Why People Buy On Autopilot

Chris Norton 0:00

Today's guest has spent her entire career showing marketers a truth that we often ignore. People don't make rational decisions.

Nancy Harhut 0:08

If we tell them they can only have so much, that's that's a bad thing to do. Like let them buy as much as they want, don't put a limit on it.

Chris Norton 0:15

In fact, up to 95% of what consumers do happens subconsciously, which is why a tiny sign saying limited to 12 can actually double sales, and why a busy restaurant in Barcelona can completely redirect your dinner plans. She's one of the clearest voices in turning behavioural science into practical marketing. Anchoring, social proof, price framing, and all of the shortcuts our brains take without us even realizing.

Nancy Harhut 0:47

It's that second version that gets people to do it.

Nancy’s Route Into Behavioural Science

Chris Norton 0:50

She's also the author of Using Behavioural Science in Marketing and a brilliant storyteller who brings these ideas to life. So this is my conversation with Nancy Harhut, which should help you rethink everything that you have assumed about your consumers. Enjoy Hi Nancy, welcome to the show.

Nancy Harhut 1:18

Hey Chris, thanks so much for having me.

Chris Norton 1:20

So thanks for joining us from Boston, Massachusetts, beautiful part of the world. I've got a couple of questions because we've when we talked before this actual interview, you told me that market you've spent years understanding how people actually make decisions. So what first drew you to behavioral science and understanding that?

Nancy Harhut 1:42

Ah, that's a great question. So I, you know, I grew up working in advertising and marketing. And if you think about it, that's all about influencing behavior, getting people to uh pick up the phone or click on the button or walk into your store or, you know, whatever. It's it's trying to get people to do something. And one day a mentor recommended Robert Cialdini's book, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. And I started reading it and I was uh underlining things and highlighting things and making margin notes, thinking about the clients I was working on at the advertising agency where I was, and how Cialdini's work might actually help me do better work for my clients. So I had um the Boston Globe, they wanted more subscribers, and I read something in the book and I was like, oh, that might work. Or I had a company that sold insurance, and I was like, ooh, that might work. And um, so I started to slowly test these things, Chris. I didn't really want to say anything to anybody, you know, but it's just like, all right, I'm gonna rely on what I know as a marketing copywriter and what the best practices are, but I'm gonna try to infuse some of these things I'm reading about regarding neuroscience and behavioral science and sales psychology. And I began to see that um there was a positive effect. And then I eventually came clean with my clients and said, All right, here's why I'm doing, you know, the why I'm doing this the way I'm doing it, you know, here's the reason I wrote this this way, here's the way, here's the reason I frame this this way. And they were like, keep doing more of that because it's working. We love it. So uh that was basically how I got started, and um just never really looked back.

Chris Norton 3:12

Wow. A lot of people mention Robert Cialdini. Um, we've had a few people on the show, and I know you know a lot of them. Um, I'd say uh so you before you've had you've said that you um people make fundamental assumptions about their customers, uh assumptions that don't hold up in the real world. So, what's one of those obvious truths that you see Pete us getting all we all get wrong again and again?

Nancy Harhut 3:36

Um so I think one of the mistakes that we make is we assume, as as marketers, as business people, you know, that people make well-thought out, well-considered decisions. So if we can just give them the right information, right, if we can get the right information to the right person at the right time, we're gonna get the right results. And, you know, we it kind of makes sense because we think of ourselves as people who make well-thought-out, well-considered decisions. The problem is behavioral scientists, brain scientists, tell a completely different story. Uh, behavioral scientists have found that up to 95% of purchase decision making takes place in the subconscious mind. So people don't know why they do what they do. So what will happen is they'll kind of make up a story that sounds good and they'll they'll stick with that, right? They'll point to that. And so as marketers, we have to be wary of believing everything that our customers and prospects tell us. We have to kind of disavow ourselves of this idea that people make these well-thought-out, well-considered decisions because very often they cruise along on autopilot. Very often they're not even absorbing all of the information we put in front of them. You know, we work so hard to craft our marketing messages, and it turns out that people are cruising along on autopilot and they're not spending nearly as much time as we think they are, you know, absorbing the information, processing it, weighing the pros and cons, and coming to this good, logical, well-thought-out decision. Very often they're just using decision defaults.

Chris Norton 5:03

Yeah. And we had a we had an interesting discussion, didn't we, uh, a couple of weeks ago. And I was saying to you that one of the biases that my family have told me, my dad always said to me, like, when you're going past a um a restaurant, you're on holiday, you choose a restaurant, and you should never go in the restaurant with um with nobody in it. You should look at the round of the restaurants and who which one's got loads of people in or a queue out the door. Behavioral science, that's the uh what's the what's the bias called?

Nancy Harhut 5:31

Uh social proof if there's a lot of people.

Chris Norton 5:33

Social proof, that's and my kids take the Mickey out of me that I always say when we go on holiday. If we don't I'm not, we can't go in there and it's empty. And I think you had quite an interesting story about what happened to you with that with that bias yourself, didn't you?

