Phill Agnew
speaker
40 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jul 2026
last heard 2 Jul
Phill Agnew’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Embracing Marketing Mistakes · From Petrified Wood to Pints Social Proof Gone Wrong · 2 Jul 2026
podcast
The classic one, the really funny one is, because we've spoken about social proof already, there's this concept of negative social proof.
So social proof is very powerful.
We do follow the actions of other people.
But sometimes marketers get confused and they share that lots of people are doing an action which the marketer would consider undesirable.
And they put that in their campaign.
And that actually influences the wrong behavior.
So let me give an example.
This was a study in universities.
I think it was a European university.
that wanted to reduce the amount of binge drinking on campus.
In fact, if it was binge drinking, it must have been a British university.
So let's assume it was a British one.
They wanted to reduce the amount of binge drinking.
And so they said the average student drinks eight pints a week.
This is way above the suggested amount you need to reduce the amount you're drinking.
Actually, if you understand social proof, you realize by saying the average student drinks eight pints a week will make everybody who drinks less think, oh, my God, I need to drink more.
I'm such a loser.
And maybe those who drink more think, oh, yeah, cool.
I'm above average here.
god that's quite cool isn't it so you're encouraging wrong behavior and then that study they actually found that drinking increased when they showed that this is um there's another example as well yeah i know i know it's hilarious and there's another example from an arizona park where people were stealing this petrified wood which is crystallized wood really really precious and
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