406. Why We Buy w/ Patrick Fagan (Refreshed Episode)

Welcome to episode 406 of the Brainy Business Understanding the Psychology of why People buy. Today's episode is a conversation with Patrick Fagan, author of Hooked. Ready?

Let's get started.

You are listening to the Brainy Business podcast where we dig into the psychology of why people buy and help you incorporate behavioral economics into your business, making it more brain friendly. Now, here's your host, Melina Palmer.

Hello. Hello, everyone.

My name is Melina Palmer and I want to welcome you to the Brainy Business Podcast. Today's episode is a refresh of my conversation with Patrick Fagan about his book Hooked, why Cute Sells and other marketing magic that we just can't resist. Now, there's a lot of intentionality in Patrick's phrasing of the marketing magic that we just can't resist. One of the things I really appreciate about Patrick and his work is that he looks at both the light and shadow side of communication and influence and how important it is to be thoughtful to how messages are impacting people, whether we are the ones buying or the ones selling, so we can keep things ethical and not take advantage or be taken advantage of. I really enjoyed this conversation with Patrick, which covers so many aspects of messaging and psychology, including insights from social media and other areas of technology, understanding habits, and the three key things every message needs to get people to buy in.

It's a fun one. I know you're gonna love it.

Don't forget there are links for everything, including past episodes, books and articles, all waiting for you in the show Notes for this episode, which are found within the app you're listening to and at the brainy business.com4:06 all right, let's talk about why cute sells and other marketing insights that get us hooked. Patrick Fagan, welcome to the Brainy Business podcast.

Hi. Thank you for having me.

Yeah, welcome back. Haha. We were laughing a little bit before starting recording in that we had gotten about halfway through recording this interview a few weeks back and my power went out randomly and so we had to reschedule. So we're back. Even though this is the first time the audience is getting to hear a little bit from Patrick, but I feel like that was just our practice run and this is going to be the best interview ever. Yeah.

Yeah.

Awesome.

Yeah.

No power cuts.

Yeah. Yes. So fingers crossed. I've got another busy day today, so let's just jump in, tell the audience a little bit about you and how you developed your love of behavioral science, how you got into the field.

Yeah, absolutely. So my name is Patrick Sometimes I ask people to call me Pat though.

Because research says it makes you more likable.

So having a shorter name or a nickname improves perceptions of warp.

I think that's probably where I use the most help.

So yeah, I ux tested my own name and that's the kind of thing.

I do as a behavioral scientist is.

Take the academic science side of psychology.

And then practically apply it to get kind of real world results for commercial.

And institutional and political means. So yeah, as a behavioral scientist on the academic side, I'm a part time.

Lecturer at a couple of universities here.

In London and I publish papers on.

Things from Facebook psychology to facial expressions.

And I also have a book with.

Pearson called Hooked about the psychology of.

Effective comms, how to grab attention, engage people emotionally, behavior.

So on the front of the book there is a puppy because we're evolutionarily hardwired to pay attention to cute things because we would have died out if we hadn't done that.

And then on the commercial side, I've.

Been doing psychological experiments and research using.

A whole range of methods and also consulting with the behavioral science focus for about 10 years. I think probably the most interesting part of that 10 years is I was.

The lead psychologist at Cambridge Analytica for.

Eight months until the end, mostly on the commercial team, I want to say.

So mostly kind of bottled water and insurance.

And I joined long after the Trump campaign, so I think my hands are fairly clean. And now I'm the chief science officer at Capuchi. We do behavioral science consulting and research. So understanding the audience's mindset and how.

To message them in the way that's going to resonate the most and how to incorporate big data to find and target the right people and to make sure your nudges are working.

Yeah, so many amazing things. That's nice. Well packed intro. So should I call you Pat? Do you prefer to be called Pat or you like the idea of the ux of it?

Yeah, I don't like it actually, but it's like funny kind of anecdotes.

Totally. You know, I wanted to make sure before, you know, you say you ask people to do that and then if I didn't, I actually similarly really hate the. When people call me Mel, it's just rubs me the wrong way. I find it grating in whatever way. So Mel and Pat will not be on this podcast today, but Melina and Patrick are going to keep talking.

Okay, thank goodness.

