Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly - Speed Bumps: The Magical Ingredient in Marketing

Episode Date: September 9, 2023

This week we look at how smart marketers use Speed Bumps to generate greater sales. While modern marketing loves a friction-free fast transaction, smart marketers know that a perfectly-placed speed bump can slow the selling process down Plus, we reveal why Van Halen wanted all those brown M&Ms taken out of the bowls. You may be surprised.       Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly. As you may know, we've been producing a lot of bonus episodes while under the influences on hiatus. They're called the Beatleology Interviews, where I talk to people who knew the Beatles, work with them, love them, and the authors who write about them. Well, the Beatleology Interviews have become a hit, so we are spinning it out to be a standalone podcast series. You've already heard conversations with people like actors Mark Hamill, Malcolm McDowell, and Beatles confidant Astrid Kershaw. But coming up, I talk to May Pang, who dated John Lennon in the mid-70s. I talk to double fantasy guitarist Earl Slick, Apple Records creative director John Kosh. I'll be talking to Jan Hayworth,

who designed the Sgt. Pepper album cover. Very cool. And I'll talk to singer Dion, who is one of only five people still alive who were on the Sgt. Pepper cover. And two of those people were Beatles. The stories they tell are amazing. So thank you for making this series such a success. And please, do me a favor, follow the Beatleology interviews on your podcast app. You don't even have to be a huge Beatles fan, you just have to love storytelling.

Subscribe now, and don't miss a single beat. Due to popular demand, we've dug very, very deep into our archives and are pleased to announce the re-release of episodes from the last season of The Age of Persuasion. And we've remastered them to fit our Under the Influence format. Here is an episode from 2011. Your teeth look whiter than no nose. You're not you when you're hungry. You're a good hand with all the teeth. You're under the influence with Terry O'Reilly.

They go by many names around the world. New Zealand calls them judder bars. In Portuguese, they are called lambadas. In Italy, they are called dosso stradale. In Denmark, they are poetically called fart shumps. And in Sweden, they're known as fart hinders. Some call them sleeping policemen. But we just call them speed bumps.

The speed bump was a marvel of simple design. A section of asphalt raised 3 to 4 inches, about a foot wide and roughly 12 feet long. The first recorded speed bump was built in Chatham, New Jersey in 1906. In an article from that era, the New York Times said, It took a while to catch on in Europe, but the first speed bump, or Verkeersdrumple, was installed in the Netherlands in 1970. The speed bump has one clear objective, to slow motorists down.

The term speed bump has become part of our language over the years. If a plan hits a speed bump, it usually means there's a problem. If the economy hits a speed bump, it usually means trouble. And if a relationship hits a speed bump, it usually means trouble. And if a relationship hits a speed bump, it usually means big trouble. But a speed bump isn't always bad news. In a world where everything is accelerating, where political campaigns are whittled down to 8-second news bites, where a tweet, or an X, is considered a long conversation, and where one-second commercials are wedging their way into programming, a well-placed speed bump can actually be a strategic thing of beauty. Come with me on a road trip

of the world's smartest marketing speed bumps. I want to show you how slowing the process down and actually creating a little bit of friction in our lives can be a very good thing.

You're under the influence. Creating effective advertising that makes the cash register ring is a skill. It takes in-depth research, meticulous planning, and an ongoing series of creative tweaks and careful recalibrations. Yet, the advertising industry is accelerating faster and faster. No time for contemplation, no room for rumination.

Even the way the advertising industry communicates with you is getting shorter and shorter. Not long ago, Honda introduced 5-second TV ads for its new model, the Fit. In the campaign, each short ad showed a feature of the Fit, followed by a computer-type voice saying, Appetite for cargo? The Fit.

New from Honda. The Fit is go. It was an interesting strategy because the Honda Fit ads were placed at the end of commercial breaks as a kind of anti-zapping strategy against fast-forwarding PVR users. Honda took advantage of the fact that when a PVR user stops fast-forwarding past a commercial break to get back to the show, the machine automatically backs up a few seconds to compensate for the user's reaction time, resulting in a little jump back

to the last few seconds of the commercial break, where they saw the Honda Fit ads. A one-second TV ad for a breath freshener called, appropriately, One Second, was done not long ago in Belgium. In the ad, a young woman places a drop of the breath freshener in her mouth, while a voiceover says, One second. The ad was run 500 times in one day on Belgian television.

