What matters in what comments your audience sees?

One thing businesses obsess about is customer/audience sentiment online. Negative reviews, scathing blog posts, ugly tweets.

The question is, how much do negative vs. positive comments affect your audience? As usual, there are many variables, but a recent study offers a few clues into how variables come together to influence sentiment.

The first clue is that well-known trusted brands are less impacted by negative commentary because the recognized brand name automatically puts the audience in what the researchers call “promotion orientation” (as opposed to “prevention orientation”). The bad news is that if your business is already struggling with a poor reputation, this is likely to automatically put your audience into “prevention orientation” mode, and in turn they will be more influenced by negative commentary.

Another clue is in how much information is presented. Similar to studies that show people can only handle a small cognitive load of choices, so too can they only typically process a few brand comments, and are thus likely to rely only on a few comments and additionally will take more seriously those comments that reflect their orientation to “promotion orientation” or “prevention orientation”:

When provided with a large number of mixed commentaries, promotion- and prevention-oriented individuals were biased in expected ways, positively or negatively. Under high information loads, individuals’ processing capacity was limited so they relied on only a subset of available information to simplify the judgment process. But this changed when only a few commentaries were provided. “When information load is low, individuals have higher cognitive capacity to process inconsistent information,” the authors write.

While this is only one study, what can you take away from this?

If you’re already a strong brand, don’t spend too much time worrying about negative brand comments. Obviously it’s important to listen and respond to customer complaints, but this is probably enough to attenuate negative comments.

If you’re an unknown or struggling brand, negative comments matter more. Monitoring social media is important as well as responding in a timely manner and making responses public, as well as following up with responses by making appropriate changes internally. You can further strengthen these responses by publicly announcing changes to products, customer service, your website etc that are a result of negative feedback.

Additionally, budget priorities should go towards customer relations and gaining positive reviews that are search engine friendly.

Lastly, no matter how strong or weak your brand, remember that your audience will only process small amounts of information at a time. So when using testimonials, highlight the most important through layout and design so that your audience can quickly scan and get the “gist” from just a few testimonials.

*Photo credit: geishaboy500 

Don't they look sharp?

Neil Patel posted today on the importance of dressing for success. This is one of those pieces of advice we hear, but maybe don’t follow. Maybe we don’t follow it because we’re rebellious. Maybe it’s because we operate from that particular morality that tells us it’s not the packaging, it’s what’s inside, dammit! Maybe our clothing budget is slim and we accept that we’ll just have to work harder to wow our audience with our intellect or wit or humor. Maybe we just prefer comfort over being “buttoned up”.

But here’s the science.

Our brain is wired for “first impressions”. Literally wired to pass judgment and assess others based on only a little bit of information, and no matter how conscious we are about trying to look beyond appearances, we can’t stop our brains from engaging in this unconscious, rapid processing by which we sort people. And once it’s done, it’s hard to undo. This “halo effect” carries over into what we think about a person even after we’ve been given more information.

How we dress matters in how the brains of our prospects will categorize us. It will affect how much they’re willing to pay, how they judge the work we deliver later, and how they treat us throughout the entire process. Why settle for anything less than what we deserve by failing to accept the importance of our appearance?

Don’t Fret, You Can Still Wear T-Shirts

The good news is that this halo effect works in your favor once you’ve made a good first impression. If you dress for success in your first dealings with people, AND generally manage to give a good first impression otherwise, this will carry over so that when you later want to dress-down it won’t hurt your reputation. So, no, you won’t be a prisoner of the suit forever. (Read all of Neil Patel’s post to see this in action.)

Think in Terms of Harmony to Quell Your Inner Rebel

Still feel like dressing up is somehow a compromise of your inner rebel? That it’s shallow or fake? That you shouldn’t be judged by your clothing? Many years ago I heard an interview on Fresh Air with a teacher. Somehow it came up in the interview that this guy always dressed so well, and why did he do that? I can’t remember his reply word for word, but essentially he expressed that he believed that dressing well allowed everyone else to feel at ease – it created a certain harmony and reduced friction so that the more important work could be gotten to more quickly.

