11 Psychology Tricks From the World’s Best Brands - Richard Shotton - #1053

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
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What did you learn from Five Guys?

**Richard Shotton** (0:44)
So Five Guys is the opening chapter. And we talk about something that they did very powerfully, which is when they launched, they were relentless at focusing on just doing burger and chips. So people like McDonald's have got seduced by the fact that they could launch filet of fish and chicken burgers. But Five Guys relentlessly honed down on just doing burgers. Now, some of the benefit of that is a ability just to get better at cooking, better at producing your core product. But psychologists argue there's something else on top of it. So there's an idea called the Goldilution Effect.
And the first studies were done by Zhang and Fishback back in 2007 And they did a very simple experiment. Recruit a group of people, randomize them into two subgroups. And the first set of people are told, if you eat tomatoes, it's very good for your heart health. Here are the reasons. And that group are asked to say whether they think eating tomatoes is worth doing for their heart health. Second group of people, they see exactly the same text, exactly the same reasons and logic and facts about why tomato eating is so good for cardiovascular health. But they are also told, if you eat tomatoes, it will improve your eye health, it will reduce degenerative diseases. Now in that second group are asked to say how good eating tomatoes is for heart health, they come back with a 12% lower score. So even though they've seen the same facts, because in this second group there was an additional reason thrown in, it reduced, it diluted the believability in that core reason. So there's a psychological as well as practical benefit about communicating that you do one thing well. People have a rule of thumb in their head that you can't be a jack of all trades, you know, if you are, you'll be a master of none of them. So there's a sacrifice in credibility and believability if you claim to do multiple things.

**Chris Williamson** (2:51)
What does that say about sort of underlying human psychology? Is it that we have a kind of a zero sum or a resource limitation on how much we think we should be able to distribute between the traits of a particular offer?

**Richard Shotton** (3:09)
I think a lot of these biases that behavioral scientists identify, the psychologists identify, they're generally true.
I mean, all things being equal, you tend to get better at a task if it is the sole focus of your attention. If you spend 40 hours a week being a cyclist, you're going to be a better cyclist than if I spent 10 hours a week. So people have a sensible rule of thumb in their head. But then the danger is they over-apply it in situations where it's not relevant. Like in a situation Zhang set up, people got the same facts about cardiovascular health, but because they threw in this second benefit, it seemed to detract from it. So I think it's often the misapplication of a generally sensible rule of thumb.

**Chris Williamson** (3:54)
Is the rule or the lesson for brands here that you need to win one thing very well and be very cautious about trying to add additional offers and features and potential advantages that people can get by using it?

**Richard Shotton** (4:11)
Yeah, that's a fair summary. It's essentially the argument that be very, very careful about adding extra reasons to believe, because what they will gradually do is undermine believability in the core reason to buy your product. So if you start saying, you're all things to all people, over time, gradually, insidiously, that original reason to buy gradually disappears.

**Chris Williamson** (4:36)
Reasons to believe is a wonderful way to put it.
The believability thing is really interesting. So selfishly, I've got Neutonic, I've got my productivity drink, and I'm shamelessly using yours and Sutherland's insights around behavioral science in an attempt to do this. It does lots of things. But we could have talked about procrastination, we could have talked about alertness, we could have talked about energy, but we just tried to get one word which was productivity, and we would just went for one single thing. I think the problem we have with productivity, the problem we're currently facing, we may end up pivoting a little bit, is that we're using fuel your focus and productivity drinks. There's two things that are synonymous with each other. I think the problem is it's too amorphous as an offering. I don't think that people necessarily want to be focused or productive. I think they want to get their job done with limited effort. We're trying to think now about what a pivot from a copy perspective would be to talk about the outcome, as opposed to the sort of mediator between you and the outcome. You don't want focus, you want your work completed. You don't want productivity, you want efficiently to complete the task that's in front of you.