So I would love if you could talk a little bit about. I mean, do you have. I know you have A lot of research that you have worked on. And one of the points when I actually, I first reached out to you, it was after you spoke in the Behavioral Science book club on LinkedIn, which I've talked about on the podcast before, had Louise join us here, and you had talked about a priming study about music that had to do with ebay. And it was, you know, we've heard the priming for the French and German wines quite a bit and that was one that I wasn't familiar with. And at first I thought you were just offhand talking about it. And then I realized, oh, you worked on that, so it was actually your study. And so I had reached out to you about including it in my book and then talked about you being on the show. So can you share a little bit about that research? I know it's been a few years now, but that would be great.

Yeah.

So yes, it's been a few years. I should also say that, you know.

This was a paid for study particularly and it was for press purposes.

You know, I did it scientifically and.

I did it to the best of my ability, but it wasn't peer reviewed by any means.

But still it was interesting that I did it wrong. And I looked at the effects of background noises on online shopping. So I made a fake online shopping website and had various conditions and a control condition and I had a look.

At what did people buy, what was their purchase intention for different products they saw, what was their emotional response, and so on.

And then between the different conditions, I play different background noises through their browser while they browse. And so there are a few interesting things. So yeah, as you say, classical music.

Makes people more likely to buy.

There's higher purchase intentions and higher ratings of product quality.

So like the wine shop study, when they play classical music, people buy more expensive wine.

Likewise, if you play classical music, it.

Primes people to see products as higher quality and therefore they're more likely to.

Buy playing noises of baby screaming and roadworks. That kind of puts people in a very efficient state of mind, shall we say? I mean, maybe if you played it for a long time, it would, there.

Would be cognitive load and it would make decisions worse.

But in this experiment, it made people much more efficient at decision making and.

Just buying the best products. What else?

If you play birdsong, people are more.

Likely to buy outdoorsy products like barbecues because again, it's priming people to think of a certain way. So I saw a peer reviewed study recently that showed that people are more likely to buy a Convertible on days when it's sunny and warm. And so that's, that's a huge purchase a car. You think people would put a lot.

Of thought into it, but really all.

It takes is, you know, it being.

A sunny day and they're more likely.

To buy a convertible.

Yes. Longing for nice days, I guess out in the convertible and you say, well, I guess today's the day. Time to get that.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Although on the other hand, people were.

More likely to buy four by fours if it was raining on the day.

Interesting. I wonder if that had to do with. Do you know, in the depths of the study. Right. Were they already going to buy a car and then it. The. But the final choice they made was influenced by the weather or I'm assuming it's not like it's sunny and I'm going to go buy a car today, you know.

Well, it was, it was a study on sales data. So they just showed how on sunny.

Days the sales data was, was higher certain types of cars. So as to the decision making, I don't know. Yeah, you could be right that they were going to buy one anyway.

But just the sunniness, it's like pull.

The trigger because I really need this now. Got to take advantage of this lovely day. So that's maybe the nudge they need came in the form of the weather.

Yeah, well, they overestimate the needs. They overestimate how sunny it will be.

In the future based on how sunny it is today.

Right, right. Yeah. All sorts of mental fallacies taking place in all the decision making processes. So moving from ebay to another sort of social space. I know you've done some research about Facebook and I think you know, the facial expressions or maybe some mental stuff that had to do with, with Facebook. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Well, those were two papers that I co authored.

One was on Facebook psychology. So it's kind of a literature review.

Of the research to that point about.

Who uses Facebook, what they're motivated to.

Use it by and what, what, what are the consequences of using it And.

I suspect things have maybe shifted a bit since then and particularly with the.

New platforms that are out there.

So I'm really. So at the time we found that.

It makes people more narcissistic. They can also improve your self esteem.

It depends how you use it.

If you're posting images of yourself, it boosts your self esteem. If you're looking at other people's images.

Sorry, if you post images of yourself.

It boosts your narcissism. And self esteem.

But if you looking at other people's.

Feeds, it lowers your self esteem, can.

Increase loneliness or the very least lonely.

People are more likely to use it.

But now, I mean, I'm really getting into books like. Well, I haven't read it yet, but I've ordered it called the Shallows, which is about how the Internet encourages a.

Very shallow thinking style so you don't get into topics in depth. Instead you're kind of like always distracted.

And blown around by different things and.

It makes you very kind of impulsive and distractible.

But I have read Amusing Ourselves to.

