Richard Shotton, Founder of Astroten and author of ‘The Choice Factory’
Mail Unleashed Transcript
Rory:
Hello and welcome to Mail Unleashed. Brought to you by Marketreach. Well, as they say on University Challenge, you're probably familiar with the rules by now. But just in case you're new to this. It's a series of interviews in which I speak to leading lights in the world of marketing about their life experience in general. And in particular, their experience of using direct mail.
And today, I'm delighted to be joined by Richard Shotton. Who I think is possessed of two unbelievably rare combinatorial skills. In that, he's a media man by background, but he is a behavioural scientist and behavioural economics guru by adoption. And I think the combination of those two things gives him a really, really unique insight into not only the kind of mathematical arguments behind direct mail. But the greater nuances in terms of why you would use one medium rather than another.
So, I mean, have you been a kind of direct mail aficionado for some time?
Richard:
Yeah, definitely. So as a media planner, one of the things that's always of interest is the power of particular moments, or particular audiences. I've always been interested in the targeting capabilities. And then I think later on, when I became more interested in behavioural science, some of the other benefits became more apparent.
Rory:
You know, in my whole time in advertising, along with, you know, direct mail, nearly always worked. In fact, if direct mail didn't work, it was a fairly sure-fire indicator that maybe your idea wasn’t much good or your proposition wasn’t working. Direct Mail probably was particularly unfairly treated, of course, because the Royal Mail didn't pay commission historically. So it wasn't in the interests of media agencies to get particularly acquainted with it.
Richard:
On TV, because it's interesting, people often say, oh well, if you have different commissions for different medias, then it will incentivise the buyer to go towards particular media. However, there's also the fact, that you allude to, which is. If a medium is very, very easy to buy in huge quantities in one go, even on the same commission like TV, it ends up being maybe overused. I think that's absolutely fair.
Rory:
It’s for all kinds of anthropological reasons. It's unsurprising that 20 somethings have an atypical media consumption, I think.
The Bobby Duffy book ‘Generations’ is brilliant because his argument is, that actually viewed through a slightly different lens. Actually, all this Gen Z stuff is mostly nonsense. By which I mean they're pretty similar to people in that age group as they were at the time.
Richard:
It's an effect of being young, not an effect of being born in 2000.
Rory:
Sort of being born at a particular time. I think that's a very valuable point.
Also valuable, actually, because direct mail has an interesting attribute. He said. Not a very elegant segway. in the sense that, of course, it isn't necessarily actually it doesn't reach you necessarily on demand. Okay. So, you know, it's quite interesting in the sense that it is sent out to young people. Regardless of what young people's attitudes to mail is.
What I notice about it is because young people get comparatively little mail. Weirdly, it has an astounding impact. It's not a bad way to reach Gen Z.
Richard:
Well, from a behavioural science perspective, that's a very strong rationale. There's an awful lot of evidence. Either that things that are distinctive are noticed, and things that are surprising are noticed. There's a lovely study from Santos, in the mid nineties, where he persuaded some of his colleagues to dress up as beggars. And go out into the streets of California and ask for donations or cash.
And sometimes they go out and say, can I have some loose change? Or can I have a quarter? That's the normal request. Other times they say, can I have 17 cents or 32 cents? And it's those surprising requests that are much more likely to get a donation. They get larger donations. And his argument is, if you behave in a predictable way, people often have scripts in their mind, with a response.
Rory:
But that business of kind of breaking a chain of thought so that is actually a kind of unique mail or a disproportionate mail attribute in the sense that it's been sent to you. You know, it has your name on it, literally. Okay. And therefore. You kind of will automatically at least give it 3 seconds of your attention.
Richard:
Yeah, absolutely. I think there's, there's a perception that it has taken time or money to send a piece of direct mail. In the way there isn’t that perception for an email. And one of the big ideas in behavioural science is this idea of costly signalling. The greater effort a communicator has gone to. The more believable their message.
Rory:
Now, one of the things you must know as a planner, you understood that the level of impact engagement attention, varied enormously according to different modes of communication. And mail, I suppose, has some particularly unique qualities. in doing this, I've always believed it had kind of magical strengths. One of them was that you, when you received a piece of mail, you at least had to consider what it said, for a brief moment before rejecting it.
Richard:
Yes, because you are the chosen recipient.
Rory:
Exactly.
Richard:
Rather than having to pass.
Rory:
And the tactility. I’d be interested if you have thought on kind of the value of it being tactile.
Richard:
Tactility is interesting. A couple of reasons. I think, firstly, there are some studies at the University of Stavanger. Which suggest that the same content. And in this experiment, I think it was Mangan. They gave people 1500 word essays. Sometimes they read it on a laptop, sometimes they read it in the written form on paper. And they found that the memorability was higher amongst the second group.
And one of the arguments was that because the words had a physical location. You remembered it from its position rather than it being on a screen where there are many other things that have same position.
