Richard Shotton

That's something you can picture and visualize.

Apple didn't say...

You get a gigabyte of memory when they first launched the iPod.

They said a thousand songs in your pocket.

You can picture a pocket, can't picture a gigabyte or a megabyte.

So I think what those businesses and copywriters did so successfully is translate that abstract objective into something that people could picture.

I think one of the most powerful things they've done, and you may have covered this with Rory Sutherland, was apply this principle of price relativity.

So a core concept of behavioral science is when people are weighing up what a product is worth paying for, they don't look at the benefits that product brings themselves.

and then try and translate that on a universal yardstick.

So they don't think to themselves, okay, well, a can of Red Bull will give me one unit of happiness and I will pay $1 per unit of happiness, whether it's a pair of jeans or a soft drink.

People don't do that because it's a complex question.

Daniel Kahneman argued when people face complex questions, what they tend to do, even if they don't realize it, is replace the complex question with a simpler alternative.

And the simpler alternative is how much did I pay for something similar?

So if a new item like Red Bull launches, if it's more than a similar purchase, people think it's bad value.

If it's less than a similar purchase, people think it's good value.

Now, when you first hear that, it sounds bleeding obvious.

But actually, that's a very powerful insight for a marketer.

Because if you accept that value is perceived relatively rather than absolutely, what it leads to is thinking, if I can change my mental comparison set, I can change the willingness of my consumer, you know, the willingness to pay.

Well, this, I would say, is the Red Bull thing.

I mean, it could be the Rolls Royce.