Thread by @digital_whiskey

HOW EVIL MARKETING GENIUSES HACK DECISION-MAKING
(another gargantuan thread)

Everyone remembers #thedress, right? It ripped the world apart when it began to appear on social feeds in February 2015.

People who saw it as white-and-gold couldn’t see it as blue-and-black (and vice versa). And they couldn’t understand how others couldn’t see what THEY saw.

This is definitive proof we’re living in a simulated universe.

The world we see around us is a simulation created in our brain, an electrochemical machine squatting in the darkroom of our skulls.

What looks and feels most real to us, most 𝘰𝘣𝘫𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘦𝘭𝘺 𝘵𝘳𝘶𝘦 (“I saw it with my own eyes”) is as ‘simulated’ as any computer game.

#thedress is evidence of this.

The photo is too ambiguous for our brain to identify one unique interpretation, so it just ... chooses one and sticks with it.

How it makes this choice is made tells us something about marketing.

You knew we were going to shoehorn that in, right?

When processing images, our brains take the “lighting environment” into account.

This postbox is grey.

You think these 🍓 are red, but they aren’t.

https://twitter.com/AkiyoshiKitaoka/status/836382313160171521

Here are some of the “red” strawberry pixels, magnified.

Even though the wavelengths of light bouncing off an object can be a completely different colour depending on time of day, or whether it’s in shadow or bright light, our brain tells us they’re the same colour.

This effect is called “colour constancy”, and without it we‘d find it harder to make sense of the world.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_con…

In the case of #thedress, the ambiguity is caused by our brains not knowing how to interpret the lighting conditions. Is it natural light or shop lighting? Is it in shadow, or not?

@xkcd’s comic covers this succinctly.

xkcd.com/1492/

Those whose brains decide it’s in natural daylight (and therefore in shadow) perceive it as white-and-gold, and those whose brains decide it’s incandescent shop lighting, blue-and-black.

Here’s the interesting thing. These decisions are 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘥𝘪𝘤𝘵𝘢𝘣𝘭𝘦.

@pascallisch, assistant professor at NYU’s Department of Psychology, hypothesised that (all else being equal):

A) People who experienced more daylight would tend towards the white-and-gold interpretation, and

B) People who experienced more incandescent light, blue-and-black.

“It is well-known that in situations like this—where it faces profound uncertainty—[the brain] confidently fills in the gaps in knowledge by making assumptions. Usually, its assumptions are based on what it has most frequently encountered in the past.”
@Pascallisch

“...people who rise early (“larks”) and go to bed at a reasonable time should be exposed to more daylight than those who rise late and go to bed later (“owls”).

In contrast, owls could be expected to experience relatively more incandescent light...”

slate.com/technology/201…

@Pascallisch conducted an experiment to test this hypothesis.

The results matched his predictions. Previous experience affected respondents’ priors, leading to different unconscious decision-making.

jov.arvojournals.org/article.aspx?a…

“Ok, but how are you going to spin this as a story about professional services marketing?”

We’d have thought this was obvious!

Previous experience affects people’s priors during the decision-making process.

These priors are low-level; they’re not processed consciously, but they have dramatic — and often irreversible impact.

The truly odd thing about this is something called the “Mere-exposure Effect” (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mere-expo…).

Understanding this is key to understanding how one can impact your audiences’ unconscious decision-making machinery.

Do read the Wikipedia article; it’s fascinating.

Here’s what professional services marketers should take away from this:

“Frequency” and “duration” should be more important objectives for your planning than “engagement.”

Conscious, intentional research is based on titanic, unseen, and almost unknowable processes.

So, when you’re reporting on your campaigns, don’t treat the click-through, the article read, or the PDF download as the key metric.

Instead, look at your reach and frequency metrics. And plan to those.

Redesign the lighting around your audience. Use simple, blunt tools to affect their priors.

That way, when they’re presented with a choice, they’re more likely to choose you.

Credits:

Follow @AkiyoshiKitaoka for mind-altering optical illusions

Listen to @Pascallisch on @davidmcraney’s ‘You Are Not So Smart’ podcast: youarenotsosmart.com/2020/03/09/yan…