5 Behavioural Science Tips for More Persuasive Content - Teacher: Phill Agnew

When a customer sees that the service they're getting, that the product they're getting, is high effort, they value that product or service much more. When they see that it takes time and diligence and care to create a cup of coffee, they'll enjoy the cup of coffee more than if it feels easy to create. If we showcase effort in our work increase our sales 

This is Phil Agnew, a self professed behavioral science nerd, and the host of the UK's number one marketing podcast, Nudge. And on this episode of Useful Content, Phil shares with us five behavioral science, marketing, and copywriting tips. That are proven to increase the positive responses you get from your content.

Some people make content with incredible claims of instant results, but we'll discuss why it's important to make the things that you say, sound believable 

It always becomes more powerful when it's more believable. can be easy for a marketer to say, I've spent a lot of time working on it. But It's hard to trust it. 

It's hard to make it stand out. 

What is the best way to use I, you, or we? when you're talking to your audience 

Turns out, when people say you, when you direct the message at a single person, it's far more effective. 

And Phil shares with us what he discovered about how to persuade people from Apple's CEO Steve Jobs 

I did a two part episode on Steve Jobs about two years ago, a where I detailed every single psychological bias he used throughout his career, and I watched every single one of his keynotes twice, and I think the thing that I noticed when I watched them is at the start of almost every single keynote, he says 

Let's make useful content. 

Hello and welcome to Useful Content. And today we have a brand new teacher in our Useful Content classroom, Phil Agnew. Hi, Phil.

Hello, thank you so much for having me. I'm very, very happy to be here.

And I believe you 100%. We were just chatting before and, um, it was a really great chat to introduce who you are to my audience and of course, uh, introduce them to Nudge. But before we start to talk about the thing that we came to talk about, Phil, could you please share with people. What you do and how you help your clients and your listeners make useful content. 

I'm a behavioural science nerd, basically. I love this world of behavioural science, which for those of you who don't know is basically the application of psychology and science into changing how people make decisions. I'm a marketer by trade. I've spent the last 10 years in marketing jobs for tech companies like Hotjar, Buffer, and Brandwatch, but I've recently gone full time on my podcast, which I've been running for five years.

My podcast is called Nudge. It's the UK's number one marketing podcast and the most popular marketing podcast about behavioral science and marketing. And I basically spent all of my days interviewing people far smarter than me about behavioral science and how psychology can drive people to take certain actions. And then I guess the different thing about me, my differentiator, as the old marketer in me would say, is that I learn from these experts and then I, desperately try in any way possible to actually test it out for myself. So if somebody tells me to use a certain nudge to influence people, I'll go and use that on my email list, or I'll run a Reddit ad to test it out, or I will go and interview members of the British public to see if it works on them, or all sorts of experiments that I run to basically see if this psychology holds up in the real world, and I share those results on my podcast. So that's me.

Yeah. And it's fantastic. It's like, it's so practical and so real and it's evidence based, which is a mean thing. Cause a lot of times people suggest things and they don't really have the evidence to support it. And even at the small scale of, let's say your email subscribers, or maybe people in the public, you know, It points towards something that could work at scale.

And I think it's, uh, it's, it's you're doing the work man, Phil. I, I, I must admit you're doing the work, which is excellent. So let's, dive into some of those actual tips and some of those things that could help people. And let's go more into that right now, because I know you wanted to talk about, uh, some copywriting advice backed by science, and maybe I think there are eight points that you wanted to touch on.

So. Let me first ask the question, why is it important when you're doing your copywriting that it have some type of scientific backing for effectiveness? 

Well, I guess the question would be, what is the copywriting for? I'm not a fantastic creative writer. I'm not a fantastic writer, full stop. If I tried to write a novel, it would be an absolute train wreck. But, copywriting, typically, is designed to try and drive somebody to take some sort of action. For an email subject line, it's please open this email. For a website, it's click on the CTA. For a sign outside a football stadium, it's directing people where to go. You're trying to drive some sort of action, and if you're trying to drive some sort of action, then it is very useful to lean on the world of psychology and behavioral science, because psychologists 150 years understanding how the human mind works, how it makes decisions, and we've discovered that I say we, I've done none of this.

