Introduction to the Science of Cool
Melina Palmer: Welcome to episode 581 of the Brainy Business, Understanding the psychology of why people buy. In today’s episode, I’m excited to introduce you to Dr. Troy Campbell to discuss the science of cool. Ready? Let’s get started.
Announcer: You are listening to the Brainy Business podcast, where we dig into the psychology of why people buy and help you incorporate behavioral economics into your business, making it more brain friendly. Now, here’s your host, Melina Palmer.
Melina Palmer: Hello. Hello, everyone. My name is Melina Palmer and I want to welcome you to the Brainy Business podcast. Have you ever wished that you or your brand was cooler? Side note, the way I just debated in my head about whether or not to say cooler or more cool shows that I definitely have some room for improvement in this area. But most of us think that cool is inherent. It’s something you have or you don’t. An unspoken quality that just sort of manifests itself in the right condition. If you try too hard, you’re gonna definitely miss the mark. It turns out there’s actually a science to being cool. Good news for us nerds over here. And in this refreshed episode, Dr. Troy Campbell is here to share all about it. He is the chief scientist at On Your Feet and founder of Luminate House and a repeat guest here at the Brainy Business. He’s always so fun to talk to. I know you’re gonna love his approach of bringing a scientific mind and artistic heart to everything he does. As you listen today, I encourage you to consider if your brand is cool and if so, in what circles and where would you want to be cooler? Really quickly, before we get into the conversation, I want to be sure you know there are links in the show notes for my top related past episodes and books, ways to get in touch and more. It’s all waiting for you in the app you’re listening to and at thebrainybusiness.com/581. Dr. Troy Campbell, welcome to the Brainy Business podcast. Now let’s jump right in. Dr. Troy Campbell, welcome to the Brainy Business podcast.
Dr. Troy Campbell: Hi, Melina, how’s it going?
Melina Palmer: Great, thanks. Lovely to see you again as always, and excited that we’re doing the interview. I know we’ve talked a few times over the last, I don’t know, three, four, six months, something like that.
Integrating a Scientific Mind and Artistic Heart
Dr. Troy Campbell: Yeah. I’m very glad that I emailed you on my mission of I need to talk to people in this field who I haven’t talked to and use the advantage, the few advantages of the fact that we were all at home for so long and yeah, it’s been great talking with you. I just love how much energy you have around truly applying the full suite of behavioral science. Right. It’s not just we’re going to bring in a default effect. It’s we’re going to bring in identity things, social things and all of that. So I’m super excited to talk and love your new book as sort of a guide for people to really use all of this because there is so much here to make everything better, from policy to the next date you go on with your significant other better.
Melina Palmer: I love it. Well, thank you so much for those kind words. Tell us a little bit about how you got into behavioral science. So for everybody who’s new to you, tell a little bit about, you know, your background, how you got into this crazy world of behavioral science, and how much you love it. Because I know that.
Dr. Troy Campbell: Yeah. So my sort of short thesis statement that if anybody’s been to my website, it says, I believe that everything can be awesome when you have a scientific mind and an artistic heart. And sort of my short origin story is that I was always the science kid, but I was always more interested in people than protons and entertainment than electrons. And I really struggled in school because I was very good at the science thing, but I wasn’t happy with it. And then I went into university and I went to the humanities because I was like, oh, there’s my artsy side, there’s the people side. And again, I wasn’t happy. And then all of a sudden, I walked into a psychology class, which I took out of just a pure recommendation from a friend. And immediately it was like I’d found myself because on that stage, the person was talking in the language that I was competent at—science—with the things that I cared about—people. And also—and something that unfortunately I’ve seen less of as I’ve got into it—it was about all the things. It was about, there was a class literally about love on Valentine’s Day. And it was about designing, you know, your experiences in your life. Of course there were things like habits and defaults and cognitive biases, but it was all these other things. And I think that behavioral science sort of gets this image of the field of “we do habits and default bias.” And of course no one’s going to go to that field when they want to design a roller coaster or something. And yet that is what we actually have to offer. We have the closest thing to a magic spell book that I think exists. Of course you need to learn how to do Wingardium Leviosa, right? You need to learn all the skills, I think it’s just absolutely amazing. And I wrote a cover letter that literally started with, “I’ve always been the science kid, but I’ve always been interested in people and protons.” And that got me both into Duke University’s PhD program, which I did with Dan Ariely, who’s a very fun “use all the science” person, and Disney Imagineering. And since then I’ve worked with Disney and Netflix and Nike and Apple and Microsoft and Comic-Con, and lots of boutique brands. Not a complete sellout as well. And just bringing this behavioral science and trying to be this person that wants to champion behavioral science as part of everything.