Nancy Harhut 5:45

I well, I did, you know, and it's funny because people will say, like, oh Nancy, you know, you wrote this book using behavioral science and marketing, you know about all of these things. So certainly you're not impacted by them. And I, you know, I'm human, of course I am, right? So I'm in Barcelona for a conference, and um, you know, I'm excited to be there, so I post about it on social media and somebody that follows me that I, you know, I know through the business. Uh I don't know them very, very well, but you know, I know them through the business, and they write and they say, Oh my gosh, Nancy, you're in Barcelona. You have to go to this restaurant. I was there years ago and I still dream about it. And she gives me the name of the restaurant, and I look it up, and lo and behold, it is walking distance from my hotel. So I think, why not? I'm gonna do this, right? But as I'm leaving the hotel, the um concierge, you know, smiles and says, Oh, you know, you know, where are you going? And I said, Oh, I'm going out to dinner. A friend of mine recommended this restaurant. Oh, what's the name of it? I give the name of the restaurant, and the concierge has the most unusual, I thought, reply. The concierge says, Oh, that's right next door to this other restaurant. So I think to myself, huh, that's peculiar. So I say, Oh, should I be going there instead? And you know, the concierge is very, you know, uh politic and they don't want to, you know, uh say anything disparaging, I imagine. So they say, Oh, it's um, it is very good. They're both very good. One is just a little bit more um, people like it because it's a little bit more different, right? So I'm like, oh, okay, you know. So I was like, well, thank you. And so off I go. And I think, well, when I get there, they're right next door to each other. To your point, Chris. I'll see where the crowd is and I'll know what to do. Well, as I walk by the restaurant that the concierge recommends, there's nobody in there. I mean, I think maybe there was like somebody at one table. I mean, it just looked deserted. And literally, right next door to it, there is a line out the door. It's lively people are trying to get in. And um I'm like, I'm clearly I'm going to this one that my friend recommended, you know, the one with the line out the door. And I eventually get in and um have a fabulous meal. Have a fabulous meal. But then I think, I'm gonna have to go back to the hotel. I'm gonna walk through the lobby, and the concierge is gonna say, So, Nancy, you know, where did you go? Did you take my recommendation? And I was gonna feel bad because she gave me a recommendation, and so I, you know, so I thought, well, I know what I'm gonna do. I will go next door and I'll have dessert next door. I come out, the restaurant next door is packed. There is a line out the door. So I kind of work my way up, and I finally get to the the front desk person, and um, she's on the phone and she motions me to wait for a minute, and you know, she's talking, then she hands up, and I say, Oh, is there, you know, is there room? Do you have like a table for two? Is it possible? And she said, it it must be fate because someone just canceled, and I can get you in. And I, you know, I got this, it wasn't a great table. It was literally right behind her, but it it was a table nonetheless. The food was amazing. It was so good, Chris. And um, I I realized afterwards that it it was just two, you know, two different types of clientele. The first place got, I guess, the after-work crowd, and the second place got the more dinner, the more serious dinner crowd. And in Barcelona, people eat late, but I'm an American. I didn't realize that it's time, you know. So I ended up having not just dessert, practically a whole second meal at this other place. It was so good. They they really had to like roll me out of Barcelona, but it was a great example of, you know, social proof. I was like, oh, this must be the better one. And it was just, you know, the difference was the timing because if I had walked by a couple of hours later, I would have clearly thought that the other one was the better one. You know, we we do what other people like us do, and you see a lot of people and you think that's the safe choice. Yeah.

Chris Norton 9:18

Yeah, and but you also you took the both recommendations as well. Like the was that off was that off Las Ramblas then? The Ramblers on the on the strip in Barcelona, those restaurants.

Nancy Harhut 9:29

It was. It was, I think, like right off of that, as a matter of fact.

Data Science Plus Brain Science

Chris Norton 9:32

I think I know what you mean. I think I know the restaurant you mean, which is really weird. So I've been a few times. Yeah, I think I do know what you mean. Um, okay. Um so marketers though often pride themselves on being data-driven. We're told to use data. Um, yeah, you argue that people don't behave rationally. So what why is this disconnect still so common? Is it because what you just said before, which is we don't know why we do what we do?

AI Can’t Replace Human Spark

Nancy Harhut 11:22

Yeah, you know, a lot of it is that we don't know why we do what we do. And the reason we don't know why we do what we do is um so much of our behavior is kind of predicated on conserving mental energy, right? Like we try not to overtax our brains. And so we look for these decision-making shortcuts or these decision defaults. Because if we try to weigh every piece of information before we make a decision, we'd never get around to making any. So we've developed these hardwired behaviors and we kind of cruise along through life, we encounter a situation and we just default to this hardwired behavior. It it helps save time, it helps save energy, and you know, and it works very well for us. Um so, but that's not to say that we as marketers should ignore data, right? So I think there's that really optimum blend of data science and behavioral science. So the data science tells us um, you know, what message to deliver to what person, you know, or what segment of our audience, uh, where we can best find them, when we can find them. All of that data is very, very helpful. And it can help us segment, you know, our audience and which offer goes to which person, and all of that is great. And then it's the behavioral science that helps us serve up the message, the marketing message, in the most brain-friendly way, in a way that's gonna be most likely to be to be to be noticed, to be understood, uh, to be acted upon and to be remembered, right? And and those two together, the the data science and the brain science, that's what gives you that one-to punch. So it's not that we want to ignore the data, we just want to use the data in the in the best possible way, which is in a way that that works with the brain and not against it. So the data is helping to inform us, and then the brain science or the behavioral science helps us craft that message so that it's gonna work with the brain and not against it. It's gonna have the best chance of doing what the marketer wants it to do, which is get noticed and responded to.

Chris Norton 13:16

Yeah, I interviewed somebody um of the one of my recent podcasts with a guy called Mick Mahoney, right? And he's a big creative um in the UK, he's done worked in the creative ad industry. And I was talking to him about AI, and I said to him, Um, and he I said, Are you worried about AI and creativity? Because he pitches creativity is really creative. And he was like, No, because creative is more critical thinking, it can't do creative thinking. And it's kind of what you just said there, which is the two where the two two shelved meet, isn't it? Like that's basically kind of what you just said, which is the AI is looking at the data side of it, whereas the actual creative side is is is the bit, the behavioral stuff that we can't get the magic, it's the magic we can't quite put our finger on. Well, why things shouldn't bloody work, but then as a marketing campaign they work, isn't it?

