Proverbs are largely contradictory:
– Absence makes the heart grow fonder / Out of sight, out of mind
– A stitch in time saves nine / Haste makes waste
– All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy / Idleness is the devil’s workshop
– Birds of a feather flock together / Opposites attract
– You can’t teach an old dog new tricks / Never too old to learn
– You can’t tell a book by its cover / Where there’s smoke, there’s fire
– Better safe than sorry / Nothing ventured, nothing gained
– He who hesitates is lost / Fools rush in
– Two heads are better than one / Too many cooks in the kitchen spoil the broth
All Threads
In a large scale study across OECD countries, 26% of the adult population were unable to use a computer – a stark reminder that your audience is not always like you.
In the recent conclave, clerics actually used the film (of the same name) for guidance on deciding the new Pope. The film is considered to be remarkably accurate, which is especially helpful for the clerics with little experience of Vatican politics and protocol.
When Concorde was lagging during the 1980s, its owners discovered that the passengers significantly overestimated the ticket price. “So very simply, we said, we’ll charge them what they think they are paying. And so we put the fares up”. Concorde ticket prices were doubled to over $7,000 one way (in today’s prices) and it was repositioned to provide a super-elite class for bankers, the rich, and the famous.
Should you force a user to confirm a password when they complete your form? It certainly slows things down: removing the ‘confirm password’ box increases form conversions by 56% while not negatively affecting the password reset rate.
The term ‘consumers’ is used so often that we forget there are alternatives. But when we use ‘citizens’ instead, we increase our sense of trust and fairness. Could this re-frame help us unlock a new way of approaching marketing?
Britain’s 35,000 corner shops offer more than cheap booze; Evri, a delivery company, now drops 180m parcels a year into shops, or 22.5% of all its deliveries; Customers of online-only banks, such as Monzo, can deposit cash wherever there is a PayPoint; And about 4 million households are on pre-payment gas and electricity meters, meaning they have to schlep to a shop whenever it runs out.
The self service coffee machines were inspired by photocopiers in American convenience stores: the manufacturer installs the machine free of charge in return for a slice of the profits, and all they have to do is fill the copier with paper and ink cartridges.
There are no aisle signs or in store maps at Costco. Plus, the store frequently rotates its stock and changes its layout, making it hard to know what is available and where to find it. This is all part of the store’s ‘treasure hunt’ strategy; helping customers find unexpected items and creating a unique shopping experience.
What explains the variation in uptake of the Covid-19 vaccine? For the most part it wasn’t due to technology, or availability, but cultural resistance to vaccinations. Countries like the US & Turkey had uptake of 65%, while it was over 90% in Hong Kong and Singapore.
How do you teach CPR at scale? Use a well known song. The British Heart Foundation launched a campaign starring hard man Vinnie Jones, showing how simple ‘hand-only CPR’ can be, to the iconic track ‘Stayin’ Alive’, which is the correct tempo to perform chest compressions.
Inspired by the “broken windows” theory of crime – where minor disorder leads to the potential for more severe crime – the NYPD aimed to increase enforcement around minor offences throughout the 2000s. Unfortunately, the target encouraged arrests for absurd crimes; eating doughnuts in a Brooklyn park, or subway riders placing their feet on seats at 4am.
The crime targets introduced by the Labour Party in the 1990s led to some anomalies. One police force showed a 27% decrease in “theft from a motor vehicle”, which did have a target, but a 407% increase for “vehicle interference”, which didn’t.
After the pandemic led to cruise ships being branded as “floating petri dishes,” 2024 saw a record number of passengers taking to the water for a holiday. Passenger numbers were up by 14.5% compared with 2019, which itself was a record year.