Melina Palmer: Yeah, well, and I love of course the Disney side. There’s an episode on Disney which will be linked in the show notes as well as when I interviewed Dan on the show. And there’s so much fun and you know, today we talked about discussing the science of cool and how you can take just an understanding of the brain and decision making and what kind of makes us tick. That’s cool and fun and anticipation and enjoyment and brain chemicals and all that. So how did that all, I guess come together for you to be in the science of cool? And of course I love the “Everything is/can be awesome” because I know when we had communicated, I don’t know if I had shared, but like—love The Lego Movie. Come on. Gotta love this.
Dr. Troy Campbell: Yeah. So maybe we’ll talk about… Let’s delay the cool thing for a half a second, but I guess I’ll tell one other little origin story about sort of behavioral science and then we’ll talk about cool as this really great case example of it. So The Lego Movie was out when I was in graduate school and it has this song that I loved and other people find annoying. But it’s “Everything is Awesome,” right? And I was listening to that song and I thought, well, everything isn’t awesome, but everything can be awesome. Right? And there’s all these lines from the song, right? “Stepped in mud, got new brown shoes. It’s awesome to win, it’s awesome to lose.” Oh, that’s a framing effect. “Everything is awesome when you’re part of a team.” That’s a social effect. And so I ended up creating this lecture out of it called “Everything Can Be Awesome,” where I put a bunch of Lego bricks up and I said, look, behavioral science is the building blocks of this. And I was a graduate student at Duke, so I didn’t teach much. And it was actually one of the first real lectures I had designed for students other than about my research, which I would be doing in the public. And the response I got from that lecture was just unbelievable because what I did was I said, what is the thing that you think is awesome? And everybody wrote either a musical artist down—lots of the kids wrote a musical artist, which is a preface for the cool lecture—but people wrote, you know, travel, they wrote sports. And then I had just nine of my favorite behavioral science principles up there. Some from what I call the social elements, the identity elements, and then other, like, design elements. And I said, is your thing awesome because of one of these nine things? Because of the way it links people together, relates to your identity, the way that it paces, the way it creates anticipation? And everybody could find them, right? And so everybody in the room immediately realized the thing they love—and in many of the cases, the thing they would love to make themselves—can be distilled with behavioral science. And so it was just a wonderful way. And then also when we were to teach other, like, more simple things and things that we’re less excited about but are necessary, like how to have a resume, how to market something, you know, how to set up a meeting, we would use the cool. We would use the examples of what their artist does at a music festival. And then we’d use that to talk about expectation effects. And then we’d say, well, a meeting should have the right expectation effects. Here’s how J. Cole does that at a concert. Here’s how J. Cole sees the audience and makes everybody feel included through multi-storytelling and multi-narrative and side identities. Here’s how you can do this with your team. And it was just this wonderful experience to see that, look, our field has this, and people can learn it very quickly through the lens of what they already know and love.
Designing Engaging Meetings with Psychological Principles
Melina Palmer: How would you recommend applying some of that to a meeting? I feel like that’s a problem that a lot of people would have a lot—a lot of boring meetings, especially as, like, you know, Zoom burnout these days. So how would you apply some of those insights to meetings?
Dr. Troy Campbell: So, yeah, so I’m the chief scientist at a firm called On Your Feet. And we are a group that brings more joy, less fear, and better results to everything in business. Sometimes that’s actually making business itself better, and sometimes that’s actually making their, like, external campaigns better. But, one thing that we’ve had to do a lot this year, both in practice and in teaching people, is have better meetings. And so one of the just general things that we really think about with meetings is we take this concept from Disney called a portal. And a portal is a slow transitional space. It’s at the start of the ride, it’s the queue—it gets you ready for the ride and it transitions you into the right mindset. And a good portal transitions you into the right mindset, the right expectation, and creates the narrative metaphor of going somewhere different. So a huge thing we do with meetings is have the right warm-up for the meeting. And different meetings need different warm-ups. And this is especially important when you’re in different spaces. And so a warm-up could be as simple as let’s tell a story together one word at a time. Because today we need to do a lot of collaboration, or today we need to do a strategic thing. So let’s use some if-then statements to be super logical. So if you visit Portland, what is the best donut place to go to? Well, if you value bacon on your donut, then you should go to Voodoo. But if you’re a hipster elitist, then you should go to Blue Star. Right? And these are just funny statements. But it’s getting the right mindsets right, and it’s just basic psychology which is activate the right mindset and it goes very, very far. Our other thing that we like to talk about is tell the story of the meeting. So it’s an advanced way to do objectives at the start of it. Remember, people process things easiest usually through narrative. And so you tell the story of the meeting. So you don’t just start with the objectives. You say, we used to be here and we did this, and we did this. Now we’re here. Today we are going to do this and then after today we will do this. And so it gets the mind of “where am I in this process?” so I know what is necessary to accomplish. And so those two things, a warm-up which could take 30 seconds, but usually is better from a one to five-minute level, and this story of the meeting—it’s going to utterly transform what you’re going to do.
