Geek Porn
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1st Floor, 17-21 Old Street, London EC1V 9HF
t +44 (0)20 3058 1100 f +44 (0)20 7253 6846
e jay.nicholl@makeitclear.co.uk www.makeitclear.co.uk
geek porn - Dopamine and the product acquisition cycle
From opening the new Playstation to the minimalist modernity of an iPod’s packaging; one way to enhance technology brand value is to offer the contemporary consumer a rewarding anticipation experience. The value of the anticipation experience is evident in the proliferation of “unboxing” videos available on TechRadar, TechCrunch, CNET etc. Just search “unboxing” on YouTube – you’ll find more than 370,000 videos. But the concentration of videos is hardly representative of the volumes of video consumption. Of 370,000+ videos on YouTube – viewing figures are astronomical. With regularly more than 100,000 views per video (with many more per product) within a year of publishing, there’s clearly an avid audience for unboxing. Watch any of these unboxing videos and you’ll be privy to the pre-product experience, something that’s been described by some as “geek porn”. It might seem sensationalist, but the parallels are there to be drawn. Unboxing might just as easily be called undressing. There’s an element of the seductive in the slowly revealed sleek lines of a long-awaited piece of tech. The promise of the product itself is almost entirely detached from the joy of its disclosure, the titillation of the reveal versus the gratification of possession.
But why watch others enjoying this experience?
One of the pioneers of the unboxing video is Andru Edwards, Chief Executive of the unboxing.com website. The website’s tagline explains much of the joy of unboxing: “Vicarious thrills from opening new gear.” Edwards, a perfect spokesman for the phenomenon, believes that the service has an instinctive draw, “It’s stuff that you’re lusting over - you can’t have it, but you want it”. For Edwards the experience transfers desire from one person to another.
“That’s the appeal of unboxing: when you watch other people doing things on the Internet, you feel like you’re doing it yourself. It’s the same as when we look at magazines of beautiful cars and dream of driving them, and it’s the reason why women are still seduced by beautiful girls walking in TV ads, supposedly wearing a perfume. Unboxing is a very masculine dream, but girls watch, say, Sex and the City, which is a feminine version of it.”
The vicarious nature of unboxing is a subject of interest to Martin Lindstrom, an expert in neuro-marketing and author of Buyology: How Everything We Believe About Why We Buy Is Wrong. He believes the unboxing phenomenon is a result of so-called “mirror neurons”: “Mirror neurons mean, in principle, that when I observe other people doing things, I feel that I am doing the same,” he explains. “When I scratch my head, and you watch me doing it, the same regions in your brain will be activated as would be if you were actually scratching your head. Through the action of mirror neurons we experience the anticipation of the unboxing experience as an extension of our own experience. If the anticipation can be experienced vicariously then the role of anticipation, of undressing, unpackaging, unboxing can be explored pre-sale, prior to the actual consumption of the product at point of sale, and as such its import is amplified.
white paper | Geek Porn - Dopamine and the product acquisition cycle
page 1
Anticipation is a pleasure
To take a step back, as Helen Phillips had it in New Scientist, “By the 1980s, the circuit diagram of this reward centre had been worked out. A whole series of brain areas had been charted and the chemical transmitter that passed messages around was known to be dopamine – hence the reward centre’s alternative name, the “dopamine system”. Everyone agreed on its function, too. It rewarded animals for doing things with survival value.” Over the course of the 80s and 90s this further evolved Dopamine’s role as a reward hormone; a prize for eating, exercise, success and some of our more rudimentary desires. But ultimately, this understanding was challenged. Dopamine may not function solely as a reward-based system. New research in to the factors that contribute to our wants is now suggesting that dopamine actually plays a fundamentally different role. The research suggests that the unexpected discovery of a prospectively positive outcome stimulates the production of dopamine, in the process encouraging further interaction; engagement that facilitates further learning about a subject. Exploration that garners positive results only produces further motivation.
What that means for marketers
Anticipation is something marketers dream of influencing. Managing the way people perceive products is increasingly difficult as it becomes ever more influenced by things outside of our direct control. It’s the goal of marketing to positively influence anticipation, no matter how complex that may be. Conversely, dopamine and the motivation it inspires can also be used to measure a negative expected result. As ‘liking’ reactions were re-evaluated as wanting, the measured ‘disliking’ in the dopamine experiments was reassessed as a dismissal of experiences that were expected to end badly. Neuroscientist Kent Berridge, PhD, of the University of Michigan, said of the research in 2005: “dopamine is only needed to use already learned information to generate successful motivated performance.” This learned information is regulated in a number of ways. When it comes to advertising, there’s very little we can do to battle cynicism. Expectations of quality rely on a range of experiences – increasingly including reviews from impartial sources and our peers. Research from Rubicon consulting recently found that online reviews rank second only to personal advice from peers in terms of influence on purchases. Both well thought out criticism and cynicism can defeat the “want” urge, increasing the pre-engagement dislike, but what can we do to nurture it?