They've discovered, and I now talk about it, 

all of these biases that people have, shortcuts that people essentially use to make decisions. So as an example, if you read that a beer is best selling, you'll be two and a half times more likely to buy that beer when you go into your local bar. If you hear that KFC chips for just one dollar are limited to just four packets of chips per customer, you'll be far more likely to buy those chips than if you heard that they were loved across the UK or something. That's a scarcity in action. Or if somebody simply told you, buy 18 Snickers for your freezer, this is a real world test in supermarkets, And you saw that sign above the, above the freezer in the supermarket and you saw Snickers ice creams beneath it and it said buy 18 Snickers ice creams for your freezer.

You wouldn't buy 18 because that's ridiculous but that high number would anchor you and it would encourage you to buy maybe more than you actually would so rather than buy two you buy three. And that's an example of how psychology can be applied to copywriting to drive the results that you want. So if you're trying to take someone, encourage someone to take an action, leaning on the world of psychology can actually be really helpful.

And that's why I think it's useful for copywriters.

perfect. Excellent, excellent setup to start on the list of these tips that will help people make the right choices when it comes to copywriting. I love those examples that you used. I'm very familiar with those examples, especially the Snickers one, you know, anchoring with a big number and instead of buying one somebody might buy two or three. So let's get into it and let's get into the first tip you want to share. Where do we start when it comes to making these, these copywriting nudges? 

me and Caitlin Borgoyan, we wrote, uh, ebook about this, which you know about Juma 'cause you meshed me about it. Um, but we, we subtracted it. We, um, segmented our tips into, into three sections. So the first is around grabbing attention. So we were trying to think, okay, what, uh, nudges that have been discovered in psychology could be applied to copywriting, would be really good at grabbing attention. And the first bias that we found was around the word you. Simply saying you when you're writing copy can be a very effective way of grabbing attention So this was an experiment done with Facebook posts.

I believe they analyzed about 56, 000 Facebook posts And they compared posts which said things like you can earn X amount Or you can save X amount by driving an electric car compared with Save X amount by driving an electric car. Turns out, when people say you, when you direct the message at a single person, it's far more effective.

So this is like a really easy copywriting tip to just gaining our attention. Just direct us and we'll say you. A great example of this that I've seen in the wild is Greta Thunberg's speeches. So Greta is, she's younger than a lot of the people she's talking to. She's, she's basically in a very different demographic.

She's a Teenager, she was basically a child when she started doing these speeches and and and petitioning politicians and experts to change their ways And so she had the ability to be in a totally different group So rather than saying we're part of the problem She didn't have to say that because she really wasn't she was a child.

She she had never owned a car She she had never been taking business flights around the world. She had never been You know purchasing fossil fuels She was just a child. So she could really frame, and she, if you watch her speeches, she always does this. She uses you constantly. She says this is your problem.

This is your mistake. These are your issues. You need to solve this problem for us, for the future, for children. And that is one of the reasons why she's so effective in her speeches, and why her speech is really cut free, because she's, she's using that principle of just directing the copy, or in her case the speech, at people. forces them to pay attention. It's this great copywriting tip, which, yeah, proven to work with Facebook ads, but, but also with political speeches. It 

heard Greta Thunberg do that. There's one where, well, generally she always is filled with indignation about things, but there's one where she's really like, you know, you did this and it's, it's, and it's really real. It's like, it's, it's saying, well, I'm not in that category, but I have a question and I don't know if you've done any research or read any research on this.

Um, what about the whole, Instead of you, when it's we, does we have the same effect? Do you know if that is a A thing or does we have a different type of effect if I like if I like say well We as podcasters have a great responsibility if I say something like that Would it have a different feeling and outcome rather than the you?

Yes 

it could work really well depending on who you're talking to. So Robert Cialdini, who wrote the book Influence back in the 1980s, he introduced six principles of influence. Social proof, authority, liking, scarcity, reciprocity, consistency, Is that six? Can't remember. If it's, if it's not, then I'm missing one, but I think that's six. He introduced a seventh in his updated book in 2021, which was updated of all the latest research, which either proving that his biases still work or introducing a new one. His seventh was unity. And unity is this principle he's introduced, which is basically around the idea that if you showcase that people or that people, individuals are part of the same group as you, it'll be a really effective way to drive action. So there's this wonderful study with really weird setup in a university campus where basically somebody while the students were just walking between university lecture halls somebody would fall on the floor and ask for help. And there would be a couple of variants in the study. Some where the student is just wearing normal clothes Some, where they are wearing the sports jersey of that university. And another, sorry this is, I'm talking about the student who fell on the floor. So what's he or she wearing? Normal clothes, the sports jersey of that university, or the jersey of another university. Like a rival university. How many people stopped to help? Well when it's normal clothes, sort of average amount stopped, maybe it was 10%. When it was the clothes of a rival university. Um, University. Very, very few stop, 2%, something like that. I don't know the specific numbers, but it was around that, that, around that. When it was, when, when that individual was wearing the sports jersey of the actual university. Everybody was at the number of people stopped rose up dramatically far more people stopped and that's because they

