Short version: Use #FOMO (fear of missing out). Call them names (“you VOTER!”). Question their level of commitment. Promise to check up on them.

Hey, blog-reading friends. Your polling place is where all the cool kids are going to be on today. What’s your plan?

We’ll check back with you to see how you did.

FIND YOUR POLLING PLACE HERE

Kindness is contagious. We know that. Studies even prove it. A study published last July in the journal Emotion found that (I hope you’re sitting down) kindness is contagious at work, too, and it’s actually good for business.

The study is called “Everyday Prosociality in the Workplace: The Reinforcing Benefits of Giving, Getting, and Glimpsing.”

The upshot, when translated into common language: When people do nice things for other people at work, they’re happier; and the receivers start doing nice things for other people. “People who were “receivers” in the experiment paid it forward by doling out volumes more acts of kindness compared to the control group – 278% more!”

The work environment is more pleasant, people have a sense of ownership and belonging—and feeling appreciated can help make workers more successful. 

While the article doesn’t overtly cover other areas of interaction, like social media, we would like to think that kindness here (instead of the usual, anonymous vitriol) would also apply.

Read the full article by Richard Davidson, Neuroscientist.

*Mural Art by Lettering Designer Gina Lu

This thing that we’re experiencing, this global situation that unites us (separately, in our own homes) can be depressing, discouraging, scarring, life-destroying.

Precisely because it’s all those things, it’s a chance to show resilience. Or to grow some.

Over four years ago The New Yorker published Maria Konnikova’s piece, “How People Learn to Become Resilient.” She said, “If you are lucky enough to never experience any sort of adversity, we won’t know how resilient you are. It’s only when you’re faced with obstacles, stress, and other environmental threats that resilience, or the lack of it, emerges: Do you succumb or do you surmount?”

Lucky us!

A central element of resilience, Konnikova explains, is perception. If we conceptualize events as opportunities to learn and grow, we make ourselves less vulnerable.

I miss moderating dial test focus groups in person.

I can’t wait until it’s possible to travel to different locations and meet new people and hear not just their words but what they’re communicating with posture, movement, eye contact, and more.

In the meantime, Engagious is adapting: Qualitative research continues; focus groups can still happen, online. Dial tests, too. 

Covid-19 is forcing change everywhere:
https://www.economist.com/briefing/2020/04/11/the-changes-covid-19-is-forcing-on-to-business
https://www.engagious.com/top-4-best-practices-for-crisis-communications 

How are you adapting?

Photo from: https://www.architecturendesign.net/16-incredible-trees-that-have-adapted-to-their-surroundings/

We feel-good stories. And people are awesome.

Not only that, but giving back is a great way to stay connected – with family, with friends, with fans, with customers. Here are some great examples to inspire you.

The owner of a local strip mall slashed his tenants’ April rent in half. Other businesses are going even further: Landlord’s advice to tenants:  ‘pay employees’ instead of rent

On a grander scale, actor John Krasinski has launched his weekly SGN show on YouTube- It stands for “Some Good News”. This week, he brought the cast of Hamilton back together (virtually) to serenade a young fan who missed out due to the corona virus. 

Support small businesses!

Yesterday I bought a 5 lb bag of coffee from a local roaster (Pirate Coffee Company- for real!). They were thrilled, as was I! (please pardon any caffeine-induced typos…)

We’ve heard about many people buying gift cards from local small businesses (especially restaurants, salons, and other services) to use later. Restaurants and ad hoc community groups are providing meals for kids who depend on schools for breakfast and lunch.

Did you know that you can now take virtual tours of some of the most famous castles in Europe? Yes, please! And many museums and concert halls are making their art digitally available, for free. 

We can’t visit seniors, but we can check on our senior neighbors, kids are making cards, stores are making special shopping times just for seniors and other vulnerable groups.

At times like this, kindness and connection are key. What else can we be doing?

➤ Want another feel-good story? Why not?! Check out my post on The Power of Civility

• Be a better person
• Be present for others
• Accept others just the way they are

Here are some quotes by him that are inspiring us for 2020:

“It’s not the honors and the prizes and fancy outsides of life which ultimately nourish our souls. It’s the knowing that we can be trusted, that we never have to fear the truth, that the bedrock of our very being is good stuff.”

Courtesy USA Today https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/entertainthis/2018/01/29/tom-hanks-mr-rogers/1075815001/

“Our job in life is to help people realize how rare and valuable each one of us really is, that each of us has something that no one else has—or ever will have—something inside that is unique to all time. It’s our job to encourage each other to discover that uniqueness and to provide ways of developing its expression.”

 

“The most important thing is that we are able to be one-to-one, you and I with each other at the moment. If we can be present to the moment with the person that we happen to be with, that’s what’s important.”

 

“To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is, right here and now.”

We love the idea of each person being unique to all time. If we don’t pay attention we might miss an unrepeatable essence.

Be a better person (good stuff as our bedrock!), be present to others, and accept them just the way they are. That should fill our year with striving.

Go here https://www.verywellmind.com/how-to-keep-your-new-years-resolutions-2795719 for why it’s good to make resolutions, and strategies for actually keeping them.

Retailers have one objective this cyber week—to get you to spend as much money in their retail/online stores as possible.  To achieve this objective, retailers use behavioral science, or the study of human behavior, to influence your spending decisions. How are retailers able to do this?

Create a sense of urgency

People are looking for good deals and the limited-time nature of retailers’ discounts creates a sense of urgency for them. We may be told that the big sale is ending soon. Or that there is a limited supply of an item that we are interested in.  This works because nobody likes to miss out on an opportunity to save money—and that’s why time-limited discounts work. It is human nature to seek pleasure (discounts) and avoid pain (missing out on discounts).

