Monday Thought: Surprise, Surprise

Remember me?

I used to write newsletters about marketing and other stuff that would you would sometimes read, other times discard.

Sometimes you would like it, other times flat out hate or it.

Or like my mom, you would have no idea what I was talking about.

The first 6 weeks of the year were a grind.

But I’m back with some thoughts.

Today’s sponsor is Matt Borchard. Matt is a coworker of mine, but more importantly, a friend. He gave me $5 in cold hard cash and said, “make me a sponsor.”

That was about 2 months ago. So I’m glad I’m able to make good on that promise today.

Matt is our Managing Director of New Biz at Noble People. If you want to work with me, well, hit up Matt on LinkedIn. Or if you don’t want to work with me and maybe want to work with other cool people, hit up Matt too - he’s hardworking, charismatic, and will let you vent about your current problems for 45 mins.

Onto the thought….

President’s Day Thought

“Fake news” was the worst thing that ever happened to advertising.

I’m currently reading Annie Duke’s book, “Thinking in Bets.”

It’s a fantastic book. One that makes you really think about how to make better decisions.

One of the chapters documents how, as humans, we are prone to believe what we see and hear as true vs. interrogate it.

As we evolved as a species, it became more advantageous to not question things.

So by default, we believe things to be true.

We opt for efficiency over accuracy.

For example, dog years don’t translate to human years when multiplied by seven.

And the baldness gene doesn’t originate from your maternal grandfather.

But these are things we believe to be true because we heard them at some point, and didn’t care to research if they were true or not.

Historically, this human behavior has been good for advertising.

Advertising is an industry built on saying things quickly, and hoping people believe what you’re saying vs. interrogate it.

That is likely why paid advertising has historically been very effective - if you tell someone something about your brand or product enough times, they’re preprogrammed to believe it.

But today, we live in a different environment.

We live in a society of “fake news.”

Or, we live in a world where we are now programmed to not believe everything we see and hear.

Instead, we’re actually taught to believe none of it.

We question everything. We think everyone is up to something.

And we have more tools than ever between the internet, social media, etc. to interrogate if something is true or not.

That’s very bad for advertising.

At best, an advertisement is ripped apart by someone who sees it - its statements researched, fact checked, and double checked via search, Instagram, friends, etc.

But at worse, it’s just not believed to be true, without any research done whatsoever.

“Best pizza around?” Nah.

“Make impossible business dreams a reality?” Nope.

“Better rates than the competition?” You would say that.

In essence, anything a brand says about themselves comes off as a lie.

And it feels like the most successful campaigns in recent memory are ones where the brand was uncharacteristically honest about their flaws - showcasing bad reviews, playing up a product weakness as a strength, etc.

Even more than that, the media channel vessels that advertising campaigns run in on have never been more distrusted.

Mainstream news sites and TV networks, social media, Disney, etc.

The biggest, broadest, best media channels aren’t exactly fan favorites at the moment.

So what is a brand to do if ads and the platforms they run on have never been trusted less?

Ditch the mindset of reach and frequency and instead opt for surprise.

In the old world, if you reached enough people enough times, you’d be able to influence them about your product.

But that was in a world in which the default behavior was the truth.

The formula was that people, when shown the same message enough times, would automatically and inherently believe it to be true.

But now, more often than not, that magic reach and frequency number does not exist. It’s meaningless.

It doesn’t matter if a person is shown an ad or campaign over and over again, because they are naturally predisposed not to believe it, or distrust the places they’re seeing the ad.

So instead, opt for surprise.

Jolt people out of their predisposition to be discerning and negative.

Be alarming, be awe-inspiring, be arousing, be shocking.

Be true to your brand as well, of course, but the goal is to create a new reaction.

One that supersedes the current human instinct to believe everything you read and hear is “fake news.”

And instead, influences them to believe that what they see and hear can be something different, something memorable, something special, and maybe even, truthful.

Stay thinkin,
Danny