Our More Addictive World

Hi, I'm Nir Eyal and this is the near and Far Podcast. This podcast is about business, behavior and the brain. On this show I do a few things. I read quick articles I've written about topics shaping your behavior. I interview authors of books I enjoy, and from time to time I devote episodes to answering your questions. If you want to ask me a question, visit the podcast page on itunes, go to Ratings and Reviews and ask me a question. By leaving a review, I promise to read it and possibly include your question in a future episode. So please ask me anything now. Enjoy the episode and for more, you can always Visit me@nearandfar.com.

Our more addictive World by Nir Eyal we're in an addictive world. The world has become harder to resist. Products are getting better at giving people what they want and for the most part that has been a good thing. Yet the historical trend line shows products are also becoming more habit forming. All products alleviate customers pain. Even products used to gain pleasure must first generate desire, a unique form of discomfort which the customer will pay to satiate manufacturing desire. The engine driving the evolution of marketing and advertising for the past 125 years has been the increasing speed with which companies adapt products to better meet customer needs. The Age of Scarcity Prehistory to the 1930s for the majority of human history, the basic necessities of life were expensive and rare. Human populations growth was mediated by the limitation of resources. Keynes formulation of say's Law was that supply creates its own demand and in a time of scarcity, goods sold quickly to those who could afford them. Though commercial communication traces back thousands of years, the term marketing only made its debut in 1884. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, products attracted consumers mostly by being available. The limited supply meant high prices and only the well off had any discretionary spending power. The age of capacity 1930s to 2000 starting just before the Great Depression, manufacturing production began exceeding demand. This was a massive problem for companies who feared making goods no one would buy. Industry called upon men like Edward Bernays, Sigmund Freud's nephew, to create demand through public relations, a term he coined as a substitute for the word propaganda which had negative connotations. After its use by the Germans In World War II, Bernays spawned the rise of modern Madison Avenue advertising through mass communication channels like radio. Copying Bernays successful tactics, companies sought to identify and connect consumers hidden psychological needs to commodity goods like tobacco, soap and cereal. During the golden age of branding, companies found they could create demand and increase consumption by giving their goods unique identities and for the first time create associations in the consumer's mind. Though their product remained largely unchanged and indistinguishable from one another, companies found altering their packaging coupled with repetitious messaging was enough to influence purchasing behaviors. During the later half of the 20th century, the falling cost of creating new products in smaller batches meant companies could alter goods slightly to appeal to previously underserved niches. Marketers also learned to segment customers through various demographic and psychographic characteristics. With various degrees of success and scientific rigor, the focus group helped brands build new offerings to satisfy what consumers could tell them they wanted. The age of contingency 2000 to the present Prior to the widespread use of the Internet, marketing had been dominated by products, which changed relatively little. Companies generally repackaged and rebranded products as well line extensions of the main brand. However, with the explosion of interactive technologies, companies could tailor products to each and every user. For the first time, products could alleviate the customer's pain in a uniquely personalized way. Perfect Contingency Vast amounts of individualized data transferred at unprecedented speeds to readily accessible, always on devices, define the age of how we interact with the products that define our lives. Technology products today adapt to the user, constructing themselves in real time. For example, no one's Twitter stream or Facebook timeline is like anyone else's. But in the age of contingency, it is not only the product that adapts to the user, the user also adapts to the product by forming new behavioral and usage habits. Two parties, the product and the user, change together towards perfect contingency, a state of nearly instantaneous adaptation to one another. The more the user habituates to using the product, the more useful and pleasurable the product becomes. This is why the world is becoming a more addictive place.

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