Melina Palmer: And so how much change would there be? So like you said, like collaboration. So you do the one-word story process and do you have to get really deep into what the story is going to be about or anything? Or are you just sort of like “once upon a time…” blah? It doesn’t matter what the story’s about. The point is just working together.
Dr. Troy Campbell: Yeah. So one of our favorite things to do is to take a movie trailer format. So it’s “in a world where…” Right? And everybody knows that format. Right? So in a world where… And then the first person says “dogs,” second person “have,” third person “inherited,” and then so on, “the planet comes the last human who…” And then you just tell a story together. And what you’re doing is you’re using a format that people know very well and you’re giving them a way to participate, which is you’re giving them one word. And I love giving people one word because if you’re stuck you can always just use the word “the” or “and” and put it on the next person. And it’s just this very, very simple way to warm up. I mean other ways we have people warm up is we just put them into breakout groups and we say tell the story of a nickname you had or something like that. Right? Just a personal warm-up because really the thing you need to just warm up is people talking and chatting and being with each other. Which in non-virtual spaces is sort of usually accomplished by the fact that you walk in and start talking to the person sitting next to you over a bagel sometime. And we replicate that. And what I love about what I just told you is it’s the same principle that we used at Disney to create your favorite rides. It’s the same principle that makes that queue and that first transitional room into Indiana Jones where you go through the door and you wait and you’re like, “oh, this is the type of adventure I’m going on, I’m getting in this right mindset,” which is different than the adventure on Space Mountain, which is different than the adventure on Alice in Wonderland. And it’s the same thing, and it’s just this sort of beautiful idea of this—that whenever we’re designing we should look to these amazing people as examples and the science, which sort of is going to relate to what we talk about with cool. Which is when I teach a software brand that is not like a “cool” brand like Microsoft, but a very, very what we think of as stodgy brand to be cool, we’re going to use their favorite rapper or country artist and the science of cool to help them design their messages and engagements.
Melina Palmer: Yeah, so I would use as far as linking for some stuff in the show notes for this. So we were talking about like setting that stage. That’s our priming, right? We’re priming for the experience that we want people to have. And also when Michelle Auerbach was on the show we were talking about storytelling and the importance of that when we were talking about in person. Something that we’ve both used are Story Cubes, which are a fun thing. I don’t know if you’ve ever used them before, Troy, but they’re like little dice basically, and each one has a weirdly sort of hand-drawn picture on it. And so you roll the dice and then everybody has to pick. So if you roll eight or something at your table and then you’d say you have to tell a story that connects to at least two of what you see here. So it’s like a bee and someone jumping and they’re like, “oh, I remember when I was five and I was stung by a bee and this happened and I jumped up” or whatever, you know. So it brings up something so random. But you’re able to get that connection level that no one would have ever talked about—a story about when they were stung by a bee when they were five—when you’re getting together at the beginning of the meeting. So it can definitely help you quickly relate and have a good connection with the people there.
Dr. Troy Campbell: I love anything that is constrained creativity, right? And that’s constrained creativity. One of our favorite warm-up activities is a scavenger hunt. So you say, “what’s something that’s bringing you joy right now?” and you go get the thing and you hold up the object, right? And somebody holds up wine and somebody holds up toast, someone holds up their dog and they say, “this thing is bringing me joy because of this.” Or if you want to make it related to the meeting, you’d be like, “today we’re talking about efficiency. Go find something in your house that is very efficient and go find something that is a waste of space.” And then when they have this object and this sort of norm of explaining in one to three sentences, it allows everybody to really contribute and get the energy and the right mindset up. And it’s just amazing how, you know, something as silly as a Story Cube or a scavenger hunt can do it. As one of my favorite sort of little metaphors says, the mind is not a Tesla Roadster that can go from 0 to 60 in 1.9 seconds. It’s more like an old Ford. It’s reliable if you give it time to warm up.
Melina Palmer: I like it. Well, let’s jump in and make sure. I want to talk about, like we’ve been saying, the science of cool. And so for those who are listening now, we’re going to talk more Disney with Troy, which I’ll talk about kind of in the outro here of how that might be happening, and maybe you could ask some questions or something later on. But here today, let’s talk about being cool and the science of it. In general, everybody wants to be cool to some degree.
