FROM THE CREW
Hey there 👋 – The Crew here!
Want to get your hands on Part 1 of the most popular Stacked Marketer Pro Report? For free?
It’s called System 1 Manipulation, and it’s a deep dive into human mind-hacking techniques for marketers. It contains the 50 psychological levers that influence 95% of people’s decisions, along with how to ethically use them to nudge customers to buy.
What’s the catch, you ask? We are giving this away for free as a thank you for helping us out with our Salary Report 2024. All you have to do is fill in this one-minute survey here, and reply with a screenshot once you complete it.
And you will get the System 1 Manipulation Pro Report – Part 1. Big, big thanks in advance!
Reading time: 5 minutes and 12 seconds
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PSYCHOLOGICAL EFFECT
The Clustering Illusion
You flip a coin. It’s heads. Flip again. Heads. You toss it for a third time like you’re Harvey Dent. Amazing—it’s heads once more.
Now you’re excited… and you try one last time.
Heads. How can it be? You’re becoming certain that your next toss would be heads.
You’d almost bet your money on it.
But what you don’t know is that the chance of your next toss being heads is the same as it being tails. Like it always was.
This is how we fall victim to The Clustering Illusion.
Our brains are hardwired to recognize patterns.
The Clustering Illusion is a fallacy in which we believe we recognize patterns or “clusters” in random events—even when there are none.
Psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky called clustering a cognitive shortcut because the brain assumes that a small sample of data is representative of the whole.
As you can probably guess, there’s a wide range of clustering in real life—from investors making decisions based on trending stocks, to your mind tricking you that a cloud in the sky looks like someone’s face.
And you can leverage clustering to make better ads—as long as you do it ethically.
Three Tactics to Leverage Clustering Illusion
#1 – Find Patterns Where There Aren’t Any
Sometimes, things just become “trendy” at one point.
One year, you see everyone donning blue fashion. Or suddenly everyone wears drawstring backpacks. Or turtlenecks. Or everyone starts drinking excessive amounts of kombucha.
Ever wondered why?
It’s because fashion and lifestyle brands promote certain things repeatedly until it appears there’s a growing trend—or a pattern—of popularity.
And it creates a sense of urgency for you because you don’t want to miss the bandwagon.
It’s the same when it comes to jumping on trends. At the peak of Marvel’s cinematic powers, Band-Aid had this campaign:
Hulk has nothing to do with band-aid. But your mind probably connected the dots already.
#2 – Contextualize Data With Visuals
The best way to present patterns to your audience? Turn data into visuals.
That will create a perceived pattern or trend—which makes your message more convincing.
The key is to take relevant yet random bits and pieces of information and contextualize it to appeal to the viewer’s natural tendency to recognize—and believe—in these patterns.
Check out this popchips ad:
Visualizing how many you can eat compared to competitors while eating the same number of calories is presented in a well known graph pattern—one that’s happily made of chips.
#3 – Create a Sense of Familiarity
People often invent patterns if they can’t find one as long as there’s at least a little bit of familiarity in the information presented.
As a marketer, sometimes it’s up to you to create it.
Here’s how Friends of Earth brought the concept of global warming closer to the everyday consumer. It turned the concept into something you’re familiar with every day: Ice cream.
Similarly, brands often cluster data into allegories to make products and concepts easier to grasp.
Which you can do, too. As long as you don’t use it in deceiving or unethical ways, of course!
Don’t worry, we know you won’t.
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ICYMI, last time we looked at The Self-Generation Affect Effect.
The “Pattern-spotting” Crew
