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Captivology | Ben Parr | Talks at Google — Transcript

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0:01SPEAKER: Good afternoon and welcome to Talks at Google.
0:04We are very pleased to bring the author and entrepreneur
0:07Ben Parr to campus today.
0:09This Princeton native, that would be Princeton, Illinois--
0:12being from Champaign, I definitely
0:14respect that-- was also voted in 2012 one of the Fortune 30
0:19under 30.
0:20So that's pretty cool.
0:22His career in the Valley and in tech
0:25has really spanned a wide variety of areas
0:27from working at "CNET" and "Mashable" to currently
0:30with "Inc." magazine and the VC DominateFund.
0:34Today, he's speaking to us about yonder book, "Captivology,
0:37discusses the psychology of attention,
0:39and includes a variety of interviews with thought leaders
0:42on that subject.
0:43It is truly the fundamental currency of today's economy.
0:46And we'll have some time at the end for questions,
0:48but for now, Ben Parr, you now have our attention.
0:52Welcome to Google.
0:55BEN PARR: Thank you.
0:57But you've all seen "Up," right?
0:59And you've seen Doug.
1:02I feel like Doug the dog, screaming "squirrel"
1:05everywhere all the time.
1:07And we live in this kind of new era in the last decade
1:11where we are bombarded with more information than ever.
1:14And yet, we have the same 24 hours a day.
1:16In 1986, we were presented with approximately 46 newspapers
1:25worth of information, according to one research study.
1:27And by 2006, that number had increased
1:30to 176 newspapers worth.
1:32Today it's actually seven full HD DVDs worth of information
1:36that we are exposed to on a daily basis.
1:39And so you combine that with our multitasking
1:43habitats--that's my actual TweetDeck.
1:45It looks like someone vomited on something.
1:48And this is the kind of thing all of us
1:49are dealing with daily.
1:51And our multitasking habit, which is not actually
1:54helping us all that much.
1:55In fact, there's another study that
1:56found that those who consider themselves heavy multimedia
2:00multitaskers are actually the least effective
2:02when it comes to completing tasks and switching
2:05between tasks and accuracy.
2:07And so you have this combination of way more information
2:10than ever and us having bad habits
2:13to manage that information.
2:14And you have a world where it is both extremely difficult
2:17to capture attention and to stand out with your idea,
2:20whether it's a project, it's a start up, it's a passion,
2:23it's a charity, and having it be seen by the world.
2:27And at the same time, defending our attention
2:29by all of this kind of information,
2:31understanding which things are worth our time and attention.
2:33And so that's kind of the reason, the impetus,
2:35for why I wrote "Captivology."
2:39And "Captivology" is about the science and the psychology
2:41of attention, and why we pay attention to certain people
2:44and products, and how to utilize that science to capture
2:47the attention of others.
2:48And so I'm going to talk a little bit about the research
2:51I did for "Captivology"-- over 1,000 research
2:54studies, interviews with dozens of PhDs,
2:57and everybody from Steven Soderbergh, Adrian Grenier,
3:00the people behind the Old Spice campaign,
3:02Sheryl Sandberg, David Copperfield,
3:04people across industries.
3:06I'm going to talk about the three stages of attention
3:08and my model of attention and, more importantly, what I call
3:12the seven captivation triggers.
3:13And these are seven psychological triggers
3:16that capture attention across all these stages.
3:19And so let me get into attention.
3:22And so I kind of describe attention as a bonfire.
3:26And your goal in capturing attention
3:28is to walk people through the three stages,
3:31is to grow the fire because you can't just
3:34start out with a bonfire.
3:35You have to start with the spark.
3:36And then you go through the kindling.
3:38And then you go and you finally get to the logs in the bonfire.
3:41And so the first stage is immediate attention.
3:43The second stage is short attention.
3:45And the last stage is long attention.
3:47And let me explain a little bit about each stage.
3:49Stage one.
3:50Immediate attention.
3:52It is our immediate and automatic reaction
3:54to certain sights, sounds, and stimuli.
3:56It's how we react if someone does this, for example.
3:58[POP]
4:01I love doing that every single time.
4:04It's how we automatically react to when there's sights, sounds,
4:07something like that.
4:08When someone puts a gunshot, or launches a confetti cannon,
4:10we're going to pay attention.
4:11And I'm sorry to the janitors in a little bit.
4:14But the reason why we react is because it's
4:16a defense mechanism.
4:17We're trying to protect ourselves.
4:19Imagine if you had to think every time a car was
4:23coming at you.
4:24We'd be dead human beings.
4:26We'd be a dead species.
4:27And so it's a protection mechanism.
4:28And you'll see that a lot of attention
4:30is a defense mechanism.
4:31And a lot of it is activating those defense mechanisms.
4:35The second stage is from subconscious
4:37automatic attention to conscious, directed attention,
4:41is when we start concentrating on something like a test,
4:44or a speaker, or a dress.
4:47That goddamn dress.
4:50But it's when we actually start focusing.
4:52And it is a kind of short-term thing.
4:55And it's run by a system called working memory.
4:57And working memory is this short-term memory system
5:00that processes the sights and sounds
5:02around us and the other stimuli and helps us determine which
5:05things are worth our time and attention
5:07and, more importantly, which things should
5:09be stored in long-term memory.
5:10Which leads us-- well, before I tell you-- very complicated
5:14system, by the way.
5:15I won't go through the entire process
5:16here, but suffice it to say it's a very complicated system
5:19that runs our attention.
5:20The final stage of attention is a stage called long attention.
5:24I kind of use Beyonce as an example.
5:25It's the difference between hearing and listening
5:27to a Beyonce song in the car and joining the Beyhive
5:32and becoming a lifelong fan and buying albums.
5:34It's the reason why when Beyonce launched her last album,
5:36she didn't have to do any marketing.
5:38She just got to drop it and suddenly everyone bought it.
5:41But it's because she earned long attention over time,
5:43building those relationships, building that relationship
5:45with her audience, building long attention and interest
5:48from millions of people.
5:49And so those three kind of things
5:51combine to create this bonfire of attention.
5:54Now how do you build that bonfire of attention?
5:57You have to go through what I call
5:58the seven captivation triggers.
5:59And these are seven psychological triggers
6:01I discovered over and over again that came up
6:03in my research that capture attention
6:06from immediate attention to long attention.
6:08So let me tell you about the first one-- automaticity.
6:12All right.
6:12So pop quiz.
6:14If you're a hitchhiker on the side of the road
6:16and you want to have the best chance of being picked up,
6:18what color shirt should you wear?