That stuck with me. What a good way to think about it. So if you want to do good work, dressing for success is just one way to remove obstacles from your path.

What do you think?

Clarity is a beautiful thing.

For those of you that follow this blog and my Twitter stream, I’ve been conspicuously silent for a couple of months now (well, except for that whole IRENE business). At first I thought maybe I was suffering from social media burn-out. I just didn’t feel like playing in that space. But I’ve come to realize it was much more than that.

When I started Verilliance I had been working in web marketing for several years, but missing my true passion of neuroscience and human behavior. Sure, conversion rate optimization, writing copy, and even design all touch on human behavior – how could they not? But I’m a science geek, and that part was lacking for me. So when I stumbled into the nascent field of neuromarketing, it was like hitting the jackpot on a slot machine. A science for marketing with BRAINS! I was excited about writing this blog, thrilled to be reading scientific articles about decision science and neuromarketing studies and then translating them for marketers and business owners.

And people were excited to read about it and discuss it.

So What’s the Problem?

It wasn’t enough. That initial excitement wore off because there were still some important pieces missing. I needed to step back and let the quiet in so I could make sense of what was still missing. Marketing alone wasn’t enough, I knew that. Neuromarketing satisfied my need for science, and yet somehow? Still not enough.

I started thinking about how both leave a bit of a bad taste in some people’s mouths. “Marketing” has become synonymous with sleaze and greed and selling us things we don’t need. And neuromarketing? When people (who are NOT in marketing) hear the word for the first time they go running for their tin-foil hats and eye me suspiciously from the other side of the room.

Until they hear me speak passionately about the potentials here, that is.

And there were my clues. What was I saying when I had the opportunity to expand with someone one-on-one? I was talking about all the potentials. See, what drives my interest in understanding behavior, or even understanding marketing, is that the way I see it, the better we understand those things, the easier it becomes to create win-win-win situations where quality of life can be improved for everyone. Ways of life that generate more health, more energy, more genuine personal contentment and joy.

“Marketing” isn’t a dirty word. We market all the time. Children market propositions to their parents for favors or things. Teachers market subject matter to children to get them interested enough to absorb and recall. We “market” ourselves to potential mates by putting our best foot forward on a first date. Marketing is a form of presentation and communication, and we all have to engage in no small amount of it in our day to day lives. Yet because well-done marketing is so effective, there’s a vulnerability to manipulation inherent. Manipulation is the dirty word here, not marketing, and it all comes down to intent.

When you go on that first date, are you really putting your best foot forward? Or are you, in fact, presenting yourself as someone you’re not? The difference can look subtle, but the reality of that difference is profound. And when I was taking time “in the quiet” to wrap my head around those differences, and what intersections of potential I want to find myself in, what it is I want to do with this blog, with my knowledge, with my time and energy, with my LIFE began to come into sharp focus.

Getting Clear on My Intent

I DO want to help people understand human behavior from the data of the various sciences that give us insight. I DO want to help people take that information and turn it into action to better “market” their goods and services. But WHO I want to help, and WHY and HOW is this.

• Every “good people” business struggling to gain traction against stiff competition with loose morals.
• Social Entrepreneurs and green businesses and Triple-Bottom-Line businesses and non-profits and activists and artists and inventors who aim to bring sane solutions to this mad-mad world.
• ESPECIALLY any of those above who get squeamish about “marketing” – THOSE are the people who most need to get it that understanding how people think and prioritize and make decisions MATTERS to how they construct their message. You can’t make change if you can’t REACH people.

PEOPLE, my point is this. There is massive potential to use these insights for both personal and far-reaching good.

Imagine With Me

Imagine how combining the power of insight from marketing, neuromarketing, behavioral economics, psychology, evolutionary sciences, neuroeconomics, and other such disciplines can be combined to:

• Help those who the world MOST needs to market themselves to do so successfully.
• Create paradigm shifts in who we consider our modern-day heroes.
• Create paradigm shifts in how people prioritize their spending.
• Create and market products that actually DO improve quality of life for people.
• Convince policy makers to pay attention to the things that REALLY MATTER for quality of life.
• Create far more effective campaigns to end human rights violations.
• “Nudge” people towards better behaviors for their own personal health and well-being and beyond.
• Combine technologies to come up with ways to rapidly improve brain function and well-being – like using the rapid technology advances of market-driven neuromarketing to intersect with brain treatments or even improvements.
• Make environmentally responsible products more desirable than toxic ones.
• Make healthy food more desirable than “bad” foods.
• Create a more sustainable economy.
• Enlighten the general public how their brain, wired for a very different lifestyle, can be vulnerable to certain not-so-good habits, and how to overcome that.