feel Unity with that person they were part of that group Another example of this is an advert for the coffee chain in the UK Costa coffee They created an advert that said eight out of ten coffee lovers prefer Costa I don't think it's true, by the way.

Costa Coffee's not very good. Sorry, Costa. Um, but that was a really smart act, because what that is doing is creating unity amongst a group of people who they really wanted to attract. They want coffee lovers. to go to Costa because coffee lovers spend more money. So saying we coffee lovers love Costa really works.

The way this can backfire is if you say we and somebody doesn't feel part of the group you're suggesting. So if you, if I was to say to this group of listeners, we marketers all know X, Y, Z. Well, there are going to be people who aren't marketers and that will backfire on them. They'll feel reactants.

They'll say, don't call

me a marketer. I'm a, I'm an ad man, or I'm in HR, or I'm in sales, you know, and I feel quite upset about that. So it wouldn't work there, and it also wouldn't work if you said the word we, but it's part of a group that is undesirable. So, whatever group's undesirable, if you're, if you're suggesting that somebody's part of that group. So we lazy people who can't be asked to work out do X, Y, Z, that could

backfire as well. So that's the difference there. 

Oh, that's perfect perfect perfect examples Excellent. All right. I can ask more questions about that, but I do know we have a list and we're going down the list. So could we move on to tip number two in your copywriting and what might that be? There's no way we're getting through this full list. I'll just let you know. 

we're Going to chat way too much. 

Um, but I will give you, 

okay. Let's, let's see what we can do. 

I'll give you another one. So this is one that I really like. It's good at grabbing attention, but it, but also building interest in driving action. And it's showing effort.

So there's a couple of examples that I really like about this, which was shared in Rory Sutherland's recent, um, Nudge stock talk. So one

example is from from 2010 and it involves Starbucks and Starbucks they They've got really good The baristas at Starbucks, we've got really good at doing something called parallel pouring where they were able to make essentially four cups of coffee at once espressos coming out of single single espresso machine Four, four espressos coming out, able to do milk for, for lattes in two, two times.

And they got really, really good at doing these really efficient coffees. They could make four cups at once. You would think the economist would say, this is fantastic. We can serve more people. If we serve more people, we can get more profit. People are in a rush. They don't like to spend lots of time waiting. So they'll be happier. All of this means, you know, Starbucks will make more profit. Turns out the opposite happened. As soon as they started doing parallel pouring and making four cups at a time, people just didn't come back to Starbucks as much as they did before. People didn't enjoy the coffee as much, we assume, because they weren't coming back, sales were dropping. And Starbucks, they got a few consultants in to review it and they said, why don't you try asking baristas to only pour two cups of coffee at once? They did, and things changed around again. People started coming back to Starbucks, they didn't go to other stores. And what's happening here is Starbucks were understanding how customers value effort. When a customer sees that the service they're getting, that the product they're getting, is high effort, they value that product or service much more. When they see that it takes time and diligence and care to create a cup of coffee, they'll enjoy the cup of coffee more than if it feels like effortless, easy to create. And so that's what Starbucks were benefiting from here. This is idea of effort. If we showcase effort in our work we'll increase our sales. Studies with HBR um, show that when customers can see the food being created for them in a kitchen or a subway or a store, wherever it is, they value that food more, they're willing to pay more for it, and in fact even the chefs create better quality food when they can see customers as well.

We both value effort. Um, real estate agents, studies with real estate agents have found that when you give prospective buyers a list of houses and say, this took me 30 minutes to create, what do you think? Or you say, this took me 18 hours to create, what do you think? Even if they're the identical houses people value the list that people say took longer to create in both of those scenarios as well It did actually take 18 hours.