Death which was exactly the same thing, but it was just about media and television, written in the 80s.

And there's various books like this about how technology maybe is not completely a.

Force for good and that it's harming.

Our attention spans and our abilities I.

Think can be conscientious.

But anyway, so there was that one on Facebook and then the other one.

Was on facial expressions.

So I used to be head of.

Emotion sciences at a company called Crowd Emotion.

So we had facial coding, eye tracking.

And I developed an implicit testing tool for them as well.

And we used that technology to look.

At engagement and boredom and what defines that. So what are the expressions that you can use to tell if somebody's bored versus actually listening to what this year?

And so it feels like that's some of. I know Zoom used to do some data as far as if people aren't paying attention in the Zoom meeting, that you can tell the attention spans and things and be able to go back and say, Melina, you only paid attention for 10 minutes of that Zoom conversation, but they turned it off. I guess once everybody started having to use Zoom, there was a problem. Privacy concern. Is that sort of the type of work that it was doing with the boredom or how did you apply that?

Yeah. Yes.

On Zoom calls you can. If you're checking emails and things, you.

Always have to make sure that you don't have that dead behind the eyes look at the same time. So people can't tell what you're doing, I imagine. I don't know, but I imagine that.

Was kind of an ethical thing and the kind of creepiness thing.

People don't like the idea that their.

Innermost thoughts can be tracked and given to their boss.

But yeah, it was like that.

It was.

I didn't run the study, so we.

As far as I remember, we showed.

People content and got them to play a game. And the game was either really interesting.

Or it was just really, really repetitive.

And Dark. And one of the surprising things is actually happiness, but it was more of.

Kind of born of a frustration, kind.

Of laughing out of anger and frustration.

When people are really, really bored and frustrated.

But otherwise, yeah, if people are bored.

They tend to lean back rather than forward on average. You know, everyone's different. But yeah, there are a few signals like that.

Interesting. Yeah. And so, you know, those are some of the things, you know, we've. We've plumbed the depths, I guess, of things that you used to work on. What sort of things are really interesting for you now? What are you currently working on that you can talk about and. Or stuff that gets you excited when you're looking at projects?

Anything where I can understand people and why people behave a certain way and how to.

How behavior can be influenced and what.

Different groups of people exist and how.

They think and act in different ways. So segmentation or psychology and behavior rather than your typical kind of demographics and attitudes, which I dare say don't work all that well.

But yeah, I love doing segmentations even.

So I did one for a supplements.

Brand recently and found five things that.

Five types of health, five types of people with respect to health and diet and nutrition, what they're motivated by and.

What they're most like.

So some people are looking for health.

And they only really care about food.

They're not really into fitness. So it's all about diet and vegetables and things. Some people just want to look good. Some people want to just achieve and be the best. Some people want to be like fitness freaks.

And what was the other one?

Oh, some people just want reassurance and they want to not worry about their health.

Anyway, that was really interesting to me.

And seeing how the different groups respond to different nudges, as you'd expect. So the fitness people respond well to duty appeals and this is what you ought to do. The reassurance people respond well to loss aversion or something like that.

Yeah, I just find that endlessly fascinating.

Yeah, well, let's dig in on that a little bit more. Assuming you can talk about it in more depth than that, but I think so. Like, you're talking about the reassurance people being motivated by loss aversion. And so to talk about that for. For the audience that's listening, that would be. So someone who is really concerned about doing the right thing and that they're going to be healthy in the long term, is worried about things going wrong or badly or that something happens to them and they're not there for their kids. That sort of motivation would make a lot of sense. And so not missing out on the opportunity, helping them overcome that time, Discounting, I guess, would be a really important aspect to help them overcome. So if we're looking at, you know, I guess messaging to them, is it pretty much that people are. I'm assuming it's not that you're just one of those things, but you have a primary motivator.

Yeah.

This is the thing with segmentation or in psychology, the difference between traits and types. If you're trying to take millions of.

People and decide to whom to send.

Which message, you can't really treat people as individuals. Obviously it's not for now, at least.

Maybe with AI and things in the future. But now you kind of have to.

Be a bit blunt and segment them into groups and you know, it's a.

Bit rough, but generally speaking is it works.

But yes, somebody might take a test and fall into a group one day and then take a test a week.

Later and they fall into a different group based on the threshold.

And yeah, it is quite a blunt.

