THE INSPIRATION PLACE PODCAST
Melina Palmer: Choosing whether your brand is one of quality or value is one of the most important things to do. And I know you’re hearing this, audience, and thinking, “But I want both of those things. Those both sound good, and I bet I can live in the gray of this.” And I’m going to tell you, no, you don’t want to, right? We need to pick a side because it makes it so there’s some cognitive ease for people where we can very much classify—you’re A or B, you’re quality or value—and it makes it easier to buy from you. And there are different decisions you make along the way that you can align with that, and you’re going to use and leverage them a little bit differently.
Speaker 2: It’s the Inspiration Place podcast with artist Miriam Schulman. Welcome to the Inspiration Place Podcast, an art world insider podcast for artists by an artist where each week we go behind the scenes to uncover the perspiration and inspiration behind the art. And now your host, Miriam Schulman.
Miriam Schulman: All right. Well, hello, everyone. I have the one and only Melina Palmer in the house. Let me catch you up on who she is and what she’s all about. Today’s guest helps companies around the world apply behavioral economics to understand why customers buy and how employees buy in. She’s written three bestselling books and hosts the Brainy Business podcast, which, by the way, has more than a million downloads in over 170 countries. A consultant and keynote speaker, she also teaches applied behavioral economics via A&M Human Behavior Lab. Please welcome to the Inspiration Place, the one and only Melina Palmer. Well, thank you so much for being with me here today.
Melina Palmer: Oh, of course. Thanks so much for having me. Delighted to be here.
Miriam Schulman: Okay, so first of all, we have to talk about that very cool thing happening. Tell us about this.
Melina Palmer: My new pop filter?
Miriam Schulman: Yes, exactly.
Melina Palmer: Yes. I was just saying that this is my first interview using my purple pop filter on the microphone. My old one was looking a little bit haggard and worse for wear, as it has like chunks out of it from traveling and things. So I thought, why do I not have a brand-colored one? So purple has arrived. And yeah, first interview with it today.
Miriam Schulman: I’m so honored. I actually, when I was looking for the purple one, I found it comes in a bunch of cover colors. Yes. So I will to be upping my foam game. But I think my cat might. Do you have a cat?
Melina Palmer: Um, I do not, but I have a three year old, which is kind of the same right now.
Miriam Schulman: Kind of.
Miriam Schulman: My sister-in-law’s, um, I think he’s five—he’s either 5 or 6—figured out how to use her phone to buy Minecraft gear, and within 30 seconds ordered himself two Minecraft lunchboxes, a Minecraft water bottle, and whatever else they have with Minecraft branding on it.
Melina Palmer: Yes. Yeah, we gotta change those locked-up settings once the kiddos start having the ability to access, well, and, we’ll say, “accidentally” buy things.
Miriam Schulman: Okay, so the reason I invited you here today is not just to talk about your very cool blank, but we’re going to talk about the truth about pricing, which is a subject very near and dear to my heart. Do you want to tell us what behavioral marketing means?
Melina Palmer: Sure. Yeah. So, um, I am an applied behavioral economist, and essentially behavioral economics is this intersection. I like to say that if traditional economics and psychology had a baby, you know, we’d have behavioral economics. And essentially, the reason that the field exists is because traditional economics assumes logical people making rational choices in everything that they do all of the time. And as we are all human, we know that’s not really the way that it works. So you end up with models that are set up to predict what someone, somewhere, sometime said people should do, but that’s not really what people actually do. So they’re not accurately predicting behavior. Over time, you had psychologists, economists, neuroscientists, neuromarketers, all these people coming together to either work together or enter one another’s fields to try and find if there are these strings and ties in the brain that we can use to better predict real behavior. And, you know, good news—those do exist. And so that’s where the field of behavioral economics comes from. There’s the academic side of that—all that research and everything. I focus on the applied side, which is in helping people in all sorts of businesses around the world to be able to understand how they can better communicate with the brains of themselves, their teams, and their customers so that those customers buy and employees buy in.
Miriam Schulman: Love it. Okay, so I would say I’m three-quarters of the way through. It is a great book. It was recommended by one of my newer friends, Liz Scully. I guess you were on her podcast, perhaps, or she just is a fan. I’m not sure. Anyway, really good. Can we start with the most expensive French fries in the world?
