Ogilvy's famous Mindspace framework: Part I
Based on solid behavioral science principles, this essay decodes the Mindspace framework employed by ad giants Ogilvy.
Hey everyone!
I don’t have much work today so I decided I’ll write another essay. Surprise!
Anyways, so the past few days, I have been reading up on Mindspace - a framework used by the Behavioral Science team at Ogilvy to create powerful campaigns.
In this 3-part essay, we'll seek to understand the MINDSPACE framework and why is it so powerful.
The consumer decision-making process is hardly linear and is subject to multiple biases and heuristics.
As such, it's helpful to navigate this chaos and make sense of what is really at play here.
This is where the MINDSPACE framework thrives. Let's dive into it.
MINDSPACE stands for:
Messenger
Incentive
Norms
Default
Salience
Priming
Affect
Commitment
Ego
In this essay, we will discuss the first two elements of the MINDSPACE framework: Messenger and Incentives.
Messenger
The messenger, put simply, is the person from whom the customer hears things.
The messenger is the individual ( a person or company) from whom the consumer receives information. Think of this individual as a guide.
The information received is of two types: (a) Direct and (b) indirect.
Direct information deals with three factors : (a) the consumer problem (b) the solution and (c) the product best suited to bridge that cap.
Indirect information shares the first two elements as its direct counterpart but it does not "directly" sell the product.
Instead, it subtly massages the product into a wider campaign addressing the consumer problem.
An example of direct information: landing page copy, advertisements, referrals.
An example of indirect information : Blog posts, webinars, etc.
Any information - be it direct or indirect, increases in perceived value when it comes from a credible messenger. But why is such credibility important? Let me narrate a story to you to better help you understand.
A few years back, I heard about an app called Grasshopper from a friend. It's an app that helps you learn coding. When I heard about it, I subsconsciously neglected it since it came from my friend whose taste and recommendation I did not trust.
My perception was that Grashopper was a sub-optimal product and was not worth checking out. But when I went back and checked out the app - turned out it was a product from Google.
The moment my brain received that information, my entire perception of the product changed. My thinking was - " If it was a Google product, it must be legit".
The product was the same - only the messenger changed.
What also changed is the perception of my friend having poor taste. I will now be more inclined to listen to his recommendations as he has demonstrated his "credibility" in my subjective perception.
It's worth noting though that such a narrative is limited to just one aspect of the whole perception issue. How you say and what you say is also crucally important. But who says it is also equally powerful. The problem then becomes a positioning one - one which is beyond the scope of this essay.
Incentives
Incentives drive human action because they are a powerful way of presenting the same idea in a different way. Economic transactions are based on incentives.
Incentives are of two types: (a) Tangible (b) Intangible.
Tangible incentives can be touched, felt and experienced by the senses. Your house, your car, your aging parents are all tangible incentives. Let's understand this better through an example.
Imagine you have a 6-year old kid who is kidnapped. Over a phone call, the kidnapper calls you and asks for 15 million dollars in ransom.
If you fail to pay the amount, he says he will kill your child. In such a situation, you are incentivized to pay the money because the fear to lose your child is too high. This fear has crossed a certain threshold prompting you to take action.
The idea of incentives therefore, is tied closely to that of loss aversion bias. The loss aversion bias is a decision-making heuristic employed by our brains - we tend to prefer avoiding losses than acquring equivalent gains.
One of the pre-requisites for the loss-aversion bias to kick in is to have a possession or a person who you are afraid to lose. If the possession or person is not valuable enough to you, there is an insufficient incentive to compel action on your part.
Therefore, your subjective threshold for what constitutes a big enough loss is an important factor in this equation.
Which brings us to intangible incentives.
Intangible incentives are subjective in essence. Think ideas, beliefs, faiths.
Let's understand this by a example.
For this story, we'll travel all the way to Cambodia.
Cambodia is a South-eastern Asian country where the staple food is rice and fish. These foods are rich in proteins but has a low iron count.
As a result, the Cambodian population often suffers from an iron deficiency leading to child miscarriage, anaemia and even death.
To solve this problem, the people of Cambodia had to be incentivized to take iron in their meals. One of the solutions that came up was this:
The people were told to use an iron plate and insert into their cooking vessel.
That way, the iron would get soaked into the food and solve the iron deficiency problem.
But the locals were reluctant to try it out. So another solution was come up with.
It was observed that the Cambodian population worshipped fish and considered it a sign of good luck.
This was the intangible incentive that was targeted.
So the next step was to mould the iron plate into a fish shape which was the offered to the Cambodian people to use while cooking.
Vieiwing it sacred and holy, the Cambodian locals tried it out instantly and the iron deficiency dropped by 50% within a mere 9 months.
The lesson here is that incentives are powerful but the way it was tied up into the solution itself made it even more powerful.
In the next essay, we will talk about the rest of the MINDSPACE acronym.
Thank you so much for reading! If you want to get in touch, you can respond directly to this email or reach out on Twitter or LinkedIn. Always excited to meet like-minded humans!
Until next week!
— Shounak.