Posted on September 28th, 2009 by Zeeshan Hamid
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Today’s book is All Marketers are Liars by Seth Godin. I recommend it.
This is something I have been saying for years, I just did not have the eloquence to put it as clearly.
This issue is sort of close to my heart anyway (why is it that a tech company, one that does it best to play nice with partners and customers, has a reputation of being a ruthless monopoly while another, one that is ruthless monopoly and hardly ever plays nice, has a reputation of being cool and friendly?)
Ultimately marketing is about storytelling. Deep down we all know that. When my brother forked out big $$$ to buy a Burberry cashmere coat, he did not really do it for value-for-money. There are plenty of other high quality cashmere coats that cost a fraction of what he paid. He did it because he bought the story Burberry created. I have no doubt the coat makes him feel smarter, taller, more attractive and more confident. Going back to tech companies, one failed at creating its own story (so its competitors created the story for it) and the other did a remarkable job at selling its story.
Being a Math major I would have preferred hard numbers and studies to demonstrate his point. However, I do not think lack of data takes anything away from the book. In fact, for most people it makes the book far more entertaining to read.
Godin also drives a point home that it’s not enough to simply create a story. Whether the story is actually true is irrelevant, what counts is whether it fits the customer’s frame or not. If it does then the customer will buy the story and create a preference for the brand. You can think of the ‘frame’ as a simple way of thinking about the world. Not all ‘soccer moms’ are same, but the frame ‘soccer mom’ conjures thoughts of busy mothers of young children. A story created for ‘soccer moms’ must then fit that pre-existing frames. Marketers typically do not create frames, they simply create stories that resonates with frames.
After reading this book I spent a fair amount of time thinking about cities and towns. Why do people pay a premium to live in one town while not another? I believe it’s because one town tells a different story than another. Most people I know would pay less money for a similar house in Brampton than they would in Oakville. Oakville, all in all, has done a better job selling its story. Where does Milton fit? What’s Milton’s story (my guess is that it’s very different for Miltonians than it is for outsiders. People outside of Milton likely see Milton as a cheaper alternative to Mississauga. Once they move in and experience the town, they realize it has its own character and charm.)
Amazon also has a Look Inside for this book that allows you to read the first few pages. I recommend this book.
Posted on September 21st, 2009 by Zeeshan Hamid
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Today’s book is “Nudge”, by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sustein.
Let me start with the bad first. This book may get a bit dry for some people in the middle, especially when it starts talking too much about specifics of the US Social Security system. However, there are parallels with Canada that should be useful to a Canadian reader as well.
It’s a good follow-up of my previous book review. The underlying theme is still the same: people aren’t perfect rational beings. The book accepts that we will make poor decisions if left to our own devices and admits that controlling people’s behaviour via over-regulation is undesirable. Instead, it argues that governments and businesses can nudge people in the right direction. It calls it libertarian paternalism.
One primary argument is that the government can mandate defaults that people can opt out of. Let me make the example somewhat Canadian. Take RRSP. My employer provides group RRSP with 100% matching (yes, I put in $1, they match it with $1 of their own in my RRSP). It’s a great deal. Yet the default setting is “no contribution”. If I did nothing when I started, I wouldn’t have any RRSP and I would be missing out on a great matching deal. Essentially if I do not opt in myself then I miss out.
Instead, Thaler would argue that the default should have been contribution up until the company max (the point at which they stop matching). So if I did nothing when I started working, the company would automatically take x% of my income, put it in the RRSP and match it with their own money. This means that unless I opt out, I get a great deal.
The book gives many such examples where “choice architects” can enable people to either make better decisions (eg. by forcing credit card companies to do better disclosure in layman’s terms) or set better defaults.
All policy makers should be required to read this book. You can read first few pages at Amazon. I highly recommend it.
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Posted on September 14th, 2009 by Zeeshan Hamid
![4f08810ae7a08ed617563210.L[1]](http://zhamid.ca/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/4f08810ae7a08ed617563210.L1.jpg "4f08810ae7a08ed617563210.L[1]")
It’s time to start a new section: book reviews. Today’s book: Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely.
I took a few Economics courses in high school and university and always felt that classic economics did not work in real life. Us humans aren’t rational machines after all. We are emotional beings. This is why I am very interested in behavioural economics.
Predictably Irrational is a very easy read that uses about a lot of fun studies to demonstrate how irrational people really are. It actually goes further and shows how our irrationality is completely predictable. Reading about paradoxes of human behaviour is fairly entertaining.
If you have ready other material on the subject then you won’t find the bug extremely thought provoking. It does not really introduce anything new that other books have not touched already. I enjoyed it for the entertaining factor though. I do think that most people will find it thought provoking and educational as well.
I recommend it. If nothing else then at least it is an entertaining read that will occupy you for a few hours. that’s always worth it, right? Amazon.com lets you read the first few pages for free.