Simply, we previously thought of dopamine as creating “like” experiences. We now believe it stimulates discovery and wanting. Of course, this has implications for advertising and marketing as they are intimately associated with people’s desires.
This element of discovery, the wanting rather than liking, the desire rather than satisfaction lies at the heart of anticipation and, more light-heartedly, vicarious titillation. We are wired to yearn, to lust; the waiting, wanting is what drives us biologically and psychologically. The research still supports dopamine as a motivator but at a different point in the cycle, it is released in anticipation of a positive outcome, not as the result of a positive outcome. What that means for brands is this: the more information you give to a prospective consumer about the value your product offers; the more they will feel motivated to interact with it. It’s simple; provide the information that proves the excellence of your product and it will receive more pre-purchase engagement.
Encouraging product desire
Though this information doesn’t fundamentally alter the way we perceive marketing’s key principles, there are fresh implications for our industry garnered from this research. Wants are fostered through learning. Excavate the reasoning behind your interest in a Ferrari; the root of your interest lies in a positive expected result. Jeremy Clarkson is probably ringing in your ears right now. The key for marketers is to provide wide ranging learning resources around their product. From a dedicated product website to Twitter exclusive announcements, the anticipation of a product can be preempted and managed to help create interest in technology’s core audiences. Marketers, now more than ever, need to make sure their product can be seen online. Among unboxing videos and blog articles about leaked photos, your product needs to be prevalent – ask the pros. Companies like Sony and Apple are well known for subtle anticipatory cues. The leaked iPhone helped boost interest in an already highly desirable product, and the release of the Sony Playstation phone will be helped by months of speculation on top blogs like Engadget. Provide your target audience with the information they want and you’ll be going further to manage hype and interest in your product.
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white paper | Geek Porn - Dopamine and the product acquisition cycle
page 2
1st Floor, 17-21 Old Street, London EC1V 9HF
t +44 (0)20 3058 1100 f +44 (0)20 7253 6846
e jay.nicholl@makeitclear.co.uk www.makeitclear.co.uk
geek porn - Dopamine and the product acquisition cycle
From opening the new Playstation to the minimalist modernity of an iPod’s packaging; one way to enhance technology brand value is to offer the contemporary consumer a rewarding anticipation experience. The value of the anticipation experience is evident in the proliferation of “unboxing” videos available on TechRadar, TechCrunch, CNET etc. Just search “unboxing” on YouTube – you’ll find more than 370,000 videos. But the concentration of videos is hardly representative of the volumes of video consumption. Of 370,000+ videos on YouTube – viewing figures are astronomical. With regularly more than 100,000 views per video (with many more per product) within a year of publishing, there’s clearly an avid audience for unboxing. Watch any of these unboxing videos and you’ll be privy to the pre-product experience, something that’s been described by some as “geek porn”. It might seem sensationalist, but the parallels are there to be drawn. Unboxing might just as easily be called undressing. There’s an element of the seductive in the slowly revealed sleek lines of a long-awaited piece of tech. The promise of the product itself is almost entirely detached from the joy of its disclosure, the titillation of the reveal versus the gratification of possession.
But why watch others enjoying this experience?
One of the pioneers of the unboxing video is Andru Edwards, Chief Executive of the unboxing.com website. The website’s tagline explains much of the joy of unboxing: “Vicarious thrills from opening new gear.” Edwards, a perfect spokesman for the phenomenon, believes that the service has an instinctive draw, “It’s stuff that you’re lusting over - you can’t have it, but you want it”. For Edwards the experience transfers desire from one person to another.
“That’s the appeal of unboxing: when you watch other people doing things on the Internet, you feel like you’re doing it yourself. It’s the same as when we look at magazines of beautiful cars and dream of driving them, and it’s the reason why women are still seduced by beautiful girls walking in TV ads, supposedly wearing a perfume. Unboxing is a very masculine dream, but girls watch, say, Sex and the City, which is a feminine version of it.”