6:20Guesses?
6:22Red, white, I heard.
6:24What else?
6:24Orange.
6:26Yellow.
6:26I've heard everything.
6:27Actually, usually someone says "naked."
6:30You guys aren't dirty enough.
6:31It's too early in the day or something?
6:33It's a Monday.
6:34Fair enough.
6:38Maybe during Burning Man.
6:40So the answer is actually, it's gender specific.
6:42If you're a man, on average, any bright color
6:45will do because of the dark backgrounds
6:48of the black roads, and the dark green grass,
6:51and the brown dirt.
6:53But if you're a woman, and there was actually
6:55a French scientist who was like, I'm going to study this.
6:58He wanted to find out who would get picked up the most.
7:00So he had women wear six different colored shirts.
7:02And on average, someone would pull over about 13%
7:04of the time.
7:05Unless they were wearing the color red, in which case
7:08they were picked up 21% of the time.
7:11And the reason for that is actually our subconscious
7:14associations that we have with red and romanticism.
7:17In fact, another study found if you just put a thick red border
7:20around a person's face, the opposite gender, on average,
7:22we'll rate that person as more attractive.
7:25Reason why there's a red border there.
7:27I also just like having an excuse to put that picture up
7:29every time.
7:32But the opposite gender will rate
7:33that person as more attractive.
7:34And even there was another study that
7:36found that if a researcher is wearing a red shirt,
7:38a person who doesn't know will actually sit several inches
7:41closer to that person.
7:42It's like an automatic invitation to be more intimate.
7:45And so immediate attention is this automatic response
7:48to different stimuli.
7:49And it really comes down to two things-- contrast
7:52and association.
7:54And contrast is the contrast that something
7:55has with its surroundings, and association is the subconscious
7:58associations we have with a certain color, or symbol,
8:02or sound, based on our cultural history, based on our biology,
8:05based on other factors.
8:07And so a key to capturing attention with automaticity
8:10is to use the right color for the job.
8:12So example is Amazon.
8:15There's a reason why they use yellow and orange buttons.
8:18They have high contrast with their surroundings,
8:20with white and gray backgrounds.
8:21And they perform really well.
8:23But most bright colors will actually perform very well.
8:26However, give me some word association game.
8:31Give me words you think when you see this.
8:37"Dutch" is usually the first thing.
8:38Give me more.
8:40Anyone else?
8:41Usually someone says "prison."
8:44But actually, here's my point.
8:46AUDIENCE: White collar prison.
8:48BEN PARR: White collar-- there you go.
8:49So orange and yellow actually have the lowest correlation
8:53with competence.
8:54Teal and blue actually has the highest,
8:56which is why my cover has blue and teal on it.
8:58But think about it.
9:00If someone like this walked into most offices,
9:02maybe not Google, but most offices,
9:05you'd laugh their ass out of the room.
9:07And it's because of that correlation.
9:08And there's all these kind of different correlations
9:10we have with different colors and sounds.
9:12In fact, let's talk about smell.
9:14So this flower, I believe the Camellia flower,
9:17was used by Ralph Lauren in a perfume,
9:19and it performed really well.
9:20So like, let's expand it everywhere.
9:22So we're going to take it to South America.
9:25Problem is in South America, this specific flower
9:28is used in funerals.
9:29So when you sprayed it on, you literally smelled like death.
9:32How do you think that performed?
9:34Not well is the answer.
9:37Trigger number two-- framing.
9:41And so framing is that we pay attention
9:43to things that fall within our frame of reference
9:45or don't pay attention to things because
9:47of our frame of reference.
9:48And to describe this, I want to talk about deodorant.
9:54Anyone want some free deodorant?
9:56Specifically, I want to talk about a teenage entrepreneur
9:59named Edna Murphy.
10:00And so in the 1910s, deodorant wasn't a thing.
10:03And antiperspirants weren't a thing.
10:05In fact, this is what they literally
10:06used to protect themselves-- cotton pads and dress shields.
10:11And there were two reasons why antiperspirants and deodorants
10:13weren't a popular thing back then.
10:15First reason was that people thought
10:16it was going to kill you to use one, to have antiperspirants.
10:20And it was going to kill you.
10:23But the bigger and second reason was because it was not
10:25a thing you talked about.
10:27Bodily fluids, sweat, any of that sort of thing,
10:30it wasn't ladylike.
10:31It was not a thing you talked about in proper conversation.
10:35And so Edna Murphy, teenage entrepreneur, her father,
10:39a surgeon, invented an antiperspirant for his hands
10:42because he wanted to not sweat doing surgeries.
10:44And she's like, you know, I could put those in my armpits.
10:48So she does.
10:49And she gets a $500 loan from her grandfather
10:52and she creates Odo-Ro-No.
10:55Greatest name ever.
10:56In fact, I found one.
10:58I don't think they make these anymore.
10:59Odo-Ro-No.
11:01So she goes out and she starts selling
11:04and she gets a little bit of traction.
11:05But she's finding it very difficult
11:07to get the product above that plateau
11:09because of the two reasons I just told you about.
11:12Now she had to get past it.
11:14So what she did was she teamed up
11:15with a guy named James Webb Young who would eventually
11:18become the first chairman of the Ad Council.
11:20And together they decided they had
11:22to go in and tackle these frames of reference,
11:24these perceptions people had.
11:25First, how do you get people to realize
11:27it will not kill you to wear antiperspirant.
11:29Well, it was invented by a doctor.
11:31And so they really advertised that fact hard.
11:33And this is actually one of the original advertisements.
11:35And you'll see, Odo-Ro-No being used
11:37and recommend by leading physicians skin specialists.
11:39That helped double sales, when we
11:41started advertising that fact.
11:42But they still had the bigger issue
11:44of how do you get people to actually talk about it?
11:47And so they put out this ad.
11:51Now this ad talks very frankly about body orders.
11:56It says, "a frank discussion of a subject too often avoided."
11:58And it talks about body odor and how you don't have to have it.
12:01And how you can use Odo-Ro-No to fix it.
12:03By the way, this was in the most popular magazine
12:05of the era, of 1919.
12:07Does anyone want to guess which magazine that is?
12:12What?
12:13Nope.
12:13Nope.
12:13Anyone else want to try?
12:14I'm going to take some out to dinner if they guess this.
12:16No one's ever guessed this.
12:19No.
12:20Answer is "Ladies Home Journal."
12:24And so this was put in "Ladies Home Journal."
12:26And when it was put in "Ladies Home Journal,"
12:29it was actually one of the most controversial things if 1919.