The Psychological Definition of Cool
Dr. Troy Campbell: Yeah so, I’m going to preview, and normally when I would do this, I’d have, you know, songs and all this stuff. But what I want to just say is, in general, everybody wants to be cool to some degree and that there are two phrases that I want to use around cool. There is “they’re cool,” which is, “oh, you know, they’re cool. I like my aunt, she’s cool.” And then there’s “she’s so cool,” which is, “oh, she has an amazing podcast. She’s one of the best breakthrough artists. She is Billie Eilish level cool.” But both of those things are going to have very similar psychology. And we all want to feel cool. We all want to give people cool experiences. And we as a brand need to be cool to at least whatever audience we’re serving. And the very simple definition of cool is: cool is autonomously breaking the norm in a positive, or at least not super negative, way. Autonomously—so that means I’m doing it of my own control. I’m an individual or one of the few breaking a norm in a somewhat positive way. And it’s largely based upon Caleb Warren’s research, but I’ve taken some artistic license. Again, I’m definitely going to talk about this idea of being a scientific mind, artistic heart. And one thing I sort of like to say with my research and sort of my orientation within the field is I help people better understand what can never be fully understood. Cool, story, happiness—we’re never going to fully understand that, but when we bring in some behavioral science, it can anchor us and then from that foundation we can have some artistic license to design. Because remember, in the real world you’re rarely trying to do behavioral science. You’re trying to use behavioral science to help you in design. Right? So let’s ask a very simple question. Who’s cool? What musical artists are cool? Let’s just go for you, Melina. What is a musical artist, at least at one time in your life, you’ve thought is cool?
Melina Palmer: All right, well, if we want to be like, for what was super cool when I was in school, it would have been… I was in a boy band era, so I would say I was an ‘N Sync fan. So the cat’s out of the nerdy school bag.
Dr. Troy Campbell: Awesome. Okay. ‘N Sync. Okay, well, we’ll get back to ‘N Sync, right? And ‘N Sync is definitely cool to some people. And so remember, there’s no objective cool. It’s all about norms and individuals and the way you engage with the norms. So let’s give some examples that are obviously cool, and then we’ll explain why ‘N Sync is cool to certain people. So who is obviously, we think of cool as… I like to use this phrase, “breaking free.” So who’s breakin’ free? Well, Freddie Mercury is breakin’ free, right? He had this song about it: “I want to break free, embrace my sexuality, be a rock and roll star.” Who in more modern times is breaking free? Let’s say Travis Scott, right, has a song called “Sicko Mode,” in which he more or less puts the definition of cool in the song where he says, “this stuff is way too formal, and y’all know I don’t follow suit,” right? And even the song itself doesn’t really have a traditional form. So he’s breaking the norm in how he acts, how he engages with brands, and how he even puts the song structure together. And then what I love to do with especially audiences around my age—I’m 34—is I say, who else is breakin’ free? Wink, wink. Who else is soaring, flying, a star in heaven? There’s no star in heaven that they can’t reach. Who is breakin’ free? And if I do this in an audience, people will scream, “Troy Bolton, High School Musical!” right, because that’s a line from High School Musical and it’s a song called “Breaking Free.” And it’s the same general psychology when it’s not the same thing. It’s a different aesthetic, different ideology, but same or similar psychology. When Troy says in one of the greatest cinematic lines ever, when people are telling him, “you shouldn’t be in the musical, no, you should be basketball,” he turns to the camera and says, “you ever think I could do both?” Oh, my God. Whoa. And especially when that came out at that time, right, too many people felt like breaking free from a norm in school. Now there is definitely a norm in society that we should be all of these things and embrace all of ourselves. But that norm exists in contrast to an existing norm, which the musical talks about: “stay in your lane.” Or as Twenty One Pilots say, they say, “stay in your lane, boy, but I go where I want to go,” right? And so that is what cool is. It’s breaking free from a norm, right? Country music really sees itself as doing that. While sometimes they wouldn’t use the word “cool,” it’s psychologically what we’re calling cool. They say, “I shouldn’t be so country, but I’m going to stay so country,” right? “I’m resisting the norm.” Cool is just finding a norm that people don’t think is that great of a norm and resisting that norm to an audience that likes it. And so ‘N Sync. I remember when I was in school, somebody said, “‘N Sync, Backstreet Boys, they make music for girls, but ‘N Sync, they make it for all of us. They’re cooler.” Right? And there was this idea ‘N Sync was the cool boy band. And people had different opinions on that for different reasons, but there was still that concept of that sort of breaking free. And remember, it’s an amazing experience to feel that. We all want to feel as if we have this ability to autonomously break free from a negative norm in a positive way. Whether you’re resisting… We were going to not talk about politics, but you can imagine how both sides, or all the multidimensional sides, feel that way. And so as a brand, we want to create these cool things so we’re seen as cool. And then we want other people to feel cool when they are using our brands or creating ways in which people can autonomously break the norm themselves or through our brands to do that. And when we throw parties, we want to, you know, make it cool and break the norm. Right? So I throw lots of parties where I have sort of like this camp counselor vibe, if you haven’t noticed from my energy. It’s like summer camp for adults at my house. And we have, like, all these activities that are fun for the people to do in my forest house. And it breaks the norm from a normal party in a way that people find positive. So it’s not just a good party, it’s a cool party. And people feel free and enjoy themselves when they’re in those spaces, or at least I hope they do.
