One of the reasons I'm cynical about market research and insight is it projects forwards and attempts to guess and anticipate how people will act. People are more likely to rationalise their actions after the fact than act rationally. We are terrible historians of our own behaviour and even worse predictors of it. The human condition is to act first, think later.
When I worked at the prison, my supervisor often talked about our chances of survival if we weren't junior psychologists but inmates locked up and made to tough it out with the other inmates. To my surprise, my supervisor said I would cope very well. His rationale was that I was good at getting people to do things for me. There would be many inmates who would look after me, because they'd invested in me. This chapter explores my favourite theme from my previous book, The Advertising Effect: How to change behaviour. It's that ‘action changes attitude faster than attitude changes action'. If you want people to like you, ask them to do something for you. For your business or personal life, this is very useful.
One of the counterintuitive concepts I've come across in marketing is this: ask not what you can do for your customers, but what your customers can do for you. It is related to the psychological theory of cognitive dissonance that states we feel uncomfortable if our thoughts, feelings and actions are not aligned. We make them align by changing the thinking, feeling or action. When you ask someone to do you a small favour, they're more likely to view you positively as a consequence of that action. In a marketing sense, the more a consumer interacts with your brand, the more wedded they become to the brand.
How do you feel when buying something for the first time? You may feel intrigued or unsure about a brand. Or you may feel neutral and grab it absentmindedly. If your preferred brand wasn't available on the shelf, you might have felt mild hesitation. How do you feel post purchase? You've just invested several dollars and time and effort towards that brand. If you've bought the brand for someone else, the kids, for example, then you have to spend time convincing them that the brand is good. These processes make you feel positive about the brand. And this is why businesses invest in trials and product samples. (But I should note, cognitive dissonance may not be enough to overcome a poor product experience.)
It's also the reason so much brand tracking is silly. We don't move from awareness to interest to desire to action. It's more likely we move from awareness to action to interest and desire. That is, ‘action changes attitude faster than attitude changes action' and if we're able to get people to act, then they'll be more likely to reward us with continued interest. Ever wondered why people seeking donations for charities often ask an innocuous opening question? If you answer, you're involved. And once you're involved, you're more likely to donate. This is the reason brands such as Aesop have free samples.
Personal care brand Aesop is a great Australian success story. No doubt you've seen the brand's liquid soap proudly sitting in many bathrooms. Established in Melbourne in 1987 and named after an ancient Greek storyteller, many of its products feature a line of poetry. Founder Dennis Paphitis and creative director Suzanne Santos conceived Aesop's vision. For many years my good friend Saurenne was Dennis's executive assistant. Dennis is exacting, with very clear ideas about what Aesop stands for, and this philosophy runs through the organisation. At the head office (which is never seen by customers) the use of blue pens is banned. Everyone has to write with a black pen because Dennis thinks black ink is neater. There is also a clean desk policy, and before employees go home, their desk has to be cleared entirely.
Each store's design reflects the brand's values. When you enter an Aesop store, you are transported into a cocoon of design, care and beauty. Each store has a distinctive look that reflects its location. A traditionally upmarket part of town may have a store with padded dark leather on the walls. But if you walk a few kilometres to the grungy, artsy part of the city, the store might feature plywood boxes with autumn leaves scattered on the ground. A store in Montreal has three birch trees in the middle of its floor. Retail staff are trained to deliver on this casually elegant feel and connect with customers at a deeper level than other retailers. Dennis banned the team from talking about the weather because he said the weather is already evident.
Aesop is a classic case of a company that conducts its marketing from the inside out led by a founder and CEO who behaves as the chief brand officer. Dennis' insistence that staff only use black pens seems like a small thing, but it means Aesop employees need to make sense of this exacting behaviour. They do this by aligning their thoughts with their actions to avoid cognitive dissonance. Staff might rationalise that the insistence they only write in black is weird, but because they believe in the brand and want it to grow, they agree to the request. The same logic applies to conversation topics with customers. The idea of coming up with interesting discussion points to engage customers scares the hell out of me. But in making staff creative with their conversation starters, Dennis forces them to put effort into the Aesop brand — making them wedded to the brand.