Along with getting faster and shorter, advertisers are always looking for the quickest, easiest, smoothest, most friction-free path to a sale. But there is a lesser-known quirk in our collective psyche that not a lot of people study. It's the simple fact that sometimes people want, sometimes they need a little friction in the selling process before they'll buy a product. Not streamlining, not hyper-lubrication, not speed of transaction,

but instead a beautifully placed speed bump. If marketing has taught us anything over the past 100 years, it's that speed bumps and the friction they create are powerful tools in persuasion. Back in the early 1970s, Clairol introduced a new hair conditioner, or rinse. Up until that point, the hair conditioning process had only been available at the hair salon. So, Clairol gave women instructions on how to use the new hair conditioner. The instructions had three steps. One, work conditioner into hair.

Two, let sit for 30 minutes. Three, rinse. But here's what you need to know. The conditioner worked in less than two minutes. But Clairol knew something about women. The process women were used to at their hair salons took 30 minutes to set. So that was the exact amount of time Clairol suggested they use with their product.

Why? Well, one word. Credibility. In order to convince women that they were getting the same results at home that they had been paying professionals for

at their hair salons, Clairol's new product needed hair salon credibility. Without that, the product might have failed in the critical launch period. So, Clairol added the incredible inconvenience of sitting at home for 30 full minutes with conditioner in your hair. It took more than a few minutes to damage your hair. Take more than a few minutes to treat it with Clairol Condition, the amazing beauty pack

treatment that keeps on working for a full 30 minutes. The conditioned deep treatment formula can make the most damaged hair more beautiful again. Keeping conditioner in your hair for 30 minutes is a major speed bump, considering the product really worked in under two minutes. But that friction aligned the new product with an existing belief system,

which made it credible and successful. The study of human nature is always fascinating. Back in the late 1950s, the lab at Johnson & Johnson created an ointment that healed faster than anything else on the market. And, as an added bonus, it was painless. During the launch, it sold well. But nobody bought it a second time. That's when research revealed that we, as a species, like to feel a little sting with ointments.

So, Johnson & Johnson added a tiny drop of alcohol to each tube to produce a little sting and sales spiked again. Then there's Buckley's cough medicine. Eighty years ago, Buckley's created a cough syrup that worked really, really well and tasted really, really bad. The brand managed to attract a 2% share of the cough medicine business in Canada.

Then, in 1987, Buckley's changed their advertising to say, it tastes awful and it works. Hi, I'm Frank Buckley and this is Buckley's Mixture. If you've never tried it before, you're going to be very surprised. Twice. You'll be surprised at how quickly and effectively Buckley's relieves the nastiest coughs due to colds, bronchitis, and even smoker's cough. But just before you're surprised at how effective it is, you're going to be very surprised at how it tastes. Buckley's mixture.

It tastes awful, and it works. Saying the cough syrup tastes awful is a major speed bump. But by being honest and saying it tasted bad because it works, Buckley's market share soared to 12.2%. And that's nothing to sneeze at. In the world of online shopping, speed bumps are an interesting tool. An analytics person at Google told me an interesting story. He was asked to redesign an awkward five-step checkout process on an e-commerce site.

So, he replaced the five steps with a simple one-step checkout that he described to me as gorgeous. It had advanced error checking. It could perform functions like changing quantity or adding recommended products. It could be retrieved even if you lost internet connection, and so on. Absolutely loaded with features. It failed miserably. Why? Because the friction of five separate steps at checkout gave people the feeling of added security. Not only that, but those additional

unnecessary speed bumps meant more people bought more products. Here's an interesting fact. Did you know that over 50% of all products returned for refunds are in perfect working order? New owners couldn't figure out how to use them. Marketers know that people have a fiddle tolerance. They will only fiddle with something for 20 minutes before giving up. Knowing that, Steve Jobs saw product packaging as a forced way to guide consumers through new unfamiliar technology. Take the original Apple mouse. Apple packaged the mouse in its own cardboard compartment to force people to unpack it, pick it up, look at it, sniff it, and plug it in.