Nancy Harhut 14:08

Yeah, I mean, you know, if you think about AI, and I am not an AI expert, um, but it's um, you know, it's all about predicting what comes next based on, you know, tons and tons of data. But if you're gonna predict what comes next based on all the data that indicates this should come next, what that would suggest is it's removing originality, it's removing uh surprise, it's removing authenticity because uh, you know, the information is already out there and it's been you know uh served up by many, many, many different people. So um, you know, as you say, it's it's great for kind of mining the data and mining that data quickly and you know, bubbling the results that you're looking for to the top in a very efficient way. You know, if you tried to do it on your own, it would take you know, many, many, many, many, many hours, and maybe you would never get to what you really needed to get to. And if you can automate that using artificial intelligence, you get some of the tools that you need and some of the data points that you need much faster. But then what you do with them, that that human spark, you know, that thing that drives curiosity or emotion or uh wonder or awe, you know, all of those things that make messages stick, that's that's the human touch. And, you know, so far at least, well, we're not able to automate that. I think I think your previous guest is absolutely right.

Anchoring With Campbell’s Soup Limits

Chris Norton 15:27

Yeah, exactly. And there is a bit of that's the there's there's hope. There's hope for us, yeah. But if the robots are listening, uh I bow down to everything that they say. I do but they're brilliant, the robots. We we um we we're here to work for you. Um, jokes aside, um yeah, so well, I find behavioral science fascinating, and one of the things that you you talked about in our previous chat was that about your the Campbell's soup, which I thought was fascinating. Do you want to do you want to tell the audience a little bit about what it was basically um it was a method to sell more products, but it didn't feel like the right way round of doing it. Do you want to just uh illuminate on what I'm talking about?

Nancy Harhut 16:07

Yeah, yeah, it's actually it's a little counterintuitive, but um, you know, getting back to um you know, understanding people and the decisions that they make and the automatic decisions that they make and um you know uh and how to prompt them, the this particular experiment revolved around what behavioral scientists call anchoring. And it's this idea that um, you know, what the the first piece of information somebody encounters influences the decision they make and it influences their um you know their behavior. So in this particular case, researchers decided to put Campbell's soup on sale. So it's it's good soup, it was a good price, and on average, people bought 3.3 cans. They came in, they saw the soup on the sale, and okay, I I can pick up three or four cans. Then the researchers put up a sign, and the sign said limit at 12. And suddenly people bought on average seven cans, twice as many cans of soup, right? Now, left to their own devices, when they saw good soup, good price, they're like, I need three or four cans. But with the anchor of 12, it influenced their purchase behavior. Some people said, Oh, I can only have 12, I better grab all 12. Other people thought, oh, I can only get 12. I don't really need 12, but maybe four or five or six or seven cans would make sense. But it it increased by 112% the amount of soup people chose to buy. And uh, and that's not the only example. There was there was another one with Snickers candy bars, and um I think it said like, you know, buy some for your freezer versus I don't know, buy 24 for your freezer. And it increased again almost by twice the amount of Snickers bars people bought. And it's just that you know, we we see that anchor, we see that suggested amount, and we react to it. And, you know, a marketer might say, you know, that you know, that makes no sense. One, people are gonna buy what they need to buy. Uh, you know, two, if we tell them they can only have so much, that's that's a bad thing to do. Like let them buy as much as they want, don't put a limit on it. And yet putting the limit on it is actually what increases the amount that that people buy. Really kind of interesting, a little counterintuitive, but incredibly effective.

Pain Of Paying And Smarter Bundles

Chris Norton 18:08

Wow. Okay. Interesting. I mean, yeah, completely counterproductive, counterintuitive of what you think. Well, you think one way and something else happens. Um, what other what other sort of assumptions do we make then as as as marketers, with we assume things. Um and what what sort of assumptions are we making wrongly regularly, do you think?

Nancy Harhut 18:30

Well, I you know, I think one assumption we make, um, and I mean we're we're making it based on what customers tell us, is uh, you know, if we listen to our customers and prospects, we would feel like we have to constantly lower our prices, right? Because people will say to us, like, you know, I shop around, I look for the best deal, I'm not made of money, I you know, I don't want to uh spend extra, like it's all about the price, all about the price, you know. Uh and and that sends some marketers in that kind of race to the bottom where they're always trying to be the low-cost provider, which isn't really gonna ultimately be sustainable, right? So if we listen to our customers and prospects, we would feel like it's all about the money, it's all about the price. But behavioral science reveals a different story. So um behavioral scientists have found, for example, that every time someone needs to make a purchase, there's something known as the pain of paying that gets involved. If we were to stub our toe or cut ourselves shaving, right, if we were in some kind of physical pain, it activates the same part of our brain that uh gets activated when we have to part with our hard-earned money. If you have to reach into your wallet or your purse and turn over your money, there's a there's a pain of pain. So what researchers have found was if you need to buy three things, for example, that's one, two, three hits of pain. The brain doesn't like that. But if if a marketer were to bundle those three things under a single price, that's only one hit of pain. And as a result, um people are more likely to make the purchase. So this idea of bundling can be very uh advantageous for marketers. And what we can do is we can bundle a bunch of things together and offer a discount even and still make money. Because say we put, I don't know, seven things together, and in this product bundle, it's gonna be X number of uh you know dollars and we're gonna give you a percentage off. And you're still gonna make money because left to their own devices, people wouldn't buy all seven. They'd buy maybe one or two or three, and that would be it. Like the the pain of paying would just be too much. There's some brain science research that shows that people even pay more for the convenience of a bundle. So you don't even have to discount your price. You can actually charge a little bit more, and people are paying for the convenience. And and this is particularly true if it's hard to um, you know, segment out each each item in the bundle and identify what it would cost on its own. You know, if you maybe you toss in a couple of other things that maybe you can't buy separately, and that just helps enhance the price. And then behavioral scientists have even identified something called hedonic bundling. And that's the idea that you place the discount on the most hedonic or the most indulgent item in the in the bundle. So I was just speaking at South by Southwest uh earlier this week, and I gave this example. It came from the Journal of Marketing Research. But you know, you can you can take three things and say, All right, here's your one price, or you can take two things and say, here's the price for that, uh, for those two things, and we're gonna give this third thing to you for free. And it took um sales from 62% to 82%. So one example of that might be, you know, you're gonna buy internet service and you're gonna buy access to your local news, and then you're also gonna get HBO. So of those three things, internet service, local news, HBO, the practical utilitarian things are the internet service, the uh access to your local news, and and having the premium, you know, access to HBO, you know, the fun movies and content, that's more of the indulgent thing. So what they do is, you know, you say it's gonna be this amount of money for news and internet, and we're giving you HBO for free. And that's a good example of this idea of hedonic bundling. But when you when you put that discount on the more indulgent item, it actually can increase sales. So another example of people um, you know, they're saying one thing and but they're actually doing something very different.