Melina Palmer: Yeah, I, of course, love all of that. And even though we are right around the same age, I have—and perhaps it is shocking to the world—but I’ve never seen High School Musical.
Dr. Troy Campbell: Oh, wow. I don’t think that’s a bad thing.
Melina Palmer: Yeah, I almost… I was gonna major in musical theater actually for a long time. That was always the plan. So, I, too, am a vocalist and whatnot. And so the, like, couple year difference there potentially made it to where… Yeah. I mean, so sorry Zac Efron, I didn’t hear your amazing line until now.
Metamodernism and Combining Norms
Dr. Troy Campbell: No, but what’s really great about what I love about this music stuff is that I can have people just write down their favorite musical artists, whether their favorite musical artist is the Rolling Stones, or their favorite musical artist is Post Malone or Roddy Ricch or Zac Efron. And we can take a lyric from them and we can help people orient to how cool they are. Right? So one of my favorite moments ever in a workshop is… lots of people are familiar with the Black Eyed Peas, and why not? Very excited to use the Black Eyed Peas. And I wish I was only teaching through J. Cole and The National and Marina and the Diamonds, but I can’t just do that. We give them the lyrics. Right? There’s that, “you’re so 2,000 and late,” right? And so they say, “our open-source software is so 3800. Your closed model is so 2000 and late. We got that boom, boom, boom.” And I had a CEO of a very stodgy software company go boom, boom, boom with his hands up, and it was this… he’s like, “oh, what we really need to be saying is not that open-source software is so good, but that we are breaking the norm in a way that is good for the consumer.” And just that simple idea that we are breaking the norm for you was just this huge unlock for them in which they could create far more engaging things and was truly authentic to what they believed in and was more emotional.
Melina Palmer: Yeah. I think that people in general don’t feel like cool is quantifiable in any way, right? To where we sort of assume like, no, they’re just cool. And you can’t box cool because once you say what it is, it’s not cool anymore, or once it’s mainstream, it’s not cool. But I like this understanding of what makes up this process, and where you were talking about like nine things or whatever from the different concepts within the brain. But it’s not that it’s the recipe and you have to have these nine things in this particular order because then it doesn’t just keep working. Instead, it’s to say, these are some of the things that can be happening. And if you as a brand, as a person, want to be more cool, then you can look at, you know, one of these that might resonate with you and how you can emulate that in throwing your cool party or making it so that your customers think that you’re actually doing cool stuff, or having, like you said, your employees be able to feel like “we’re doing something cool here.”
Dr. Troy Campbell: One of the things that was really wonderful about On Your Feet is when we do these things with companies and we get them to break the norm in a positive way, it is that psychological feeling of cool, right? That we are autonomously breaking the boring business norms in a way that’s positive. In my working with designers and brand people, I often group like the lyrics into categories and give them to them. So, like, there’s the things that we’ve been talking about, right? They say, “you’re not supposed to say that in a song,” or “I don’t follow rules and they don’t like that.” Or there’s cool by staying true, right? So, like, “the new me is really still the real me” is a really good Drake line, or Imagine Dragons: “Don’t you understand? I’m never changing who I am.” And we’ve worked with some traditional brands to really emphasize that kind of thing. Cool by leading, not following—right, that’s the “2000 and late” type of stuff. But maybe my favorite sort of, if we really think about sort of what also the zeitgeist of cool is—and it’s a term that I think people should look up more—there’s reasons why this is not the greatest thing in the world, but it’s called metamodernism. And so metamodernism, I’m going to talk about, is sometimes used as a philosophy. I like it just as a description of what’s going on. So metamodernism is this type of culture that we’re in right now, which is people really like mixing things together in positive ways. It’s this idea that is the pendulum at both ends, or the famous phrase is “both, [comma] and.” And so when you put things together, it is both those things and something different. So I wrote this little sort of… I do a lot of rap when I’m in front of a stage and stuff. It doesn’t really work that well on podcasts, so this is the only one I’ll do. And I also get my, you know, CEOs to do it. But I wrote this sort of as a way to understand the culture. And then I have people rewrite this for their brand or this part, and here it goes. I’ll explain it a little bit. But this is how a modern rapper—sounds like Roddy Ricch could do this—sounds: “I got a Gucci belt with some dirty Vans / An Apple watch with some thrift store bands / I’m not this or that I’m the both comma ands / Supreme and Goodwill are both my brand / Sophisticated with the street culture side / So many parts of me and none I want to hide / Others like a barrier but I don’t like a wall / I want to mix in everything, I want to mix in it all.” And so I usually would do that more dramatically, but I want to have you guys make sure you hear it. Isn’t it exciting for somebody to just sort of barely rap lyrics?