12:33Hundreds of women canceled their "Ladies Home Journal"
12:35subscriptions in protest of this ad.
12:39But guess what?
12:39The ad changed people's frame of reference.
12:41They started actually talking about deodorants.
12:44And suddenly it was OK to talk about antiperspirants.
12:46And sales went through the roof.
12:48And a few years later, Edna Murphy
12:49was able to sell her company for millions.
12:52And so what she did was she adapted her audience's frame
12:55of reference.
12:56And she helped re-frame the conversation.
12:58And Odo-Ro-No did this by adapting to the fact
13:02that people were worried about health concerns
13:04so they brought in the fact that a doctor invented it.
13:07And they re-framed the conversation
13:08by making it OK to discuss.
13:10And so frames of reference and framing
13:12is this incredible power in which we can pay attention
13:14to certain things and not others based on our backgrounds
13:16and worldview.
13:17It's the reason why if you talk about climate change
13:21or you talk about vaccines, one group
13:24is going to have a very different reaction
13:26than another.
13:27And in a funny way, it does make sense sometimes
13:29because if someone comes to us and is telling us
13:33how the earth is flat, why the fuck should we listen to them?
13:36It makes sense, but then sometimes we
13:39get into this kind of rut where we miss important things.
13:42There are a couple ways to create frames of reference
13:45and to change frame of reference.
13:47One big one is scarcity.
13:49So who likes Twinkies here?
13:53Oh, thank God.
13:54No one.
13:56But Twinkies, as you probably may remember,
13:58a few years ago, the company that owned them,
14:00Hostess, went bankrupt, right?
14:01And suddenly, millions of people went to the stores
14:04to grab these things.
14:06And it was not for the reason that they tasted any better.
14:09They still tasted like shit.
14:11But suddenly, they became very popular.
14:13And the reason, actually, the science
14:14shows that we assign higher value to things
14:17that we feel are scarce.
14:18Specifically, when we believe something
14:20is scarce due to outside circumstances.
14:23If something is scarce because it is popular,
14:25it does not raise in value and we
14:27don't pay more attention to it.
14:28But if something is scarce because of an outside force,
14:31because of a manufacturing or some other thing,
14:33we assign much more value.
14:34In a Google example, let's think about Gmail invites.
14:37I actually, someone paid me $100 once for one
14:39of my original Gmail invites.
14:41I was like, why the f--oh, here you go.
14:43Thank you for the $100.
14:45But that scarcity element does drive attention
14:48and drives a different frame of reference.
14:51Trigger number three-- disruption.
14:55We pay attention to the things that violate our expectations.
14:57And I'll explain why in a moment.
15:00So there's this one research study
15:01where they want to see which things would
15:03stick in the memory longest.
15:04And so they would give subjects different sentences.
15:07Standard ones like, the maids were plating the food
15:10on the table versus the maid licked
15:13the ammonia off the floor.
15:16Now which one do you think people had a better memory for?
15:19It's actually a scientific term called the bizarreness effect.
15:21And the reason we remember this is actually
15:24because of something called violations expectancy theory.
15:27So imagine, for example, we're on a date.
15:31All right.
15:31And we're just like sitting down and suddenly, two giant clowns
15:36come and just sit down right next to us, right?
15:39We're going to be paying attention to them.
15:41But the reason why is because we make an automatic threat
15:43assessment.
15:44We have to figure out whether this is a positive development
15:46or we should run the fuck away.
15:48Maybe this is our good friends who
15:49are about to go visit a children's hospital
15:51or maybe they're about to mug us and we're about to die.
15:54Either way, we're going to turn our attention to something
15:56that violates our expectations because we
15:58have to protect ourselves.
15:59If you think about how we originally
16:00were as hunter gatherers when our attention was scanning,
16:03we were looking for things that were out of place.
16:05Maybe it's a saber tooth tiger, maybe it's a potential food.
16:09We have the same kind of instincts.
16:11And that's why we pay attention to things
16:12that violate our expectations.
16:14And there's a couple examples, especially in advertising,
16:16that work really well.
16:17This is a campaign a couple years ago from Patagonia.
16:19They did a campaign.
16:20It was called Don't Buy This Jacket.
16:23They're a clothing company.
16:24They're not supposed to fucking say that.
16:26But they explain, when you go into the ad
16:28deeper for that, the reason they're
16:30saying this is because they don't
16:32want people to unnecessarily buy more stuff.
16:34They want to help repair your clothing if you can.
16:37And of course, they'll sell you a jacket if your jacket is old.
16:40But they'll help you repair and they want
16:41to protect the environment.
16:42Funny enough, this ad telling people not to buy their stuff
16:45made more people buy their stuff-- double
16:48the amount within nine months.
16:49A whole ton of people started buying their jackets
16:52because people paid attention.
16:53It was a positive experience.
16:55The Old Spice guy's another great example of this.
16:58Of positive destruction.
16:59Every five seconds diamonds are suddenly coming out
17:02of people's hands and he's suddenly
17:03on horses and diving into cakes and who knows what else.
17:06But it's a very kind of positive experience.
17:08And every few seconds something is
17:09happening different that violates
17:11your expectations of how the world is supposed to work.
17:14The disruption has to match your values is a very key thing I
17:16want to mention.
17:17There is such a thing as positive
17:19versus negative attention.
17:20I think about what Nationwide did at the Super Bowl
17:23commercial.
17:23And the only thing I think of Nationwide
17:25now is that Nationwide kills kids.
17:27Now I'm going to show you the actual ad from a few years ago.
17:32This one.
17:34This was an ad for Quiznos.
17:36And they had weird, freaky, mutant, fucking rodents
17:41advertising sandwiches.
17:43Why the fuck would you want any of these things near your food?
17:47How does that make any sense at all?
17:52And yet, a bunch of execs decide,
17:55you know what, this is going to be a great idea.
17:58They went bankrupt last year.
17:59There is such a thing as negative attention.
18:01This make no sense at all.
18:02It did not match their values.
18:04It was disruptive.
18:05People paid attention.
18:06But it didn't make people buy their sandwiches.
18:08There is a clear difference.
18:11Trigger number four-- reward.
18:14And so I learned some interesting things
18:16about the reward mechanisms of the brain.
18:18Most people think of dopamine as the system
18:20that creates pleasure but that's actually a misunderstanding.
18:24I interviewed Dr. Kent Barich, a leading researcher
18:26in dopamine and reward systems of the brain.
18:31And what he did is this famous experiment
18:33where he took the dopamine out of lab mice
18:35and he wanted to see what would happen.
18:38And what he found was that the mice could still feel pleasure
18:40even with no dopamine.
