From a bat flapping around Thomas Nagel’s living room to Elle Macpherson strolling out of the surf for Tab Cola, we ask what it’s like to be your customer, and why kindness and respect travel further than any assumption.
Philosopher Thomas Nagel asked what it’s like to be a bat, and it turns out the answer matters for anyone who sells, hires or serves. Steve and David explain why “they’re just like me” is the laziest assumption in business, and what to do instead.
Drew Eric Whitman’s eight life forces make a return, with a fire escape ladder, a bowling club and a lively argument about what number two really is.
A PHP vulnerability put hundreds of millions of websites at risk. Two questions for your web host will tell you whether yours is sorted.
Then a 1982 Tab Cola ad takes David back to being twelve, and we ask whether it would work today.
Get ready to take notes.
Talking About Marketing podcast episode notes with timecodes
02:00 Person This segment focusses on you, the person, because we believe business is personal.
Bats, Uber Drivers and the Danger of “They’re Just Like Me”
Steve found an old interview with Thomas Nagel on the Instagram channel @closertotruth, in which the philosopher describes the bats that lived under the clapboard of his country house and occasionally lost their way into his living room. That is where his famous question began: what is it like to be a bat? David explains why the thought experiment still bites. We can’t know how big the differences between us and another creature are, and the riskiest move is to assume they’re small.
The hosts reckon this is autopilot thinking, and it’s economical. We grow up in families, pick friends who resemble us, and conclude the whole world is a bit like us. It works well enough in a village of 150 people (Dunbar’s number gets a mention). It lets us down with a new customer, a new employee or a new culture. David’s Uber driver arrived in Australia at 19 with $1,500 and a mobile phone, and had two jobs by day four, which is a nice reminder that humans get on board with each other faster than we expect.
So what do we do about it? David’s answer from fifty years of social psychology and neuroscience: almost everyone responds well to kindness and respect. Add a learner mindset (asking “what led to that?” before jumping on someone) and you build bridges rather than defences. Plus, as David points out, ten people are probably watching how you handle the awkward moment. Steve then demonstrated the principle by spilling his coffee mid-recording. David asked how that happened. Steve did not enjoy the irony.
12:30 Principles This segment focusses principles you can apply in your business today.
The Eight Life Forces, the Chords Playing Under Your Copy
Steve picks up Drew Eric Whitman’s Cashvertising and runs through the eight life forces: survival, food and drink, freedom from fear, pain and danger, sexual companionship, comfortable living, being superior, care and protection of loved ones, and social approval. David wonders whether the numbering means anything. The hosts then do what hosts do and re-rank the list on air, with Maslow lurking in the background. Steve suspects the need for food outranks the enjoyment of it, and David points out that our American author may have a soft spot for the rugged individual.
Whitman himself explains how he bought a fire escape ladder for the second storey of his home. The reasoning came afterwards. The emotion came first, and a headline asking whether your family will die in the night shows how directly a good copywriter can speak to it. David ties this straight back to Nagel: you don’t need to understand someone’s unique quirks to reach them. The best marketing works at the level of the drives we share, then adjusts for the niche.
Steve brings it down to earth with Torrensville Bowling Club, where social approval, food and drink, and a healthy thirst to win all play their part (the trick, he notes, is that it’s not sheep stations on the line). The life forces aren’t the words on your website. They’re the chords playing underneath. Work out which ones matter to your ideal customer and the copy gets easier to write.
25:00 Problems This segment answers questions we've received from clients or listeners.
The PHP Hole Under Your Website (Two Questions for Your Web Host)
Steve spent an evening cursing the universe after news broke of a vulnerability in PHP, the code sitting under most of the world’s websites. Researchers using AI tools found the weakness and then used AI to test the patch, a rare moment where AI gets good press. David wishes the coverage would pause long enough to notice that.
The practical bit is short. Ask your web host whether the latest PHP patch has been applied. Ask which PHP version your site is running; Steve wants to hear 8.3 or above. If you have a webmaster, send them the same two questions. Updating plugins alone wouldn’t have helped this time, because the problem sat under the ground, rather like crooks drilling up into a bank vault from below.
30:30 Perspicacity This segment is designed to sharpen our thinking by reflecting on a case study from the past.
Tab Cola, Elle Macpherson and an Ad That Would Still Work
Steve asks David about his beach wear (board shorts, as it turns out) and that leads to 1982 and a Tab Cola commercial starring Elle Macpherson, a very curvy bottle and a man with a roving eye who gets a bucket of ice water for his trouble. David recalls his twelve-year-old brain going “wow” for reasons that Whitman and Nagel could both explain.
Which life forces are at work? Sexual companionship leads, with social approval and enjoyment of food and drink in the mix. Steve admits that despite our best noble intentions, we’re still working with a brain that evolved over millions of years. Would it work today? The hosts say yes, and point to the Sydney Sweeney campaign: plenty of noise for and against, a person firmly in control of her image, and an advertiser amplified by the argument. The brain hasn’t changed, so the appeal hasn’t either.
