to get um Sam Benton on from Mad Masters. He came on the show and said he'd he'd drop Rory, he'd get Rory on for us, but we've not seen we've not met Rory yet. But I mean he's everywhere, so um when when he finally decides to come on the show, I'll I'll I'll drop you a line. So who do you who do you think would be good, a great guest for our listeners to to catch?

Phil Agnew 53:02

Well, Will Ghidara, I would recommend, for the reasons that we spoke about earlier. Um but I'm I've been fascinated recently by this story of the Scottish tea scandal. Have you heard about this? It's this amazing story of this basically fraudster who sold Scottish tea.

Chris Norton 53:22

I have heard of this.

Phil Agnew 53:23

Yeah, so like the Dorchester, the Balmoral, Fortnite and Mason. I really want to interview him, even though he's been in prison for three years for basically fraud, and lots of people have suffered because they bought his tea and it didn't grow. But I think he would be an amazing person to interview because I think essentially he's he's a very good marketer, but used it for all of the wrong reasons. So fraud.

Will Ockenden 53:46

That would be a coverful.

Chris Norton 53:47

If you could get Tam O'Brien on the show, he he convinced loads of really clever intellectual people, you know, he outsmarted everybody. And yeah, it was a load of it was a bit like um for the for our older listeners, it was a bit like when Derek Trotter uh sold um what was it, um, Peckham Spring Water, which is just from the tap. It's exactly the same thing, isn't it?

Phil Agnew 54:10

Yeah, yeah. Or like one of my most popular YouTube episodes is on Elizabeth Holmes, who like famously did the Theranos blood test. All a load of a load of rubbish wasn't actually happening. And there's another one recently. What did I hear recently? Did you hear about um Amazon Fresh, the supermarket? But the idea that you go in, you pick up your groceries, you go out, and it and all the AI tracks what you're doing. Do you know what they were actually doing? It came out recently. They hired, I think it was 1,000 people in India to just watch CCTVV if they were walking in the store and actually just say, oh, that person just picked up a packet of crisps. And it's like, well, obviously that's not going to be profitable. So anyway, look, this stuff I I I would recommend interviewing either Tam O'Brien, who did the Scottish Keys hand, or either Elizabeth Holmes, whose Holmes is in prison for Paranoid, or two out of three recommendations are incarcerated, so that'll be fine.

Chris Norton 55:05

Yeah, uh, welcome to the show. Uh well, thanks so much for coming on the show, Phil. Um, yeah, um, brilliant, as always. Um, thanks very much for for coming on. Hope you enjoyed it, and um, we'll we'll see you again soon.

Phil Agnew 55:16

Thank you, guys. Cheers. Thanks, Phil.