Cognitive Distortions & Marketing

I think everyone should learn about the most common cognitive distortions (or thinking errors) as we are all subject to them. Importantly, I have increasingly witnessed political campaigns playing to many of these errors to achieve their intended ends. I believe this is highly unethical. But understanding what these errors are will help you understand how people (including you) can be and are being manipulated. And, as I am sure you know, politicians aren't the only ones playing to these errors. Anyone who is trying to sell you something has a tendency to do this if he or she knows about these errors and is less than completely ethical.

Here are some of the most common errors:

• Anchoring bias - you are over reliant on the first piece of information that you see or on the first belief to which you were exposed
• Conservatism bias - you tend to favor prior evidence or thinking over new evidence or thinking, causing you to be slow to change
• Confirmation bias - only seeing those things that confirm your preconceived notions, including any prejudices or other biases 
• Choice-supportive bias - when you have chosen something, you tend to feel more positive about that thing
• Dunning-Kruger effect - people of low ability have illusionary superiority and mistakenly assess their cognitive ability to be greater than it is
• Overconfidence - this is a variation of the Dunning-Kruger effect that might appear in people of any cognitive ability level
• Availability heuristic - you overestimate the importance of the information that is available to you over other information that is not
• Filtering (or selective perception) - seeing only what you want to see while filtering out the rest
• Clustering illusion - seeing what you want to see in random patterns or events
• Polarized (or black & white) thinking - if it is not this, then it must be that - there is no room for gray areas, complexity or nuance
• Negative bias - you tend to believe in and respond more to the negative than the positive, related to this, you act more out of fear than hope or vision
• Overgeneralization - making generalized conclusions based on one or a very few data points
• Jumping to conclusions - making a snap judgement before all of the facts are in - deciding on the outcome prior to the analysis
• Magnifying or minimizing the scale of an event or problem - blowing it out of proportion or significantly downplaying it
• Oversimplifying - taking something complex and simplifying it to the degree that it cannot be properly understood or addressed
• Bandwagon effect - this is a form of groupthink in which you are more confident in a position that a large number of people seem to share
• Fundamental attribution error - you overemphasize your personal uniqueness
• Always being right - assuming that you are always right and that anyone who disagrees with you must be wrong
• Projection bias - you think people think like you, agree with you and support your point of view whether they do or not
• Labeling - you might label something to make it look bad, argue against it or lump it with others in a larger group - you might also mislabel something
• Emotional reasoning - making decisions based on how you feel rather than objective reality
• Personalizing - taking everything personally, holding yourself personally responsible for something that was not completely within your control
• Blaming - this is the opposite of personalizing - with this error, you do not take personal responsibility; rather you point the finger at others
• Fallacy of change - thinking that others need to change for you to be happy
• Confusing correlation with causation - just because two things appear to be correlated does not mean that one caused the other
• Framing effect - you accept or reject something based on how it was framed
• Context effect - for instance, luxury items only advertised in upscale magazines and sold in upscale retail outlets are perceived to be of higher quality
• Taking something out of context - without context, something might be interpreted completely differently
• Observing just a portion of the whole - you might observe data points that contradict the general trend, for instance, if you choose a different shorter or more limited timeframe
• Placebo effect - believing that something will have a specific effect often causes it to have that effect
• Authority bias - you tend to follow people in authority rather than your own conscience - you chose authority over your own decisions
• Illusory truth effect (or reiteration effect) - the more something is repeated, the more you think it is true even if it isn't
• Scarcity effect - the more scarce you think something is, the more you want it - this applies to exclusivity
• Recency - tending to weigh the more recent information more heavily
• Zero-risk (or loss aversion) bias - you would rather avoid any risk even if slight risk would result in a large reward
• Pro-innovation bias - getting overly excited about anything new
• Action bias - you prefer action over anything else even if the action is ill-conceived and dangerous or dysfunctional
• Decoy effect - often marketers feature one or more items at a very high price (or a much poorer value) to make the other higher priced (or better value) items seem more reasonable
• The choice paradox - the more choices you have the more anxious you feel

I could provide an example of how each of these cognitive errors was used in sales, marketing, persuasion or manipulation, but I will provide just five examples and leave it to you to think about how the others can be and are being used in this way.

• Emotional reasoning - consider pharmaceutical advertisements in which there is an emotionally appealing scene of two lovers strolling through a field of wildflowers while the company is quickly mentioning the possible negative side effects of the drug
• Labeling - consider the way our current US president labels his enemies as a way to make them seem less desirable 
• Framing effect - this is what almost every public relations firm specializes in - marketing copywriters are also expert at this
• Decoy effect - this is why many realtors show house hunters the highest priced, poorest value house first
• Scarcity (or exclusivity) effect (and context effect) - this explains while luxury brands such as Vilebrequin limit their distribution to only a small number of upscale shopping centers in carefully targeted upscale markets

Brands and Salespeople

Not much has been written about this topic. Salespeople are in the field selling your brand each and every day. They are motivated financially to sell, sell, sell. As a vice president of marketing, I have worked with sales forces quite a bit. For many companies, they are the front line manifestation of your brand. 

Because salespeople are so strongly motivated to maximize sales and because that is their primary (if not only) objective, not much else is of concern to them. Often, this leads them to say anything to close the sale. They will promise things the brand cannot or does not want to deliver - products or product features, services, even a certain level of responsiveness. They might also talk about the brand in a way that is "off strategy" to get the sale. Many salespeople will promise whatever it takes to get the sale. Another problem is messaging. If your organization is decentralized and your salespeople have a lot of latitude in creating localized marketing materials, the messages can be way "off strategy."

I have encountered situations in which the salespeople have presented premium brands as discount brands and vice versa to make the sale. Think of the confusion this might cause. I am not implying that every salesperson is "off brand" in his or her approach to selling. I am saying that they need extra help to stay on message because of their strong incentive to sell no matter what. 

Here is what you can do to help them. First, create a digital asset management system that allows for the right amount of flexibility in locally created marketing materials. This system will insure that the brand's identity is presented correctly and that key brand messages remain intact. It also gives the brand manager visibility to what is being created in the field. It is a useful feedback loop that can result in productive discussions with the sales force. Second, create detailed selling scripts for the brand and for each family of products. Train the sales force in using these scripts. Integrated the brand's elevator speech in the selling script. Make sure each salesperson can articulate the brand's elevator speech correctly. Finally, work with the sales force to develop the most useful brand collateral materials and other selling tools.

If you do these things, you can transform your sales force into strong brand advocates. 

And, don't forget, your sales force is your front line. They interact with your customers daily. They are a great source of competitive intelligence, informal customer research and feedback on whether your brand position and messaging are working. They can help immensely in informing the the refinement of your brand's position. 

The sales force can be a great partner in building the brand if you provide them with the proper tools and messaging. If you do not, they may work against what you are trying to accomplish for your brand. When managing your brand, don't forget about the sales force.