Whether you are white and gold or blue and black, a new psychological study in Cognition, the International Journal of Cognitive Science, shows that showing you perceptual illusions similar to #thedress increases your openness to attitude-change...
Life’s little luxuries may sell better if they’re priced with a rounded number – e.g. $20.00, rather than $19.99. That’s the finding of a new set of five studies in the Journal of Consumer Research that looked at the impact...
Hitting the screens this month is a new Hollywood movie about the power and influence of the smartphone today. A must-see for digital marketers. Starring Samuel L. Jackson (and Colin Firth, Michael Kane and Taron Egerton), Kingsman: The Secret...
The Jam Study is one of the most famous experiments in consumer psychology, and new research to be published in the Journal of Consumer Psychology supports the Jam Study’s controversial conclusion; offering consumers less choice can be good...
The same personality traits that predict men’s preference and openness to one-night stands also predict their selfie behaviour, with interesting implications for marketing. A new study in the psychology journal ‘Personality and...
The Hawthorne Effect* is a psychological phenomenon that produces changes to behaviour and belief as a result of increased attention from superiors, experts or researchers. And as 3M has demonstrated, the Hawthorne Effect can unlock B2B content...
The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in psychology that explains the success of content marketing. But with a twist. The Dunning–Kruger effect is the illusion of competence that comes from ignorance. We see something and we say to...
Why do normally prudent (or cash-strapped) shoppers go spend-crazy on Black Friday – the post-Thanksgiving annual shopping frenzy? The superficial answer of course is that we shop on Black Friday to get the one-day only deals, allowing us to...
Good news for ‘convenience tech‘. Convenience is one of the four core motivations for going online according to a new international ATKearney report that includes a survey of 10,000 consumers in United States, the United Kingdom...
Here’s a short downloadable primer on how sponsorship works from a psychological perspective, using examples from Adidas, Nike, P&G, The North Face, Intel and Coca-Cola – with four strategic implications for effective digital...
Sponsorship, the acquisition of rights to affiliate or directly associate with a product, person, organisation, venue, cause, team, league or event, is a rising star in the marketing mix, worth $51BN+ globally and growing at 4%+ annually. But...
Here’s a short downloadable refresher on need-to-know psychology for social media professionals that I’ve put together for my new advanced class on social media at ISOC. It contains examples from Adobe, ALS, Burberry, DNC, Ford, Heinz...