Invalidators

There are many words and expressions in English that exist to help us to define truths to one another. For instance, when one says, “I seriously have to pee,” the word ‘seriously’ is not being used to communicate that one literally has to pee.

The sentence above would have communicated that message without the word seriously in it at all. It is simply being used to stress the degree of truth to the situation. (You can’t figuratively have to pee anyway).

Oddly enough, many similar words like ‘seriously’ that we use to validate and qualify our thoughts have polarized in meaning. These words, when used, may actually serve to discredit and even invalidate the things we say. Thus, we might call these words ‘invalidators.’

The meanings, of course, have not changed in any dictionary, but merely in how we interpret these words in common discourse. The ways that we try to emphasize how correct we are are varied and many. Among them, common uses are:

• Seriously
• Truly
• Trust me
• The fact is
• Really
• I swear
• For real
• Actually
• Honestly
• The truth of the matter is (this is, in my opinion, the worst invalidator of them all)

Calling in to work sick is a bad time to use invalidators: “I don’t think I’ll be able to work today. I’m actually feeling really sick.” While you may be cripplingly ill, no boss will believe you once you’ve used an invalidator like ‘actually’ in this context.

Invalidators are most often used in blanket statements of assertion that are rarely substantiated by any outside source. In using them, we try to make ourselves the source of truth.

However, anyone with any intelligence has a cognitive filter that red flags this sort of behaviour. All living creatures are naturally distrusting, like a chipmunk that won’t initially won’t take a peanut from you, but in time comes to acknowledge your benevolence.

This is the foundation for the flaw of invalidators: they are almost always used by people when they are trying to persuade us into doing something. “You should come. I promise it will be fun.” Our minds see any behaviour that seeks to change our perception as incongruous, and this lessens our willingness to accept it. Like the chipmunk, we are resistant to trusting.

A salesperson who is new to their job is a good example of a user of invalidators. “I give you my word; if you buy this car you won’t be sorry. It’s top quality.” At this point you either buy the car because you already wanted to, or, you get a feeling in your stomach that says you don’t want to buy a car from this person. You body receives signals that this person is trying to trick you, or at least manipulate your thought process.

It is this mental barrier that these words often fail to hurdle, and thus why they  can diminish our credibility.

The really unfortunate thing about invalidators is that we use them so freely in common speech. However, while the truth of the matter is that it is very hard to avoid using “invalidators,” they are definitely to be avoided. The fact is, you will truly be perceived as more believable and trustworthy if you abstain from using these words. Just trust me.

Paying attention to attention spans

According to Marketing Daily, the number of 15-second television commercials has jumped more than 70% over the past five years as advertisers slowly migrate from traditional 30-second spots.

Naturally, ads should get shorter given the waning attention span of modern audiences.  For instance, it is well documented that if someone browsing the internet finds a website that does not load within the span of just a few seconds, most users will leave the site.

If people won’t wait a few seconds for information they actually requested, it says a lot about the difficulty of advertising information that was not requested, and about keeping viewers engaged for a period of time longer than just a few moments. How can advertisers still deliver value in 15 or 30 seconds to an audience that demands instant gratification?

One related campaign that has been around for years is Get a Load of Milk from the Dairy Farmers of Canada. They are perhaps most commonly remembered as those ultra-short clips before the trailers at the movie theatre, though they also hold a notable presence on television.

As you likely recall (see below otherwise), the ads are but six seconds in length. The spots are, very clearly, youth-oriented. The format is unusual, and how they are able to obtain this media buy I do not know. What is known is this: the kids that the Dairy Farmers are trying to reach typically have the shortest attention spans of all.

The campaign aligns the message to the audience, and consequently, has been effective enough to have been on the air for years. On a personal note, I have always been partial to the spots, but that may just be my love for conciseness and 2% milk talking.

What stinks?

There’s something about the smell of a hot dog. The way it hitches a ride aloft a lazy breeze and invariably finds its way into your nose where it lodges itself and begins to tickle your hungerbone. Whether the hot dog stand is one foot away or one-hundred, its meaty scent finds you.

That smell is sort of an interesting smell because it does more than just stimulate one of your senses. You could call it a sales pitch. Most of us have experienced it, strutting along the sidewalk when it hits. “Man that smells great,” you likely thought, perhaps even said aloud. And you may have bought one.

Scent has the strongest ties to memory and emotion. To put that in an advertiser’s terms, our level of recall is the best with scents. Memory is much more high-level with our other senses, and much more precise when we smell something.

If scent is so deeply linked, what if, for example, hot dog suppliers included additives to make the smell of meat even more potent and far-reaching? What if they already are? Could it drive sales? If the brain can recognize that smell with precision and also has the power to trigger your hunger, of course it could.

Cinnabon, Starbucks, Pizza Pizza, or even a burning cigarette can effectively convey scent and stimulate demand in this way. I know I’m never craving popcorn until I walk into the movie theatre. However, these smells are native to the products. It seems that scent as a marketable function is an incidental byproduct rather than something that is leveraged purposely.

There are some brands and products that are intentionally stinky. LUSH: soap normally smells, but it never smells that much in a drug store. Hollister definitely makes an effort to leverage scent. Cars are sometimes sprayed with synthetic ‘new car smell’ because it’s something consumers have come to associate with a brand new car. I believe I once heard that pickle jars were engineered to release as much scent as possible when opened. There are other examples but they are few. This begs the question, why is our most acute sensory perception is not being more heavily exploited?