Melina Palmer: Oh, yes. Yeah. And the grilled cheese sandwich is what I always love to talk about on this one. Yes. So if we think about a grilled cheese sandwich—even if you can’t cook, right, you could probably get yourself through making a grilled cheese. And if you were to think about buying one, you know, we have an idea. There’s not a lot of mystery in what goes into a grilled cheese sandwich, right? So when we think about pricing, if you were going to be selling grilled cheese sandwiches, it may feel kind of limiting based on, you know, how much ingredients cost and things like that. So if we ask people, “How much would you spend on a grilled cheese? Like, if you really, really wanted one, you know, you’re excited about it?”. Often people say like five, ten dollars. Maybe I hear sometimes twenty, you know, people have gotten up to before, but, you know, that’s pretty much it, right? For a grilled cheese.
So what I like to let people know is that there’s actually a restaurant in New York City called Serendipity 3, and they have a $214 grilled cheese sandwich on their menu. And people do buy it. Right? So this is a thing to know for one. And even though it has fancy ingredients—special cheese and, you know, bread that has flecks of gold in the crust, and it’s made with Dom Perignon champagne and all these things—you know, it’s definitely that, you know, they’re making money off of that sandwich.
But there’s a lot more to it, right? So, in one way, when we’re talking about it being more reasonably priced, we’re thinking about the cost of the ingredients that we’re spending here, right? You’re maybe going five, ten, fifteen dollars for it, and you can’t imagine spending more for one. Now, when I tell you that this is a $214 sandwich, people often go, “Well, I kind of want to try it, right? Like, I want to know what the fuss is about. Why is it so expensive? That’s so interesting, right? I want to learn a little bit more about that thing.” And then there’s social proof that gets involved because we want to share about it on social media. If you do eat there, maybe you don’t get the $200 sandwich, but you would get maybe a $35 sandwich to say you were there and talk about it with your friends. So while this is a bit about PR, it really helps their brand. And as you mentioned, they don’t just have an expensive grilled cheese; they also have $200 French fries and a $1,000 vanilla sundae on their menu as well.
Miriam Schulman: I missed that, you must—I’m sure you put that in the book, but somehow I didn’t see it. Did you say where it is? Because I am in New York City. Where is this?
Melina Palmer: I’ll find it. I’ll find it for you. And actually, as you get to the end of the book, the last chapter is a set of examples where we look at quality versus value brands, which I think we’ll potentially get to, as well as product and service-based. So there are four different case studies, so kind of anybody can see themselves in here. And I do a more thorough breakdown on Serendipity 3 that comes up at the end of the book, talking a little bit more about it. Actually, Selena Gomez is now a part owner. I believe she’s come on board with Serendipity 3. Now, they primarily sell ice cream, interestingly enough. And so there’s a special blend that’s, you know, Selena’s mix of ice cream that you can get in all these different aspects. But again, she wouldn’t come into a brand that wasn’t in this luxurious, quality, cool, different space, right? So, by being willing to try making $200 grilled cheese sandwiches and $1,000 vanilla sundaes, and those $200 French fries. They had an 8 to 10-week waiting list when they first launched those, for people to buy $200 fries, right? So there’s space for it. Whatever it is you want to sell, whatever price you want to put on it, it can be done. And this example comes up in a chapter that’s all about you and knowing that for each of us, you know, we tend to be our own worst enemy when it comes to pricing. We can really get in our own way, especially as solopreneurs and entrepreneurs, when you’re looking to sell your own art, right? Like, how do you put a price on this? How am I going to even think about what this would be? Is it based on the time it took me and what someone would be willing to pay? And you can get in your own head in a way that you’re always going to be thinking smaller than you need to. So I love this example to show that you don’t need to be limiting yourself and putting yourself in that box.
Miriam Schulman: I love that. Now, in my book Artpreneur, I know I didn’t have you as a resource when I wrote my book, but I did talk about how I used some research about how champagne sold better on a rounded price which is prestige pricing versus the charm pricing, which is ending in the 97. But you took what I learned a step further talking about value pricing versus quality pricing. So can you talk about how ending in a 97 versus ending in zero zero would communicate quality versus value and what that might mean for our customers?