Instrument, but it's useful for sending types of messages.

So yeah, I mean someone, your average.

Person would probably fall into the groups to different extents, but one of them will be the best fit for them.

Yeah. And so with the research that you did, did it. Was it pretty evenly split amongst the groups, as you know, 20% for each of the five? Or was one really predominantly the motivator or types of people that existed?

It depends on the segmentations. For this one they were fairly evenly split, but sometimes or usually in fact that doesn't happen.

So you'll end up with one segment that's like, accounts for loads of people. You might have one tiny segment that's in few people.

So I did a segmentation on coronavirus.

And the different types of people there are with respect to that.

And there was this really small group.

Of what I call gadflies.

So I think Aristotle talked about gadflies.

These people that just like buzz around.

Around to you, like annoying you. But they're kind of important because they.

Stir people to movement and to debate and discussion. So these are people who disagree with everything and they're protesting it and all that stuff.

Yeah, they were, they were a tiny.

But probably an important segment compared to most people who just kind of going along with it because it's probably the right thing to do.

Yeah, well, and seeing the gadflies can help move everybody else along where the rest of us might be in that status quo bias. Right?

Yeah.

So heretics Much maligned, but I think.

They'Re quite important for society. I mean, they often get sentenced to death or burned at the stake and.

Stuff, but generally speaking, they're quite important.

Worth it.

Yeah.

Funny, when you were talking about the health segments and whatnot, it reminded me of somewhat recently had Wendy Wood on the show and we were talking about her work in habits and she has some really interesting examples about runners and was talking about. So people who have formed a running habit and that is, you know, what they're motivated. You know, they, they run out of habit versus out of feeling like they need to or that they should or whatnot. But it's just something that they do every day. If you bring up imagery and whatnot for them, that reminds them of the path that they run, where they go. In this case, you said the study was done at Duke University, so it was the, the trails and things around Duke. And so if you were to remind them of those trails, they would think about running and that, that would come up and be like, oh, better, you know, time to go run. That was something that was a trigger for them. And people who had not yet formed a habit, the goal as to why they were running mattered more to say it's about my health or fitness or losing weight or. And so they, if you showed them the paths, even if that was also where they ran, it didn't have any association with the idea of going for a run. And for the people who it had become a habit for reminding them of the goals, the fitness, the health thing, losing weight did not trigger the idea of running for them in the same way. So it's a really interesting piece that, you know, for me, my, my brain's kind of going over. I wonder how much of it has to do with that habit cycle as well. And for the people who were the, you know, fitness be the best, you know, how much of it is because they've gotten into a habit of that exercise and achievement and whatnot versus so the, that fear piece that is in the, you know, taking care of yourself, avoiding the problem.

I don't know.

That's.

That's what's in my brain right now.

That I'm thinking about.

Do you have any thoughts on any of that?

That's really interesting.

So, I mean, I guess looking at habit formation, you need to have that.

Expected outcome first to even get people.

To start doing the habit. And I guess that's quite energy consuming the brain.

But then once you get into the habit, you don't think about it at.

All, which Is good, I suppose, unfortunately, a bit limited. Again, if you're doing this kind of.

Research with loads and loads of people.

You can only really, if you want to get enough data to do segmentation.

You can only really ask survey questions.

And they're of course limited in the self report.

There may be some biases in answering.

So sometimes it can be hard to get to those.

Those kind of nuances that you're talking about. Right, right.

Yeah, definitely.

But for the, for the fitness seekers. Yeah, it was very much about commitment.

And consistency was something they're influenced by.

So. Yeah.

Which is doing in the future what you've done in the past.

Interesting. I really love the, you know, the psychology aspect is my background as well. And I'm one of those. I get get this vibe off of you too that it's the, you learn something and you go but why, but why is it that way? And what about this other thing? And what if we looked at this, you know, the really digging in with more questions is one of my, I guess, favorite pastimes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I love. This is so geeky.

But there's nothing better to. Than to get new SPSS data set with new questions in. I can cross questions by each other and see if some assigned traits predict doing certain things.

Yeah.

So interesting to me.

Yeah. And digging in and seeing if what you thought was going to happen happened or something else happened. What I have found with many of the people that I brought in the show and just had conversations with, often you throw in something into the study that you think this is weird, but let's go ahead and test and see what happens and it ends up doing the best. It surprises you. Do you have any examples of something where that's happened for you?