Well, by their very nature smells are close-by. This means that when you sense it, an action can be taken. You can buy it. It’s marketing at the point-of-sale which is usually the most effective time to appeal to a consumer. That’s the good news. The downside: there’s no marketable medium that can distribute smell, aside from, say, a scratch card for perfume. Thus, smell can’t be used in 99.9% of appeals to mass markets.

Smell is the best sensory trigger when you are exposed to it, but recreating and disseminating it is almost impossible with the channels available today. However, there are already some really interesting technologies being developed to overcome this obstacle.

The power of smell is indisputable. Just imagine it with scale; imagine being able to smell an actor as you watch them on TV, or the scent of cheese and warm dough wafting down from a billboard for Pizza Pizza. Imagine the glossy eyes of an advertiser who is able to emanate a smell from your iPhone—perhaps the fresh, cool air of the Swiss Alps in a tourism ad. The increases in audience engagement and recall would be nothing short of meteoric.

It can be said with near certainty that such technology will exist in our lifetime given the potential payoff. There’s simply a big, orange carrot idly dangling in front of our noses.

Salesmanship summarized

Salesmanship at the consumer level is about three things: enthusiasm, empathy, and translation.

Enthusiasm is about standing behind what you’re selling and making sure the customer can see that. Mimicry is an innate human behaviour; if you love the product, the customer starts to love it too. If you sound bored selling a product, they’re bored too. Enthusiasm is about more than peppiness, however. You need to have knowledge as well. If you’re selling air conditioners and you don’t even know what BTUs are, it’s very difficult to feel enthused (trust me I’ve been there). Knowledge is power and confidence in the sales environment, and when you add the right attitude you have enthusiasm.

Empathy, at the minimum, means interpreting your customer’s behaviours, motions, actions, expressions, and words. A salesman who is truly empathetic takes part in the the interaction as if he is looking at himself through the customer’s eyes. The sales process is largely about answering questions and overcoming objections, or better yet, anticipating them by being empathetic. In The Tipping Point, Malcom Gladwell quoted a colleague as saying, “What separates a great salesman from an average one is the number and quality of answers they have to the objections commonly raised by potential clients.” When you can predict your customer’s actions and objections you have achieved a state of empathy. You’re thinking on their terms.

Sales also requires translation. I served a customer recently who wanted some help with an SLR camera. After telling him about some of his options, the customer expressed that he was very satisfied, though he had been to two other camera stores without finding much help. One salesperson had described the highly technical aspects of the camera which meant nothing to him (no empathy). The other simply read specs off of the display tag (no enthusiasm). Neither tried to translate. If the customer wanted a hardcore explanation he would have checked out the forums on www.dpreview.com and if he wanted specs he could get them anywhere. He came to see a salesperson so that they could put it into words he could comprehend. Note that translation doesn’t have to be technical, like it sometimes is for tech gadgets. No matter what the product, take a feature and translate it to a benefit that adds value for the customer.

Adding value to your company’s offerings is what sales is all about; this is what salespeople are paid to do. These three concepts outline the basis for accomplishing this task.

How the NFL won America

The NFL is the most popular sport in America for one and only one reason. You might say that it’s popular because it’s the American pastime, that it’s just a cultural thing. But how did it achieve this?

The answer is simple, but has little to do with star players, big hits, last-second Hail Marys, nor with Al Michael’s sparkling play-by-play. The reason the NFL is winning America is its schedule.

Here’s the breakdown, if you don’t know. Football teams play once a week for a total of 16 games per season. Hockey and basketball share an similar schedule format with one another, lacing up about three times per week with 82 games in total. Ballplayers and their fans endure 162 games each year. The trend carries into the playoffs. There are 11 post-season games in football. That includes every team and every game. In hockey and basketball there are between 60 and 105 games in the playoffs. Baseball trims down a bit with between 24 and 41 games in the post-season.

Why are these differentials so essential to each sport’s popularity? Playing one day a week appeals to the time-sensitivity of the average TV viewer. People have less time now than ever before and many struggle to keep up with an intense schedule when they’ve got a family and a full-time job.

To an extent, PVRs can counter this time trend for regular shows, but there is a fundamental difference between sportscasts and regular broadcasts: perishability. Much of the value in watching the game depends on it being live. You certainly don’t see Kansas City Royals 2009 Season on DVD like you do for Lost or The Office.

Plunkett Research provides some data on the subject which is rather interesting. The trends are displayed below. Baseball takes in the most revenue, which makes sense given that it hosts 10-times more games than the NFL (see first graph). The NBA and NHL, sharing the same schedule format, display a very similar pattern to their lines, albeit lower for the NHL which suffers in viewership throughout the Sun Belt.

Now look at revenue and operating income on a per-game basis (second graph). The NFL obliterates the other three leagues by a factor of 10. Each game in the NFL earns enough revenue and operating income to make up for 10 games in any other league. That’s how much America loves the NFL schedule.

This is why baseball’s popularity is in decline and why hockey and basketball struggle to make gains in viewership. There are too many games. However, success is not as easy as taking games out of the season. There is an entire infrastructure in place to support each league’s current schedule and tampering with this is very difficult given the associated trade-off between the optimal number of games and forgone revenues. Millions of dollars worth of income is forfeited from selling private boxes, tickets, concession items, and broadcast rights with every game taken out of the schedule, not to mention the costs of idle capacity.

That being said, it is highly unlikely that the NBA, NHL, or MLB will change their schedules significantly, and also why a seemingly unimportant factor will remain football’s greatest competitive advantage.