The vicarious nature of unboxing is a subject of interest to Martin Lindstrom, an expert in neuro-marketing and author of Buyology: How Everything We Believe About Why We Buy Is Wrong. He believes the unboxing phenomenon is a result of so-called “mirror neurons”: “Mirror neurons mean, in principle, that when I observe other people doing things, I feel that I am doing the same,” he explains. “When I scratch my head, and you watch me doing it, the same regions in your brain will be activated as would be if you were actually scratching your head. Through the action of mirror neurons we experience the anticipation of the unboxing experience as an extension of our own experience. If the anticipation can be experienced vicariously then the role of anticipation, of undressing, unpackaging, unboxing can be explored pre-sale, prior to the actual consumption of the product at point of sale, and as such its import is amplified.
white paper | Geek Porn - Dopamine and the product acquisition cycle
page 1
Anticipation is a pleasure
To take a step back, as Helen Phillips had it in New Scientist, “By the 1980s, the circuit diagram of this reward centre had been worked out. A whole series of brain areas had been charted and the chemical transmitter that passed messages around was known to be dopamine – hence the reward centre’s alternative name, the “dopamine system”. Everyone agreed on its function, too. It rewarded animals for doing things with survival value.” Over the course of the 80s and 90s this further evolved Dopamine’s role as a reward hormone; a prize for eating, exercise, success and some of our more rudimentary desires. But ultimately, this understanding was challenged. Dopamine may not function solely as a reward-based system. New research in to the factors that contribute to our wants is now suggesting that dopamine actually plays a fundamentally different role. The research suggests that the unexpected discovery of a prospectively positive outcome stimulates the production of dopamine, in the process encouraging further interaction; engagement that facilitates further learning about a subject. Exploration that garners positive results only produces further motivation.
What that means for marketers
Anticipation is something marketers dream of influencing. Managing the way people perceive products is increasingly difficult as it becomes ever more influenced by things outside of our direct control. It’s the goal of marketing to positively influence anticipation, no matter how complex that may be. Conversely, dopamine and the motivation it inspires can also be used to measure a negative expected result. As ‘liking’ reactions were re-evaluated as wanting, the measured ‘disliking’ in the dopamine experiments was reassessed as a dismissal of experiences that were expected to end badly. Neuroscientist Kent Berridge, PhD, of the University of Michigan, said of the research in 2005: “dopamine is only needed to use already learned information to generate successful motivated performance.” This learned information is regulated in a number of ways. When it comes to advertising, there’s very little we can do to battle cynicism. Expectations of quality rely on a range of experiences – increasingly including reviews from impartial sources and our peers. Research from Rubicon consulting recently found that online reviews rank second only to personal advice from peers in terms of influence on purchases. Both well thought out criticism and cynicism can defeat the “want” urge, increasing the pre-engagement dislike, but what can we do to nurture it?
Simply, we previously thought of dopamine as creating “like” experiences. We now believe it stimulates discovery and wanting. Of course, this has implications for advertising and marketing as they are intimately associated with people’s desires.
This element of discovery, the wanting rather than liking, the desire rather than satisfaction lies at the heart of anticipation and, more light-heartedly, vicarious titillation. We are wired to yearn, to lust; the waiting, wanting is what drives us biologically and psychologically. The research still supports dopamine as a motivator but at a different point in the cycle, it is released in anticipation of a positive outcome, not as the result of a positive outcome. What that means for brands is this: the more information you give to a prospective consumer about the value your product offers; the more they will feel motivated to interact with it. It’s simple; provide the information that proves the excellence of your product and it will receive more pre-purchase engagement.
Encouraging product desire
Though this information doesn’t fundamentally alter the way we perceive marketing’s key principles, there are fresh implications for our industry garnered from this research. Wants are fostered through learning. Excavate the reasoning behind your interest in a Ferrari; the root of your interest lies in a positive expected result. Jeremy Clarkson is probably ringing in your ears right now. The key for marketers is to provide wide ranging learning resources around their product. From a dedicated product website to Twitter exclusive announcements, the anticipation of a product can be preempted and managed to help create interest in technology’s core audiences. Marketers, now more than ever, need to make sure their product can be seen online. Among unboxing videos and blog articles about leaked photos, your product needs to be prevalent – ask the pros. Companies like Sony and Apple are well known for subtle anticipatory cues. The leaked iPhone helped boost interest in an already highly desirable product, and the release of the Sony Playstation phone will be helped by months of speculation on top blogs like Engadget. Provide your target audience with the information they want and you’ll be going further to manage hype and interest in your product.
ho
nh 2
ho
white paper | Geek Porn - Dopamine and the product acquisition cycle
page 2