The list is nearly endless. The details of how are all right there in the data. Not all that much is going to change in the way I write the blog or what I talk about, but I needed this clarity to focus and drive the content. How about you? Are you clear on what you’re doing and why? Tell me about it in the comments.

Will the lizard live? Depends on how he says it.

How many times a day do you need to sway someone to your point of view, or get them to do something you want them to do? How you say it can make all the difference according to a team of scientists at University of Michigan. Speed, pitch, number of pauses – the team has narrowed down possible optimal levels for each by studying the speech patterns of calls made by 100 male and female interviewers seeking participation in a survey. The team analyzed 1,380 introductory calls and then correlated data with the success rate of each interviewer.

The Findings

Speed – Not too fast, not too slow allows the listener to comprehend what you’re saying without getting bored, and growing suspicious of your intentions because you’re “talking too fast”, a tactic used to confuse the listener. Want to fall in the optimum range? Try 3.5 words per second.

Pitch – The scientists predicted that “animated” speech with lots of variation in pitch would be more successfully persuasive, but it turns out there was no correlation. They suspect that in some cases too much variation might seem fake. Men with higher voices has slightly lower success rates, but there was no measurable difference for women based on how high or low their natural voice was.

Pauses – Interviewers who were “perfectly fluent”, meaning there were no discernable pauses in their speech, had lower success rates than their pausing counterparts. And even though too many pauses in speech is considered “disfluent”, even those disfluent speakers had higher success rates than the “perfectly fluent” interviewers.

Practice “Right” Speech, or Practice “Right Speech”?

Now you have some insights into how to make your talks, your sales calls, and your pitches more persuasive. You can run and grab your digital recorder and practice getting it just right. But the way I see it, what this study really reveals is that effectively persuasive speech is really what we do naturally when we are speaking from the right place — an orientation of being honest, fair, and believing in what we’re saying. So my advice? Believe in what you’re saying.

What do you think? How much time and effort should be spent on practicing the individual elements versus working on confidence that stems from being genuine?

What beer comes to mind?

Imagine yourself sitting in a lounge chair on a white-sand beach. The sound of relaxed laughter and merriment comes from behind you. It’s hot but you’re kept cool by a mellow breeze and the cold, light refreshing beer you’re drinking. What beer comes to mind? Was it Corona?

Brand Focus vs. Broad Brands

According to a recent study, brands like Corona that define their brand with narrow associations do better than brands that try to be too many things to too many people.

Lars Erling Olsen conducted a series of experiments to test narrow vs. broad branding strategies at BI Norwegian Business School. He found that the more narrow the associations around a brand, the greater the recall, and the stronger the intent to purchase became. Additionally, Lars found that narrowly associated brands prompted greater brand loyalty and the more likely it was for the subjects to reject “new” brands introduced. Finally, narrow brands fared better when introducing an expanded product line. What Olsen calls, “success in both defense and growth scenarios”.

Specificity and Consistency Wins the Race

As you build your business, personal, or organization brand, resist the urge to be “more”. The fear to “miss out” on opportunities can drive branding in the wrong direction, leading to a diluted message and a forgettable brand that forges weak loyalty bonds at best. Stay focused, stay consistent, and build your brand  on a strong, but narrow pillar of associations

www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lXh2n0aPyw

If more businesses and the government were to follow the lead here and make taking care of ourselves, each other, and the planet both fun and cool, imagine the progress we could make.

Have you seen more examples of “nudge”? Let me know in comments.

There must be better ways to design networking.

After getting off the phone with Dr. Stephen Sands of Sands Research (stay tuned for a post on that interview), I hopped on Twitter to announce how much I love what I’m doing right now. I noticed #smchat was in progress and jumped in for the last 15 minutes. The topic was Realtime Trends for Conferences focused on how to make conferences more appealing through social sharing (transcript here).

