The Psychology of Design

Most marketers took at least one psychology class in college but few learned to apply what they learned to their work. Watch TV or listen to the radio for an hour and think like a consumer. You’ll quickly surmise what their marketing department thought you wanted to hear, and you’ll know just how far off they really were.

Fact is, marketing is, by definition, psychology applied to business. Customers make purchase decisions based largely on the messages they receive. However, are we marketers crafting that message carefully enough?

This white paper does not attempt to teach tactics for prying open consumer’s minds and cramming the marketing message in. Rather, it attempts to ensure the message is sent and its frequency and look are interpreted by the audience accurately. They can make up their own minds as to how actionable that message is.

Like the conductor in front of his orchestra, we aim to tune and pace the message for maximum impact—we’re not trying to coerce a love of classical music.

The following sections will explore the applications of modern psychology to marketing messaging, so we can develop our messages for greater and longer-lasting impact.

Humble Extravagance

Interestingly enough, modern group psychology has a strong tendency toward a need to be humble along with a desire to be seen by the public as extravagant or luxurious.

This is not an effect of western culture. This is global. Proof can be found in Middle Eastern culture where a compliment of a fine possession is responded with an offer to give it as a gift (demonstrating humbleness). The correct response, of course, is to refuse.

In our culture, it’s shameful to ask the price of a friend’s possession, and the owner, either seem proud to explain the tremendous deal they received, or seem embarrassed, and shy away from the compliment with self-deprecating humor.

Be that as it may, no matter the price point, it’s important for marketers to cultivate a greater perception of value over cost. Whether it’s developing an atmosphere for a great purchasing story, or positioning the product or service as unlike anything else available, or cultivating a sense of exclusivity and status associated with its purchase, careful attention must be paid to how its ownership will be viewed by others.

“Humble Extravagance” is a global phenomenon of which savvy marketers can take advantage, if they understand the post-purchase psychology.

Reverse Psychology

Reverse psychology is one of the few psychological principles of which everyone is aware, but it’s rarely utilized effectively by marketers. Proposing to the board that the best way to sell more units is to tell the consumer they’re not ready to buy more units may be a tough presentation. However, the principle is as sound as it is risky.

The Reverse Campaign is to marketing what the Negative Sell is to sales. This strategy is one you’ve probably heard before—for example, when someone tells you the sports car you’re looking at is too fast, or the TV is too big, or the painting is too expensive. They tell you can’t have it, and you want it more than ever.

Humans tend to want what we can’t have. A reverse strategy is designed around positioning the product as something that might be a little too beneficial.

Rather than telling the end user that they cannot possess this product or service, convey how this product or service might work a little too well, provide too much value, or that the price will not stay this low much longer.

Use caution, however. Reverse psychology can be too effective. They may just believe you and move on.

Practice Makes Permanent

Reach (the ability for your message to touch a large audience) and Frequency (the number of times each prospect is touched by your message) are subjects forever in debate among marketers as to which is more important to generate a response to a given campaign.

Modern psychology tells us that repetition (frequency) does not necessarily increase the rate at which someone will respond to a message. Variety (reach) in the message does not do the trick, either. The only thing guaranteed to increase action rates is retention, the audience’s ability to remember the message when the time comes to do something about it.

Memory is a tricky thing. There are numerous ways to increase retention rates, but when it comes to reach versus frequency, studies have shown a greater correlation with reach. In other words, message retention goes up the more varied the media, timing and tactics used.

Think about it. Which is more memorable: seeing the same ad for weight loss pills every night on the same channel at the same time, or hearing a radio ad, seeing a TV spot, getting a post card in the mail, and stumbling across their website all in the same day?

To increase marketing message retention, shy a little away from repetition and look at diversifying your message across many mediums and using a variety of tactics. It’s possible you’ll get your cake and eat it too.

A Man Goes into a Bar…

Recall an ad that hasn’t run in years and five to one it’s humorous. Can you remember the name of the company or product it was promoting?

People don’t generally memorize jokes in their entirety. Rather, they memorize the punch line and make up the lead-in as they go. The difference between a humorous ad in which you remember the product or business name and the one you don’t is how carefully the Brand is inserted into the punch line.

This is easier said than done, but consider the reason the Budweiser frogs croaked the name of the Brand, rather than just croaking the name of the product. “B. Eeee. Errrrr. BBBEEEEERR.”—just doesn’t stand out.

I Heard About That

In the Information Age, those “in the know” are often held in regard. Similarly, familiarity can build a significant feeling of credibility to an audience. No one wants to be “out of the loop.”

Familiar media like TV, Radio and Print conveys credibility, but not action. Few write down the phone number rattled off during a radio ad, but many recall the Brand, and that’s good enough when the product or service’s credibility is on the line.