Jobs enforced this friction on his customers. He wanted them to go through a slower unpacking process. He could have made it easier. He could have made the complete unpacking in one step. But he made it more difficult so the mouse was less alien to people when they had to use it for the first time. He designed the unpacking routine to be performed in a certain sequence to force people to get used to the mouse, to handle the mouse, to get acquainted with the mouse. Those forced speed bumps were important to Steve Jobs. He was right. Return percentages for Apple products are the lowest in the industry. The Great Recession hurt sales of Porsche around the world.

But China defied that trend. During the recession, Porsche sold a third more cars in China than the year before. The reason was a big big pricey speed bump. The Chinese government slapped a hefty luxury tax on imported European cars with high horsepower engines. That tax added 35,000 American dollars to the price of the car. Porsche, already battered and bruised by the recession, braced for the worst. Instead, their sales went up. They had a blockbuster year in China, and for the most unexpected reason. The added sales tax made the car more expensive, so the prestige of owning one went up. The exact opposite of what Porsche thought would happen, happened.

What is that, sir? That, Charles, is my new Porsche 928 S4. Shall I have the chauffeur put it in the garage? Fire the chauffeur. Just in case you think $35,000 in tax isn't that much when you're buying a Porsche, know this. When that luxury tax is added on top of the import taxes and other Chinese taxes affecting cars,

tax represents about 75% of the price of a Porsche. But what happens when the speed bump is created by a rock and roll band who insists that all the brown M&M's be removed from the dish? Van Halen has sold more than 80 million albums worldwide. They're a band known for Hair, spandex, and excess. One of the most notorious aspects of the band had to do with their concert contracts. One of the clauses stated that there had to be a dish of M&Ms backstage. The writer further stipulated that, quote,

all the brown M&Ms must be removed. And if the band discovered any brown M&Ms backstage whatsoever, they would forfeit the show with full compensation. As a matter of fact, lead singer David Lee Roth canceled the show in Colorado for that very reason. That clause has gone down in history as one of the most self-indulgent rock band requests of all time. But here's the thing. It wasn't self-indulgent at all.

It was a perfectly placed speed bump. One of Van Halen's touring strategies was to not only play in the major cities, but to also perform in the smaller but lucrative second and third tier markets, like Poughkeepsie, New York and Moncton, New Brunswick. It also meant that Van Halen was one of the first major rock acts

to bring huge productions into small towns. Instead of the usual U-Haul trailers pulling up with gear, Van Halen rolled into town with nine 18-wheeler trucks full of equipment. With that much equipment, it took hundreds of people managing thousands of details to make it all work. Their technical requirements alone read like the Yellow pages. The band quickly discovered that many promoters

in these small towns treated the contracts casually and were overlooking dozens of important technical details. It could be something as simple as the doors not being wide enough

to move the gear through or something dangerous like the stage not being able to take the weight of their massive equipment. So, just as a little test, in the technical section of the contract, buried in between the amperage requirements and weight-bearing conditions,

was rider number 126. I'll let Mr. Roth explain it from here. And then just out of the middle of nowhere said there will be no Brown M&Ms in the backstage area or the promoter will forfeit the show at full price. So when the band walked backstage and spotted a Brown M&M, it was a warning sign. They guaranteed the promoter had not read the contract writer and we had to do a serious line check because frequently we had danger issues. And that was the genius of the Brown M&M's rider. It was a brilliant test to determine if the promoter had thoroughly read and complied with the contract.

A built-in speed bump that ensured the band was safe. While fundraising is a long cry from rock and roll, it too is a multi-million dollar business. Charities have long studied human nature to understand what triggers can be used to persuade people to give more generously. I'm fascinated by one method in particular. Many of us have had donation forms sent to us in the mail. They usually offer you three different donation amounts to choose from. For example, there's a $500 option, a $50 option, and a $5 option. Here's the thing.

