The Fresh Start Effect
Why people feel motivated to pursue goals at new beginnings like Mondays or January, and how to use the fresh start effect in marketing.
In this issue
Hey 👋 The Crew here.
It’s the 23rd of January today.
If you had any unrealistic New Years’ resolutions, now is usually the time where you realize that they might’ve been, well… unrealistic.
But the most important thing is how you felt when you thought of them! And that’s kind of what we’ll talk about in today’s newsletter—from a marketing perspective, of course.
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We all love the phrase “clean slate.”
It’s magical. We say it, and—poof—everything before disappears. We’re ready to change old habits, old environments, old… us. And start anew.
You feel this too, right? It’s the dopamine hit when you start making New Year resolutions. Or when you finally decide to switch careers, or when you discover a new hobby.
Psychologists call this phenomenon “the fresh start effect”.
And it’s the phenomenon where people feel motivated to pursue goals and make positive life changes during temporal landmarks that represent new beginnings. Sound familiar?
A group of researchers has proven there are a wide-range of “fresh start” moments where behavioral changes are significant:
- New gym memberships rise by at least 10% every January.
- Google searches for terms like “diet” spike at the beginning of weeks and months.
Think about it. There can actually be 52 potential fresh starts each year just from Mondays alone.
The best part is, you can draw that imaginary line between old and new with your marketing strategy.
Three ways to leverage the Fresh Start Effect
Set a temporal landmark
New Year is an obvious “temporal landmark.”
But what if we told you that every product or service can establish a temporal landmark beyond the obvious?
If you’re promoting a travel app, offer discounts during seasonal events or holidays. Selling gardening gear? Spring cleaning is a perfect time for a fresh start. And so on…
Here’s how Mint—a finance app—associates spring with fresh credit score and new financial decisions:
Position your product or service as a “new start”
Sometimes when you can’t set a temporal landmark, you can just become one.
We’re not exaggerating.
Position your product or service as the literal or symbolic starting point of a better life and focus messaging on that.
You can frame anything—from restaurants to gym equipment to real estate—as a chance for a fresh start.
Also, many companies treat onboarding as a fresh start.
For example, you can emphasize transformation and change to reinforce the idea of a “better me” in your customers.
Duolingo’s onboarding was always a prime example of this:
Getting started. Setting goals. It all sets you up to become a more skillful and successful you.
Use before and after storytelling
Change lies between “before” and “after.”
You fit your product in this imaginary space and voila, you’re leveraging the fresh start effect.
How can you do this: Craft narratives that highlight a transition from an old state to a new one.
Even if you’re just selling home decorations, showing how your vase fills a bland, boring space in a before and after ad creative can be a powerful trigger.
Even agencies promote their services in a creative way:
Use visuals, testimonials, or case studies to amplify the effect. And watch what happens.
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ADVERTISING:Did you know that a 30-sec Super Bowl ad would cost you $7M last year? Yikes. But even if you can’t afford it, you can still learn something from how advertising works during the big event. This report digs into data—and provides some actionable tidbits.
SEO: AI-written or human-written? Combine the two if you want to rank higher, according to science. A new report says that AI models generate SEO content like the one that ranks well. And if you add your own touch, it will likely do better than if you wrote it from scratch. Nice.
CONTENT MARKETING:More videos, please? Apparently, TikTok and YouTube are the top platforms for those aged 18–35 in the US. So if you’re targeting a younger demographic—video is your go-to format, and TikTok and YouTube are your go-to channels.
ADVERTISING:Prices rise, click volume doesn’t. Urgh. Reports say that Google’s cost-per-click (CPC) rose 7%, while Microsoft’s grew by 7% as “AI gets in the way.” Guess automation didn’t deliver that efficiency we’d hoped for, eh?
ICYMI, last time we looked at the Commitment bias.
The “new year, new me” Crew
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