Category: insight
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Why Clever People Believe Stupid Things
This is the title of a chapter in Ben Goldacre's excellent book 'Bad Science'. In it, he talks about inherent bias – the kind of false beliefs or 'cognitive illusions' that come from the shortcuts we use to simplify complex problems when we reason informally, and that can often mean (to paraphrase Ben): 1. We…
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Bots And People
"Ask yourself this: do you think Wikipedia ever hired an SEO consultant in order to get its high rankings on Google?" Jeremy Keith I posted this quote (via armandoalves) over on the Tumblr the other day because it makes such a good point about the rounded benefits of good, people focused content. There are of-course…
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Continous Partial Media Attention
Gareth's post about MP3s and the peak attention thing reminded me of these three sobering stats (from here) concerning media multitasking (or should I say continuous partial attention): 36% of UK broadband users (aged 16-55) state they have both the TV and Internet on in the same room every day. On weekdays the time when…
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Conformity Has A Higher Value Than Diversity
"So many innovation processes are simply toxic to creating conditions in which people feel moved to acknowledge real needs. Bureaucracies flourish by subordinating spontaneous human responses and awareness to standardised systems. Organisational hierarchy means we're going to be guarding our status before we share anything resembling our vulnerability"Johnnie Moore I think we consistently underestimate the…
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The Social Ape
"We spend almost all our time attempting to change behaviour through overt persuasion – while paying no attention to influencing the other, barely conscious ways in which people behave." Rory Sutherland Of all the marcomms (and vaguely related) books I've read over the past few years there have been a few that have really stuck…