There was some lamenting over waning interest in live attendance of conferences as content is shared in near real-time through social media channels. Others responded by pointing out the importance of face to face networking, and that got my neurons firing. I asked @thehealthmaven what the tipping point would be for her to attend a conference for the networking opportunities and she said, “business opportunity is the tipping point…hands down..that ROI just has to be there for me”.

What Needs to Change? Conference Networking Design

In an age of free-flowing content, if conferences want to lure business folks away from their desk, give up valuable production hours, and cough up registration, lodging and travel fees, networking opportunities need to be front and center, but they also need to be revamped and intentionally designed with human factors in mind (hat tip to Dr. Sands for the inspiration…it will all be revealed in the interview post).

We hear about the importance of networking, but do conferences take an active role in ensuring that networking opportunities are designed to be easy, pleasurable, and potently effective? No, they rely on old stand-bys of throwing some parties and naming them “networking events” where “enjoyable” and “ease” factors are sometimes left up to alchohol. Here’s the not so startling newsflash. These events work best for extroverts, only a small percentage of any given group. That leaves a lot of poor souls with dry mouths and anxiety, and if they walk away from an event with 10 business cards they then have to follow up. Does that sound like a situation that is promising enough for someone like @thehealthmaven to feel confident she’ll see some real ROI?

Think Outside the Box and Design for Human Factors

It’s time for conference organizers to think outside the box (like Tonia Ries does) on networking, designed with human nature in mind. Events that reduce anxiety, that facilitate putting the right people together, and have opportunities for interaction built in. If the real value of a conference is the networking, than ensure its value.

Think speed-networking events, like speed-dating, only for business relationships, not romantic ones. Divide people into two groups based on “need” and “service”. For example, businesses that are interested in expanding or creating a social media program are matched by a group of strategists and consulting, and the the speed networking begins. But businesses don’t want a bunch of follow-up calls from people they don’t want to “date” so further contact is left on the business side.

Think a large room of round-table discussions with each table having a variation on a topic, and folks play a form of musical chairs. 10 minutes the music starts to play and folks have to find a new table before the music stops. Find a way to make those discussions actionable for folks and allow for people’s best skills to shine.

Think of creating like-mind, like-size, like-skills networking rooms or areas. The “Triple Bottom Line” networking lounge for people interested in people, planet, profit. The networking lounge for introverts. The networking lounge for [fill in the blank]. Create smaller common grounds so people walk in already knowing their among “their” people.

Think about dedicated Twitter “mentioners”. Someone at every networking event and vendor booth tweeting about the people there. Like,

“At networking lounge for introverts and @verilliance is in passionate conversation with so-and-so about marketing and brain science”

OR

“@verilliance is trying out our new user interface and just said “cool beans”, haha! Who says that?”

Tweet the little names, the middle names, not just the big names so that folks know if they talk to someone they’re going to get a shout-out.

So there you are, a few of many possibilities to make that “networking” aspect of conferences a much stronger pull so we can keep the face to face alive and well.

What are your ideas?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OPs0x2r9aM

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*I’ve been curating neuromarketing and behavioral economics, all found on the Verilliance YouTube channel here.

Altruism - it's in our nature.

Ok, so maybe social media for social good is kind of a no-brainer. Where some businesses can meet with a frustrating resistance to their social media efforts, social good campaigns seem to be much more welcome. Why is that, and what can we learn from brain and behavior research to better our chances of creating successful social media campaigns for social good?

Altruism isn’t Just for the Other Guy

People turn to social media to feel connected and to feel good. And as it turns out, acts of altruism feel good too. Altruism activates the dopamine pathway, otherwise known as the reward pathway — the very same mechanism in the brain that makes food and sex so pleasurable. Evolution decided that altruism was a good thing apparently.

Which is awesome when you consider the implications for high rewards on such simple tasks as clicking “like” on Facebook or “retweet” on Twitter, but social media offers even more opportunities to focus on this positive aspect of altruism. Real-time reporting on milestones, photos of people in the field, stories of triumph made possibly through support, etc. can all help to stretch out the natural good brain vibes people get from helping others. Social media makes it easier to offer immediate and sustained reward feedback.