There was no lie about it taking longer They just just lied about it taking less time and people valued those houses a lot less And as I said

at the start one of the things I love to do with now just is test this out myself So I ran a reddit ad about a year ago You're smiling. So you probably remember me talking about this So for the listeners, this is going to be new and the reddit ad was to promote my end of year show And that show contained six of the best marketing tips I'd heard that year. The control for my Reddit ad, the copy on my control read, learn the six best marketing tips I've heard this year. Pretty good copy. And then a link to the, to the podcast should do quite well. The variant showcased effort. It said, I've spent 480 minutes speaking to marketing experts this year. Here are the best six lessons I've heard. So kind of a difference. Bit of a difference. One showcases effort, one just gets to the point. I didn't really expect it to be a massive change. It was huge. 45 percent

increase in click through rate with the effort version. Saying I've spent 480 minutes working on something made people far more likely to click and listen.

So that is the power of effort.

I have a couple questions about that. The first one is, uh, and I'll ask the easier one first, which is when we are describing our effort, is it preferable or is it wise to give a specific number or amount as opposed to saying this took me a lot of effort or this was very hard to do? 

I think with effort the, and this nudge is known as labor bias or input bias, um, whatever you call it. I think It always becomes more powerful when it's more believable. So the issue with, with EFA, and a lot of these biases and nudges, is it can be easy for a marketer to say, I've spent a lot of time working on it. The classic example would be if you go on Etsy, Etsy, every single mug says handmade, hand painted mug. That's good. It's showcasing some form of effort. Um, but It's hard to trust it. It's hard to make it stand out. If you can find a way to make your effort more salient, it'll be more believable. So in your example, if I was to say I've spent 480 minutes speaking to marketing experts, that will be more persuasive than saying I've spoke to marketing experts over the last year.

And it's because it's more believable. There's a, there's another example again from the same talk I referenced earlier, and it was, it involved a, a, a couple who had just had triplets. This is in the uk, and they wanted to buy a bigger house and there was a road they wanted to buy a house on. There were no houses for sale on that road. So usually most people, if there's no houses for sale on a road, they don't look for houses to buy on that street because there's, there's no way you could buy a house. 

But they thought, no, no. no. Hold on. We want to. We really want a house on this road. And so they

decided to do something kind of interesting.

They wrote a handwritten letter to all 20 houses on the road, each different, so each handwritten for the individual house, and they posted them through the letterbox. Roy Sutherland in his talk says that out of the 20 houses, uh, 8 people invited them round, 5 people, um, invited them to actually view, And make an offer and two people accepted the offer and they could pick between those two houses And they had a house by the end and that is incredible because when we talk about nudges We talk about quite small changes to behavior What you've done there is you've got somebody who wasn't willing to sell their house or wasn't thinking about selling the house and within Just one implementation Is now willing to sell that sell their house and rory sutherland says and I agree with him That is it directly correlated or directly caused by It the amount of effort that's put into that communication.

If they had just written a email and sent it to those 20 houses, there's no way they would have got that output. If they had typed a letter and printed it out and put it in those 20 houses, there's no way they would have got that output. It was because they took the effort to write the letter, which is so clearly showcasing your effort, that it made the house sellers more likely to sell. 

right. And I remember you saying this, uh, and I, I tried it and it worked, which is writing that handwritten note even works if you send it digitally as well. Yeah. Yeah. I tried that. I couldn't like you're in the UK. Um, it would be nice if I could hand write to a letter and email it and mail it out in snail mail.

But for some people, I just, I tested it and I sent in a handwritten note, took a picture of it on this, on one of my pods here, probably this one. My little notepad, did a little handwritten note in this, tore the page out, took a picture of it, sent it, attached it on email, and the person who I interviewed shared it on LinkedIn and said this was a lovely handwritten note.

And I said, well, I sent you a digital, and they were raving about the fact that this is a great way to do it. Little did they know I learned that from Phil. Um, and so it, it actually does, does work. So I, I, I endorse that particular nudge. It, it does work. 

really glad you're experimenting on this. I'm actually running an experiment right now on that principle. And I can 

because you won't have heard this. This is one of the few things I won't have told you before. So I can let you know how it's going. Half the people have received an email from me saying, will you review my podcast?

It's just a typical email. I've only got two reviews from that group at the moment The other half received the same email the same copy from me, but I did what you did. I wrote it up in a in a Hand write it and then send them a picture of it And then send them the link below because you can't obviously include a link in a handwritten note So one was a normal email with a link one was a picture of a handwritten note with a link The first one currently so the control has two reviews.