Just the thing that's coming to mind.

Recently is some polling work and I had a. I read a couple of books recently.

I had a hunch about something called traditionalism.

So you have, you know, in the.

Public mind you have conservatives and progressives, so you have people who want to.

Conserve things as they are and you.

Have people who want to progress things and change them.

But actually I had this hunch that.

Maybe there's a third group who actually.

Want to not conserve things or progress.

Things, but actually move backwards.

And so I added a question around that and it was completely validated.

And actually the proportion of people who are happy with the way things are today and want to keep things as they are today, conservative in the truest sense, is very, very small. Most people into one of the other two camps they either want to progress things or they want to return to the past.

So it was great to have that.

Kind of hypothesis and then actually see it born out in the data.

It's interesting with that, did you look at all, was that, did age tie in on that at all or from memory?

Yes, in a predictable way.

Obviously the older people get, the more.

They want things to be like they.

Were when they were younger.

Yeah. And so how would you, you know, if you were looking at building that into safer business project, you know, for me I would think that the, that really shows why nostalgia can work and the power of story and things like that can. What else might you. How would you look at applying that information for. For somebody that's listening for.

For businesses, that particular question could be tricky.

But I suppose there's different ways of thinking that go with those two mindsets that can tell you how to do messaging.

So if you can do, can do.

A segmentation or profiling and you see your customers, for example, if they really.

Want to progress things, they're really progressive.

Then they're probably that more open to experience type.

So those people tend to be, and this is broad brushstrokes obviously, but they tend to be more open to experience, more liberal, more intellectual, more empathetic.

They care about reducing harm and equality and having equality. And you can use these insights for the aesthetics of the messaging.

You can be more reflective, more like modern art, more kind of thoughtful.

And in the language you can be.

More verbose and use new and different words, use metaphors and ask questions, just get people to a bit more.

Whereas if they're on the other side.

The traditionalists, they tend to be a bit more threat sensitive.

They prefer tradition and order and structure.

They're more organized generally speaking.

So then your aesthetics would be much more structured.

Don't do anything like new or out of the box.

Be very simple and concrete in the wording.

Yeah.

So basically how you would use it.

Is to either segment to different people within your market or you can profile the market overall. But either way you end up knowing exactly how to talk to your customers in the way that you know, you can speak their language basically.

Right. And I would think in that for the approach that most businesses would make where you're. You basically pick a direction that you want what you want your company to be standing for. Right. And so for me, the brainy business and the work that I'm doing, those traditionalists are probably not the right fit. You know, we're looking at pushing the envelope, changing things, moving Forward. And so making sure that I'm having more colorful language things that could help people, maybe self select in and out would be the way that I would use that information.

Yeah, exactly.

Oh, I love that. And it reminds me a lot of Will Leach, who was on the show talking about his book Marketing to Mind States. And it ties in with the stuff we were talking about with the health and fitness thing too, of understanding the goal and the motivation. And you can be marketing exactly the same product. And if you're talking to one audience, you would use different imagery and whatnot. And if you're trying to appeal to this other group, then you would talk about it in a different way and use the different motivations. I think that all really comes together in an interesting way.

Yeah, absolutely. That's it. Yeah.

So let's talk a little bit about Hooked. So why did you write the book other than just for the opportunity to put an adorable puppy out into the world?

I suppose there's.

Why did I decide to write a.

Book which is good for work and it has been.

But then Hooked in particular, I thought I saw a gap in the market.

For a book like this about how.

To use psychology for messaging, but a real kind of not like a stodgy textbook, but at the same time not.

Like a kind of marketing guff. Seth Godin, no offense to him, but.

You know, just fluffy kind of marketing book.

So I thought that was a good gap in the market for that cross.

Between something people can actually use and apply in marketing. But it's still kind of backed up with science and. Yeah. Bringing that all together in a framework for how to make messages work, that.

Is how to grab attention, how to engage people, and how to nudge behavior.

There just wasn't anything like that on.

The market at the time.

Yeah. So can you talk a little bit more about the framework and what it would help people to do or some of the steps for people to be thinking about from that process?

Yes.

So there's three steps that a message needs to take. The first is to grab attention because.

We'Re all cognitive misers with very limited attention spans. There's a huge amount of information in.