Melina Palmer: Yeah, absolutely. So in The Truth About Pricing, I let people know there are many steps in this book, and my other two books are definitely applied. But The Truth About Pricing is like, do this, answer this, then do this, and then do that. It’s very step-by-step as we go through this process. And choosing whether your brand is one of quality or value is one of the most important things I tell people they have to do. And I know you’re hearing it, audience, and thinking, “But I want both of those things. Those both sound good, and I bet I can live in the gray of this.” And I’m going to tell you, no, you don’t want to. We need to pick a side because it creates cognitive ease for people where we can clearly classify—you’re either A or B, quality or value—and it makes it easier to buy from you. And there are different decisions you make along the way that you can align with that, and you’re going to use and leverage them a little bit differently. So quality brands can be luxurious, like Serendipity 3 is an example there. If they said that the sandwich was even just $199 instead of $214, it feels very, very different, right? Or even $200.
Miriam Schulman: Yeah, but let me ask you about that. Why $214 rather than $200? Because the $15 makes it seem very, um, precise, like they carefully came up with that number.
Melina Palmer: Yeah, so I don’t know exactly why they went with that number. However, when we look at rounding up on some things, it’s an interesting psychological effect—it makes you question it in a different way. It just hits your brain a little bit differently. You definitely don’t think it has anything to do with value or a discount, right? So that’s something key to know with something like $214. It’s a very interesting number to pick. When we think about pricing other items—let’s say you’re deciding if you want to price something around $500—it feels very different if it’s $500 versus $499 or $497, right? We just inherently feel that those prices are discounts or bargains, and that perception is tied to your brand. You want to know if that’s something you want or not, and if it isn’t, then rounded pricing is something I would recommend.
There are great companies on the value side of things, and you can still have high-quality items, but if you’re leading with that value approach, you really want to own it. This is Costco; this is Walmart. They are value brands. I really love the example of Costco—they’re one I talk about a lot because they have this membership model, and everything is about getting great value for their members. You can feel that in everything they do. They have some standout items, like their rotisserie chickens, which they lose massive amounts of money on every year to keep at the same price, as well as their $1.50 hot dog combo, which they’ve said they will never change the price on, ever, even though they lose money on those too. For customers and members of Costco, you don’t even check prices typically; you’re not price comparison shopping like you might at other stores because you know Costco has your best interest at heart and is finding you deals all over the place. If I pay a little bit more for this thing, it’s okay because overall, I’m going to come out ahead—and don’t worry, Costco does too, right? But they’re on the side of value, and they likely use a lot of rounded-down pricing like $19.99 instead of $20.
Miriam Schulman: You talk a lot about it not being about the price even though… And that really is kind of the punchline of the whole book. It’s the truth about pricing, and one of the frameworks that you use—I love how we have so many food analogies, by the way. Yes, French fries, grilled cheese, and now it’s cookies. Let’s talk about the cookie framework.
Melina Palmer: Yeah, yeah. So, I don’t know really, other than just that I enjoy baking and whatnot, how I end up with—you know, I use behavioral baking as a framework in my first book. And then, you know, it’s not about the cookie and all these. So, really just if we imagine—so, you know, you and I are walking down the street having a great conversation, and then all of a sudden there’s this amazing, enticing scent that comes toward us. It’s sweet and a little salty, and there’s brown sugar and a hint of chocolate. And we can tell it’s these amazing cookies that are baking somewhere. We can tell they’re close by. So we’re still talking to each other, but we’re maybe a bit distracted trying to find the source of that scent. And then we get in front of the building and realize that there’s a line, and we find ourselves in the line. And then they say, “Hey, today only we have this special deal—buy three, get one free, and we’ve got a sample.” You know, before we know it, we walk out of that store, each eating a cookie and having a bag with an undisclosed amount of cookies in it for later, right?
Miriam Schulman: And that exact scenario was exactly what my daughter and I—my daughter is an adult, not a three-year-old, by the way—so my daughter and I came out of New House Chocolate, which would be like in the 200 French fry category. It’s like for two pieces of chocolate, I think it was $10, which wasn’t $100, but still. But that exact scenario was like the samples and the chocolates and the more chocolates. And yes, we only came in for one piece of chocolate. What happened?