The handwritten variant has four reviews at the moment. It's very early days Double the

impact at the moment. So, it does seem to really work.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. Testing is is good. Listening is great but like trying it for yourself is is the way to go. I love the practicality of these things and the last question I wanna ask you about um like sharing the effort. is how can you find and this may not have been part of these studies but is there a danger in sounding like you're boasting as opposed to kind of defining your effort is there a danger in that that you sound too boastful or no that's not a thing yeah It's a good question.It's a Good Question.

I think, if you imagine somebody boasting, you assume they're going to be talking about the plaudits they've received, the awards they've won, the titles they've gained. You know, that's, if I was to boast about my running achievements, Which are tiny. It would, it would be that I've got a sub 40 minute 10k. That would be my, my biggest boast. But if I was to talk, that's not really showcasing effort. If I was to talk about how I've done, last year I ran 2, 000 kilometers in the year. I guess that is a boast, but it's more showcasing the fact that actually now I'm just sharing my effort. I think Steve Jobs knew a thing or two about persuading people and about What's the best way to get people on, on, on board?

I did a two part episode on Steve Jobs about two years ago, a year and a half ago now, where I detailed every single psychological bias he used throughout his career, and I watched every single one of his keynotes twice, and I think the thing that I noticed when I watched them is at the start of almost every single keynote, he says The effort that he's made and his company has made he'll say something like if you had been around apple's offices over the last 10 weekends You would have seen the car parks were full of cars or we've spent five years working on this And it's the thing i'm most proud to release He always started his keynotes by showcasing effort and I think if it's good enough for steve jobs It's probably good enough for us.

We shouldn't worry too much about it sounding like boasting when It's used by people Probably the most persuasive person on the planet. And I don't even think people would have said, Oh, he's just boasting by saying that. They would have just said, No, he's incredibly hardworking, incredibly talented and incredibly intelligent. But he was seen to be more, more of all those things by, by using that effort nudge. 

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I like that. I like that. Yeah. So don't worry too much about sounding boastful Just like define the effort and and that should that should help. I didn't know you had a sub 40 10k. That's that's cool, man

Yeah, it was like a lockdown. It was real. It was in Kew Gardens in London. So it was timed 39 minutes, 40 seconds, I think. Yeah. But it was 

it was like COVID fitness. So it's when I could do nothing but run every day. And now if I try to do a sub 40, 10K, I would, I would die. So yeah, not,

There was once a time

bittersweet.

Alright, so I know we're not going to get through all eight, uh, like you indicated before, but let's, let's get through a couple more of your favorite ones. And let's, let's 

talk about those and give, give the people some nudges for copywriting and other things.

Yeah. There's one I really like, which is one that Richard Shulton talks about in his recent book, Illusion of Choice. And it's around being concrete. So there's this incredible study. Which he replicated, he was replicating it in his book, but I remember his version, so I'll talk about his where he, um, basically showed participants in his study to one of two sets of words, one was very vague and opaque, one set of words, so words like, due diligence or fantastic provenance or AI generated technology or pioneering, uh, cutting edge tech Those words are so vague.

I've forgotten them. So that's why Me repeating them isn't very good. And then he showed a different group a different group a another set of words, which were very concrete so things like um award award winning vodka, for example, or tool which allows you to monitor all of your customers at once um Different things like this.

Concrete things which you can sort of picture and understand, they're not as vague. And the finding is that concrete words, concrete phrases, are far more memorable than vague phrases. The original study

on this, I remember, was showing people words like fast car, or phrases like fast car,

which is concrete. And then phrases like, um, you know, car. opaque cloud, which is not as concrete, um, and it's again finding the same thing, that if you're more concrete, you're more memorable. And I think this is really just a fantastic storytelling technique.

If you're trying to tell a story and trying to make a point, being able to find a concrete example or a concrete visual that people can imagine in their mind will be far better at helping them picture the story you're trying to tell.