One caveat, keep in mind that people become easily habituated (i.e. bored) to just about everything, including feeling good.

Social Media Makes it Easy to Tell the Story of One

It might seem logical that if something is affecting a lot of people, that sharing those statistics ought to compel people to offer more support. After all, if thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of people are under some sort of threat, we should be moved by that. And recent mobilization of donations and other support through social media channels for such things as the Haiti earthquake, or the Egyptian uprising would seem to support that.

As it turns out, we’re much more moved by the story of one. Studies by Paul Slovic show that giving increases when subjects are presented with the story of one person in need versus being offered stats and data about the scope of a problem affecting many people. When you really analyze what happened with Haiti or Egypt, you see that the story of one was coming through. Traditional media could only cover the scope, but social media channels connected us to people who were directly affected.

A static website or brochure can tell the story of one, sure, but only one. Social media amplifies the power by enabling campaigns to tell the story of one at a time. Think how much more potent a social good campaign becomes when powered by blogs or YouTube, activating mirror neurons for empathy and shared joy! A cause can tell the story of one, but the nature of social media allows them to do so over and over again so the scope of a threat or opportunity becomes scalable, one story at a time. Today you meet “John” who is affected by such and such, but tomorrow you get to meet “Jane” and hear her story.

And the beauty of stories? They like to travel.

Altruism and Moving Beyond Groups

Altruism has been shown to be more readily acted upon within one’s own “groups”, mediated by the powerful bonding hormone oxytocin. Conversely, the same mechanisms make us hostile, suspicious, and even aggressive to perceived outsiders. Social good campaigns must find common ground with supporters. Overcoming this obstacle was an expensive and slow endeavor with “traditional” communication channels such as snail mail, cold calls, and events. Social media offers more and less expensive communication channels.

But social media does more than open more communication channels. It opens communication channels that can more easily “jump” group boundaries, effectively circumventing group boundary obstacles present in other communication channels.

Social Media Facilitates Social Proof

Social proof is a concept bandied about a fair amount these days, because it’s an important concept. To simplify, when we see a lot of people doing any one thing, it makes us biased toward whatever that thing is. So if we see a lot of people are going to a certain cafe in town, we assume it must be an all-around great experience.

Before social media there was no way for users to know how many people were visiting a certain website, or how many of their own friends and family were. Social media allows visible and public social proof to users, and this can facilitate campaigns for social good. The more people who sign-on for a cause, the more others will want to.

Conclusion – Social Media Can Rock Your Social Good Campaign

Oxytocin, mirror neurons, dopamine, in-group jumping, social proof…the list goes on. Social media and social good are clearly symbiotic and when social media is intelligently leveraged, the opportunities to affect social change are immense.

From the press release:

Product Highlights

Mynd has undergone rigorous development and testing procedures for three years. The standards set for the device to meet included performance levels as accurate and reliable as gel-based, wired EEG systems used in clinical settings for a host of neurological disorders, as well as high durability and serviceability.

Key highlights of Mynd include:

• Full-brain coverage with dense-array EEG (electroencephalographic) sensors.  Full-brain measurement is the universal neuroscientific standard applied in the world’s premier laboratories and educational institutions.
• Within seconds of slipping the user-friendly headset on, a consumer’s brainwave activity is captured across the full cortex.
• Wireless transmission of brainwave signals; capable of interfacing with any Bluetooth-enabled mobile communications device.
• Dry “smart” electrodes (sensors), eliminating the use of gels and enhancing signal quality by introducing novel technological breakthroughs.
• Enables first full-brain coverage home panels for market research.
• Comfortable, lightweight, aesthetically pleasing modular design with easily-replaceable sensors.

What Can Mynd Really Do?

My first question for Dr. Pradeep was, “when you say ‘home panels’, you mean subjects will volunteer to wear the headset at home? What will be measured, and how?”

Dr. Pradeep explained how the technology will allow users to wear the headset at home and it will be able to communicate with other devices such as your cable box, your computer, your iPhone or iPad. This way, collection of brainwave activity will be synced with various activities such as watching a certain television program, commercial, interaction with a website, and so on.