Chris Norton 22:12

I I mean amazing. I think I think what we should do is you said you're not an expert in AI. I think, Nancy, what we should do is get you to go over to San Francisco and work with the people that are marketing the AI products. Because I don't know about you, but Chat GPT 5.2, 5.3, 5.4, or 4, or and then they come up with all these random names for all these different AI tools. And I'm just I'm here thinking this isn't very behavioral science, they're iterative improvement, they're not the and they they sort of they don't really bundle it up very well, and it's just like here, have that product. I I feel like for the sake of something that's supposed to be changing everything and including marketing, um, they could make their products a little bit cleverer and and and they could use behavioral science to market it to people like you and me much better, couldn't they?

Price Framing That Sells Upgrades

Nancy Harhut 22:58

Well, uh, you know, I think you probably have a point there. Um, you know, maybe they're so you know so focused on the tech, the idea of maybe marketing it isn't um you know isn't as important at the moment. It's it's you know constantly improving the tech. Um what's interesting though is it it makes me think of uh um another behavioral science study, and uh it it talked about how to sell upgrades or premium products. So typically, if you you know maybe you have two. Products, you have your your basic and your deluxe, and a lot of people will go for the basic, right? But if you instead of saying here's the price for the basic and here's the price for the deluxe, you say here's the price for the basic and for you know seven dollars, seven euros more, you can get the deluxe, that can double the amount of uh deluxe products that you sell because you're not focusing people on the total price, you're just focusing people on that small incremental charge. It's called differential price framing. And they did a study actually using the New York Times. They said you can have um for $9.99, you can have access to the app and the online version New York Times. Or for $16.99, you can have access to the app and the online version and the podcast and the print and the crossword, you know. And then they tested that against for $9.99, you can have online and app, or for $7 more, you can have everything. And they sold twice as many of the of the premium package subscriptions when they, you know, they focused on that just seven dollars. You know, and it it's it's interesting. It is crazy. It's the it was all the same things for the same price because $9.99 and seven is $16.99, you know, but it's these decision-making shortcuts that that people take. And again, if you ask them, they would say, oh no, you know, I make well thought out, well-considered decisions. I know exactly why I'm doing what I'm doing, I know what I'm gonna buy. And yet, you know, telling you here's the two total prices, choose versus here's the base price, and for a little bit more, you can also have you know, you can you can upgrade, it's that second version that gets people to do it. Nothing has changed other than how you've framed the price.

Chris Norton 25:05

So you've got framing and anchoring, and it's like you could go, you could go all out with your pricing, couldn't you? I couldn't feel marketers' heads spinning while they're listening to this, going, oh, should I should I anchor the price of the say if you buy a luxury product, it's 700 pounds or 700. If you buy and then but but we're gonna give you it today for 499. Do you know what I mean? It's like that's anchoring, isn't it? So the two are different models, really, aren't they?

Nancy Harhut 25:31

Yeah, yeah. No, you can you can say, hey, it's usually this amount of money, but you can have it for this, so that looks great, you know, or you can try to get people to upgrade to the more expensive one by saying it's only this little amount more to get the better product. You know, there are really so many different ways. You can bundle things together. There's so many different ways to affect people's purchasing. So even though you know they're telling us, no, no, no, it's all about the price. I, you know, I make you know well thought-out decisions, I don't spend money, I don't need to spend, you know, behavioral scientists show that that's not entirely true. That depending on how it's not, it's it's usually not about the price, it's more about how we serve up the price, right? How we show the price, how we position the price. Um, and that's really important for businesses to know, for brands to know, for marketers to know, because it does influence people's behavior, particularly their buying behavior.

Chris Norton 26:22

It influences my buying behavior. Because I was just thinking of times that it happens to me, it's with tickets, right? Tickets to gigs, or you know, if I'm going to an event and it'll be like a normal ticket, £59 or whatever, £59 in the UK. And then it'll be, and then you'll buy that ticket and say, Oh, you could upgrade for 25 for 25 dollars, 25 pounds, and you you click to upgrade to a VIP, which gives you this, this, and then you think, oh, it's only 25 quid more. And then, if I'm honest, I've literally went to a show in uh London's West End, which is like Broadway in the UK, uh the uh two weeks ago, and um to see Back to the Future and the the yeah, um the the cost of the cost of the tickets. I was sat in the audience and literally I was thinking, I can't remember how much they were. You know, like you're thinking you're rational, you're careful with your pricing. I literally can't remember how much the tickets were. Because once you've done that bit where you're thinking you're being logical and framing your prices and everything, in actual fact, you forget the prices roughly, and it's because you enjoy the experience, don't you?