So. As an example, you, and I, sorry to keep plugging my own podcast, but you mentioned that you listened to my podcast this morning,

right before we came on air and you said, Oh, I really liked how you started it. And I, it was an, it was an episode all about reciprocity. So this idea that if I, I did a bunch of favors for influencers and I measured how many of them would promote my podcast, a surprising amount did. That's the spoiler. But I started the episode because I wanted to find a really interesting example, really concrete example. By sharing the story of the Cuban Missile Crisis, and how JFK basically solved that crisis by just doing a bit of reciprocity, just doing something in return for the Russians removing the missiles from Cuba. And that's, that concrete example is helpful for listeners, because I could just start the episode by saying doing a favor for somebody is really fantastic because it enables you to get a favor in return.

And that's vague, it's opaque, there's nothing concrete for the listener to imagine. Whereas if I talk about the Cuban Missile Crisis, and nukes in Cuba, and JFK's demands, it's far easier for people to imagine that and picture that. And it's the storytelling techniques that really work. So, the copywriting tip here is review your copy. Look for parts of your copy that seem vague, that seem opaque, that seem difficult to visualise, and just test yourself. See if you can translate them into something concrete. Rather than saying something vague, go for something concrete.

Don't say, these second hand plants are the finest quality. That's a bit vague. Say

something like, These second hand plant hand plants are impossible to kill. That's a bit more concrete. So find ways you can bring that into your copywriting

That's a great, great, great tip. Keeping the language concrete. Um, I had a friend, one of my mentors actually, who always used to say, people hear better when they see. And, um, and he used to say, like, if you describe something and you say, and I think this is probably what's from one of your episodes maybe as well, like a green door, um, then people can see in their brain a green door as opposed to saying this.

a wonderfully ornate door or something of that sort. I mean, you could probably imagine it, but the language being more concrete does help people to see and visualize things better. It's so, so good let's, let's have another one of your favorites and then we could kind of summarize everything and, give the people a nice to go. 

there's one I really like which is very simple it's one I Just I'm tending to use a lot now in my own communications my own copywriting And it's built on this idea around reactants. So for listeners who don't know reactants is that horrible feeling we get when somebody tries to restrict our autonomy. So when we're

told, oh you can't eat your picnic on the grass over there, get up and move, feels horrible. It's like no, don't tell me what to do, I don't like to be told what to do. When we're told you can't work from home four days a week anymore folks, you have to come into the office three times a week. That feels horrible. We feel this restriction on our autonomy. We feel reactance. We feel like we want to fight back. And this is something that marketers actually need to face and deal with a lot more than they probably expect. Whenever we receive a communication from a company that's telling us to buy now, or grab the deal before it runs out, or sign up immediately, or save your seat, All of us feel a little bit of reactance when we read that.

We think, don't manipulate us, don't tell me what I don't want to do. I want my own autonomy, I want to feel free to make my own choice. And so there was

this amazing French researcher who decided to test reciprocity and see if there was an easy way to avoid it, and to make people Not feel those feelings of, of, of reactants.

Sorry, I think I said reciprocity earlier, of, of reactants. Um, just by adding an extra line to his request. So he ran this test in bus stations in France, I believe, or maybe it was America. I think it was, it was California, maybe. And in these bus stations, these bus stops, he would go up to fellow bus passengers waiting for the bus. And he would say, do you have any change, um, for me to take to you? To ride the bus, I don't have any change on me. Could I borrow some change? Actually, it didn't say can I borrow, can I have some change? And unsurprisingly, most people say no. They feel reactance. They say, you can't tell me what to do, you know, it's your fault.

It's not my fault. I don't want to give up my money. I didn't, you know, I'm not here to pay for somebody else's bus fare. I don't know you. Most people tell them, I think nine out of ten people say, I don't have any change for you. And then he repeats the experiment again, similar bus stops, same bus stops, just with different groups of people.

These are real people at the bus stop, this isn't, you know, in the lab, students. And he says, do you have any spare change for me to take the bus? You know, I forgot my wallet. Um, but of course, this is the line he adds at the end, but of course, you're free to refuse. It's a bit of a cumbersome line he's added there, it's a bit, You know, almost medieval.

You are free to refuse. It sounds a bit medieval, right? But that one line had a dramatic impact. Rather than 9 people refusing him, this time 10 agreed. So just reminding people of their own autonomy. You are free to refuse me. I don't expect you to agree to my request. Reminding people that they have their own autonomy was incredibly impactful and changing. people's behavior. Just saying this is your choice really impacts people. So as an example, whenever I write an email asking people to do something, I will usually just finish it by saying of course you're free to refuse. Here's my latest e book, I would love it if you would buy it, but obviously you are free to refuse. Here's my podcast knowledge, please do come on, but obviously you are free to refuse. I don't know how much of an effect it has, but if the you know, relevant and worthwhile going by, it should have a fairly big impact. And I think I know this because I think I feel it. You know, as a marketer, I'm somebody who really hates being marketed towards.