18:42If you gave the mouse sugar water,
18:44it would still find pleasure drinking the sugar water.
18:46What happened though was that the mice lost all motivation.
18:50These mice were so demotivated, in fact, that they would rather
18:54starve to death than eat.
18:56And almost all of them died because they had no motivation
18:59to live or to find any kind of survival.
19:02And so dopamine actually creates wanting.
19:06It creates a wanting response in the brain.
19:08Opioids actually create the actual pleasure.
19:10But when it comes to attention, what's important
19:12is our desire for something.
19:14We pay attention to when we desire a reward,
19:17whether it is an intrinsic or extrinsic reward.
19:20Extrinsic rewards are the kind of physical ones
19:23that you're very well familiar with-- money, food, sex.
19:27Very, very, clear things.
19:29And they really do capture our attention in the short term.
19:31In fact, there was a study that found
19:33that if you associate an object with monetary gain,
19:36with money, even just a few cents,
19:38people's eyes will automatically gravitate towards that object,
19:41even after that object is no longer associated with money.
19:45But that's only short term attention.
19:47Short attention.
19:49That doesn't capture attention over the long term.
19:51Intrinsic rewards capture attention over the long term.
19:54Things like self satisfaction and purpose and mastery
19:57and these kind of self type of things
20:00that motivate us in our jobs, in our careers, in our lives.
20:04And family and order and whatever things that
20:06motivate you.
20:07Those are the kinds of things that
20:08make people stay long term.
20:09You need both to capture and maintain attention.
20:12But you can't just use one or the other and succeed.
20:15And there are a couple ways to create motivation
20:18and to create desire for a reward.
20:20One is the power of surprise.
20:22And so a couple years ago, a company called Skopje,
20:25they wanted to get more engineers
20:26because it is obviously a very, very competitive market.
20:29And so they're like, how do we get some more engineers?
20:32They're going to offer a bonus of $11,000 for signing up.
20:34That's kind standard.
20:35But they decided, you know, what we're
20:37going to parody the most interesting man in the world
20:38campaign.
20:39So they wrapped $11,000 in cash in bacon.
20:42And then they would also give you
20:43Macoun 15, a oil painting of yourself,
20:47and my favorite, a harpoon gun.
20:51I don't know about you, but I want a harpoon gun.
20:54Can I get a harpoon gun?
20:55That would be nice.
20:56So this actually, this campaign, got them
21:00over 1,000 different applications.
21:02And they were able to fill their engineering seats.
21:04And so that surprise actually helps capture attention
21:07when it comes to rewards.
21:08But it's also just the fact of surprising people
21:10with a reward.
21:11And so there was a study that was
21:13done-- there was a study that what happened
21:16was that they would have subjects
21:17and they would spray either water
21:19or citrus into their mouths.
21:20And what they found was that the people who could not
21:24predict the order in which citrus or water were going
21:27to be sprayed into the mouths felt much more pleasure,
21:29had stronger member of the task, and overall
21:32paid more attention.
21:33It was a much more positive and pleasant experience.
21:36And so most people deliver rewards in incentive form.
21:40You do this, I'll give you this.
21:42And that is actually the least effective type of reward.
21:44There many other better types are rewards.
21:47There's a company called Keep and what
21:49they do is they specialize in post action rewards.
21:52And what happens is like, you do a task.
21:54Like you run two miles, you get a high score in a game,
21:57and suddenly something pops up being like,
22:01you've accomplished something.
22:02We want to give you a gift.
22:03A surprise gift.
22:04Maybe it's a Gatorade, maybe it's an extra life,
22:07maybe it's some points.
22:08But that kind of surprise, where people didn't expect
22:10to get a reward actually reinforces
22:13behavior much stronger and increases
22:15attention and overall is much stronger
22:18when it comes to attention.
22:19Practically every other type of reward delivery is better.
22:23Gifting, for example-- you're very used to it,
22:25like in a social game being able to give a life to your friends.
22:28Even though, as you think about it,
22:30you're not actually giving anything to your friends.
22:32It's actually coming from the game.
22:34It just makes it look like it's coming from you.
22:37But it actually creates much more attention
22:39because it feels like it's a more personal sort of thing.
22:42Sneaky.
22:44Trigger number five-- reputation.
22:48So I'm going to put this on while we talk about reputation
22:51in this interesting study.
22:52So a few years ago, there was a study at Emory University
22:55and what they did was they looked
22:59at the FMRIs of students' brains as they
23:02were making economic decisions.
23:04I'm putting on a lab coat.
23:06I'll explain why in a moment.
23:08So they were looking at the FMRIs of students
23:10and they were trying to figure out
23:12how the brain works while during decision making in economics.
23:14And so they would have to make economic decisions
23:16with their money.
23:17And as you could expect, the critical thinking decision
23:19centers of the brain would light up
23:21whenever they were making decisions with their money.
23:23And this is the actual brain scans.
23:25But in half the cases, they would have an expert come in
23:27to give advice.
23:28In this case, an economics professor.
23:30And it would always be the conservative advice.
23:32And what they found was when a subject was listening
23:34to the expert, the decision making centers of their brain
23:37would completely shut off.
23:39It was as if they offloaded the processing power
23:41of their brains to the expert.
23:44And in fact, even when the advice
23:48that the expert was giving was clearly wrong,
23:51the subjects would more often go with that advice than the other
23:56because they're not thinking.
23:57And this is a phenomenon known as directed deference.
24:00And directed deference helps drive our attention.
24:02And so the reputation triggers that we pay attention
24:04to repeatable sources, specifically authority figures,
24:08the crowd, and most of all, experts.
24:11In fact, and this is a fun study,
24:14if someone puts on a doctor's coat and you tell them
24:17it's a doctor's coat, and they do tasks,
24:20on average they will have better attention,
24:22they will make less mistakes, and they will complete tasks
24:25more effectively.
24:26Now if you give them the very same coat
24:29and you tell them it's a painter's coat,
24:30their attention will actually go in the opposite direction.
24:33And they will complete less tasks
24:35and they'll be less effective.
24:37The mere perception of expertise increases attention.
24:42That's why I'm wearing the coat.
24:44And so as I said before, there are three key types
24:47of reputable sources that we pay attention to.
24:50Authority figures have power over us
24:52and so we pay attention as long as they
24:54have that power over us.
24:55And the crowd kind of acts like an expert.
24:57And you think about sites like Yelp or a lot of others
25:00where we go into those the sites for ratings
25:03and we trust their ratings because
25:04of the collective knowledge of the crowd.
