second brain

search wars

The news that News Corp is considering an alliance with Microsoft will be causing real concern at Google.

Now of course, News Corp is the David here, up against the digital Goliath. The Murdoch media empire is just a small part of the world's information and news services, so it may well be that by removing themselves from Google they're simply shooting (or stoning) themselves in the foot. But even if that's so, the very act of unsettling the status quo just might prove deeply damaging to the world's favourite second brain.

As consumers, we've been in the thoughtless habit of going to Google whenever we want to find information for ten years now. This development might make it less thoughtless, and less of a habit. When you know that certain content will only be found on another search engine, not only will that prompt you to consider a specific alternative - it will prompt you to consider why on earth you're so reliant on one particular search engine in the first place. And who knows where that will end...?

Google's search technology isn't demonstrably superior to its competitors. One its biggest competitive advantages is consumer habit. News Corp's move - whether beneficial to News Corp or not - has the potential to unravel that advantage.

the "paradox of choice" is no such thing

Tim Harford - the nemesis of behavioral economists - explains why new research seems to show that this most heralded and cited of recent ideas is, well, of dubious substance:

Benjamin Scheibehenne, a psychologist at the University of Basel, was thinking along these lines when he decided...to design a range of experiments to figure out when choice demotivates, and when it does not.

But a curious thing happened almost immediately. They began by trying to replicate some classic experiments – such as the jam study, and a similar one with luxury chocolates. They couldn’t find any sign of the “choice is bad” effect. Neither the original Lepper-Iyengar experiments nor the new study appears to be at fault: the results are just different and we don’t know why. After designing 10 different experiments in which participants were asked to make a choice, and finding very little evidence that variety caused any problems, Scheibehenne and his colleagues tried to assemble all the studies, published and unpublished, of the effect. The average of all these studies suggests that offering lots of extra choices seems to make no important difference either way

(via Tyler Cowen, who saw this coming)

why (genuine) brands make you a better person

Dan Ariely, behavourial economist and author of Predictably Irrational, outlines a fascinating experiment which suggests that wearing fake brands is bad for one's moral health. Luxury brand-owners agree.

a lesson in how to create branded content (from 1895)

From the New Yorker's fine piece on the Michelin guide:

The original Guide Michelin was developed by André Michelin, an engineer, and his younger brother, Édouard. Born into a wealthy manufacturing family in Clermont-Ferrand, the brothers, in 1895, presented a new design for a pneumatic tire for cars. Automobiles were still a rarity on roads in France. The brothers had the idea that a guidebook to hotels in the French countryside would encourage people to climb into a car (equipped with Michelin tires) and hit the open road. The first edition, published in 1900, was a five-hundred-and-seventy-five-page alphabetical listing of towns throughout France and the distances between them, with recommendations for hotels and places to refuel, and instructions on how to change a flat.

tmi

(via Indexed)

sunday night is suddenly alright

Sunday night TV has, for as long as I can remember, been an entertainment desert for anyone born after the release of the White Album. A relentless diet of hymns, antiques, bumbling vicars and period frocks, it's been a conspiracy to bore the nation, or at least half of it, into a state of melancholic resignation at the end of another weekend.

I've always wondered, for years now and often out of sheer frustration whilst flicking across channels, why none of the broadcasters, despite their ferocious competition for viewers elsewhere in the week, hadn't taken the initiative and tried something different on a Sunday evening. It seemed like such an easy win. You have a near-captive audience who want to stay in and sedate themselves in preparation for the start of another work week, including the much sought-after younger demographic, shagged out from partying the previous two nights. And if you move first, you have an enormous advantage over the almost uniform tedium across the schedule. Why hadn't anyone gone for it? When I worked at Channel Five I used to ask this question of everyone, including schedulers. I never found a satisfactory answer. It was just the way things were, apparently.

Finally, ITV has taken a look at this open goal, and decided to boot the ball into it:

Traditionally an evening for the small-screen equivalent of a warm bath, ITV's decision to broadcast its hour-long X Factor results show on Sundays has brought it massive ratings.. "It was waiting to be done. I'm not surprised that there's a large audience on a Sunday night – people don't go out," said the ITV director of television, Peter Fincham.

And that, folks, is why TV execs get paid the big bucks.

decent, honest, truthful

It's not about brands but it is - in the broader sense - about human behaviour, so here's a link to my recent Times piece on why we have a very evolved capacity for deception (not a capacity that those of us in marketing and advertising ever exercise of course...).

the marshmallow test

The marshmallow test is one of the all-time great psychology experiments. It was invented in the 1960s by a Stanford psychologist called Walter Mischel and has been repeated many times since. Essentially, it's a test of self-control. In brief: put a four-year-old in a room with a marshmallow (or some other sweet they love) and promise them another, but only if they can wait a few minutes before eating the first one.The researcher leaves the room, so the child is left alone with their temptation. Some kids barely wait till the researchers have closed the door (or not even) before gobbling up the one on the plate. Some stare at the thing intensely until they can wait no more and give in after a minute or so. Others find ways to distract themselves - singing, looking away, crawling under the table - and win their reward.

What made the experiment really notable was that Mischel followed the lives of the children in those first tests as they grew into adolescence and adulthood. He found that the ones who managed to wait it out - who were good at managing their own impulses towards instant gratification - tended to be happier and more successful at school and in their careers. Those who didn't even bother trying to resist were more likely to have drug problems, wayward careers, broken relationships, and so on. This suggests just what an important skill it is to be able to manage our own instincts, to conceive of our future selves as well as address our immediate desires, to play the abstract future off against the clamorous present. For a longer, fascinating account of the experiment and its implications, print 'n read this. (The video above is a sort of impressionistic take on the experiment - I don't know if they were doing it 'for real', as it were.)

The test provides a suggestive analogy for brand management, too. Marketers are constantly having to balance the short-term needs and opportunities of a brand against its imagined future. The temptation to eat the marshmallow on the plate comes in many forms (cut the price, run that promotion, do a deal with a partner that doesn't share our values but offers big volumes). Strong brand management requires a vivid ability to imagine (and persuade others of) a future for the brand for which it might be worth sacrificing the immediate opportunity. Brands that are good at this are likely to be stronger and more valuable in the longer-term. Sometimes, however, you just really, really want that marshmallow.

the homer simpson effect

The excellent Lucid Thoughts describes a fascinating new study on the links between food advertising and actual eating behaviour, based on a cleverly designed experiment. The gist of it is that food advertising does stimulate people, unconsciously, to eat more... although not necessarily to eat more of the advertised brand (I think LT may be over-interpreting a little when he says the ads aren't building a brand - does the paper actually show this or even investigate it? Sounds like a separate question about long-term effects to me but then I haven't bought and read the whole paper).