Melina Palmer: Yes, definitely, right? So we’re drawn in, you know, by, in that case, the scent of the cookies. So if we imagine the other scenario, right? We’re walking down the same street, same conversation, and all of a sudden some person comes up and they, you know, shove a coupon in our face and say, “Hey, hey, hey, you know, today only, we’re selling cookies over here. They’re buy four and you only pay for three of them, and I’ve got samples.” You know, like this guy—get out of here! We’re having a good conversation. We don’t like this guy. We’re definitely not buying from them. You know, we get in front of the store and we see the line, and we finally smell that scent of the cookies. And it’s like that last straw to go write Yelp reviews or whatever about how much we hate their sales tactics and that we would never buy from them. So, the key to know here is that one could have been exactly the same cookies in both scenarios, but it wasn’t really about that, right? It’s not about the cookie in that case. It’s also not about the price—$3 a piece, and maybe they’re only $0.50 a piece in the other one—but we’re pretty definitely buying in the first scenario and pretty definitely not in the other one, regardless of the price of those cookies.
Melina Palmer: So everything that happened before we got to that buying moment matters more than the price itself, and it’s all working in tandem to help make that sale happen. One thing that’s really important to note is that all the same things happened in both stories. They were just in a different order, and they were kind of flipped around to make it so that they’re all, again, working for you or working against you based on the story. One of those being that priming, that scent of the cookies—having that drawing people in and getting them excited early is really, really key to thinking about how you’re making, uh, business with you enticing. And of course, it doesn’t just work with scent, right? There are other aspects of that. But we also had our, you know, the social proof aspect. We had reciprocity in that free sample, uh, the way we framed talking about it. So in the first scenario, we said, “Buy three, get one free” versus “If you buy four cookies, you only have to pay for three of them.” And there are a lot of different little things that end up making a really big difference. That’s what behavioral economics is all about.
Miriam Schulman: Yeah. One of the things that I did notice, that is something I remember learning a long time ago, was that bonuses always do better rather than including. So those of you who are listening today who teach online classes, that’s the same. What Melina’s talking about, it’s the same sort of thing. It’s, “This is your course, and this is the bonus,” rather than, “Look at how much value we have when we include it.” Do you want to explain a little bit more about how your brain processes that?
Melina Palmer: Sure. Yeah, I mean really, and there are different approaches too. You also don’t have to do discounts and things, right, which I talk about a lot in the book—not defaulting to doing a discount. But when we feel like, let’s say, we’re going to get that free gift with purchase, that little bonus, that’s triggering some reciprocity right there. Uh, when people give us something, we want to give back, and it might be that they want to give back in the way of actually buying from you, of what it is that you’re talking about. We also can have some—maybe there’s scarcity tied to that. There’s loss aversion and that fear of missing out, where it’s, you know, the most extreme examples of these. I kind of tell people, if you want to see this in the most literal way that these come around, it’s like watching infomercials, right? Where they’ll say, “But wait, there’s more.” And you might think that this would be $600, but you won’t pay even five or four or three. It’s just these four easy payments of whatever, right? So, um, seeing how some of these come together—if you act in the next 20 minutes, you get this bonus. We don’t want to miss out on that benefit. It’s only right now, right? So, loss aversion, scarcity, reciprocity—there’s a lot of, uh, stuff that’s working together to help those tie in with human behavior and how we like to buy.
Miriam Schulman: Okay. And then before we continue, I just want you to know that I am not tall. So I just met in person with my book editor, and as soon as she met me, she was like, “Oh, good, you’re short.” And then I slipped off my sandals—even shorter than you thought. So I only look tall on Zoom.
Melina Palmer: The disparity of our—
Miriam Schulman: Because I had my chair up high.
Melina Palmer: So we’re there. We’re even now, I guess. There we go. Where we line up, back up.
Miriam Schulman: So this is an artist thing. I know your thing is behavioral economics. So with composition, I just like to have only a forehead distance between the top of my head and the top of the screen, and the eyes to be a third of the way down. And when they’re down here—anyway, so that’s composition.
Melina Palmer: Interestingly, I actually do that based on when we’ve been doing vertical stuff for social media. The way that things will auto-crop when someone is speaking—when they are spaced like that, where they’re too close to the top, it zooms in so that it just picks up the sides of their face in a super weird way, and it looks like they’re shouting and like right in the camera, which is why I split the thirds to be more like my head is centered on. If we do our, like, the three rows and three columns, I’m going to kind of be center of the space. So I too think of the composition, and it’s for the auto-crop of vertical video.
Miriam Schulman: Okay. So those of you listening to us right now on the podcast, Melina very graciously and bravely agreed to come with me live on Amazon. So if you want to see us and see how short or tall we actually are—you can’t tell at all. I’m actually—so how tall are you, actually?
