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Rohit
📖 I spent the last 2 weeks reading up about Behaviour Sciences aka Behaviour Economics and I am truly fascinated by what I came across. This discipline provides answers to how we make decisions including our buying decisions. Sharing below some of the best things I came across in Behaviour Sciences and other interesting things below.
📺 Rory Sutherland at Nudgestock 2019
Rory Sutherland is the Vice Chairman of Ogilvy and one of the few admen who are at the forefront of propagating the use of Behaviour Sciences in marketing and advertising. This is his keynote address at Nudgestock 2019 (an annual get-together of various stakeholders who are interested in behaviour sciences). If you have only 30 mins to spare this weekend, then I suggest you spend it watching this video. It will be totally worth it.
🍔 Why Burger King's mouldy burger ad doesn't work
By now, we have all seen the mouldy burger ad by Burger King (in case you haven’t, there’s a link at the bottom of the post). The media has been rife with opinion pieces on why it is the marketing campaign of the decade or why it is the most terrible piece of marketing ever produced (yes, on the extremes). Here’s a take on the campaign by Phil Barden, Founder, Decode Marketing and an expert in Behaviour Sciences. He uses the linguistics of Behaviour Sciences to argue why this campaign will not work
🔑 The 6 Keys to Breaking Bad Habits
An excellent post on using scientifically proven methods to break your bad habits. This is written by Dan Ariely, whos is one of the foremost experts in the field of Behaviour Economics (and Chief Behavioral Officer at Lemonade, which is the company which runs this blog). You can spend a lot more time with Dan’s writing on his website danariely.com
📚 Books for advertising/marketing by non-advertising/marketing folks
Here’s an interesting thread on books which people in advertising/marketing should read (with 2 humble contributions from yours truly as well). Some terrific suggestions in this thread. Do check it out.
📰 Ben Smith is Half Right, But There's a Hole in His Analysis
This will take time to explain.
Ben Smith, who was earlier the Editor-in-Chief of BuzzFeed News, recently joined the New York Times. After joining NYT, he wrote a piece titled: Why the Success of The New York Times May Be Bad for Journalism. As the title suggests, he believes that the rise of media giants such as NYT on digital is killing-off smaller publications/media companies on digital. (More on it at the end of the post).
In the article linked here, Jacob Cohen Donnelly, who is a veteran on old & new media, opines that while Ben Smith may be right, there is a crucial point he is missing in his analysis. You have to read the article to know what that crucial point is :-)
BTW, I exchanged a few tweets with Jacob on this as I disagreed with his argument (so it is like the inception of disagreements right now). Sample it below.
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Thanks for reading 🙏
Rohit
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