“Holiday Shopping Ads Are Geared Toward the Brain’s Reward Center.”  -Camelia Kuhnen

Elicit positive feelings of excitement

“Holiday Shopping Ads Are Geared Toward Brain’s Reward Center,”  says Camelia Kuhnen, a behavioral economist at the University of North Carolina. These offers appeal to both the “fear anxiety center” and the “reward center”—the part that’s a trigger when we’re happy, says

Kuhnen.  She argues that our “happy-frenzied” state drives us to strongly prefer immediate rewards and take on more financial risk. Sales, coupons, and markdowns—valid only for a short period of time—help to build excitement in our “reward center”. And thus, retail sales soar.

“FREE!” Effectively frames the “gains” for consumers

Daniel Kahneman, the Nobel Prize-winning author of Thinking, Fast and Slow, has written about the psychology of gains and losses. This subject directly applies to how retailers are using behavioral science. Aron Ezra, the CEO of OfferCraft gives a very simple example to demonstrate.

Scenario 1: Sales associate #1 is selling $60 pants and then attempts to up-sell the customer on a $15 belt.

Scenario 2: Sales associate #2 sells the pants at $75 and presents the belt as a free gift.

Not surprisingly, the “free gift with purchase” will help enterprising sales associate #2 move a lot more belts than his counterpart. Why? Kahneman says that psychologically, we feel losses twice as acutely as we feel gains. A free thank-you gift would be viewed as a gain for the consumer; passing up a free gift will feel like a loss. We like receiving gifts. It feels good—and retailers know this.

This is just a brief list of all the ways we can be influenced–even when we are looking for it. Before you hit that ‘Buy’ button during cyber week, ask yourself how they nabbed you.

They’re rituals. They’re religious, cultural, and civic. Every society has them. We do them for our families, for our countries, for our teams. (Just try to neglect them: “But we always have monkey bread Christmas morning!”)

Turns out, these rituals aren’t magic; they’re science. And (no surprise) why we have them and perform them is the subject of studies.

Follow the links for the details, but here’s a glimpse of the findings: Pre-task rituals can reduce anxiety and improve performance. Engaging in a sequence of ritualistic movements tricks the brain into thinking it’s in an arena of stability and predictability. Which is calming.

More on point for the holiday season: Rituals unite us. They solidify and sacralize human bonds. They enhance our sense of belonging. They also can enhance our perception of value: A ritual for eating chocolate can make the chocolate taste even better.

So keep up those traditions, as they feed your soul. Start new ones with extended family and business partners. Traditions transcend family bonds. They reach into your community and your work life. And it is all good–for you and others.

Enjoy the season.

1. Networking is an exhilarating way to advance my career, boosting my productivity and my career outlook—not to mention all the great connections I get to make!
2. Networking is an exhausting, but necessary, thing I have to do to advance my career, but sometimes I feel like it distracts me from my real work.

Researchers at the University of Bamberg in Germany had a theory that daily networking gives people an increase in productivity and career optimism.

Maybe they have extraversion bias, because the results surprised them.

They found that daily networking made career optimism go up—for people who already had a strong need for social affiliation. But people who had a low need for affiliation did not see an increase in career optimism. Some even reported lower work performance, because the networking took so much energy.

Researchers concluded that “people who are less inclined to interact socially should not force themselves to network.”

That’s not permission to take up permanent residence in the introvert’s comfort zone.

And it isn’t doom to introvert’s career ambitions.

How important are the Fall Pilots?

In the current entertainment climate, a show will often sink or swim based solely the performance of the pilot. Thus all the hype around the “New Fall Shows” before they even air. A lot is riding on that first episode. A lot of careers are riding on that first episode. But should it work that way?

Consider this:

• We all know that a show often takes several episodes to find its ‘rhythm’ and its audience.
• A Netflix study this time last year proved that the average viewer isn’t hooked on a series until episode 4.
  By then, 70% of viewers will watch the rest of the season.

So, Netflix has their magic formula. But the variable here is binge-watching. With streaming or on-demand shows, the commitment to watch follow-on episodes seems much lower than on traditional network television. These days, having to wait a week to watch the next episode seems like a commitment worthy of a ring! That’s why, as far as Network TV is concerned, these pilots matter whole a lot more.

Viewers know when you’ve got a winner

Through testing, network executives know that within those first 15 minutes, viewers decide if the show is quality and if it will be a lasting success. Any premiere that loses 30% of its audience by ‘half time’ is on the not-so-short cancellation list. (for more behind-the-scenes info on entertainment research, see our interview with Aaron Paquette, formerly of Vision Critical.)

We find the number of Fall pilot fails very interesting. Dear Network Executives, If the average viewer can tell you in 15 minutes then…. couldn’t you have tested it in advance? Wouldn’t that have saved you a lot of time? Yes, of course you can and yes, it would.  We’ve done our share of dial testing focus groups to test pilots for every major network at one time or another. (editorial comment: clearly, they need to be doing a lot more of this.)

Pilot Season 2019

All the research in the world can not forecast the intangible. The viral nature of a hit. (Game of Thrones type chatter through social media and word of mouth.) These types of Megahits are few and far between, and they are even harder to accomplish in the comedy category. A perfect comedy seems like some combination of potions that, when poured together, produce lightning in a bottle.

For example, look at the run that Veep and Modern Family have had—both in the ratings and at the Emmy’s. Beyond the quality writing, they are also standouts due to the lack of competition.

When is a “pilot” not really a pilot?

That is why one of the most talked about new shows in years was the RETURN of Will & Grace.  With how challenging it is to come up with a winning comedy, you can certainly understand the appeal of going back to a sure thing. Not sure this really qualified as a ‘pilot’, however.

Let the ratings begin.

Get more on that Netflix study here.

Photo courtesy of NBC