I really hate being told I have to buy something. I'm sure you do as well. But when a

marketer reminds me that the choice is mine, and that I'm free to refuse, Even though I know about these nudges my brain just clicks into gear and says oh, okay I think I will offer this man some change for the bus because he's been so kind So that's one that I think is really powerful just write on your requests You're free to refuse and you might see that they they're far more effective than they were before 

And the interesting thing about that nudge is that you are free to refuse if you didn't want her to tell you that. But I'm guess in the context of being a request being made, being told that like that person understanding that you have the power to say. No, I'm not interested or I don't want to really put them in a position where they're more willing to, to give, like it's their own choice.

Yeah. Um, and in your, and you didn't call it this, but I'm going to call it this in your perfect podcast pitch framework. Um, you include that at the end, as you mentioned, and that is like something that gives the person an out, essentially. that if for some reason they feel slightly pressured then they'll be like oh you're free to refuse huh i am free to refuse maybe i should do this you know so it's it's a very very powerful and an interesting nudge i love that one i love that one i've tried it in different ways now they're free to refuse all the time um i've probably said things like um you're free to say no or you're free Is this something you'd be against?

I mean, I'm not sure if that has the same effect. Um, but I have, I have said that in an email sometimes. I've tried different variations of it, um, with varying levels of success. 

Well, that's

where, British people like me are very good at being self deprecating. We're fantastic at putting ourselves down. And an American would look at us and say, you idiots, why don't you talk, why don't you talk about how fantastic you are? If you are, you know, you'd be much more effective.

But actually, this is sort of evidence that could suggest that there are times when being self deprecating really does work. If I sent

someone an email saying, I'm really not the best at podcasting, or, you know, I'm really not a great used car salesman, but The good thing about me, I guess, is that I'll never be able to pull one over on you because I really don't know what I'm doing, so, you know, it's really as always the decision is yours. Having that angle, having that self deprecation, making people feel in control, removing that reactance, giving them, like we said, the right to refuse, is the key. can actually be very, very persuasive and you might find that a bumbling British idiot can sell a few more used cars than an extremely confident American, you know, 100 percent positive individual simply because they've, they, they let the buyer feel that, that real feeling of autonomy which drives them to action. 

That's great. That's so, so excellent. Phil, are there any last like comments you'd like powerful. If somebody somehow ended up at this point in the podcast and they've heard nothing we've said before, is there any one, um, nudge to rule them all? Like, like the one ring, any one nudge to rule them all that you would share, uh, before we, we close off and come to the end? 

It's the silver bullet that's not the silver bullet. We've talked about how effort drives action. If we showcase effort, we can drive action. This is the most, the single most powerful thing in psychology. If you write your proposal to your partner in stone, it'll be more effective than if you write it in letter. If you Create a restaurant with, you know, handwritten menus and one waiter per table and gold plated plates and make all of that effort, people will value that restaurant more. We value things more when effort is put into it and this is what marketers often forget. We often think the best solution is the most efficient solution. Well, we can

email a million people, so let's email a million people. We don't think, well actually, we might be much more effective at segmenting that list and creating something more personal. We might be more effective at just emailing 10 with a handwritten note. There's this, we naively believe that efficiency and effectiveness work best when actually we need to be telling ourselves, something that I think we've always known, that hard work generates the best responses. So effort equals reward if you can make more effort You'll be more successful in your marketing, but don't be afraid of hiding that Of showcasing that effort don't hide it Because if people see the effort you've put into your work, they'll be even more likely to value it Highly that is the nudge I think rules them That's 

beautiful. I had a questions to ask but I can't remember what it is. A question to ask but I can't remember what it is but thank you so much for sharing that that final nudge there. I I appreciate that. That whole effort and oh I know I remember what I was going to say. I was going to say um that that's becoming a bit of a challenge and a problem because of the AI a bit where people are putting low effort into things and so everybody is kind of suspicious about how this was done type of thing.

Oh, just as a side, as a sidebar, have you seen that become a problem with how people respond to things based on the knowledge of these available tools as well? 