Melina Palmer: No judgment.
Dr. Troy Campbell: And so what I’ll have is I’ll have people take that. And most people, in actuality, anytime you’re really breaking the norm, you’re usually combining norms. And that’s actually what we really sort of value in modern times—like the modern way to break norms. It sort of always has been this. But really right now, when you see sort of this high-low culture divide, where you see this, you know, being capitalism and trying to help the world at the same time, though some people might not be on board with that… Sorry, I got political for half a second. But you’ll have them, they’ll write it. Right? So for the University of Oregon it’s: “We’re an academic institution with a sneakerhead side.” Right? And it was just this incredible phrase that when I was working with some people at the University of Oregon, they were like, “oh, that—that’s what we are. How can we now have events and marketing that really captures this kind of thing that’s going on?” Right? “We put the new and the old together” has been some other people. And that is just a really useful tool for people to think about that. Right? “We are family—Disney. We are family-friendly and adventurous in the same breath. We talk about silly things, but we deal with the seriousness of life and death.” And then that sort of understanding allows you to really sort of understand distinctively how Disney breaks the norm, or at least is differentiated from other people.
Melina Palmer: Yeah. In the episode that I did about Disney and just some of the behavioral economics and behavioral science concepts I see there—and with the caveat of the episode being like, there are 10,000 ways this could go; Disney is a huge brand with lots of stuff—but one of the things I was talking about that I really admire about Disney is that balance of familiarity and our bias toward that, as well as toward novelty. And they walk that line really, really well. Prince Ghuman is going to be on the show really soon after when these are coming out. And in his interview, we talk about why we like what we like, which is part of their book Blindsight. And in that same… it’s a mix of new and safe, right? So it’s all of what you’re talking about there that if you’re too far, then it doesn’t relate. If you’re too safe, that doesn’t relate. So you kind of gotta find that good balance.
Dr. Troy Campbell: And the other thing about this, of course, is that what’s too safe for one person is not too safe for another person. So it’s very, very difficult to be cool to everyone. So Disney… one of the ways that Disney really accomplishes being Disney is it has things that range from the political or emotional weirdness of WandaVision and Falcon and the Winter Soldier all the way to these other things. And if they can put them all in a brand, people can find their parts in it. We also talk about the ideas of, you know, these first-mover effects. Right? You’re too unfamiliar. And so what we actually… sort of… One of the things I like to do is I like to take a musical artist and say, look, this musical artist did this too early. So by the time Kendrick Lamar is using this, Kendrick Lamar is awesome, but he was a little later to the game on using the sound. And because it was familiar enough to people, it was comfortable enough, and then all the new things that he brought on top of that from his amazing lyrics and stuff like that is this very useful thing to do in this space.
The Future of Applied Behavioral Science
Melina Palmer: Yeah, absolutely. So if you were going to do the, like, singular tip of like a first thing for a brand, if they’re just trying to be cool and resonate with whomever their audience is going to be, what would be the first thing that you would say or most important thing that they should be doing to be more cool?
Dr. Troy Campbell: Break a norm that is in line with something they need or their ideology. That’s the simplest thing. But what I would say is what I really, really believe that brands need to do is that in order to truly be cool and to truly create things, you need to go through really good design workshops. Because the reason we are able to influence companies as behavioral scientists is because we have this one sentence, but then we have these ways for people to engage in it, to be in a scientific mind and artistic heart. And one of the reasons I kind of like rapping and all this type of stuff and being silly and childish is I’m sort of calling out our field a little bit, which is to say, like, look, you can’t take your own research and make an ad as quick as my team can with these things because the way we translate this stuff is childish and weird and silly, and that’s how it has to happen. I sort of am getting on my sort of, like, stool here, which is one of the things I really sort of want behavioral science to do is to see that we all have different talents, even if we’re all calling ourselves behavioral scientists. There are some people who are really, really good at writing a book, but when they go do a workshop, companies are disappointed in them. And by the way, I come into companies after these people have given talks for 20, $40,000, and they are disappointed with what was delivered. Famous people, because it wasn’t what they needed in that situation. They needed more design. And so there are people who can write books, there are people who can design, and there are very few people who really can do all of that, especially if they don’t have the time to do it. And what I