Sell The Experience Not The Price

Nancy Harhut 27:22

You're absolutely right. No, it's funny you should mention Broadway. I also love theater, and I I was in New York, so I wanted to see the uh Museum of Broadway. And like many museums, you you buy a timed ticket, so you timed entry ticket. So uh, you know, you have to agree to show up between, you know, 130 and 145, or 145 and 2, or 2 and 215, right? These little 15-minute windows. So I buy my ticket, and then they send me a message that says, you know, for just an extra $10, you can come anytime you want this afternoon, you know, and it was that same idea. They they didn't focus on the total price of the come anytime you want ticket. They only focused on that little that upgrade. Um, and then to your point about you're sitting in the audience and you don't remember what you paid, you're just having a great time. And there's research that actually came out of Stanford University that found that when marketers focus on the experience somebody's gonna have, that the how they're gonna spend their time with the product or the service and how they're gonna experience it, uh, it actually makes people less price sensitive. If if we focus so much on the price, what that does is it gets people to focus on the price. It makes them, you know, more um cognizant of what they're paying. But if instead we focus on, you know, how they're gonna experience the product, they become less price sensitive. There was a um there was a sample that I showed in a presentation I did. It was for I think Intuit. It was a B2B example, and it was, it's the headline was something like, um, be your customer's hero. So if if you're uh you know an accountant and you're using Intuit, you know, your your clientele are gonna think you're incredible, right? So they weren't talking about, you know, this is gonna make you more efficient, or you'll, you know, you can charge more or make more money because you'll be, you know, faster. Like they didn't focus on the money end of it. And they or they they didn't also say, hey, we're putting it on sale, you can get it now for a discount. They focused on the experience of what it's gonna be like using the product. And when you're focused more on how you're gonna feel, how that's gonna make you feel like great, you know, like your customers think you're incredible, you're gonna be at the top of your game, you're willing to spend a little bit more. You're you're just not as focused on what you're spending, you know. And so like you said, you're injured there in the audience enjoying that that you know that play, back to the future, and you're not thinking, you know, the play is two hours long, and my ticket costs me a hundred dollars, so what am I paying per, you know, per minute? And is it worth no, you know, you're just enjoying yourself.

Chris Norton 29:41

Yeah. And the other the other thing in terms of ticketing and and uh while you're talking, the uh things that I've been thinking about is when I've been to a theme park, right? And you you come on the way out, uh, I don't know which which bias this is, but this is quite clever as well. So you've paid, I don't know, in the UK it's about a hundred, it can be like a hundred dollars, a hundred, yeah, about a hundred dollars, I'd say, to go to a theme park each, so it's four hundred dollars, you know, it's quite expensive for the day. But we've got Alton Towers, you've got Disney, you win. Um, but anyway, uh as you on your way out, sometimes in some of the areas where you know, maybe the toilets or areas where the they can fit some posters, it'll say things like um, upgrade your ticket today to come back as many times as you want for the rest of the year. And I and you like and it's usually about the same price as what you've maybe a half of what you've already paid. And it it's the same sort of nudge theory, that isn't it? But I always think that's really clever because it does tempt you. And I'm like, oh, I might come back. And I haven't been back, but you know, at the time you're thinking, oh, well, we could come back three times if we wanted, and we'd make our money easily. It's clever that.

Nancy Harhut 30:46

It it's very clever. And I think one of the behavioral science principles they're taking advantage of there is something called hot state decision making. And it's this idea that when when we're in a hot state, when we're really happy or when we're angry or agitated or or hungry or um, you know, or feeling um super excited and and lucky, you know, like when our when our we're in a hot state, not in a cool, calm, collected state, but you know, you've just been to the theme park, you've had a fabulous time, right? It's over, you're kind of bummed that it's over, and they're like, hey, you can come back. We're in this excited state, this hot state, and we're like, that seems like a great idea. I'm I'm gonna, you know, like you said, I I can come back, two, three times, we'd really enjoy this. So you're in that hot state, and you're gonna make a different decision than you would if you were in a calm, cool, collected state. If you waited maybe a week and then thought, all right, do I really want to buy another ticket so I can come back? Or maybe I've seen enough, maybe I want to go someplace else. You'd be a little bit more calm, cool, and collected, a little bit more rational. But when we're in that hot state, you know, we're much more likely to make a decision that would be a different decision. You know, it's like, you know, you land on a website and they say, oh, spin the wheel to get your discount. And you know, you came maybe just to browse, or maybe you came to buy that one item, but you know, you can't resist spinning the wheel. So you give it a spin, and then you're like, oh my gosh, I just saved 20%. And what happens? You end up spending more, you buy more than you plan to because you're in this hot state. So I think you know, that could be an example of that, yes.

Chris Norton 32:12

Yeah, yeah. So obviously, if you've you've you've researched this extensively and you you know that we don't we don't work rationally, consumers don't work rationally. So this show is about marketing mistakes, and I'm sure you're puke perfectly rational. You've never made any marketing mistakes then, right?

Nancy Harhut 32:30

Oh, no, no, no, no, no.

Chris Norton 32:32

Well, that's the end of that interview then.

Nancy Harhut 32:35

Yeah, well, uh, like customers lie to marketers, I am lying to you right now. I've I've certainly made some mistakes, no question about it. We all have, right? Yeah.

Chris Norton 32:43

Yeah. So have you got any ex have you got any examples of where you've done something wrong?

Nancy Harhut 32:47

Yeah, you know, I um I can give you two. I can give you one with um kind of the nitty-gritty client work, or I can give you another that's more just um Nancy and her career.

Chris Norton 32:58

Okay.

Nancy Harhut 32:58

Or I can give you both. Whatever you can do.

Chris Norton 33:00

Go both, yeah, go both. I'm interested. Always it'll be use this as a cathartic experience.