Rory:
Because there’s that mysterious quality that books have, which Kindles don't. Which is that there's some passage you're looking for. And even months after you've read it, you can remember whether it's on the left hand side of the book or the right hand side of the book. Which is kind of weird, but you can.
Richard:
That study links to a whole body of work, which I think a great bit of mail can take advantage of. Which is that we are much more likely to remember concrete things than abstract things.
So there's a wonderful study from Begg back in 1972. Where he reads out lists of words to people. So some of these are what he calls concrete phrases. Like square door or muscular gentlemen. Some of the words are abstract, like basic truth or subtle fact. Reads them out and then asked afterwards. Asked people to recall as much as they possibly can. And he finds people remember, on average, 9% of the abstract phrasing. 36% of the concrete phrasing. So there is a massive fourfold change in memorability. Based on something being concrete rather than abstract. Now Begg’s argument is the vision is the most powerful of our senses.
Rory:
Yes.
Richard:
If you use language that you can visualise and visualise a door and visualise a man. That will be much, much stickier than language that is abstract.
Rory:
The concretisation thing is really interesting. Because of course most abstract expressions actually have their origins in things like motion. If you take expression, for example. It literally means to push out. And so most abstraction probably linguistically arises from verbs of motion for example. Or something tangible. Because we essentially, I suppose in a sense, because we think with our bodies. I mean, you know, there are weirder arguments about this. About sort of whole body cognition.
Richard:
Yeah.
Rory:
But that concrete thing is fundamentally different, isn’t it? Actually, there's a point that I also make about print being trustworthy in a way that a screen isn't. Which is, if I get into a taxi in a strange country. And there's a bit of paper that says tariff. Okay. Well, I'm pretty confident that that's the same price for everybody while I’m being charged, just what everybody else is charging.
Richard:
And it's that physicality that leads to that.
Rory:
Yeah. Yeah. So the physicality has a sort of permanence to it. It says this is the same for everybody. Now, obviously, laser printing has changed that and allows for personalisation. But in some respects print can be valuable precisely because it isn't personalised. It has a permanence of promise there, which doesn't quite happen when you're using pixels.
Richard:
Absolutely.
Rory:
Which is where you draw the line. I think that’s fantastic. There's a piece you particularly like which I think might be one of ours, in fact.
Richard:
Yes, it is. So, a more recent one 2018, one of the campaigns you did around Christian Aid Week. So 1.2 million envelopes put through the door asking people to donate money. Yeah. Every year. And what I really like some of the data that your team produced. Around the six or seven different biases you tried to use to boost donations.
And the one that stuck in my mind, which was either the most effective or the second most effective. Was the use of costly signalling. So the envelope in question, for that particular group of recipients was slightly higher quality paper stock. And it boosted donations by about 80%.
Rory:
In particular it boosted large donations interestingly. The findings were slightly uneven. Okay.
And some of that may just have been totally practical in the sense that you felt more comfortable putting a large amount of money in a stronger envelope.
Richard:
Oh, a very good point.
Rory:
So a little bit of it may have been impractical. But undoubtedly all the pressure was to say produce this more and more cheaply because we have to print, you know, X million of them. Yeah.
And we said ‘be careful with that’ because, there's a thing called slicing the salami, I think in procurement. And those cost savings sort of work. It's a bit like boiled frog. They work for a bit, but actually that becomes self-defeating because the paper becomes so cheap that it loses its sort of meaning in a sense.
Richard:
I think it gives a sense that, you know, we all have no idea how generous our neighbours are. Now, I think what it suddenly signifies when you see a high-quality envelope might be well, to be a decent citizen, I should put a tenner in. Whereas if it's a cheaper envelope, it might signal, well.
Rory:
Fiver, coins, whatever.
Richard:
Not that I'm deeply reflecting on it. But it's that immediate, speedy response that matters.
Rory:
Now, there's another interesting fact about adding the extraordinary potency of adding the locality. Which it's not just more relevant social proof. I've always had a strong belief with direct mail that localisation actually is a very strong form of personalisation. Not everything has to be about you as an individual, but anything that has kind of ‘Kent’ on it. Is automatically of interest to me.
Richard:
And it's a great balance of personalisation, sorry. Of targeting, but not over targeting. If they use a fact about you, that is, you feel is seretish.
Rory:
Yeah, exactly.
Richard:
Where is your location something that is never going to I think transgress that.
Rory:
Richard, it's been an absolute joy having you on. I have to say it's a masterpiece of timekeeping for the people behind the camera, because we could have gone on for another 6 hours at least.
But, I think there are about four or five million dollar ideas in there. And in the right hands. I think, again, the right insight combined with the right medium can be absolutely transformational. So if you too would like to unleash the power of mail for your business. Well, maybe watch this again. Contact Richard. Or if you prefer, simply head over to marketreach.co.uk
It's been a pleasure. Thank you very much indeed. Thank you.