But what about other activities that don’t involve electronic devices? Sure, as Pradeep describes, one could report that they were about to eat Y brand of cereal, and the Mynd headset could begin collecting brain-wave data after the report, but how could that data be synced properly with actions? Dr. Pradeep explained that in the next version there will be a video camera installed so that activity can be synced with data coming from the brain.

Many critics of neuromarketing claim that insights gathered from in-lab research are flawed because it can’t account for real world context. If this technology works as well as Pradeep claims, this would push neuromarketing research to a whole new level, removing lab environment bias.

But it’s not just marketing that can benefit from this technology. Neurofocus began developing the technology out of a desire to deepen neuromarketing research, but as the technology emerged the team had a moment of, “wait a minute” as the implications for other applications arose. This led Neurofocus to develop Mynd as an open platform for which other applications can be built. Already TOBI is working with the technology to invent new ways to help brain injury patients.

New Opportunities

Dr. Pradeep was most passionate when he spoke about the possibilities for other applications of Mynd – from medical, to entertainment, to self-help. “Imagine you are a mother of a child who has seizures. If you were in another room, the device could notify you so you could run in.” He listed other potential uses, such as the applications that could be built for an iPad that could allow a user to play games using brain-waves, or to see and interact with their own brain activity. “This opens up a whole new world” he said. His passion was contagious as he continued to list the possibilities.

What the Critics Say

Given the incredible scalability of the platform, the potential for good, and the seemingly endless opportunities of this type of device, it is almost surprising that there could be criticism. Yet there’s been plenty. I asked Dr. Pradeep to respond to some of his critics and their claims.

In response to critics who say that dry EEG has not in the past been able to collect good data, Dr. Pradeep stressed that Mynd has been in development for three years. Neurofocus didn’t want to release anything until it could attain “medical grade”, which as Pradeep points out means that “it has to collect good data. Period. End of story.”

We didn’t speak directly about criticism that Neurofocus has opted out of a neuromarketing standards study by ARF, but you can read other coverage of that here. Elsewhere on the web, as part of a group, someone pointed out that Dr. Pradeep had compared himself to John Lennon or Steve Jobs. And I think that probably hints at another reason NeuroFocus has opted out of an outside standards study. In talking to Dr. Pradeep it is immediately clear how warm and passionate he is about his work, and though he didn’t say it directly, our whole conversation was shaped by Pradeep’s passion for his vision. I imagine that yes, similar to Lennon or Jobs, Dr. Pradeep is clear on what he wants to do, and that vision can seem uncompromising at times.

In response to general critical response to neuromarketing as “mind control” Pradeep confirmed that there is no “buy button” and you can’t make people do something they really don’t want to do. We also talked about how marketing generally has become a dirty word, but marketing is something we all do. “We market our best selves to our significant other, we market knowledge to children in teaching…” and so on. This is a point I make all the time — it isn’t marketing that’s a problem, it’s intent. If a company is selling a product that is harmful or doesn’t work, and they use marketing tactics to persuade, convince, and even lie, then the problem is with the intent of the company, not with marketing. “We’ve always been marketing,” Pradeep says, “but when you quantify it and give a name to it, people don’t like that.”

However, in as much as any marketing can persuade, NeuroFocus takes a clear stand on who they won’t work for. Dr. Pradeep feels strongly that marketing should not be involved in politics so NeuroFocus refuses any work related to politics or campaigning. Additionally, Pradeep feels children should be free to explore and grow without being bombarded by marketing persuasion they can’t understand so NeuroFocus won’t run neuromarketing tests on children.

Neuromarketing is largely misunderstood to have much more power than it does, resulting in some tending toward a knee-jerk reaction to the idea of such deep investigation into their motivations, decision making, and unconscious response to marketing creatives. Dr. Pradeep’s response is quite the opposite.

That’s why I started this work. It offers me the deepest insight into myself. Why do I do what I do? Why do I make the decisions I make? And so on. It is a deep journey into myself. Some people are uncomfortable with such deep introspection because it makes them feel vulnerable.