25:06And we trust the crowd.
25:09So there's another reason why we trust reputable sources
25:11and experts.
25:12And the answer is actually from this Edelmen Trust Survey.
25:15We trust them more than any other type of spokesperson.
25:17And so you can see here the most credible spokesperson out
25:21of thousands and thousands of people surveyed are experts.
25:24More than people like you, more than executives,
25:29and definitely more than CEOs.
25:31We really, really trust experts.
25:33And government officials are somewhere in the basement
25:36where they belong.
25:38And so key brands and capturing attention
25:40really revolves around leveraging experts,
25:42and leveraging the power of experts,
25:44and establishing your credibility as an expert
25:46as well.
25:48Odo-Ro-No did this by leveraging the fact that it
25:51was created by a doctor.
25:55And leveraging the fact that it was created by a doctor.
25:58And this is also the same kind of reason
25:59why things like Kickstarter do very well because it's
26:03the crowd's expertise showing that a specific thing is
26:07worth our attention and time.
26:08Two more triggers.
26:10Trigger number six.
26:11I can take this coat off.
26:12It's kinda hot.
26:14I'm stripping for you all.
26:16You're welcome.
26:18Mystery.
26:19So what movie is this?
26:22Anyone want to guess?
26:24That's right. "Cloverfield."
26:26So I don't have time to show the entire trailer
26:28of "Cloverfield."
26:29But in the first trailer of "Cloverfield," what happens
26:34is there's people at a party, suddenly there's a roar
26:38and then the Statue of Liberty's head falls into the street.
26:40There's no mention of the movie's name
26:42or what it's called or what it's about.
26:43And this is a huge impetus of the mystery trigger.
26:46And this is a JJ Abrams movie.
26:47He's a master at mysteries.
26:49At both using mysteries to market his material because
26:51for example, we know barely anything about "Star Wars"
26:54and that's what he wants.
26:55And also in his storytelling.
26:57For "Lost," for example, famous for having that cliffhanger
27:01that would get people to come back week to week.
27:03And so there are actually two scientific reasons why
27:05mysteries capture attention.
27:07The first is something called the Zeigarnik Effect.
27:09So in the 1950s, there was this Soviet researcher.
27:11Her name is Bluma Zeigarnik.
27:12And she is sitting in a restaurant
27:15and she's curious about something.
27:18The waiters who are taking her order
27:20have perfect memory of her orders
27:23until they actually drop it off over at the kitchen,
27:25and suddenly, completely forget.
27:27Now why is that?
27:29She's curious.
27:30So she gets a bunch of students and a bunch of kids
27:32and she has them do puzzles.
27:34But in half the case studies, she takes their puzzles away.
27:38That's mean, right?
27:40A couple months later, she would ask them
27:41which puzzles they would remember.
27:43And guess what.
27:44The only puzzles they could remember,
27:45the only tasks they could remember
27:47were the ones that were incomplete.
27:48We have a much stronger memory for incomplete the tasks,
27:51incomplete thoughts, incomplete storylines.
27:54Zeigarnik Effect.
27:55Now there's a second reason.
27:58Now, let's pretend you and I are on a date.
27:59Actually, we'll go on a date.
28:01We've been on a date before.
28:02So pretend we're on a date.
28:04Now if we're on a first date, what we're going to do,
28:07typically, is small talk, right?
28:08Kind of things like where are you from, what do you like,
28:12that sort of thing.
28:13And the reason why we do that is actually because of a thing
28:16called uncertainty reduction principal.
28:19And essentially, we don't like uncertainty in our lives.
28:21It makes us uncomfortable.
28:23And we meet a stranger, there's nothing but uncertainly.
28:24We don't know anything about each other.
28:26And so what we're trying to do is
28:27relieve the uncertainty so we can figure out whether or not
28:30I want to hang out with this person
28:31or be friends or get the fuck away as far as I can.
28:35All depends, right?
28:37And so in the case of uncertainty reduction
28:39principle, it applies all across the board.
28:41When we're left with a cliffhanger
28:43and we're left with a mystery, we
28:44want to relieve that uncertainty.
28:46We want to resolve that storyline.
28:47And then when we don't, we start filling it
28:49in with speculation and uncertainty.
28:52The Malaysian Airlines disaster last year
28:54is a perfect example of this.
28:56It's not the first time a plane went down.
28:59But planes aren't supposed to disappear.
29:01And so when this one disappeared,
29:04suddenly, it was on the media for months.
29:06Why?
29:07Because we don't like uncertainty,
29:08so we start filling with speculation.
29:10Especially CNN.
29:11They loved filling it with speculation.
29:12Thank you, CNN.
29:14And they kept filling it with all this speculation.
29:16Trying to-- what's going on?
29:17Where did it go?
29:17All that sort of thing.
29:18And the reason, again, why is because we do not
29:20like that uncertainty.
29:22We have to fill it in.
29:23It's the same reason also why, for example, I
29:25don't know if anyone remembers a year ago, Justine Sacco.
29:29She was an exec at IAC.
29:32And she before she gets on the plane she
29:34decides to tweet something along the lines of "I'm
29:37going to Africa.
29:37Hope I don't get AIDS.
29:38Oh and wait.
29:39I'm white."
29:40She does this.
29:41She gets on a plane.
29:42And then she's off Wi-Fi.
29:44By the time she gets off the plane,
29:45she's the number one trending topic in the world
29:47and she's the most reviled person on Twitter.
29:49And the reason why is because she couldn't
29:52close the uncertainty gap.
29:53She couldn't close the mystery loop.
29:55Everyone started filling speculation
29:56of how is she going to react?
29:57Who is this person?
29:58Why would she say such a thing?
29:59In fact, Steve Martin tweeted something offensive
30:02as well in the same time period but nothing
30:04happened to him because he was able to delete
30:06his Tweet within two minutes and post an apology.
30:10Mystery done.
30:12Justine Sacco could not and that's
30:14why she became the number one trending topic.
30:16And so there are a couple things when you think about mysteries
30:19to capture attention.
30:20The mystery trigger.
30:21One is to create suspense.
30:22And I don't think the sound is working,
30:24but we're going to try a video anyway.
30:27This was one of the Budweiser ads
30:29from this year's Super Bowl.
30:32And I love any reason to add puppies to a conversation.
30:35And in this case, this was one of the most popular ads.
30:39And part of the reason is because of suspense.
30:41And so you know that Budweiser's not going to kill the puppy.
30:44They're not Nationwide.
30:49But there is this moment to moment suspense of what's
30:52going to happen to the puppy, how
30:53is it going to escape the wolves,
30:55how is it going to get back home.