A Marketing Mistake About Standing Out

Nancy Harhut 33:05

Okay, you can be my therapist. Perfect, yes. Yeah. Um so there's one, there's one that I actually write about in my book, Using Behavioral Science and Marketing, where um I talk about something called the von Restorff effect. And it's this behavioral science principle that means that people notice and remember things that stand out, right? We notice and remember things that stand out. And this goes way back to our ancient ancestors, where um, you know, if they if they got up in the morning, they looked at their surroundings, if everything was the same, that was pretty safe. But if something were different, if something had been added to the surroundings or removed, it could pose a life or death threat back then, right? All these years later, we're still hardwired to notice things that are different from their surroundings. That's the von Restdorff effect. So, based on that, I'm working at this agency, we land our first credit card client. None of us had ever worked on a credit card before, but we're like so excited, we've landed this piece of business. So we do what any good agency would do. We set up a war room, we collect all of these samples of credit card solicitations, and we've got them all over, and we're looking at them, and we're like, wow, they all look the same. They all talk about, you know, whether or not there's an annual fee and what the uh the introductory interest rate is, and then what the go-to is and whether or not they're a reward. Like it's they're all the same. You can just put your hand over the logos and they all seem the same. So we think we're gonna do something radically different. We're gonna use the Von Restorff effect, we're gonna do this this marketing campaign that doesn't look at all like credit card marketing. So that's what we do. We have this, you know, this we had a mailpiece that had a bright yellow envelope and this uh fish eye lens picture of a person. And, you know, if you looked at it, you would not think it had anything to do with credit cards. And we proudly come in and we present it to our clients, and the clients say, All right, listen, we appreciate that you want it to look different. But here's the thing about credit card marketing it only works if right away, right up front, you tell people whether or not there's an annual fee, what the introductory interest rate is, whether or not there are rewards like you have to, like that's what people want to know. You have to have that. And I thought they're gonna pull the business, I'm gonna lose my job, I'm gonna get fired, you know. But they were very kind, you know, they were like, listen, we love what you're trying to do, but go back with with these guardrails, you know. And so we did. We went back and we're like, okay, these are the elements we have to have, but there's, you know, there's a different way to show those elements, to present those elements that doesn't look like the same old, same old that, you know, that doesn't look like if I covered up the logo, this could be a credit card solicitation from any particular uh organization, bank, whatever. And so we came back with a you know, you know, with an interesting way to present the information that looked different. Uh, client bought it, we ended up having a long-term relationship with them, and we established, I think, nine different controls, which are the the best performing asset for a particular segment of their market. So it turned out to be a great relationship, but it it started a little bit rocky because of that mistake. You know, we just, you know, we we made the assumption that different would be better, and different usually is better, but sometimes how different is the gating factor, you know? You want to be just different enough to get the interest, but not so different that people have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. So I think that was that was one example of a mistake that has stuck with me. I made it very early in my career, but it it served me well, and it ultimately made its way into the book, you know. That's good. That's how it stuck with me. Yeah.

Chris Norton 36:34

When did you write the book?

Nancy Harhut 36:35

I wrote the book um during COVID, actually. Okay. I was supposed to speak at South by Southwest, and uh about a week or two before we were supposed to show up for the conference, Austin um said to South by, we're shutting down the city, you can't do the conference. So South by Southwest wrote to all the speakers and said, you know, it's it's off, basically. And then I get this email from Cogan Page, uh London-based publisher, and they say, We're gonna go to your session, but obviously we can't, but we're really interested in it. Um, the topic, the topic seems right. Would you submit a book proposal? Would you be interested in submitting a book proposal? And I I was like, you gotta be kidding my. Like I had to look them up to make sure this was legitimate. Like I was like, I never in a million years expected this to happen, but I was like, Oh my gosh. So I kind of wrote a proposal, you know, based on what I was going to talk about at at uh the the conference, just kind of you know, extended it and uh they accepted the proposal. I wrote it during COVID and and we got it out um as you know as we were coming out of COVID. So yeah.

Chris Norton 37:35

How long did it take how long did it take to write? I interview a lot of authors, and it amazes me because how how much work it is to write a book. I wonder I wonder now if using AI to help you structure everything these days would be it's easier to write a book, but I know it is a lot of work to write a book because you've got to have your own ideas and your own, like you said before, about not being vanilla and copying everybody else. It's got to be different, distinct, especially if it's a book about behavioral science, right? There's a lot of biases and things. So how long did it take? How long did it take you all of COVID or a year? How long?

AI Hallucinations And Fake Citations

Nancy Harhut 38:09

Well, it it's funny. It took me uh probably seven months, I think. Uh it was it was interesting. They had said to me, um, so here's how it works, Nancy. You're gonna do a chapter a week. We don't expect you to send us a chapter a week, but at certain intervals, we expect you to send us a chunk of chapters, which is basically a a chapter of a week. That's that's how it's gonna break out. And I'd never written a book before, I had no idea. And so I said, Oh, oh, is that how it works? And I had one question though, for someone who is a a working professional who's also writing a book, is this a, you know, like that's a reasonable schedule? It's not your schedule for people who don't have a job, you know, whose only job is to write the book, but that's a a reasonable schedule for people who are also working. Like, oh yes, you know. Well, I'll tell you this, Chris, it's a good thing it was COVID and my regular workload was substantially less because our clients were pulling back because I don't know if I could have done it that quickly, but I did. I mean, I signed the the agreement and I was gonna stand by my word. If they wanted to, you know, they wanted me to keep that schedule, I would keep that schedule. Um, but I would work from Sunday night until Friday afternoon. And I would give myself Friday night, Saturday, Saturday night, and Sunday off to see my family, see my friends. But otherwise, I was working. Now, some of that was also doing client work, but a lot of it was writing the book. And um, you know, and again, I had never written one before, so I was meticulous about citations and sources and backing up everything I said. So the the book is actually a nice mix of, you know, what you said, the the storytelling and the uh the authenticity that you can't find on on AI. I talked about the the clients that I had worked for, the specific marketing challenges they had, how we went about solving them, the different ways we thought of of approaching the problem, and then where we landed, and then what the results were. And you can't, excuse me, you can't find that out on AI, you know. It's it's it's you know, it's it's uniquely part of that book, but then it's also uh, you know, any scientific study I cited, and I didn't want to go deep into the behavioral science because I thought people's eyes would roll into the back of their heads. There's just enough behavioral science cited so that you could point to it and say, all right, this isn't Nancy's opinion. She's basing it on this study that came out of Harvard or Vanderbilt or uh Stanford, you know, and and here's a synopsis of the research, and uh, and it was a it was academic research. It was, you know, it was pure in that respect. And now this is how it's being translated into marketing. So um, so I, you know, I spent a lot of time making sure that my facts were in fact factual, they were correct, and I cited my sources. And I think with AI, that would probably be a lot easier, although we have to be careful because AI wants to please us, they AI hallucinates. Um I don't know if you know, there's a guy named Chris Graves, Christopher Graves, and he first made me aware of this years ago. He on in a post, he was researching this kind of obscure behavioral science principle. And so he used AI. And what comes back is this like incredible wealth of information with citations, and he was like, This is amazing. Like I couldn't find any of this, and this AI thing, this is fabulous. But then he starts to look up all of the different you know, citations in this journal and that journal, and they don't exist. And so he goes back to the AI and says, uh, do these do these exist? And he said, Oh no, no, they don't. And so he says, Could you please rerun this with um with with actual citations? And again, it comes back with made-up citations, you know. So, uh, but those were those were in the earlier days. Things have gotten a little better, but but AI still hallucinates, AI still tries to please. So I do think writing a book now could be a little bit easier and faster, but there's still a huge amount of human oversight. And I was just at a at a conference where they were saying that the that there was one study at least, and I can't remember the source, but that the amount of oversight and correcting is kind of zeroing out the the time savings of using AI. Like, yes, it makes you know the initial research much easier, but then you still have to go in and double check and edit and fix, and suddenly, you know.