would really love our field to do is to sort of love on each other as much as we can and let people be different. Because the person who is spending three years to publish a paper that can be summarized in one sentence is probably not the person who’s going to be able to design a roller coaster or design the catchiest ad possible. They can contribute to it, but not… And I think we really need to see this whole spectrum of talents in behavioral science and really allow that to happen. And for nobody to try to say behavioral science is just them. There’s a couple people out there who say if a behavioral science firm isn’t doing actual experiments, then it’s not a behavioral science firm. No, that firm is not doing science, but there’s thinking scientifically and there’s using science, and those—those are hugely important things. And we work with companies all the time to sort of help them do that. Right? So so much of what I do is help translate everything that I started falling in love with in my first class. And it’s in part because I sort of had this sort of scientific mind, artistic heart where I sort of saw that stuff, and immediately I was like, I’m going to take that and use it at my DJ set tonight. Most people aren’t scientific mind, artistic heart, and that’s okay. I’m not the best scientist in the world, and I wish more behavioral scientists would just say, “I’m not that great at applying stuff. I wish that there were more people like Melina and Troy out there really helping that and us sort of working together in those spaces to facilitate that.” And, yeah, I also sort of… sorry, ranting also… I really think that what we need to do is we need to have a group of people who know the process of defining and applying psychology go in and create lecture content for people to deliver behavioral science. And anybody teaching behavioral science knows this: nobody taught you how to teach ever. They saw you do a research presentation when you came to their school, and because I did a research presentation, people are like, “oh, he knows how to teach.” No, there’s so little transition between that. Yes, I know how to teach graduate students the most advanced concepts currently out there, but that doesn’t mean I know how to teach a freshman how to understand brand differentiation and default bias and the science of cool. Sorry, that’s a little ranty, but it’s like a love rant in a way.
Melina Palmer: I think it is the era of applied behavioral economics and just this kind of… to what you were saying. I’ve been having so many great conversations with people and really loving that our field is… because it wasn’t something that super existed when we were kids. So you weren’t able to have this, like, dream of becoming a behavioral scientist or behavioral economist when you were a kid, because it wasn’t a thing yet—it didn’t exist. And so the backgrounds of people where I’ve been talking to them about, you know, “how’d you get here?” it’s like, oh, my PhD or my master’s or whatever is in engineering or philosophy or marketing or psychology or just all these things. And I think that amalgamation of insights is so important as we’re looking to apply and understand, because the brain is so complex. And so that sort of melting pot of a field, I think, is really important in moving it forward. And I’m excited for the era of applied behavioral science and to be on this journey with you, Troy.
Dr. Troy Campbell: Yeah, it’s this lovely thing. If you think about it, behavioral scientists originally got into this field because we were a critique of economics, right? Or at least some of this is really a reaction to economics. And we said economics needs… it’s not all wrong, but it needs to include a lot more stuff. And right now, I think what we’re going through in behavioral science is it also needs to include a lot more stuff. I think that the critique is a little softer because lots of it is “you need to include more stuff in the translation of it,” rather than saying that the core principles of behavioral science are wrong, and that we need to be creative and empowering with it. And we do. And I’ll say this last thing at the end—maybe everybody’s on my side till I say this—there are some things about behavioral science that are not fascinating, right? Like, “people are influenced by other people.” Wow. “Memory doesn’t work that good.” “Emotion influences decisions.” And I like to say sometimes that’s not new, that’s in the Bible, right? And what is really great about behavioral science is the nuances and the sophisticated concepts we bring around that, which is both the deep science and this sort of artistic mind around how we use that. And I love what you do, and I love your book, because it just bypasses the sort of unconscious decision. Like, it’s 2021, you’ve seen a TED talk on unconscious bias, right? You have a relative who’s pretty unconsciously biased and you’ve looked out in the world. You know that people are biased. All right, we got it. All right, here’s how you start using it with sophistication. Here’s 10 examples of a mirror neuron on page 20 or whatever it is in your thing, right? And that’s just the type of stuff that we need—this is how we can use these things rather than another TED talk. It’s not 2008 anymore about behavioral science.
Melina Palmer: I love it. Well, thank you so much for those kind words. I appreciate that and I appreciate you. And for everyone who is just itching to get in contact with you and learn more, what is their best path to do so?