The company has nailed critical touchpoints and is globally successful. But in my view, Aesop's best strategy is its unrelenting supply of samples. Since the company's inception, Dennis insists that customers be able to sample the products. If you walk past an Aesop store, there are pump packs of moisturiser that passers-by can sample. At any Aesop store, you can take a handful of sachet samples with you. Saurenne always had plenty of sachets to hand out to her friends. Samples would be available at poetry readings, book launches and select conferences. Dennis didn't worry that the samples would cannibalise a sale. He was convinced that once people have tried the product, they'd love it and make a purchase.
Even though the samples are perceived as a gift, all it does is encourage people to rip the pack open and try it on their skin. When it's on their skin, they feel more positive about it. In psychology, this is called ‘the endowment effect', which states we are more likely to value brands and objects if we hold them or ‘own' them in some way. In the case of Aesop products, once you feel it on your skin, you like it more. It's the same reason that retailers want you to remove a dress from the rack and hold it. You value it more if you hold it. The endowment effect can even be observed in online shopping if there's a touch screen.1
It's also worth mentioning that Aesop has never spent a dollar on advertising. Through the samples, distinctive store design, media coverage and select sponsorships of events, the Aesop brand has grown across the globe. He may not have heard of cognitive dissonance, but Dennis has achieved a customer base that thinks, feels and acts positively towards his brand. Customers have invested in his brand through their actions, which helped to build the brand. He did it beautifully.
My friend CJ Holden describes himself as an ‘experientialist'. After working at a rebel trade event known as LE Miami, which I spoke at, he asked for my advice about moving to Australia. I said, ‘Why don't you just create an event?' We'd had ongoing conversations about the stiff and predictable nature of most corporate conferences, with delegates stuck in row after row of chairs for a day or two listening to 40-minute chunks of content. The only opportunity to meet other attendees is during morning tea and lunch. And if you wanted to meet the speakers, forget about it. Most speakers fly in and fly out and rarely stay for the entire conference. We wanted to change this approach and decided to stage a conference together. CJ had one requirement. It had to be unlike any conference we'd ever been to. By bringing people together to create a new kind of experience, we would ‘ask something of the customer' and construct a community of people to co-create the brand and be the experience.
When CJ sent me a business plan, at the top of the document was the phrase: ‘Watch This Space'. I thought this was his name for the conference and loved it. He said ‘Adam, that's not the name. I don't have a name yet.' A few days later, he suggested we call it ‘s p a c e' because it's neater and more prominent. He was right, and s p a c e was born. We invited Holly Ransom to be part of the conference because she's one of Australia's most successful young business leaders. (To illustrate her credentials, when US President Barack Obama gave an exclusive talk in Sydney, he was in conversation with Holly.)
To make s p a c e work we needed to attract a community of people invested in its success. We asked friends and family to suggest interesting people who might want to help us develop the concept. There were many workshops with pizza and wine as we worked to build the idea. These people gave their time, effort and expertise to the cause, which meant they felt invested in the success of s p a c e.
This conference didn't separate speakers and delegates. There were no official speakers. Every attendee was a delegate and speaker. And everyone was expected to stay the whole time (three nights and two days — not three days and two nights). Attendees had to contribute to the ‘conference' (and I'm calling it a conference, but it was more festival than a conference). Each delegate received a s p a c e pack that asked whether they would contribute a talk, video, adventure or another idea of their devising. People were excited about what they would create. CJ spoke with each of the 240 delegates to ensure they were happy about their contribution. As CJ described in an interview with Echo newspaper,
You choose your own adventure. We remove titles, places of work. Every single session you go to you don't know who's running it — you will turn up because of the power of the title. Anyone can apply. This is not a CEO retreat. It's not a marketing or advertising conference. It's not innovation. It's about finding people who are passionate about Australia and want to be a force for change.2
On the first night, the rain bucketed down. We held a dinner and fireside chat with two of the more well-known delegates, one famous and one infamous. They were Jules Lund, TV presenter turned technology entrepreneur and founder of social influencer company TRIBE. He interviewed the recently notorious ‘egg boy', 17-year-old Will Connolly, who'd thrown an egg at then-Senator Fraser Anning. Jules and Will set the scene for a rather special event.