30:56And there was a study that actually
30:58found that the more moment to moment suspense
31:00we feel in an advertisement, the more memory we're
31:02going to have it, the more we'll pay attention,
31:04and the more positive reaction we'll have to that ad.
31:07And that's part of the reason why
31:08I believe this one was one of the most popular ones
31:10of this year's Super Bowl.
31:12And so another tool for capturing attention.
31:15Can't do another one even tough I love the puppies.
31:18So another key tool is using cliffhangers.
31:21And so creating the cliffhangers, whether it's
31:23in advertising, or in your storytelling,
31:25or maybe just a cliffhanger to get people to come back
31:28to the next meeting.
31:29Captures attention again because of that uncertainty gap.
31:32You should use cliffhangers when you can unless you're
31:36going through a press crisis.
31:38Like that guy.
31:40So everyone knows that guy or most of you
31:42know that guy, maybe.
31:43And this is Brian Williams.
31:45And what happened with him was he basically
31:50lied about what happened when he was in the war zone.
31:53And he put out what amounted to a half-assed apology.
31:56It was kind of like, "I sort of mis-remembered, blah, blah,
31:59blah."
31:59What it didn't do was complete the mystery gap
32:02and complete the mystery.
32:03And so people filled in with speculation until suddenly,
32:06more reports came out to a point where he had to step down.
32:11On the other hand, regardless of what you think of this guy,
32:15there was no mystery gap.
32:16When his allegations came out, he
32:18came out hard and being like, here's exactly fact ABC.
32:21Go look.
32:21That's it.
32:22Done.
32:22And guess what?
32:23He still has a job.
32:24Again, regardless of what you think of him,
32:26he's still in his chair and Brian Williams is not.
32:28But there's actually a couple good tech examples
32:30of this as well.
32:31So a couple years ago, Airbnb-- I
32:34don't know if anyone remembers this-- but they had a renter.
32:37They had a gal named EJ and she rented out her place
32:39and she came back and it was completely
32:41ransacked-- destroyed, burned, everything stolen.
32:44And Airbnb was kind of slow to helping her our
32:47in fixing the problem.
32:49So she wrote a blog post about it.
32:51It went viral.
32:52Everyone wrote about it.
32:53And when it started going viral, Airbnb
32:57felt like it had to respond.
32:58So Brian Chesky wrote that on Hacker News, which
33:02basically says, "hi, everyone.
33:04We were shocked when we heard about this unsettling event.
33:06We have been working closely with the authorities, blah,
33:08blah, blah, blah.
33:09It is written by a lawyer.
33:11It sounds like a lawyer.
33:12There is no apology.
33:13It doesn't resolve jack shit.
33:16Guess what?
33:17The mystery continued.
33:19EJ put out another post.
33:20The thing went more viral.
33:22Airbnb looked even worse until finally, they
33:24put out the right statement.
33:26They put out this blog post.
33:29This one, which said, like, with EJ, we got this wrong.
33:33We let her down.
33:34And we are sorry.
33:35And we fucked up.
33:36And here's how we're going to fix it.
33:38When they did that, the story was over
33:40because they completed the mystery loop,
33:42the gap of uncertainty was filled and the story died.
33:47And so when it comes to a press crisis like that,
33:49your number one goal is to end the mystery.
33:52Exactly here is we fucked up and here's
33:55how we're going to fix it.
33:57Final trigger.
33:58And then questions, if you have any questions.
34:00Think about your questions now.
34:01Acknowledgement.
34:02The most powerful of my captivation triggers.
34:05And so there was this one study that-- yeah,
34:09it was pretty cruel, actually.
34:10And what they did was they strapped electrodes
34:13to the ankles of married women.
34:16Yeah, pretty much.
34:18And there were three conditions.
34:19Condition one.
34:22Married woman sitting alone.
34:23Condition two.
34:25Married woman could hold the hand of a stranger.
34:29Condition three.
34:30Married woman could hold the hand of her husband.
34:32And so what they found was that when
34:35the married women who had no one to hold the hand of
34:39felt the most pain because they had nowhere
34:41to direct their attention.
34:43And the married women who could hold the husband's hands
34:46felt the least pain because they had
34:48someone they love to direct their attention towards.
34:50But what I found fascinating about this study
34:52was that there was a direct correlation
34:55between the strength of the marriage and the amount of pain
34:58that these women felt.
34:59The more connected they felt to their spouse, the less pain
35:03they felt.
35:03And it kind of shows how powerful this acknowledgement
35:07and this connection is.
35:08This connection is so powerful that it can
35:10reduce an even eliminate pain.
35:13And so the key to the acknowledgement trigger
35:15is that we pay attention to the people and things that
35:17pay attention to us and provide us with validation,
35:20empathy, and understanding.
35:23And one example of this is actually
35:25in our celebrity culture.
35:26And so this is Adrian Grenier from the show "Entourage"
35:29and this is Dr. Thomas de Zengotita.
35:30And I interviewed them for "Captivology."
35:32And you wouldn't think that they would be experts in anything
35:35like this, but actually, they did a documentary together
35:37called "Teenage Paparazzo" on a 15-year-old teenage paparazzi
35:44and following him around and exploring
35:47why we pay attention to celebrities and celebrity
35:49culture.
35:49And we had this long conversation about why.
35:52And we kind of came to the conclusion,
35:53one of the major reasons we pay attention to celebrities
35:55is because they're, in a way, a reflection of ourselves.
35:57They are a piece of our identity.
36:00It says something about you, whether you're
36:02a fan of Justin Bieber or Rachel Ray
36:06or Sheryl Sandberg or an Apple or a Google
36:10or a whichever company.
36:12It says something about you and your identity.
36:15And we are looking for things that validate
36:16our identity in some way.
36:19In fact, actually, Buzzfeed, for example--
36:22I interviewed Jonah Peretti the CEO Buzzfeed--
36:24and what I learned from them is that they
36:26do a lot of this kind of validation aspect.
36:28One article that I read about is that they
36:30did was "54 Things That Minnesotans Are
36:33Too Humble To Brag About."
36:35Now, this article went viral, especially in Minnesota,
36:38as you could imagine.
36:39But the reason why is because it's
36:41a validation, a positive affirmation of a key identity,
36:44for a key demographic.
36:45And it's saying it's great to be from Minnesota.
36:48And Buzzfeed puts these articles and these quizzes
36:51out all the time.
36:52'90s Kids or from Chicago or works in X industry.
36:58They do this all the time.
36:59And it's always very positive.
37:00They affirm.
