Every so often we share useful nuggets on behavioural science.

Here's three mind-blowing psychology studies we've come across in the course of working for our clients. We thought you'd like these!

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Every so often we use our Monkey Business newsletter to share useful nuggets, opinions, and findings as food for thought. Sign up here.

📷 What sort of imagery should you use in your advertising?

According to this study at least, you should show the product being held from the consumer’s perspective, rather than an identifiable consumer’s face.

The former had a 13% higher click-through rate.

Perhaps it’s better not to picture people when it’s an identity-related product (so that consumers can imagine themselves owning it) – alternatively, the perspective photo might make consumers imagine owning/consuming the product more vividly.

It should be noted the alternative format (‘consumer selfies’) got more likes and comments. We know that faces are attention-grabbing.

We should caveat that this is one paper. As with everything you must test things with your own context and audience. But food for thought.

🌟 SALIENCY! We tend to make most of our decisions on autopilot, following the signs and cues around us, and reacting to whatever comes into our field of attention.

Here’s a nice of example of that. This was an eight-week study in a prison. It found that when a meal was highlighted with a green ‘smiley face’ next to it, it was on average 11% more likely to be chosen. The effect was more powerful for some meals than others: turkey salad saw a fourfold increase in choice!

Of course, there are the usual caveats around the ethics of deciding what is the ‘best’ food for people, and of running experiments on a captive audience of prisoners. But still!

👜 We want luxury products to be rare, pure, and unsullied by the grubby hands of others.

That’s probably why this study found that luxury goods are perceived more favourable when they’re seen as distant from other people – for example, when the model is further away from the product in an advert, or when the mannequin is further away from it in a shop window.

On the other hand, for popular/trendy goods, the effect is reversed – we want to feel that other people have engaged with them.

If you'd like to apply this kind of behavioural science to your work... talk us.

James, Patrick and Dan

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We practically apply the science of the human mind for hard, commercial results 

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