Ostrich Effect
Why people avoid information they fear, and how to use the ostrich effect in your marketing.
In this issue
Hey 👋 The Crew here.
Here’s a riddle for you:
They’re quick, they’re grand, but when things get tough—they bury their heads in the sand.
We’re talking about ostriches, of course.
But you have to admit it, these magnificent birds—and that one meme dog—aren’t the only ones who tend to ignore bad stuff and hope it will just pass on its own.
No, no, we’re not pointing fingers…
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Imagine you’ve invested in a company’s stock.
Later on, you see the value of that company declining—along with your stock. If you’re like most people, you’d probably avoid checking the market for a while, hoping the tides will turn.
You might deny it, but a 2005 study by Niklas Kaarson confirmed that’s the case—people would check their stocks more often if they were in the green, unlike those in the red.
Another study from 2012 showed that people are much more likely to ignore data on impending societal or environmental dangers—like depleting oil resources or climate change—by choice.
Sounds familiar? That’s the Ostrich effect in full force.
In a nutshell, people will often go out of their way to purposefully “miss” negative information. Especially news that may trigger stress or anxiety.
That’s visible in consumer psychology in many ways: from the shoppers’ tendency to get overwhelmed by complex checkouts to skipping “scary topics.”
So let’s see how to make them dig those heads out…
Three ways you can leverage the Ostrich effect
Make the purchase process smooth
Nothing releases stress hormones as easily as wanting to buy something and having to go over dozens of touch points to actually complete a purchase.
You can discard such users as lazy. But they’re not. They just get overwhelmed with all the data and prompts that never seem to end.
Luckily, nowadays you can mitigate this in many ways:
- Apply a one-step checkout process on your store
- Provide multiple payment option buttons to avoid any bottlenecks
- Create simple, shoppable landing pages with a smooth purchase path
Gymshark for example takes you to an express checkout that looks like this:
Order summary? Check. Express checkout? Check. Multiple payment options? Check.
You don’t even have time to look away, let alone bury your head in the ground.
Overcome objections quickly
Whenever there’s an objection, there’s an opportunity for your inner ostrich to appear.
Let’s say you want to change your diet and eat healthy. The first thing that comes to mind is that you’ll have to give up on those tasty snacks.
If not for immense willpower, you may ignore all the signals—from society, from experts, from your body—that you should start eating healthy.
However, when you see this ad:
…the biggest objection, which is taste, is already gone. And you don’t have to pretend that you don’t need healthy stuff. This one is healthy—and tasty, too!
Tackling a serious problem? Try to be witty
When you’re targeting people who are struggling with a serious issue, or want to promote an important cause—you can try to inject some humor into it.
For instance, men struggling with hair loss often lack confidence and would much rather not read about facts, or long-form copy about treatments—which can be painful, or costly.
But if you’re like HIMG—a clinic that performs hair transplant procedures—you might want to try something like this:
A simple, funny, bizarre way to send a strong message and boost confidence.
Of course, you should always be careful, as you’ll be treading a fine line between appearing humorous or condescending.
If you decide on this approach, make sure your creative team brings its A-game…
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INSTAGRAM: How does the Reels algo work? We might’ve gotten some answers from the head of Instagram himself. Adam Mosseri shared a post on Threads in which he claimed that likes and views per Reel are more important than the follower count itself. Good to know.
DATA STORY: Speaking of… Instagram recently overtook TikTok as the most downloaded app in the world. And Reels was a big part of this turnaround. How big? Well, this Data Story outlines some of the major post-Reels changes that indicate just how big of an impact they had.
X: Not all apps are growing. It seems like X’s usage had gone down 30% compared to last year. Combined with the news that X’s ad revenue is still over 60% down since Elon Musk took it over… yeah, it doesn’t bode well for the app. But let’s wait and see.
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ICYMI, last time we looked at the Conservatism Bias.
The “Flightless” Crew
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