37:01They go for EQ over IQ.
37:03And it works really well for capturing attention for them.
37:07So there's actually a term for all this,
37:09and especially for our relationship with celebrities.
37:12It's called the parasocial relationship.
37:14And so it is our capability to feel a two-way relationship
37:16with a one-way figure.
37:18And I'll give an example.
37:20There is-- my old boss at "Mashable,"
37:23she works for Rachel Ray now.
37:25And what happened was Rachael Ray
37:28came out for Obamacare, right?
37:31And what suddenly happened was there
37:33was a whole bunch of women who came out and they're like,
37:36how could you do this?
37:37You've betrayed me.
37:39I thought I knew you.
37:42The fuck?
37:43How does this make any sense?
37:45It makes sense because people can
37:47feel as deep of a connection with a figure
37:50like that as they can with their best friend or their families.
37:53Parasocial relationship.
37:54It's why we can fall in love with a brand
37:57or a musician or an artist.
37:59And the case, for example, of Taylor Swift.
38:00She's a master at parasocial relationships.
38:03So last year, she was doing YouTube videos.
38:05And it was YouTube videos of her wrapping gifts
38:08and sending it to a few of her fans.
38:10And this created a frenzy in her entire community.
38:13She didn't have to give a gift to every single member
38:16of her community, to all over fans-- just a few
38:20to show that she cared about them as a collective.
38:23And as a result, they paid attention back
38:25and made her album the number one album of last year.
38:29She did a fantastic job of building that community
38:31and building that relationship.
38:32And she scaled her relationship with her community.
38:35Now there are a couple other ways
38:36to build that kind of identity and that validation
38:39and that acknowledgement.
38:42And it is this way.
38:43It is through the power of participation.
38:45So some of you may know this story.
38:47In the 1950s, Betty Crocker and all the big cake mixing
38:52and food mixing companies at the time like Duncan Hines
38:56and Pillsbury, they were trying to get cake mix off the ground.
38:59But cake mix wasn't taking off with the female demographic,
39:02not like Bisquik did.
39:04And they were stumped.
39:06Betty Crocker's like, why is this not
39:07being getting bought by everybody.
39:10So they brought in two researchers
39:11to come in and give them advice on what's going on.
39:14And they figured it out, actually.
39:15The reason why it wasn't taking off was eggs.
39:21Now back then, eggs actually came in powdered form.
39:24You could just have the powdered eggs, you just put it in.
39:26You didn't have to have the fresh eggs with you.
39:28And in fact, if you actually try these recipes,
39:30there really isn't much a difference
39:32between a powdered egg and a fresh egg.
39:35But what they found was that women
39:38didn't feel like they were making
39:40any contribution to the recipe in the cake mix version.
39:43And so what Betty Crocker did was literally make
39:46their product harder to use.
39:49And the result was that their sales went through the roof
39:51and they won the cake mixing wars
39:53by making it so that you had to break eggs into the recipe.
39:58And it worked really, really well
40:00because they enabled their audience
40:01to participate and provide some kind of validation,
40:04to provide their input.
40:05It's the same kind of reason, for example,
40:07why Kickstarter is so powerful.
40:11Yes, Exploding Kittens.
40:12I can't wait to get my deck.
40:13And it's because not just are you buying something--
40:16it's pretty much a buying website--
40:18but you feel like that you're providing some kind of input.
40:21You are helping a company get off the ground.
40:24You are providing something extra.
40:25You are part of that community.
40:27A couple years ago, I remember, Vitamin Water-- they actually
40:30asked their community to help name
40:32the next flavor of Vitamin Water and actually create
40:34the next flavor.
40:35And it was a campaign and it went really viral.
40:38And they allowed their audience to put their input.
40:40And they eventually came up with one called
40:42"Connect," based off Facebook.
40:43And it did really well and their sales went up as a result,
40:47again because they allowed their community to participate
40:49and that alone created that acknowledgement
40:52with their audience.
40:54And so I've talked about the seven key triggers.
40:57Automaticity, framing, disruption, reward, reputation,
41:00mystery, and acknowledgement.
41:02And you'll kind of notice that these
41:03triggers go across all three stages of attention.
41:06Automaticity is very powerful in immediate attention,
41:09while disruption is a very powerful trigger for capturing
41:11short attention, while mysteries and acknowledgement are
41:14powerful tools for long attention,
41:16get people to have long term interest.
41:18Because it's not enough to just get
41:20people to pay attention to your ad or to your idea
41:22or to your campaign.
41:23But you need people to become customers and users and fans.
41:28And the last thing I will say that I learned
41:31from this process is from all the interviews
41:33I did with all these masters of attention
41:36is that the masters of attention don't try to capture attention
41:41for themselves.
41:42They're trying to get attention for their products,
41:44their projects, and their ideas.
41:46They're not trying to be me, me, me.
41:48They're trying to get a cause and to promote something
41:51that is bigger and beyond them.
41:53And that is a much more powerful version and much more powerful
41:56form of attention.
41:58And I guess that is a sign that it's done.
42:01So you know what?
42:03Thank you, very much.
42:04[APPLAUSE]
42:11AUDIENCE: I am Darcy.
42:11I am a hardware reliability engineer,
42:13and I'm curious about this colors and competency study
42:18thing.
42:19Is that dependent on culture?
42:21BEN PARR: It is dependent on culture.
42:23And so I didn't mention in this part of the presentation
42:25but the cultural associations really do impact color.
42:29I was talking specifically about US and Western.
42:33Couple different examples.
42:34Green is terrible packaging in China
42:37because green is associated with funerals and death in China.
42:39And in fact, it is a very poor performing packaging color
42:42in that country.
42:44Red has significantly different associations
42:47across different cultures.
42:48There are a few things that are the same.
42:50Like for example, blue.
42:52If you, for example, there was a study that actually found
42:54that if you put schizophrenics under blue light, regardless
42:57of which culture, they will be calmer
42:59and they will be more relaxed.
43:01And if you put them in a red light,
43:03they will be more energetic and they'll be more jumpy
43:05and they'll be more agitated.
43:06So there are some that are universal.
43:08But there's a lot that are different culture by culture.
43:10And I actually provide some resources in the book
43:12and some links and examples of different colors
43:14in different cultures.
43:15And there's actually an amazing color wheel
43:17that shows the associations different cultures have
43:19with different cultures.
43:20The reason why I focus so much on color
43:22is because color provides the majority of initial assessment
43:26when people are looking at a brand.
43:27If people look at a symbol for the first time,
43:30the majority of their assessment will be purely from the color
43:33as well.
