Charismatic characters are great when used wisely in small business marketing. It creates an emotional connection and the character can even say things that wouldn’t be appropriate to team members.
In our company we have Apple the schnauzer. She writes in our printed magazine Engage and every now and then appears in one of our direct marketing campaigns.
Look how Virgin uses a charismatic character in its advertising.
Women perform more poorly than men on the highly competitive entrance exam for French business school HEC Paris, even though the same women had performed significantly better, on average, than the same men on France’s pass/fail, less-competitive national baccalauréat exam two years before, says a team led by Evren Ors, a professor at the school. As a consequence, the pool of admitted candidates contains more men than women. Once women are admitted to HEC, they tend to outperform their male classmates. Tournament-like competitive contests may lead to gender differences in performance, the authors say.
We say quite often that entrepreneurs need to become business storytellers.
The brain is wired for narrative and we must lead with stories.
Here are the 22 rules of storytelling according to Emma Coats:
Consumer behavior: 56% of purchases at a self-service gasoline pump in upstate New York ended in .00, well above what would be expected by chance, and an additional 7% ended in .01, likely reflecting failed attempts to stop the pump at whole-dollar amounts, says a team led by Michael Lynn of Cornell. The findings, along with data on tipping and a pay-what-you-want online scheme, show a pronounced consumer preference for round-number payment amounts, the researchers say.
As American employers shift health-care costs onto workers, more have been offering health plans with high deductibles. But those deductibles discourage male patients from seeking treatment, even for serious problems like kidney stones and irregular heartbeats. In the year following a transition to a high-deductible plan, men reduced their emergency-department visits for “high-severity” ailments by 34.4% in comparison with a control group, says a team led by Katy Kozhimannil of the University of Minnesota. Women, by contrast, continued to go to the ED for high-severity ailments, although they reduced low-severity visits.
SOURCE: When Health Deductibles Rise, Men Delay Emergency Care
Consumer behavior: By flaunting expensive shoes and handbags, women effectively deter potential romantic rivals, according to a series of experiments by doctoral student Yajin Wang and Vladas Griskevicius of the University of Minnesota. For example, after each research participant was prompted to imagine another woman flirting with her partner, those who were instructed to envision being alone with their rivals spent 77% more of a small honorarium on a chance to win a gift card for a luxury-spending spree, suggesting that women whose relationships are threatened seek conspicuous goods only when the products can be seen by a potential rival. Other experiments show that the deterrent is effective, probably because women perceive a man as more devoted to his partner when she sports pricey products, the researchers say.
If you’re trying to do creative work, you’ll actually have more luck when you’re more tired and your brain isn’t functioning as efficiently.
If you’re tired, your brain is not as good at filtering out distractions and focusing on a particular task. It’s also a lot less efficient at remembering connections between ideas or concepts. These are both good things when it comes to creative work, since this kind of work requires us to make new connections, be open to new ideas and think in new ways. So a tired, fuzzy brain is much more use to us when working on creative projects.
This Scientific American article explains how distractions can actually be a good thing for creative thinking:
Insight problems involve thinking outside the box. This is where susceptibility to “distraction” can be of benefit. At off-peak times we are less focused, and may consider a broader range of information. This wider scope gives us access to more alternatives and diverse interpretations, thus fostering innovation and insight.
Some customers are more important than others, says iProspect in a new study covering “affluent influencers” – the 40% of affluent adults (more than $100,000 in household income) who define themselves as influencers. Knowing what activities these individuals regularly engage in can assist marketers in producing and placing their ads in a way that maximizes their ability to “influence the influencers.
The study also looks at the activities that respondents are most passionate about, with responses tending to follow their regular activities. For example, spending time with family and children is the top response across each generation, with relaxing at home and DIY also among the top 5 across generations.
Travel pops up as an activity that respondents are passionate about, though there appears to be a generational divide in this case. While Millennials count international travel as one of the top 5 activities they’re most passionate about, travel within the US makes the grade for both Gen Xers and Boomers.
Compared to the affluent population as a whole, Millennial affluent influencers are far more passionate about going to bars and nightclubs (each with an index of 256), while Gen Xers over-index most for entertaining and hosting (137) and going to the movie theater (131) and Baby Boomers for home improvements (150) and DIY (142).
Once again, it seems that what affluent influencers are passionate about probably doesn’t differ too much from the typical individuals, at least in that these activities are for the most part not restricted to individuals with oodles of money to spend (although perhaps they require some spare time). While there aren’t too many eyebrow-raisers in this portion of the survey, here’s an interesting one: Millennial affluent influencers are more than twice as likely as their affluent peers to be passionate about going to fast food restaurants. Go figure.
About the Data: The data is based on iProspect’s sister agency Carat’s proprietary Consumer Connection System (CCS), from which the researchers looked at the data associated with 4,855 affluent adult respondents (HHI of $100K+) and then looked specifically at the 40% who defined themselves as influencers.
Here is another episode of BuzzBooster TV
This week we talk about websites and why many don’t work.
There is also the reasons why most websites don’t work. A marketing lesson from Patek Phillipe and a bunch of NeuroMarketing Tips for your business. With hosts Shahar and Nashlah.
Please share the love!
Don’t forget, the show is also available on Roku at the Buzz and Biz channel. There you will find some amazing shows related to marketing and self-improvement by different show hosts.
Also available on ITunes
People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it. This has been backed by NeuroScience experiments.
Fantastic video presentation by Simon Sinek!