Melina Palmer: I’m five seven.
Miriam Schulman: Oh, see, she is actually five inches taller than me. I’m five two, and I may have shrunk since the last time I checked. Okay, so if you want to see us and see, like, her cool microphone and the colorful books and all that, that full experience, you can go to SchulmanArt.com/Livestreams, and you can see what it is that we are doing here. So this is like me experimenting. I already had an Amazon Live crash this morning, so I figured, oh, let’s get back on the horse and try again. Okay, Melina, this is a question that you gave me to ask you, and so I’m dying to know the answer. What is the one word that increased sales by 38%? And what concept is in play there? I don’t think I got up to that part yet. Or maybe it’s in a different book.
Melina Palmer: It is also in other books, but it’s definitely in The Truth About Pricing. In this case, I’ll tell you about the study, and then I’ll explain what’s going on behind the scenes here. So, this research study was done in a grocery store. There were two different end cap displays—one says, “Snickers bars. Buy them for your freezer,” and the other says, “Snickers bars. Buy 18 for your freezer.” And we can all probably agree that 18 is a lot of Snickers bars, likely more than most of us are going to be buying. If you were the one creating those ads, you might feel like you don’t want to put out the number 18—it feels arbitrary, and you don’t want to have to defend how you came up with this number. And, you know, we’ll rationalize and say, “But it’s like ‘them’ is unlimited, and people could buy a hundred Snickers bars if they wanted.” It may not feel like there’s that big of a difference, but as we know, uh, actually when the number 18 was used, there was a 38% increase in sales over the word “them” when they used it. So it’s not that the number 18 in and of itself is magic.
Miriam Schulman: But actually, it is. Wait. Did you know that it actually is?
Melina Palmer: Okay. We can talk about that.
Miriam Schulman: We will talk about that. But you finish your thing, and we’ll circle back, okay?
Melina Palmer: So in this case, uh, the number 18 is being set up as an anchor, as the concept that we talk about—anchoring and adjustment in this case. And so it’s a high anchor because we want to be seeing this, uh, like differently in this higher way. Uh, so if you were in the store and you were walking down the aisle, you see “buy them”—like, maybe we notice it, maybe not. One of the things we didn’t really talk about yet on the show is that our brains, we actually, as humans, we’re making so many decisions today, every single day. Research shows that humans make up to 35,000 decisions every single day on average. So we’re constantly in this stream of decisions, and most of those are done subconsciously using habits, predictability, these rules and concepts of behavioral science and behavioral economics. So in this case, if it even breaks through the filter, you know, maybe we get two of those Snickers bars, right? In the case of 18, it’s pretty shocking. You might go, “Whoa, like, have I been buying Snickers wrong?” Like, we’re seeing this a little differently and maybe we’d say, “You know, I’m way better than everybody else. I don’t need 18. I’ll just get six.” Right? So coming down from 18 is different than moving up from “them,” which is actually more like a fancy word for zero versus when we were kind of in that conscious planning place, and we’re saying it’s unlimited, and people could get 100 or 1,000 Snickers.
Melina Palmer: Right. We want to be thinking about the context where people are actually going to be buying. So I mentioned a little bit, when we talked about the scent of the cookies, how framing and how we say something matters more than what we say. There’s a slightly different question frame behind these statements that’s also happening here with the Snickers bar. So in the first case of “them,” we’re saying, “Hey, do you want some Snickers? Would you like any?”—is kind of the question behind that. When we have that number 18, there’s more of this implied sale, like it’s going to happen. You’re asking, “How many do you want to buy?” It’s a slightly different question, but because of how it hits the brain differently, it does impact and change behavior. So again, 18 isn’t magic in and of itself, but it does work in a certain way.
Miriam Schulman: It is.
Melina Palmer: And I’m excited to hear more about that since I do say this all the time, but the concept of knowing what it is you want people to do and understanding how we anchor and use numbers is crucial. I can give some examples too. When we think about selling things, the biggest mistake I see people make is inadvertently anchoring on a low number. For instance, you might start with small pieces and work your way up to the biggest thing, right? So it’s like, “We’ve got these little $5 postcards, and then there’s this other thing, and then you can get this thing that’s like $500.”
