Bias for action is a mental error that causes us to act even when inaction is the best decision. First, let’s see how Coca-Cola executives made that mistake. And then how to avoid it to make better decisions. In the 80s, Pepsi started its famous ad campaign on TV. The Pepsi Challenge. Pepsi made consumers…
Category: How Brands Win
The Law Of Reciprocity: Vito Corleone’s Favorite Tool to Build Influence
In 1985, Ethiopia was in a humanitarian crisis. Civil war, poverty, famine… Ethiopians dealt with many calamities at the same time. The suffering was immense. As these disasters were ongoing, newspapers covered a story about a five thousand dollars aid between Mexico and Ethiopia. But one detail surprised everybody. The side that sent the aid…
Flywheel Effect: How Businesses Go From Good To Great
What is the flywheel effect? The Flywheel Effect is a framework that shows how businesses become great by building a virtuous cycle. Jim Collins defined it in his book Good to Great after he researched patterns of successful companies. In this article, you’ll see how Jeff Bezos’s meeting with Collins shaped Amazon’s fate. And how…
How To Think In Funnels (And Achieve The Best Possible Outcomes)
Thinking in funnels is a mental model that breaks down your goals into different stages. So you can improve the conversion at each stage to achieve the best possible outcomes. We’ll start with a marketing story from the 1890s to understand how it was born. And finish with how to think in funnels. Let’s go.…
The Law of Diminishing Returns: How To Do More With Less
What is the law of diminishing returns? The law of diminishing returns is a concept from economics that indicates after a certain point, increasing only one input starts producing fewer returns. Let’s see how Henry Ford used it to increase the productivity of Ford workers with fewer working hours. And how you can do the…
How To Think In Systems (And Why McDonald’s Has a University)
Ray Kroc was a milkshake mixer salesman. One day, he received an order of 8 mixers from an unknown restaurant. He didn’t believe it at first. 8 mixers could make 48 milkshakes at once. Why would a single restaurant need that many milkshakes? So he decided to visit the restaurant to see what was going on. And…
Salience Bias: How to Become Unforgettable
In 2011, Patagonia made an unusual advertising campaign. They told people the opposite of what a clothing brand wants customers to do. “Don’t buy this jacket.” And you know the best part? They published it on Black Friday. So imagine this. You open a newspaper that day and see pages of ads from different brands.…
Uncertainty Matrix: How To Deal With Uncertainty (And Gain From It)
In early 2002, the Bush administration decided to invade Iraq. To put the plan into action, they started working on shaping public opinion. The main argument was Iraq’s “weapons of mass destruction.” But the press was not convinced. In one of the news briefings, journalists questioned Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld about the lack of…
Critical Mass In Business: How To Reach “The Success Moment”
Everything is hard at the beginning. Started a business? Good luck finding your first 50 customers. New social media account? Getting your first 10,000 followers takes forever. People put in the effort (and money) for months, but don’t get any visible return back. It’s frustrating. So most people quit at this stage. Crossing the valley of…
Synergy In Business: How YouTube went from near failure to global dominance
In April 2005, YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim uploaded the first video on the platform: Me at the zoo. And the platform went live. The founders expected YouTube to succeed. But nobody imagined it would happen that fast. People loved uploading and watching videos. In one year, YouTube reached 25 million daily views. And new users kept coming.…