1273: Richard Shotton & MichaelAaron Flicker | Marketing to Human Minds
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On The Jordan Harbinger Show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most fascinating people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you. Our mission is to help you become a better informed, more critical thinker through long-form conversations with a variety of amazing folks, from spies to CEOs, athletes, authors, thinkers, performers, even the occasional mafia enforcer, rocket scientist, or legendary Hollywood filmmaker. If you're new to the show or you want to tell your friends about the show, I suggest our episode starter packs. These are collections of our favorite episodes on topics like persuasion and negotiation, psychology, geopolitics, disinformation, China, North Korea, crime and cults, and more that'll help new listeners get a taste of everything we do here on the show.
Just visit jordanharbinger.com slash start or search for us in your Spotify app to get started. I'll be honest, I've read a lot of business books and case studies, and most of them, they just kind of blur together after a while. But this book that I read for the show today, there's stuff in here I genuinely never heard before. Such as why Five Guys, the burger joint, refuses to do more than one thing and somehow makes more money doing less. Why calling something healthy, food namely, can make it taste worse in your brain. Why Kraft sells a million boxes of mac and cheese per day. And yes, that number is as... upsetting as it sounds. Today, we're talking about the hidden psychology behind why we buy what we buy, why our brains take shortcuts, and how brands quietly manipulate those shortcuts every single day, sometimes brilliantly, sometimes hilariously.
Joining me today are Richard Schotten and Michael Aaron Flicker. He has two guests at the same time today. I know that's a rare one. And by the end of this episode, you're never going to look at grocery stores, menus, or Starbucks seasonal drinks the same way ever again. Here we go with Richard Schotten and Michael Aaron Flicker. I have to admit, I read a lot of business case studies in my life, right? Because I used to love doing podcasts about business, less so these days. But there's a lot of stuff in the book that I just never heard before. And some of it's quite fascinating, you know, looking at new products or the nostalgia of... What it does to marketing is pretty incredible. So I want to start with Five Guys Burgers.
One, because I've eaten there one time in my entire life, and it was so good. It's so good that I haven't gone back because I know if I go back, I'm going to keep going back, and it's going to be a problem. So they do one thing beautifully, and that's kind of their motto, and I'd love to discuss that because if you go to McDonald's, they have everything now. It's actually kind of overwhelming in some locations.
Yeah. And, you know, the story that backs up how they got to this insight, Jordan, really helps paint the picture of the bias that they ended up exposing. So I'll paint the picture for you. And then maybe, Richard, you want to knock down some of the science behind it. But 1986, we have the founder, Jerry Morrell, is at the Maryland boardwalk with four of his sons. And they're walking down the boardwalk and they're deciding if the oldest son is going to go to college or start his first company. And as they're talking, they look across the boardwalk and they see that only one of the stalls... has a line triple, quadruple the length of all the other lines. And the name of the stall is called Thrasher Fries.
And they're talking about how could this one place that only does fries be so much more popular than all the other places that serve all different types of food. And it's Jerry that gets the credit for having the insight. Maybe it's because they only do one thing really well. They must be experts. They must be so good at it that it's worth queuing up and waiting for that line. And so today, many years later, Jerry and his four sons become the original five guys.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:03–8:27
2
How did Five Guys use specialization to build a $1.6B brand?
8:27–17:00
3
What is the goal-dilution effect and how did the tomato study demonstrate it?
17:00–49:25
4
Why do people assume healthy foods taste worse and how can marketers overcome it?
49:25–1:16:45
5
How do scarcity and nostalgia make the Pumpkin Spice Latte a seasonal cash cow?
1:16:45–1:22:11
Speakers
4 identifiedMore from The Jordan Harbinger Show
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