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Stop promoting your product. Start promoting your process.

New research suggests a powerful way to stand out in a cluttered market is to share how you make your product, not just what it is.

Consumers perceive traditionally made products as having better quality and being better for society.  For example, chocolate described as being made with a “traditional” process was believed to be of higher quality by research participants, and they were willing to pay 10% more...

Most of the letters and emails I receive are ‘safe’.

I was discussing this with a client the other day. 

Her communications specialist had drafted an email that was long winded, bureaucratic and entirely unengaging.

Lots of words, lots of waffle.

But being ‘safe’ is a risk.

Because you risk being ignored.

That’s fine if you want your message to be overlooked.

But if you want to engage? 

Be bold.

Learn how to write behaviourally effective...

Did you know you shouldn’t use “you” on your website’s help page, but you should on your home page?

Or that you should only use “we” with some types of customers and “you and us” with others?

Getting personal pronouns like “you, me and we” right is important. 

So important that using them in the right way can increase your revenue by up to 7%, and getting them wrong can lose you customers.

In this video, I share which...

Horrified.

That’s how I felt after watching an Apple TV ad spruiking its AI (Apple Intelligence) for emails.

It’s a business lunch with a writer meeting to discuss a pitch she’d emailed actor Bella Ramsey.

Bella, who obviously hasn’t read the email, quickly reaches for her phone and reads the AI generated summary of it, helping her feign knowledge of the project.

She lies, effectively.

The writer gets excited and says “Great, I’ll tell them...

“But I wasn’t properly trained!”

It’s a familiar excuse when people are found in breach of some sort of requirement. 

• During Covid it was protective equipment protocols.
• In restaurants, food handling standards.
• In organisations, security or privacy regulations.

But what does properly trained actually mean?

To be properly trained means behaviour needs to change.

We need to influence people to do X instead of Y.

Yet most training programs are based on...

How do you know when to walk away?

Let’s say you are trying to crowdsource funding for a new product using a platform like Kickstarter to attract and secure investors.

It’s a nervous wait, and if fundraising doesn’t go to plan, there are two paths to follow.

You can let things run their course, deciding not to invest more resources into the process, or you can make changes to the product to try to capture new interest.

But what factors influence that decision?...

Want to keep a journal but struggle to establish the habit?

A few years ago I created a super simple, behaviourally informed format that I use every single day. I call it the "Quad-al technique".

It works so well because:

• takes less than 5 minutes;
• it's structured without being constrictive; and
• it access different parts of your brain.

I explain it, along with the science behind it in this clip.

For more on habits, you might find my book The How of Habits useful.

Snails are amazing, the way they lug their homes on their back. 

It’s quite the balancing act:

• Too heavy a shell, they can’t move.
• Too flimsy, it doesn’t protect them, which curtails their freedom.

It’s a balancing act humans are subject to, as well.

We’re constantly assessing what level of risk to carry before we compromise either freedom or safety. 

• Yes, I can post on social media, but what if I attract hate?
• Yes, I can buy your services,...

 "Human nature is perpetual. In most respects, it is the same today as in the time of Caesar. So the principles of psychology are fixed and enduring. You will never need to unlearn what you learn about them.” - Copywriter Claude Hopkins*

 And as if to prove this, Claude wrote these words in 1923.

Imagine enjoying a few hours of training and coming away with skills you can use everyday for the rest of your life. That's what I'd like to offer you.

...

Outcome bias is our tendency to judge a decision by its eventual outcomes instead of the quality of the decision at the time it was made. 

In other words, that decision you make today, feeling pressured or frustrated, will be judged without the benefit of context.

No one will care what was happening to you or around you – they’ll only care how your decision turned out.

Two things to consider:

1. Next time you feel overwhelmed and uncertain about what to do, imagine...