richard shotton
@rshotton
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Founder of Astroten, a consultancy that applies findings from behavioural science to marketing. Author of The Choice Factory & The Illusion of Choice
Joined December 2008
📕📕📕. After 2 years of work MichaelAaron & I have finished our book: Hacking the Human Mind. It's now available for pre order. Pre-orders are doubly useful as they affect how much Amazon promotes it. So if you're interested the link is here 🙏🙏🙏
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Fascinating data analysis from the Economist looking at 7.5m US car crashes. The chart below shows likelihood of you dying in a car crash by weight of your car (grey line) and weight of other car (red line). So it’s in our own self interest to get a heavier car (slight reduction
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Wheelchair protest in Portugal - each one has a note on back saying "Be right back" or "Just getting something". Via @Brilliant_Ads
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How we phrase a question has a huge effect on the results - my favourite example, from @Gerald_Ashley
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Lovely nudge - a speed camera lottery in Sweden. Cars driving under the limit are entered into a lottery and someone wins the fines from speeders. In the test it reduced speeds by 22%.
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Wonderful parody of brand manifestos by Kim Mok. In Read Me
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Designing for how we want humans to behave, rather than how they actually behave
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Hyperbaton: the adjective order that every English speaker knows but none of us can articulate . From Forsyth book
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With the hype about robots stealing our jobs, this 30 year old ad from IBM is still relevant. From book by Collins
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Douglas Adams on how our reaction to technology changes with age. In The Week
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Designing for how we want humans to behave, rather than how they actually behave
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Lovely nudge - a speed camera lottery in Sweden. Cars driving under the limit are entered into a lottery and someone wins the fines from speeders. In the test it reduced speeds by 22%.
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For such an austere brand, the Mother’s Day ads from Chanel are brilliant
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David Ogilvy’s 1982 advice on how to write . Including point 4, that using jargon is the “hallmark of a pretentious ass”
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Remarkable ad from Norwegian, created by two interns: Axel Lokrantz Månson and Mickel Jiunntzer Yu. HT @Suzannepope
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I think this tagline ('You never actually own a Patek Philippe' etc) is one of the best out there. It gives the buyer an alibi (I'm doing it for my kids) and it reframes the price (something to be mentally split across generations)
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The Myers-Briggs personality test:. Originally designed to identify appropriate marriage partners. Has no basis in clinical psychology. Has no statistical significance to its retest . So why do 79% of FTSE 100 companies use it?. In Uncharted by Heffernan
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Interesting argument for why active & transitive sentence construction are more powerful. From the Science of Storytelling
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Interesting argument for why active & transitive sentence construction are more powerful. From the Science of Storytelling
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How adding the tiniest bit of friction can change behaviour, even suicide rates. From Halpern book
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Campaign from German Rail: when people searched for overseas destinations they were served images of remarkably similar-looking places in Germany & the cost of getting to either one. A brilliantly creative example of price relativity HT @laurenleaksmith
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Wonderful parody of brand manifestos by Kim Mok. In Read Me
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The blue duck approach to presenting. In Now Try Something Weirder by Michael Johnson
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Sakichi Toyoda, the founder of Toyota, developed the Five Whys as a problem solving technique that got to the root cause, not just the immediate symptoms . An example of its application from the brilliant Crossover Creativity by @davetrott
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At the age of 23, long before he achieved power, Caesar was captured by pirates. His reaction showed a brilliant understanding of the psychology of price. In Creative Blindness - the excellent book by .@davetrott
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Remarkable ad from Norwegian, created by two interns: Axel Lokrantz Månson and Mickel Jiunntzer Yu
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David Ogilvy’s 1982 advice on how to write . Including point 4, that using jargon is the “hallmark of a pretentious ass”
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David Ogilvy’s 1982 advice on how to write . Including point 4, that using jargon is the “hallmark of a pretentious ass”
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In 1983 ad regulations meant Guinness could no longer say it was good for you. Their response - created by Allen Brady Marsh - was genius
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Fantastic story of "bike shedding": how corporate decision-makers focus on trivial issues, that they know lots about, rather than more important but complex issues issues. Russell Davies in Market Leader
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Wonderful parody of brand manifestos by Kim Mok. In Read Me
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The power of a name - how renaming vegetables made them more appealing to kids. Via @contagious
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The scariest phrases in marketing . In Delusions of Brandeur by @Dr_Draper and @Giles_Edwards
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The Myers-Briggs personality test:. Originally designed to identify appropriate marriage partners. Has no basis in clinical psychology. Has no statistical significance to its retest . So why do 79% of FTSE 100 companies use it?. In Uncharted by Heffernan
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Everything communicates. Wonderful twist on a barcode for pasta packaging . In Graphic Design
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Perhaps the greatest title of a psychology paper ever. (The study amended essays, replacing long words with shorter ones. Participants who saw the essays with the shorter words judged the author as more intelligent than those who read the more wordy essays)
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Sometimes being effective is different to being right. In The Week
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"To sell something surprising, make it familiar; and to sell something familiar, make it surprising". Raymond Loewy, designer
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The best example of branded content is 100 years old. Why the tyre brand created Michelin stars. In Predatory Thinking @davetrott
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I've just finished writing my second book - The Illusion of Choice: the 16 1/2 psychological biases that influence what we buy. It should be out out in March. If you want to be kept up to date when it comes out let me know
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I think this might be one of the best pieces of copywriting in recent years. By reframing which element of the G&T was most important it created a new category of premium tonics
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The agenda for your next brand planning workshop. In Delusions of Brandeur by @Dr_Draper and @Giles_Edwards
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The power of framing your request: how Danny Boyle got 60,000 people to keep a secret. In How not to plan
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After 18 years of working full time at agencies, I've decided to go part-time. The plan for my own time is to focus on applying behavioural science to advertising, whether that’s consulting, training, speaking or writing. If you have any suitable projects please let me know.