It should be mentioned that mass media speaks to a massive audience. That audience is already under siege by a mind-blowing amount of marketing messages every day. By speaking through a common media, you can build credibility, but you’re 30 seconds away from another, totally unrelated message or worse, a click away from another channel.

Optical Delusions

With art, unlike almost anything else, the strictest attention must be paid to the rules in order that they may be broken. We’ll look at a couple of rules and ways to make sure you’re breaking them to draw the audience’s attention instead of distracting them.

It’s been said that a well chosen font is invisible, but a foolish choice is unmistakable. As a rule of thumb, don’t use more than two fonts per piece and make sure you have a very good reason not to use common fonts like Verdana, Arial or Helvetica.

Consider the adjacent example with “I miss you” printed in five different fonts. Without changing the words or the colors, the fonts each tell a different story. Whether the subject we’re missing is  a serial killer, a friend, or a computer, each typeface conveys a different and confusing story because of poor font choice.

Color

Studies show that sight and color are the last senses people are willing to lose. Color has real meaning to us. There are feminine colors, masculine colors, cold, hot, complimentary and contrasting colors.

Color also provokes moods such as comfort, warning, energy and danger. Professional designers and artists have the talent to think in terms of color wheels combining colors that look and feel the way that suits their purpose best. Listen to your designers.

Contrasting Layout

Contrasting layouts do not quite dissect evenly into thirds, fourths, or sixths, as the commonly accepted ‘Rule of Thirds’ recommends. Determining alignment is a lot like arranging musical chords. Broken layout rules are like sour notes. Remember, a greater portion of the human eye is sensitive to contrast than to color. Misalignment is often interpreted as contrast by the eye.

It takes a professional with the talent and sensitivity to these and countless other design rules to be able to break them for a reason. All the eye mapping analysis you can afford won’t effectively coax the eye to pay attention to subtle cues in your marketing materials’ design the way a layout from professional designers can.

Rule of Thirds

The preceding pictures, courtesy of Marea Downey Photography, illustrate what happens when the same photo isn’t cropped according to the rule of thirds. The top picture appears incomplete and loses the eye’s focus. The bottom follows the rule and focuses the eye on the house and its proximity to the sea.

What’s in it for me?

Humans rarely act without incentive. The marketing message should answer the question, “What’s in it for me?” This can best be answered by using an incentive. Incentives come in many shapes and sizes, but pretty much fall into three categories: informational, functional, and executable.

Informational offers have a much higher extrinsic than intrinsic value. For example, a proprietary report highlighting the latest research influencing purchase decisions costs very little per report if you’re sending out thousands. However, it has tremendous value to the individual prospective customer, as obtaining that information on their own would be prohibitively expensive.

Functional offers are those which have some degree of shelf life. They should be relevant to the recipient, and advance the message in some way. Stay away from mouse pads or other overused products. Instead, look into complimentary products or services for a promotion. For example, everyone has an MP3 player now. Don’t give away iPods. Give away iTunes subscriptions. Complimentary products like this convey value as well as an understanding of your audience. You simply can’t appear of touch with your target market.

Executable offers are probably the most common. They depend on the audience taking some action. “Buy one Get one,” “Buy now and we’ll double your order,” “Buy now and save later,” are executable incentives.

What’s in it for you?!

The modern consumer is as informed as they are skeptical. Their skepticism should be addressed in your marketing message. A common mistake is to offer something that seems too good to be true without explaining how it really works.

The latest example of this is the “FreeLaptop.com” businesses. Here they offer a free laptop to those who go online to their site and register for a free laptop. Without explaining a little about the business model, most are left very skeptical. If they were to explain that they will be providing discounts on products and services from their exclusive partners and will send you a free laptop for subscribing to the advertising service, more late-adopters would opt-in, understanding the trade-off.

Resist the Monkey!

The final topic we’ll cover in this white paper is the Psychology of Intrigue.

Our eyes can’t take in everything at once, so the mind fills in the gaps. We are unable to remember each explicit detail so our mind manufactures what’s missing, tying in the notes our mind took at the time we received the information. The human mind is an eight pound guessing machine, so what happens when it receives an incomplete marketing message? It goes to work trying to solve the puzzle.

Teaser campaigns play on our interest in solving partial messages.

The key is to make that partial message so strange or provoking that the mind can almost make out the answer, but never quite does—until the campaign’s conclusion.

A similar take on the psychology of intrigue is the innovative, or just plain weird. Nothing can make your message stand out, be remembered and even discussed more than a strange, incomplete message. The next time you’re in a good loud cocktail party, shout these words just loud enough for those near you to hear, “I don’t know. It started with a friendly monkey, and…” and then trail off. You’ll see the power of intrigue.

All Good Things…

By understanding the impact psychology has on marketing, we are able to more precisely convey our marketing message to an interested audience. What they do with the message is a topic for another white paper.