43:34AUDIENCE: I'm actually a video game designer.
43:37And I just wanted to let you know
43:38that I had seen something very similar
43:42that somebody had described in trying
43:44to figure out how to get people to play early arcade video
43:48games.
43:49A woman ran a company and she talked
43:52about the first quarter, the second quarter,
43:54and the thousandth quarter.
43:56And the idea that it's first getting their attention
43:58and then having them have that reaction of OK,
44:01I played it once.
44:02Now I want to try it again.
44:03And then having something in there
44:05that keeps them going 1,000 quarter drops later.
44:09And just the games industry looks
44:12at trying to keep people's attention particularly
44:15on social media games, as you mentioned, like the stuff
44:18on Facebook.
44:19So it seems like there are a lot of commonalities in what you're
44:22talking about there.
44:24BEN PARR: Exactly.
44:25One of the people I interviewed and one
44:26of my favorite interviews for the book,
44:28is Shigeru Miyamoto, the creator of Super Mario.
44:30And I got to interview him at E3 a few years ago.
44:33And he talked me through why Mario
44:36captures so much attention across all three stages.
44:38So I don't know if you all know this,
44:40but the original Super Mario, when they first
44:42created the character, they only had 16 by 16 pixels.
44:45And they're like, how do we make this guy more distinctive?
44:47How do we have him pop out on the screen?
44:49Well, we got to make his nose big because that's the only way
44:52to see he even has a nose.
44:54So they made his nose big.
44:55But you couldn't even tell he had
44:57a nose so they put a mustache on it so you
44:59could define the nose.
45:01Now it was impossible to do hair in 16 by 16 pixels.
45:04So we're going to give him a red cap.
45:06And a shirt didn't really pop out at all, shirt and pants,
45:09so they gave him overalls.
45:10And that's actually why Super Mario has big nose, moustache,
45:15a hat, and overalls.
45:17But that's just immediate attention.
45:18They really focused on that kind of gameplay element,
45:21getting people to try to achieve the reward of getting
45:23that high score, getting to the end
45:24of that level, and that loop every single time,
45:26within a specific game.
45:28But the reason why we play every Mario game and love and all
45:32that sort of thing is because we fall in love
45:34with the characters.
45:35We know the key elements of every single Mario game.
45:37There's always going to be Koopas.
45:39There's always going to be gold coins.
45:41There's always going to be a Bowser somewhere.
45:43And that kind of element makes us come back for each game
45:45because we have the familiarity.
45:47While each game is different enough in terms of game
45:49play to make us find something new.
45:52Whether it's going to a Mario galaxy or a new platform
45:55or that sort of thing.
45:56And so that's part of why Mario has
45:58become an icon over decades.
46:01And so many other games have fallen by the wayside.
46:04AUDIENCE: I am wondering what suggestions
46:06you have for getting people to pay attention to and not only
46:09pay attention to, but take action
46:11in regard to environmental issues,
46:13such as water conservation and climate change.
46:17BEN PARR: Oh.
46:18Oh.
46:19I mean, I went through a lot of framing research
46:21to think about that one.
46:22Because there's a couple things that go about it.
46:24It's really a framing issue, right?
46:26It's elevating the importance of that knowledge
46:32to a level where people will be forced to pay attention, right?
46:34Because there's a whole-- there's
46:36a segment of the population that absolutely and thank
46:39God believes that we have huge issues coming
46:42with water conservation and climate change.
46:44And yet, there's still a huge part
46:46of the population that will not even
46:47listen to you if you mention these things because they have
46:51been indoctrinated with years of hearing
46:55a different side of the story.
46:57Now there's a couple different ways to kind of go about it.
46:59You can find a way to adapt to the frame of reference
47:02and not go directly and be like, you're wrong.
47:04Because that will actually not work.
47:05You have to find a way to get actually
47:07them to agree on a little thing and that actually opens up
47:10the door lot more.
47:11You get them to agree on the smallest thing
47:13and that will make them more receptive to an idea.
47:15There's a couple other things.
47:16One interesting thing I learned is
47:17the illusion of truth effect.
47:19And this might not necessarily help you get attention for it,
47:21but it'll help you understand why
47:22people believe what they do.
47:24And it is purely that the more you repeat a phrase,
47:27the more likely people will believe it is true.
47:30And they did a study where they would
47:32have people go through like 30 or 40 phrases every couple
47:38weeks and they would rate how true they were.
47:40And every time they went through it,
47:43they would rate the statements that they saw over and over
47:46again as more true, despite the fact
47:48that repeating a statement does not
47:50make a thing more or less true.
47:52But it actually has that kind of profound effect
47:54in our brains and our minds.
47:56And so when it comes to getting attention
47:58for that sort of thing, it's going
48:00through those three stages.
48:01It's how do you get people to pay attention
48:03to it in the first place?
48:04If they don't know anything about it, disruption trigger.
48:06Getting people to violate their expectations
48:08with something that'll make them turn their heads.
48:10I think about anti smoking campaigns.
48:13In Thailand, they had a campaign where
48:16they had little kids with cigarettes in their mouths,
48:19asking adults for lights that had cigarettes in their mouths.
48:22And the adults would be like, you shouldn't be smoking.
48:24It's causes cancer.
48:26And the kids would be like, then why are you smoking it?
48:28And that went viral not just in Thailand but all across
48:32because it violated people's expectations,
48:33and it really drove the point home.
48:36But then, it kind of comes in long term.
48:37It depends on the audience that you're really going for.
48:40I suspect that you have a huge group.
48:42There's one group that just will not believe what you say.
48:45And it's going to require different tactics
48:47and you have to really think about the framing trigger.
48:49And you have this audience that thinks it's important
48:51but maybe they're not being active enough.
48:53And they know that there's sort of a problem,
48:55but they don't think of it strong enough.
48:57And I think that maybe have to violate their expectations
48:59and jolt them out of their complacency and be like, here
49:02is what is effing happening.
49:04And I'm not sure what that kind of thing
49:05is but you need to jolt them out of their expectations.
49:08I would love to talk about that one
49:10further because that's a hard problem that I still
49:12haven't fully figured out how we solve that one.
49:15All right.
49:16I think that's good.
49:17So if you want to ask me more questions,
49:20feel free to email me or tweet at me or Google+ me or all that
49:24other fun stuff.
49:26And I hope you'll check out the book
49:28because it has a lot more of that scientific research
49:30and interesting stories and more tips on how
49:32you capture attention and how attention really works.
49:35So I want to thank you all for being an awesome audience.
49:37[APPLAUSE]

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