Psychology, Advertising & Human Behaviour - Richard Shotton - #163

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
Oh, hello, friends in Podcastland. Welcome back. My guest today is Richard Shotton. Long time Modern Wisdom favorite, and we're talking about one of my most delightful topics, which is behavioral economics, consumer behavior, advertising, psychology, and all that good stuff. So today, expect to learn how you can tell somebody's mood by the movement of their mouse, why the end of an experience is the most important, what Richard thinks makes the perfect advert, how you can increase workplace safety with skeleton gloves, why the British press might have got social change messages wrong with what they've been publishing, and so much more. This is one of my favorite ever episodes that I've recorded, and that is a big shout now, two and a half years in. You're gonna absolutely love it. I would love to hear what you think. So you know where to get at me, Chris Will X on all social media, Instagram, Twitter, wherever you follow me. In other news, this episode of the podcast is brought to you by Surfshark VPN. Surfshark VPN is a service which allows you to change the location of where you are browsing from. It protects your data from it being stolen or hacked by people, stops websites from tracking you, but most importantly, it gives you access to every country's Netflix library. If you are anywhere that isn't America, you want access to America's Netflix library because it is phenomenal and massive and vast and wide. And if you're in America, the British Netflix is pretty good as well. So head to surfshark.deals.mw, 83% off and an extra month for free. It's £1.59, which is like $2 for the American people listening. £1.59 a month to get an entire globe's worth of access to Netflix films, surfshark.deals slash modern wisdom. I literally would not use Netflix without it now. In more news, I'm doing three episodes a week. Usually it's just Monday and Thursday, but I'm recording so much during quarantine lockdown that I'm just getting backed up. So you lucky, lucky devils, you're going to get three episodes this week. Dave Rubin is coming on this Thursday to discuss his new book, Don't Burn This Book. And Saturday, I haven't decided who it is yet, but I have a huge library of episodes to dig into. So you will get Monday, Thursday and Saturday for the next couple of weeks until we work through this backlog. Final thing, please hit the subscribe button. You already know that it makes me very happy indeed. So if you are new here, if you are a long time subscriber and you haven't done it, go ahead and hit it. You don't want to miss any of the episodes that we've got coming up. But for now, it's time for the wise and wonderful Richard Shotton.
My mum still does my washing. I pay her every week to do my washing. But the problem is, obviously, with the new essential travel-only lockdown, I can't see her. So the first thing that she said after Boris' announcement wasn't, are you okay, what's business gonna be like? It's, do you know how to work the washing machine? So look, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back. The crowd goes crazy for Richard Shotton's return to Modern Wisdom. How are you, mate?

**Richard Shotton** (3:41)
Very good, thanks, very good.

**Chris Williamson** (3:42)
Pleasure to have you on. I cannot wait for today. First things first, Richard, did you know that sex toy sales have increased by 71% in Italy?

**Richard Shotton** (3:54)
No, I did not. That's amazing. For every crisis, someone's winning.

**Chris Williamson** (3:59)
That's it. Everyone's talking about what's going to happen to the price of oil, what's going to happen to the price of gold. No one's talking about what's happening to the price of silicon, are they?
It's a tradeable commodity. I said I was gonna tell you as well about gangs in Rio de Janeiro.

**Richard Shotton** (4:17)
Oh yes, oh yes, yes.

**Chris Williamson** (4:18)
So to the listeners, this is not going to be COVID-19 focused. I promise you, we're gonna give you some awesome insights into advertising and marketing, but it's too topical not to drop this. So gangs in the favelas in Rio enforced a lockdown from 8 p.m. every night, and they put a statement out on a website, I don't know if it's their website, and the statement reads, if the government won't do the right thing, organized crime will.

**Richard Shotton** (4:49)
I haven't seen that.

**Chris Williamson** (4:51)
I just thought, how amazing that you've got a place where typically the gangs are the people that have more control than the police on the negative side, and now they're just stepping in to enforce a lockdown.