The charity has no expectations whatsoever of getting a $500 donation. That box is there as friction. When you see a $500 option, you are meant to wince because $500 is a lot of money. At the same time, the $5 option is an opposite form of friction. It's hardly worth the stamp and effort to send back a $5 check. It's the cheapskate option. You know it, they know it.

The $50 option is the target donation. So, they frame the desired response with the shock of the $500 amount and the embarrassment of the $5 one. And that friction guides you to the $50 sweet spot. It's the Goldilocks strategy. Not too hard, not too soft, just right.

One last place I want to take you. Dr. Atul Gawande is a surgeon in Boston, and he wrote a book titled The Checklist Manifesto. He writes that there were over 150,000 deaths in the U.S. per year due to medical mistakes made in surgery. That's nearly three times the number of traffic fatalities. Dr. Gawande believed that many of these mistakes were preventable. So he asked other high-risk professions how they prevented errors, like aircraft pilots. He discovered their method of preventing mistakes was simple. Since the mid-1930s, they have used checklists.

Before taking off, while in the air, and during landing, pilots have to go through simple checklists. So Gawande borrowed that idea and created one for surgeons. One of the first checklist steps he included was to have everyone in the operating room introduce themselves. It's not as silly as it sounds, because in many large hospitals with big staff counts, members of the surgical team may actually be meeting

for the first time at the operating table. And when everyone introduces themselves, it creates a feeling of teamwork. The second item on the checklist was to make sure they had the right patient on the table. That's a good step. The third item was to all agree on what kind of surgery they were there to perform.

So we're here to do a vasectomy. Actually, doctor, it's a tonsillectomy. Thank you. These steps may sound completely logical to you and me, but they didn't to most operating staffs. Surgeons hated the idea. There was enormous blowback. They found the checklist silly, unnecessary, and a waste of time.

But eventually, hospitals started using Dr. Gawande's checklist. And when they did, an amazing thing happened. Preventable mistakes plunged by 80%. A staggering change. But still, 20% of surgeons refused outright to use the checklist. This speed bump offended them. So Gawande asked those holdout surgeons the following question.

If you yourself were going to be operated on by another surgeon, would you want that surgeon to have completed the checklist? 95% said yes. Speed bumps can bring many positive things. They can create credibility. They can steer people toward choosing a desired answer. And they can even save hundreds of thousands of lives.

Gawande's checklist has been adapted now by over 90% of hospitals worldwide. The trick is to figure out how much friction to add and at what point. Have you ever looked at the famous black and white yin-yang symbol? It represents the opposing forces of life that are interconnected and interdependent in our world. The black side stands for yin, or soft. The white stands for yang, or hard. It symbolizes the duality of life. Night cannot exist without day.

Winter without summer. Strength without weakness. But have you ever looked really closely at the yin-yang symbol? There is a tiny white dot on the black side and a tiny black dot on the white side. It means that inside every yin, there is some yang and vice versa. Within the hard, there is a touch of soft.

Within the smooth, a grain of sand. There, in a symbol that has been with us for thousands of years, is the insight. Friction is a secret ingredient to life. So, if you ever wonder why someone is asking you to pick every last brown M&M out of a bowl, that speed bump might just be saving the life of someone in spandex. When you're under the influence. I'm Terry O'Reilly.

This episode was recorded in the Terrastream Airstream Mobile Recording Studio. Producer, Debbie O'Reilly. Sound Engineer, Jeff Devine. Under the influence theme by Ari Posner and Ian Lefevre. Tunes provided by APM Music. Follow me on social at Terry O'Influence. If you liked this episode, you might also like our sister podcast titled, We Regret to Inform You, The Rejection Podcast. It tells stories about people who overcome massive career rejection

and succeed by never giving up. And wait till you hear the stories of actors Jim Carrey and Sandra Oh. So good. You'll find all the episodes

on this podcast app. You can also find our podcasts on the new Apostrophe YouTube channel. And if you think there are too many ads in a show about advertising, and you wish there weren't so many ad speed bumps, well, you can now listen to our podcasts ad-free on Amazon Music.

See you next time. Fun fact. M&M's sells bags of just brown M&M's on its website. All those discarded Van Halen M&M's have to go somewhere, right?