Dr. Troy Campbell: So the two best paths to interact with me are: if you’re interested in anything to do inside a company, go to onyourfeet.com or it’s actually oyf.com is the shortest way to get there—O-Y-F. And if you’re interested in more marketing and that type of stuff, and the nitty-gritty of behavioral science, then go to Tingen Industries, which is where my friend started a company. And we work out of that and we do a lot of interesting things. And one of the things that we have started is something called Unstuck. And the idea is to be as quick and fast to people as possible. So when you have an issue, you give it to us and we distill some information and we get it back to you immediately. Because we really believe that with behavioral science we can be incredibly valuable in an hour. And the way that often behavioral science is sort of hired by companies ignores that. I remember, here’s an example: I was at Netflix and I gave a talk before I was assigned to my main project, and a bunch of people came up to me and they’re like, “oh, we’re going to use what you said tomorrow. Can I ask you one more question?” And I turned to the leader who would become my leader at Netflix and I said, “I look very forward to this long-term project that I’m going to do, but I should just be doing this all the time because all these smart people—real smart—but they just don’t know sort of one principle or they don’t know the artistic way to apply that principle or start engaging with it. You should have somebody getting them unstuck all the time.” And they’re like, “well, that’s just not how we have the system made.” And so from many experiences like that, or even at Disney where people would walk over to my desk and be like, “Troy, you’re the behavioral scientist. I’m dealing with people, how do we do this?” It’s like, boom, this is the answer. We’re trying to create a service that has that quick applied version of it. Because five minutes with a behavioral scientist is, to some degree, a lot more useful than reading an entire book, especially one that isn’t as specific as yours.
Melina Palmer: Yeah, absolutely. Well, love all of that. Definitely agree. I love that idea. And thank you so much for those places for people to go. We’ll have them linked in the show notes for everyone. And truly, as always, enjoyed the conversation. So again, Troy Campbell, thanks so much for joining me on the show.
Dr. Troy Campbell: Thank you very much. Hopefully you will all create amazing things with behavioral science.
Summary and Final Thoughts on Branding
Melina Palmer: Thank you again to Dr. Troy Campbell for joining me on the show today. What got your brain buzzing in today’s conversation? For me, I love knowing that cool is not some mysterious thing that certain brands just have and others don’t and never will. It’s actually a decision that can be made and maintained with science. And once you understand that, it completely changes how you show up for your audience. Let’s think about Crocs. For years, they were the punchline of fashion, dismissed as ugly and bulky—the shoe you wore when you’d given up. Healthcare workers and chefs wore them for practicality, but not many were claiming them as a style choice. And rather than trying to fix that reputation and fit into the norms, Crocs completely leaned in. Their whole identity became: “we know exactly what we are and we don’t care what you think.” That attracted some really interesting collabs and Crocs found themselves on the runway at London Fashion Week. And then that led to a Balenciaga collab for their Spring 2018 fashion show, which included sky-high platform versions of those classic clogs that the models wore while strutting down the runway. They’ve gone on to make many over-the-top styles together over the years, including some stilettos. You should definitely research and take a look at some of these. Post Malone has collaborated with them five different times. Justin Bieber’s collab sold out in the US within 90 minutes. Countless other celebrities and brands have done their own collabs over the years because it’s now cool to be unapologetically themselves, whatever that means. And if you have a favorite one or one that you think is the weirdest, please come share it with me on social media. I’m the Brainy Biz pretty much everywhere. That KFC collab is one that always stands out to me as just a totally crazy one. But one thing is for sure, Crocs has made it so the right people can’t help but find them. And they’ve been expanding who those right people are with those thoughtful collabs. In a behavioral sense, this all works because we’re a herding species. Social proof is a powerful force in human decision making. And cool is kind of like social proof with an edge, or like social proof embodied in an entity. We want to feel like one of the people who gets it, but we also desperately want to belong. Those two things are in constant tension while also seeking a harmonious balance. So just remember, cool is never universal. There’s always going to be some people who think you’re brilliant and others that think you’re the worst. The brands that win don’t try to manage that tension or apologize for it—they use it to their advantage. You can really improve and embrace it when you know your audience well enough to know exactly which norms they’re going to want to break, and then go ahead and break them with confidence. And so the question worth sitting with today is: who are you for and what do you stand for? So clearly that the right people feel like they found their people when they find you—that is the work to be done. And it’s some of my favorite work to do with my clients. So if you’re interested in digging deeper, learning more about that and seeing about working together, go to thebrainybusiness.com/contact and you can set up some time. Let’s talk. I’d also love to hear what brands you think are cool, whatever they might be. Come share them with me on social media. You’re going to find me as the Brainy Biz—B-I-Z—pretty much everywhere and as Melina Palmer on LinkedIn. There are links in the show notes to make it easy, as well as links for my top related past episodes and books, ways to get in touch and more. It’s all waiting for you in the app you’re listening to and at thebrainybusiness.com/581. And thank you again to Dr. Troy Campbell for joining me on the show today. It was a delight to chat with and learn from you. Join me next time for another brainy episode of the Brainy Business Podcast. It’s going to be a lot of fun. You don’t want to miss it. Until then, thanks again for listening and learning with me. And remember to be thoughtful.
Announcer: Thank you for listening to the Brainy Business Podcast. Melina offers virtual strategy sessions, workshops and other services to help businesses be more brain friendly. For more free resources, visit thebrainybusiness.com.