The action started the following morning. Ten large boards were placed next to each other and divided into different parts of the day. Everyone wrote their session on a card. After a somewhat chaotic hour, we had ten boards filled with 240 sessions spread over the full two days that people could go and see.
It felt magical as everyone wandered around, creating their conference from the content on display. Some sessions only had three or four people in them, while others had a hundred or so. A massive gong sounded when it was time to move to the next session. With so much on offer, you had to plan your time carefully. In case things went awry, a ‘s p a c e' facilitator was in each session, but nothing went wrong. When it was time for a delegate to become the leader, they did so. It was an exciting experience.
Over the next two days, people wove in and out of various sessions on a range of topics including how to self-brand, men experiencing what it's like to cry, treasure hunts and discussions about making a meaningful life without kids. There were conversations about films, how businesses can break into China, and how to manage troublesome employees. Each session fulfilled s p a c e's core mission of creating a more ambitious Australia. It did this by facilitating unexpected conversations between unlikely people. It was a massive success. Our post-conference satisfaction scores were through the roof and created substantial buzz.
I'm sure part of its success relates to the power of cognitive dissonance. Everyone who attended had to contribute and co-build the event, so everyone who spoke or contributed (which was everyone) now has a vested interest in s p a c e. They are part of a community that will help it grow into the future. There were no passive attendees. Everyone who attended spent several hours of preparation thinking about the conference, and during the conference put effort into co-creating it. Exerting this effort meant they were more inclined to enjoy it. Between you and me, I do wonder if delegates agree with this assessment. I hope so.
Since starting Thinkerbell, one of the campaigns I'm most proud of is ‘Doing Nothing Does Harm'. It was created for Our Watch, an organisation that addresses violence against women and children by changing culture and behaviours. It's focused on the prevention of abuse and changing behaviours that make violence more likely. We wanted to address bystander behaviour where people don't call out sexism. You might witness sexism but dismiss it as harmless.
With the insight that ‘action changes attitude faster than attitude changes action', we decided to create a series of ads that allowed online interaction. When there was a sexist comment, a button appeared on the ad that read, ‘To stop this sexist behaviour, click here', next to a five-second counter. Those that clicked the button saw an alternative ending to the video where a bystander takes action and calls out the sexist comment. They also received a message rewarding them for their pro-social behaviour. It read: THANKS FOR DOING SOMETHING TO STOP SEXIST BEHAVIOUR. YOU WON'T SEE THESE ADS AGAIN. It empowered those who intervened and rewarded them. We ‘de-targeted' rather than ‘re-targeted' viewers. It was a world first.
By contrast, those who didn't ‘intervene' continued to be targeted and the sexist behaviour became progressively worse. Counter messages dramatising the implications of not acting also appeared including: TO SEE MORE DISRESPECT TOWARDS WOMEN, KEEP DOING NOTHING. The campaign gave viewers the tools to take action, helped them practise pro-social behaviour and rewarded them. The hope is they'll take these skills into the real world and speak up if they witness sexism.
It's challenging to measure the impact of the campaign, but we used benchmarks that asked people if they knew how to intervene when witnessing sexist behaviour. After watching and interacting with the campaign, these metrics increased. The campaign achieved extensive reach and earned media. Even though sexist attitudes are fairly entrenched, this campaign showed that an ability to practise online is positive. I think interactive campaigns will become more prevalent.
When you finish reading this book, which is really soon, can you do me a favour and visit Twitter or Instagram and use the hashtag #Stoplisteningtothecustomer? It's much appreciated. This reminds me of the old car bumper stickers that read, ‘Honk if you listen to X radio station'. I'm surprised a commercial radio station hasn't revived that sticker in a retro promotion.