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Stopping advertising to save money is like stopping your watch to save time – Henry Ford
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The blue duck approach to presenting. In Now Try Something Weirder by Michael Johnson
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Hyperbaton: the adjective order that every English speaker knows but none of us can articulate . From Forsyth book
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Fascinating. The connection between technology and art. No metal paint tubes, no Impressionism
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Classic ad from Campari. Normally stressing the unpopularity of your product is a disaster - but not, in this case, if your audience thinks Italians have more sophisticated tastes that Americans.
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Bob Bob Ricard sells more champagne than any other UK restaurant. The key is a wonderfully simple bit of design - every table has a 'press for champagne' button. Every diner at least considers buying, friction is removed completely and the novelty injects a little fun. Genius
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Why Van Halen insisted on a bowl of M&Ms in his dressing room with all the brown ones removed. In Checklist Manifesto via Capitol
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Why Van Halen insisted on a bowl of M&Ms with the brown ones removed in his dressing room. In Checklist Manifesto via Capitol
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Wonderful parody of brand manifestos by Kim Mok. In Read Me
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My next book is out in early 2023 and Chris Parker has designed a great cover. Let me know if you want me to update you on launch details
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Paul Arden on why rough layouts sell the idea better than polished ones
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The power of a name - how renaming vegetables made them more appealing to kids. Via @contagious
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Shame The Economist doesn’t have bylines as this week’s piece on Angela Rayner is brilliantly written
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A mind-bogglingly clever tactic for conveying freshness from Aldi
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“People’s indifference to brands should be the starting point” . Sarah Carter quoted at @contagious
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Trade ad from ad agency Crispin & Porter on the difference between sales and marketing
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On advertising fundamentals not changing: Stephen King's Planning Cycle from 1974
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Empty shelves aren't down to selfish-stockpiling:. Kantar data shows that 3% of people are stockpiling selfishly (ie buying a lot more than normal) but lots of people are buying just a little more. Via @WARCEditors
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Fascinating piece from @rorysutherland in Campaign on why agencies should learn from the IT industry and harness loss aversion when selling their services
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The blue duck approach to presenting. In Now Try Something Weirder by Michael Johnson
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Social proof suggests that people tend to follow what they perceive to be the norm of behaviour- so the government should highlight the vast majority who are complying with rules, not the minority who aren’t . Finkelstein in The Times
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There might be plenty of snowflakes, phone zombies or selfie addicts, but no one identifies as one. So this ad talks to our perception of other people, not how they identify themselves. It ends up speaking to no-one
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Bob Bob Ricard sells more champagne than any other UK restaurant. The key is a wonderfully simple bit of design - every table has a 'press for champagne' button. Every diner at least considers buying, friction is removed completely and the novelty injects a little fun. Genius
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Behaviour change is more likely to succeed if it works with, rather than against, human nature. Amazing Taiwanese tax collection idea from .@davetrott
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Lovely piece on social norming, increased sales and the shopping trolley. From @rorysutherland on LinkedIn
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Rory Sutherland on why group decision making is often worse than personal judgement
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Paul Arden on why rough layouts sell the idea better than polished ones
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James Webb Young's approach for idea generation from the 1940s is still hard to beat . Via Hey Whipple Squeeze This
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The best example of branded content is 100 years old. Why the tyre brand created Michelin stars. In Predatory Thinking @davetrott
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The Behavioural Insights Team categorised behavioural biases into nine broad areas - MINDSPACE
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"To sell something surprising, make it familiar; and to sell something familiar, make it surprising". Raymond Loewy, designer
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The best example of branded content is 100 years old. Why the tyre brand created Michelin stars. In Predatory Thinking by @davetrott
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Tim Delaney: “a brilliant use of a universally accepted truth about airline food makes a telling point about the car and what could be an aloof brand immediately becomes accessible. It looks simple but isn’t. We work on Porsche and still haven’t done anything as good as this”
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