The world and we will get bombarded by ads and other messages by the hundreds or thousands every day. So there's certain things you need to.

Do to cut through all that noise.

And grab people's attention.

And fortunately, there is kind of a VIP list of things that brain, the.

Subconscious brain, immediately lets into your conscious brain because they have survival value. So puppies, It's Important for us to pay attention to our kids or anything like our kids. So anything cute and vulnerable, anything potentially dangerous. So snakes, spiders, sharks, faces as well. We very much pay attention to faces. Anything personal we'll pay attention to.

So our own face, our own name.

The names of people we know, products.

Or brands that we use and come into contact with a lot.

Music, obviously music is a great way to be personal to everyone because there'll.

Be certain songs that everyone has their own personal relationship with and then emotional.

Things obviously emotion, words, emotion, images that.

Will grab our attention and surprise is the other one. So surprise.

There's two kinds of surprise.

One is quite physiological and quite basic in nature. So that could be a loud noise or movement rather than static images.

Use video animations, things like that.

The other type of surprise is more banana in nature. So something that doesn't quite fit in and make sense, like me saying the word banana just now, the listeners ears.

Will probably have picked up because it's like that doesn't make sense.

So that's, that's kind of what modern art does and adverts do is they show something a bit weird or different.

Or unexpected and you pay attention to it. So that's.

The first one is grabbing attention. The second one is engaging people emotionally and well, just engaging people really.

So the key here is to use what's called the generation effect, which is where if I for example, want you to remember the number four, it would be much more effective for me to ask you what's two plus two? Than just to tell you remember the number four.

Because when I ask you, you generate it yourself. There's that co creation where you're actually thinking it and producing it yourself, so.

You'Re more likely to remember it.

So for example, if you want to revise for a test, it's much better to go through your textbook and write it out in your own notes and.

Add your own thoughts to the notes.

Because then you're actually processing on a.

Much deeper level and you're more likely.

To remember it rather than if you.

Just rehearsing it, revising it just by ropes.

And so there's three ways to do this.

The first is through curiosity. So you present people with puzzles or metaphors, produce that kind of cognitive dissonance.

Something where there's a gap in their understanding. So for example, MH370, that plane that disappeared, there was a lot more interest in that than in the one that crashed over Ukraine.

Because the first one was a mystery and we don't know what happened. So it's a bit like why people are still interested in Jack The Ripper and JonBenet Ramsey and all that stuff today. Because it's a mystery.

And so if you present people with puzzles or riddles or anything where they have to think about it, then that will of rhetorical questions, even then they'll.

Be more likely to engage with it and remember it. The second thing is stories, because stories help us actually experience something ourselves, because.

We empathize with it rather than just seeing it superficially.

And also stories with their three act.

Structure, they introduce that tension again where.

You'Re wondering what's going to happen, how is this going to be resolved? And so, so you can process the message more.

And the third thing is.

Fluency. So making things concrete and simple, talking about real things, so talking about dogs, cats, books rather than philosophy, quantity, you.

Know, like real things people can get.

Their hands on, so to speak.

And just making sure you use short.

Words, don't use loads of text, all that kind of.

So that's the second thing. And then the third thing is how to nudge behavior. And there's in my book, I talked about priming, which is where you make people behave in a certain way by.

Making things front of mind. Like classical music makes people buy expensive.

Fine nudges which probably your listeners are familiar with, but just using those mental.

Shortcuts like, oh, everyone else's doing this, so you should too.

And then memory, there's certain things you.

Can do to make something more memorable.

Like repetition, repetition, repetition and the peak.

End rule, things like that. Now what I've learned since then, which.

I also would have added in that last section, is motivation. So you have to motivate people, you have to activate some kind of emotion. There's a saying that passion or emotion is the steam in the engine which drives behavior.

So if you want people to act, you need to kind of fire them up and get that energy and that potential going to kind of drive them to act.

So normally with adverts it's like envy.

You want what other people have, or maybe anger, especially for politics. There's lots of things.

Social status, wanting to fit in, belonging.

All these kind of motivations.

And then the other thing, kindly, is.

Relevance, I would have added.

So you need to be relevant. If you're advertising a funeral home, you.

Can'T have someone in a bikini with a puppy.

You need to create these relevant memory structures. If you're selling Coca Cola or some drink, you need to connect that brand.

In people's heads with ideas like thirst and ice cold and happy. This because then when people think, oh.