I have a theory that there will be a future where human created content will be labelled human created content, not because of any legal requirement, but because people will just value that content more. You know, so, that, that'll, AI, AI content will almost become useless. For example, like imagine an AI writing a book. As soon as there's a law in place which says this has to say it's AI written or AI assisted. Because as soon as people know that, their opinion of the content changes dramatically. 

I'm planning, in a few months, to go trekking in Nepal. So I've been watching a load of videos about trekking in the pool. And most of these videos There are vloggers who have been to the place, they're filming themselves, filming their reactions, recording, it's fantastic, you think, what amazing content. And then there was one video, it had loads of views, but I realised it was using a lot of stock imagery. The voice was quite, it sounded real, but it was quite, the intonation was sometimes a bit off, and the accent was a bit too, like, stereotypical. And then the copy was, the, the actual script was a bit odd as well. So. Is this AI? And so I scoured the comments, like surely someone else has thought about it, and somebody wrote, and not most people missed it, but somebody wrote, oh my god, I've never seen more AI drivel in my life. You used the word allure 55 times in the space of 30

minutes, which is classic AI, like a classic way to spot it, and that, that, anyway, as soon as I realized, this is just my personal opinion, obviously, as soon as I realized that that content was AI, I immediately unsubscribed from that channel.

I didn't watch any more of their videos. I just didn't want to. I thought, well, I can't trust you. If you're not going to put the effort into creating this video, like other creators, why would I trust you? And I think, I think that's what marketers really have to worry about, or even content creators. You know, you might think that it's really easy to create loads of content really quickly if I use AI, but what you might find is there are individuals who, as soon as they notice that you've fooled them, tricked them into thinking you've actually worked on this when you haven't, will react in that way and actually not unsubscribe, unclick, uh, leave your site, do anything they can to get away from you because they won't trust that you create fantastic content anymore.

It's a good thing. I remember the question. It's a great way to end off. So thank you so much, Phil, for joining us. Phil, people may want to find you online and engage with your content. Where would you like to send them?

I create a podcast called Nudge. It's got a lovely orange logo. After you finish listening to this wonderful podcast, you can search for Nudge and hear my latest episodes there.

Yeah. Yeah. Fantastic podcast. Heavily endorsed. Juma approved. Boom. 100 percent useful content. Excellent. So thank you so much, students, for joining us for this conversation with Phil Ang Ngu. And we'll see you again soon on the Useful Content Podcast, Useful Content Classroom. Dismissed.

And we're clear. 

Wonderful. 

Really enjoyed that. 

Yes, it's great. It's great talking with you, man. It feels so familiar. 

It feels so very, very 

I feel bad because the stuff that I have like top of mind is the stuff that I talk about quite a lot, or if you've followed me for a while it gets quite familiar, so yeah, sometimes I feel for you like it's a bit like, oh, I don't know, it's talking about the same stuff probably.

No, no in the middle of the conversation I could see that you were thinking that and I was saying no no It's just for the people they're gonna get so much value out of 

it because listen I had to hear some of these things like five times Before I decided let me try it. I had to hear some of them six times seven times Some of them i'm still now getting in, you know, it's never immediate.

It's it's you know, if you didn't say it five times it would not have You Sunk in, you know, cause so I'm so glad when you repeat things, I'm so happy when you repeat things like, Oh, I forgot about that one. You know, you give 10 tips and I remember one, and then I have to hear that one tip twice or three times for me to actually try it.

And so it takes me two years to try 10 tips. So it's, it's, it's, it's like, yeah, we need to hear it more than once. So I have no problem with that at all. It was perfect.

Thanks, man. Appreciate it.

Yeah, that's good. And also, um, I, I also reviewed, um, Louis Grenier's book too.

Um, yeah, 

it? 

Um, yeah, he did the whole, um, what's it called?

The whole, you see, I'm forgetting the tip right now. He, reciprocation, reciprocity.

Because he offered to send you a free copy in exchange for the review. 

Yeah, 

so, so, he did that too. Smart dude, smart dude. All right, thank you so much, Phil. 

Um. I hope you have a great great day wherever you are in the world.

Um, yeah, and I hope you have your, your, your trip to Nepal is good as 

Thanks, man. Do you wanna i'm just conscious you want to hit stop recording because upload And I don't want to leave 

All right, there we go. All right, let me stop this off right now. Now we have an after, we have an after show talk. So this 

Oh Oh,