That’s an option. And I also have this $5,000 piece if you want to get that. Like, whoa, that feels really, really expensive because we started at $5. And so maybe I’ll just pick up a couple of those; I’m not even thinking about the $500 thing. You set the anchor too low with that first number they heard, so everything else feels really expensive from there. This is also why I don’t really recommend “as low as” type pricing.
So if instead you were to say, “Oh, of course, we have custom art pieces that are $5,000 that are available for these types of spaces. We also have options that are, you know, just $500 if that’s something you’re looking for. And there are trinkets and things as well. But you know, what feels like a fit for you if you want to move forward?” Right? $500 feels way more reasonable when we talked about the $5,000 thing first. Whereas if you started at $5 and then tried to go up to $500, it’s a really hard jump for people to make. It’s all the same stuff. You didn’t have to change your price. You didn’t have to change those offerings—just how you talked about it and the order you presented it in made a huge difference in whether or not someone’s going to buy that thing you want them to buy.
Miriam Schulman: Yeah. And those of you who have been on any of my masterclasses or bootcamps, you’ll notice that right before I present how much it costs to join the Artist Incubator, I will let people know, “Well, I invested in a mastermind that cost $25,000,” and then I’ll share that private coaching with me costs $18,000. So I work my way down so that when you are presented with the investment of the incubator, it doesn’t feel like such a shock. It’s kind of like priming—it’s priming the right word here? It’s priming you for something higher.
Melina Palmer: Yeah. Anchoring is a form of priming.
Miriam Schulman: Yeah. Okay. All right. Let’s talk about 18 being magical so we don’t leave an open loop there. Okay, so in Hebrew, the number 18 actually means “chai,” and the word “chai” means “life” or “luck.” So a lot of Jewish people—and if you have any Jewish friends, when you got married, you might have noticed this—they may have given you a check for $180. And you’re like, “Why is this $180?” Or, you know, my older relatives, it was always an $18 check. It was like, come on, don’t you know about inflation? Like, put a zero at the end of that! So it’ll be multiples of 18 sometimes, like it could be $360. And I’m 55 now, but last year when I was 54, I was like, I’m triple chai—it’s like three times 18. This is going to be an amazing year. So, um, yeah. So 18, it has mystical properties. It’s kind of like in the Harry Potter world how seven was a magical number.
So while we’re on the topic of numbers, what about ending in seven or five? I mean, I know we talked about value versus quality, but is there something with sevens and nines?
Melina Palmer: So when it comes to that, the first thing is to decide again if you’re focused on quality or value. And there’s more to it—I explain it a lot in the book—so if you’re not really sure, you can check it out. Uh, but if you’re going to be on the quality side of things, those luxury pieces, if you know you’re something people are buying as gifts, in the space of investment and whatnot, rounded whole numbers, like even pricing with zeros, are really just a good way to go for you. As a rule of thumb, don’t round down. If you are on the value side, and you’re going to round down, you can choose if you like nines, sevens, eights, you know, whatever the thing is that you really like, or even a five if that’s where you want to be. If it speaks to you for whatever reason, just go with that one. Uh, the research shows it doesn’t really matter which one you go with, but you can just pick something and be consistent. Knowing whether or not you should round down or go with the whole number is, uh, up to you.
Miriam Schulman: Okay, I know we touched on a few of them, um, like “as low as.” But what are the top five wording mistakes you see businesses making?
Melina Palmer: Yeah. So this is—and I know it’s, uh—so I have an episode. What’s funny is this—this is episode two of The Brainy Business podcast, which now has 420-something episodes or whatnot.
Miriam Schulman: Congratulations.
Melina Palmer: Oh, not that I am now. I always get in my own head when someone asks me this question, and then I think, “Am I going to get the right thing?” So, the first piece is that we tend to be too boring. Uh, we can be too literal, too much, too vague, or too confusing. Those are kind of the five big things that people get wrong. So with “too literal,” this is actually a framing example. And I talk about a nail salon that was in my area. When I moved, I needed to go to a place to get my nails done, and people were recommending it, but it just didn’t quite feel right. And they had a sign—I realized after a while—they had a sign outside that said they were voted “Best in the South Sound,” our area, uh, in 2008, 2009, 2010, I believe. And this was in 2017, 2018. And you go, “So, what happened?” Right?
Miriam Schulman: Or, what won the best one this year?
Melina Palmer: Because I want to go check them out.
Miriam Schulman: Because I want to go there, right?