I want to drink something cold and.

Be happy with my friends, they'll think of your brand.

So putting it all together, as you'll hear, I'm really bad with mnemonics, but the best I could come up with was past men maps because men don't like to ask for directions.

Stereotypically speaking, that was the best I could do. It's difficult.

There were like, was it 10 things.

So passes primal which are called the three Fs food, faces and sex, which grab attention.

Pass pa is affective for emotion. S is self relevant.

So personal stuff. And the other S is surprising.

And then to engage people, it's men.

So M is mystery or curiosity, E is ease or fluency. And N is narrative stories.

And then finally map is memory, autopilot and priming.

Nice.

I like your mnemonic device.

It's memorable at least.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's. I mean, even if we look at the, you know, most iconic one in this case being nudges and where the first one is incentives. Right. Our N starts with an I. But, you know, you make it work so well.

There's. There's the made to stick model, which.

Is success with only 1s. There's.

It's quite hard to find these things.

Yeah. With. But I feel like in many ways that shows that this is what actually works. These are the real things. And we didn't make something up to force the, you know, our acronym and whatnot to. To make it happen and say like, well, it's not worth adding something else. I promise. We thought about this a lot. It almost shows you you thought about it more by not being able to fit it into a model of an existing word. So let's go with that. Well, I definitely think that with that everyone listening, I know that is a fan of this podcast is thinking that they are ready to go and pick up their copy of Hooked. And so what is the best way to get that and knowing in advance that so. And I know that you know, because it came up on the other conversation. But Nira Al, who's a friend of the show and has been on the brainy business, we talked about his other book Indistractable, but he obviously has a book called Hooked as well. So what's the best way to find your Hooked book and get more information about you?

Yeah, I mean, Nir Eyal's book is.

Vastly more successful than mine.

And I said to my editor at Pearson, I was like, oh, you know.

There'S this other really good book called.

She was like, no, it's fine. So yeah, if you want to find it, please have a look on Amazon and just my surname Fagum and it will come up. And in particular if you liked it.

Please do leave me a nice review. If you didn't like it, please don't leave any review.

Yes, we support all positive reviews here and yeah, trolls can stay home, right?

Yeah, I got a one star review recently and yeah, and they didn't leave a comment.

Cowardice.

Those, it's, it's rough. You know, that's the, it's a hard thing. I, I've had a couple that you know, for the podcast, you get them and you go oh man. Like and it's usually, you know, often when those come in, it's like I tried to, to download and it was slow and you go but why, why did I have to get a one star for that? But it's yeah, stars. That social proof is an interesting phenomenon for sure. So we will definitely have a link for Hooked from Patrick Fagan in the show notes as well as a link to Capuchin for anybody who wants to go check that out and all the amazing things that you're doing. So just want to say thanks again so much for joining me for a very long multiple segmented interview. Glad that we, we made it through this time. So thanks again.

My pleasure.

Thank you.

So what got your brain buzzing as you learned from Patrick Fagan today? For me, I always think about his research in social media and how it impacts our well being as well as the ebay priming study. I absolutely loved how the background noise changed the shopping behavior as it shows how important context is and the little things that that can make such a difference in experience. Let's say you're selling your product or service to busy parents. If you do your research while they're alone in your quiet space without their kids present, it might not reflect their true buying behavior and that can impact your results when you go to market. This is why understanding the overall experience and mind space is so important. And knowing that all those little things you don't think should matter can make all the difference. Taking a little more time to be thoughtful about who you're selling to, what you want them to do, what they're doing now, and what will matter to them in the right moments is so important for every business, regardless of what you're selling and to whom. To help you learn more about all this, there are links in the show notes to my top related past episodes, episodes and books, including Hooked of course, as well as a time stamped summary of the episode and more. It's all waiting for you in the app you're listening to and@the brainybusiness.com 406 and just like that, episode 406 with Patrick Fagan is done. Join me Friday for a brand new episode with Mindy Weinstein on applying scarcity in consumer research and market insights.

It's going to be a lot of fun.

You don't want to miss it. Until then, thanks again for listening and learning with me, and remember to be thoughtful.

Thank you for listening to the Brainy Business Podcast. Molina offers virtual strategy sessions, workshops and other services to help businesses be more brain friendly. For more free resources, visit thebrainybusiness.com.