Risky B2B Creativity And ChatGPT Errors

Chris Norton 42:27

So I've got a good I've got a good example of that. I mean, yeah, you're right. I say to my staff about the iterative side of it, because you're talking to it, and I mean, and and when I was talking about the fact that it's gone from five, it was you know, chat GPT four, then it was four, then it was five, then it's five point two, five point three, and now it's five point four, as we as we talked today. I think it's five point, it might have changed this afternoon. Um, but five point four, you know, at each iterative bit, they're saying, I think they said the other day that this 5.4 is 63% less hallucinations than 5.2. So you see what I mean? So it is hallucinating less, but don't believe the hype because I interviewed somebody last week. We had um some a person who used to be, there's a brand in the UK called Yorkshire Tea, it's the number one tea brand of the in the country, and we had the head of the former head of marketing from Yorkshire Tea to come in and tell us a story. Anyway, I did um as part of my research, I've got a I've got a team here um back in my office, and he was because he was coming into the into the office, I'd done this extensive research using AI, I'd done proper research, I'd checked all his social media out, and and anyway, and I then I commissioned some deep research, used AI, researched him extensively, produced this like 16 page document, and there's me thinking, I've really gone to town on this. I took ages to make sure it was brilliant, had a special folder, had all my questions, and I opened with this, and it it will it will be out there very soon. I opened with, so you've been working in marketing for 25 years, you've you've got this qualification, that qualification, that qualification. I think the question that everybody listening to this will want to know is what was the first record for insert band name? I can't remember what the band name was in the research. And he just went, sorry. And I was like, Oh, and he was, you know, that band you're in, it was like I was in a band, uh, and it did start with the letters BW, I think it was BW, but the AI had obviously found that it was and he said, I was a drummer, he was a drummer in a band, but they never released a single and it wasn't called that name. So, I mean, it's fine because this is embracing marketing mistakes. I can embrace that mistake, and it was everyone around the table burst out like all my production team laughing at me, and I was like, We're gonna have to clip that and stick it on. But but that just shows you AI does hallucinate and is still hallucinating no matter what they tell you. So yeah, absolutely, absolutely. I was I was being interviewed by um someone at um Marketing Profess, and one of the questions they asked was, you know, what's a uh business to business campaign that you've seen that you thought, I wish I did that one. And I said, you know what? You know, creativity and B2B, you don't see a lot of it. A lot of times, you know, business to business marketers play it really, really safe. And I had come across this video, and it was for a like a transportation logistics company, and they had this product that would, I think, monitor drivers to make sure they were driving safely. So you have your fleet of drivers out there and you put this little thing on and it monitors you and um it monitors drivers rather and and uh you know gives you you know information on whether or not they're driving safely which is going to help you have a a better fleet of drivers right and the the video it was really interesting it started with this um wildlife observer and they're out and it's like a documentary and they're out in the in the woods and they're they're looking for a sighting of this rare animal and they're looking and they're looking and and they finally find it it's a bird they're looking for and it turns out it's it's um oh gosh it's flip the bird um it's when you when you give somebody a a middle finger yes okay yeah we say flip the bird I know what you mean the middle finger I'm like oh gosh this is probably not appropriate but

Nancy Harhut 46:09

but it was so very unusual for a a B2B um video about this right and it's a it's this like I said this fleet logistic uh company and um and I thought wow that is just it was it was it was funny it was on point it was a little risky and um but it was certainly kind of thing that you know that captured your attention and it made the point and so but I could not remember it. So anyway long story short I turned to chat and I describe it and they say oh yeah that was for OnStar and and then they had a little clip of something and I'm like I know it wasn't from OnStar. Like I know it wasn't so I started to do my research and no it it's OnStar has nothing like that. But then I'm looking at the little clip and someplace in the clip is the name of something and it was like the name of the the company or the product. So I Google that and sure enough I find it. So I go back into chat and I say listen it's it's not OnStar you know I was like are you first of all I was like are you sure it's OnStar? Yeah yeah we're sure I go back in and I say well um I I think it actually might be blah blah blah and they come back and they say you are absolutely right you know Chat and Chat says you're absolutely right you know sorry for the error so I decide to push it and I say okay but why did you tell me it was OnStar when you then included a clip which had the correct product name on it but I had to drill down to you know to get and you know the answer was again sorry you know it was the most likely company that would have made a product like that and it's all about you know probability and and prediction and OnStar was like the big name in that space and so they would probably be the most likely to be doing a video about but you know and it was like wow and I I screenshotted it because I wanted to hang on to it. It was like you know why did you do that?