Melina Palmer: Yeah. And it could be that, you know, maybe they’re not giving out those awards anymore. Maybe they just didn’t apply for them. It doesn’t really matter, right? But I’m just seeing something, and it feels off, like something went downhill because of this. So keeping that really literal thing that’s older is not working to their advantage anymore. Even though you still won those awards, the context has changed, and so that’s not going to resonate in the same way. But if you were to reframe that and say, “We were voted best in the South Sound three years in a row,” which is also true, we hear that very differently, right? So just being thoughtful about that context and how you say things.
So, that framing piece—being too boring—I give a fun example of grapes. Grapes are one of the ultimate commodities where we don’t really care where they come from or what farm, until there was a brand that came out with cotton candy grapes. They have bright pink on them, and they’re extra sweet grapes—they don’t add extra sugar.
They just did all these different versions of hybrids to create these really sweet grapes. But again, knowing if they called them “extra sweet grapes” or, um, “sugar blasted grapes” or, like, “vanilla grapes,” it doesn’t feel the same as “cotton candy,” right? I’m intrigued. They have pink packaging in the fruit section—I want to go check those out and see what they’re like. And they only come out at a certain time of year, um, for like a week, and then they sell out. There are actual websites like cottoncandygrapewatch.com that track every year when those are going to be released. It’s about turning something boring into something exciting. And instead of being like $1.99 a pound, the cotton candy grapes are always $6.99, $7.99, $9.99 a pound—right next to the other grapes. So people want to buy those because it’s interesting.
Too much being, you know, if you’re asking yourself, “Am I saying too many words here?”—which, you know, I could be asking myself as I’m on this diatribe of answering the question—but, uh, the answer is typically yes, right?
Miriam Schulman: We usually teach what we need to hear.
Melina Palmer: Yeah. Yep. But when you can condense the language, when you can make it simpler, it is going to resonate more. Uh, similarly, don’t be too vague to where we don’t know what it is that you’re saying to us. And if it’s too confusing—so often there’s not a clear call to action for someone, like on a website, right? Are they supposed to click the button? Are they supposed to book a call? Are they going to buy now? What you want them to do isn’t very clear, in email communication and everything else. Uh, so those are the top five mistakes.
Miriam Schulman: Beautiful. All right. Well, thank you so much for being with me here today. Before we wrap up, we just want to do, um, a quick roundup of your other books. So is what you just talked about in What Your Customer Wants? Is that your first book?
Melina Palmer: It is. Yes. Yeah. What your customer wants and can’t tell you is the first book.
Miriam Schulman: And would that be that you’re too boring? You talk too much.
Melina Palmer: Yeah. That. That is in there. Yes.
Miriam Schulman: You’re confusing.
Melina Palmer: Yes. That’s part of it, a piece of what’s in that book that is really looking at brand experience. There’s actually a chapter in that book called “The Truth About Pricing.” It talks about pricing a little bit, but it’s really about these 16 key concepts from behavioral economics that I think everyone in business should know. Each concept has a dedicated chapter—there’s one on framing, one on anchoring, one on priming, one on surprise and delight. As you go through those, you really understand them on their own. Then part three of that book starts looking at how you can weave those concepts together in different ways, as you would look to use and apply them.
And then the second book is What Your Employees Need and Can’t Tell You, which focuses more on understanding change and management, getting people to buy in on ideas when it isn’t really about buying a product or service but about leading teams and organizations.
Miriam Schulman: Okay. Well, those are definitely both going to be on my list. All right, Melina, do you have any last words for our listeners before we wrap this up—whatever, however you’re consuming this podcast?
Melina Palmer: Ah, well, I would just say thank you for the time. Often, people ask if I was going to give one little piece of advice. So, I end every episode of The Brainy Business with “Be thoughtful.” I think just understanding and asking, like, “Why did I click on this thing? Why did I think that was interesting?” Asking more questions, getting a little curious about what’s out there, and being generous and thoughtful with others works on multiple levels. So, yeah, that’s a key takeaway for thinking about business and understanding our brains.
Miriam Schulman: Fantastic. All right. I will see everyone same time, same place next week. Until then, stay inspired.
Speaker 2: Thank you for listening to The Inspiration Place podcast. Connect with us on Facebook at facebook.com/schulmanart, on Instagram @schulmanart and of course, on SchulmanArt.com.
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