Chris Norton 47:53

Well you know apparently there was a story of um I heard on another podcast I think it might have been Joe Rogan where there were some guys and they did they were they were doing something with uh one of the earlier versions of ChatGPT and they they thought I think they were smoking marijuana at the time but they thought they'd cracked some massive mathematical problem and and chat GPT was doing exactly you're completely right this is really good you're going down the right and and and they th I think they spent ages doing it and they thought they'd cracked this amazing it was either a physics or a mathematical problem and it had all the rationale and everything out and and it was all complete rubbish and was not true. And they thought they'd done it like literally they you know because it's so self-rewarding and and they're trying to wind that back aren't they um which is interesting again for behavioural science like people are it's pulling you in to get you to use it because it's saying you're absolutely correct I've completely made all that up it's like well stop making it up stop making it up I'm trying to I'm trying to do this um okay right well let me see what questions I've got left for you because we're nearly out of time well actually I've got I I did think of a question before I look at my questions which was your book right you wrote it uh in 2021 did you say uh 2022 2023 okay so a couple of years have passed right two two or three years have passed if you had if you had to do it today what's one thing that you would love to add to it that's not already in it for marketing people oh wow that you know that's interesting um and it's interesting for a couple of reasons so Cogan Page has been saying to me how about a second book how about a second book and I've been like I I'm you know I'm busy I'm busy with my clients I've I run an agency HBT marketing we've got clients we've got to do their work and um I you know and I'm also you know I'm talking about using behavioral science and marketing the book that I wrote and I don't you know like I'm not sure where I have time to write this third book but they're like no come on or the second book rather they're like come on come on come on um and my first thought was I don't even know what I would do and then as time passed I started to keep a little folder of of notes of you know new behavioral science principles that I'd read about new research coming out thinking about how these could be used and uh and so now um I think if I were to either update this version or do another one there are definitely some other principles that I would like to talk about.

Nancy Harhut 50:15

One of them is this idea that um how you express deadlines makes a difference. So you could say um you know this is due on um uh Monday March third or um I don't know what the date yeah Monday March 30th you know or you could say this is due uh in in a two Mondays from now, two weeks from now right and if you if you put it into the context of duration as opposed to date more people are likely to start to take action. If I say you know Chris I'm gonna need this uh two weeks from today you're gonna be more likely to get going on it than if I say Chris I'm gonna need this on March 30th because you know March 30th you have to stop and think and you know okay well what day is today and when is March 30th from then but if I say two weeks from today that's a lot easier for you to comprehend. And they ran I think eight different studies and in all of them they found that people were more likely to take action when you express the the deadline as a duration versus a date. So that I thought was really interesting. I would put something about that into the book. There's something called the generation effect and what researchers have found um was that if people have to work just a little bit to get the message, to complete the concept, to to figure out the idea, they're more likely to remember it there were uh there was some research that came out of the University of Toronto and they gave people lists of synonyms to memorize um but some people got like a complete list maybe it would say rapid fast but other people got a list and it would say rapid and then F. And you would have to think all right what's a synonym for rapid that begins with F. Ah fast okay fast and then you'd move on to the next set. So in other words some people got a complete set and some people had to do a little work to it. And the researchers said all right you know memorize these and then uh you know then a little bit of time passed they did some other things and the researchers came back and said all right now I want you to tell me how many of the synonym pairs you can remember. And the people who had to think a little bit to figure out what the matching word was, they remembered 10 to 15 more word pairs. And what the researchers concluded was when you have to put a little bit of effort in to complete the idea to get the message, you're more likely to remember it. If you have to do too much, you're gonna walk away because people don't want to work too hard but just a little bit can make a difference. And so I was like that is really brilliant. You know so I've been finding you know these these new research studies that are coming out that are either identifying new principles or are uh reconfirming existing research that had happened in the past and I'm thinking there's definitely more that I could add to um to a book like using behavioral science and marketing or or even you know more that I could that I could put into a brand new book that still kind of addresses that topic. Because there's um there's research happening all the time that's confirming this idea that people don't make well thought out decisions that very often we're we're off you know we're kind of cruising along on autopilot and how we phrase something, how we frame it as marketers really makes a difference in terms of uh not only how people understand the information but how they react to it I mean that both of those are fascinating both both of them um really really fascinating um Nancy thanks so much for your time if if people want to get hold of you um how how can they do that?

Chris Norton 53:39

How can they find you and how where can they find the your book? Because it's brilliant so where can they find it?

Nancy Harhut 53:44

Well thank you thank you so the book is using behavioral science and marketing drive customer action and loyalty by prompting instinctive responses. And I will say in this case prompting does not mean AI prompting it means triggering or nudging right okay but using behavioral science and marketing it's published by Kogan Page it's available on their website it's available on Amazon it's it's really available um uh on many places online and and in physical bookstores uh and then you can find me um on LinkedIn and um also at my agency which is hpt marketing and our website we we abbreviated it's hptmktg.com we kind of shorten marketing to mktg so hptmktg.com you can write to me there you can also access um other interviews articles podcasts about uh behavioral science and you know tips and tricks and tactics and techniques that you can use to increase engagement and response for your marketing messages I would love to hear from your listeners that would be awesome yeah cool well thanks very much for that we'll I'll make sure that they get they get in touch with you and so there you go you can get in touch with Nancy um if you want to discuss behavioral science um yeah thanks for coming on the show Nancy that was absolutely brilliant Chris thank you so much it's been my complete pleasure