Transcript This transcript was generated using Descript.
A Machine-Generated Transcript – Beware Errors
S09E07
Caitlin Davis: [00:00:00] Thinking about Marketing is a podcast for business owners and leaders, produced by Steve Davis and David Oldney of Talked About Marketing. More than 8,000 conversations have taught them something. You can’t read the label from inside the bottle. Everyone needs external perspective. Through their four Ps, person, principles, problems, and perspicacity, yes, you heard that correctly, they explore marketing with curiosity, generosity, and the occasional gentle eye roll.
They hope this becomes a trusted companion on your journey in business[00:01:00]
Steve Davis: David, could I ask you a personal question?
David Olney: We start podcasts with this quite regularly, and my answer remains the same. Of course you may.
Steve Davis: What’s it like to be me?
David Olney: I don’t know. What’s it like to be you?
Steve Davis: No, I’m asking you.
David Olney: Well, what’s it like to be you? Hmm. Hmm. Ah. See, this is, this is an old mind-body thing of do you think people are like you, or do you just think we have some deep fundamental things in common and experience makes us different?
So we’re both very similar and very different. So I think you’re very similar to me and very different.
Steve Davis: And here I was expecting you to say, “I think you’re really happy ’cause I’m here recording a podcast with you.”
David Olney: But then it would’ve been about me.
Steve Davis: Ah.
Caitlin Davis: Our four Ps. Number one, person. These are insights for the whole person, not just the business operator. Oscar [00:02:00] Wilde put it this way: “The aim of life is self-development, to realize one’s nature perfectly. That’s what each of us is here for.”
Steve Davis: In the person segment, we are going to pick up where we left off in that bizarre introduction we just did, and we’re gonna talk about what it’s like to be a bat, uh, as a way of bridging towards what it is to be a human and connect with other humans in this world.
Uh, Nagel was the philosopher, wasn’t he?
David Olney: Yes, Thomas Nagel.
Steve Davis: Mm. And I was browsing through Instagram, and this bizarre little old interview popped up with someone interviewing Nagel about this breakthrough he had in psychology-
David Olney: Uh, philosophy …
Steve Davis: uh, sorry, in philosophy, um, when he was 37, which at the time was, of recording, was 50 years ago.
So he’s roughly 87 [00:03:00] as he’s answering this question, and the interviewer’s asking, “Can you take us back to what led up to you having this insight that the big problem for philosophy is to understand that we don’t understand necessarily what it’s like to be a bat or another thing or even another person?”
Speaker 6: I had a house in the country that I went to on weekends in the summers. Bats lived under the clapboard and would come out to hunt at night. But once in a while, a bat would lose his way and end up inside the house at dusk, and I found myself forced to confront these bats that occasionally were flying around in my living room.
And I began to think about them. I thought, there’s a mind-body problem for bats, too. It then [00:04:00] occurred to me that I couldn’t use this imaginative projection as the basis for my conception of a bat’s experience. It couldn’t be a general account of the subjective aspects of consciousness that they were what I could imagine when I projected myself into the point of view of the other creature.
To come up with a general account of that aspect of the mental, you’d have to form an abstract conception not dependent on personal imagination. That led me to the characterization of the essential mind-body problem for subjective experience as giving an account of how what it’s like for the subject relates to the objective description of the behavior and underlying physiology.[00:05:00]
Steve Davis: Okay, we jumped right into that ’cause I wanted to get to the good bit, David. But you can probably frame this for us in the context of the mind-body problem.
David Olney: I can, and it’s a really interesting thing because at the time Nagel was doing this work, we didn’t have modern neurology or neuroscience like we do now.
We, we thought we knew what bits of the brain did, but we really didn’t understand. So here’s a philosopher going, “Well, I don’t really know what this amazing lump of cells inside my head does, and how it differs from the lump of cells in a bat’s head. But we’re both alive, we both have to do similar things, but in different ways because I’m a human and that’s a bat.”
So it’s so interesting that just by thought experiment, he worked out that there would be similarities and there would be differences, and the most dangerous thing you could do is make assumptions about how big the differences and the similarities are. ‘
Steve Davis: Cause on autopilot, [00:06:00] I think we all just assume that the other, whether it’s another person or a pet or whatever, is basically like us.
And so that gives us a right to be frustrated when they’re not doing what we would do.
David Olney: Yep, and it’s the least amount of energy for thinking.
Steve Davis: Mm.
David Olney: If something’s just like me… And you gotta remember that socially, we grow up in a family, and because we grow from being teeny and tiny and being shaped by that experience, we end up more or less like our family.
Then we make friends. Well, we tend to pick friends that we have things in common with, so they’re more or less like us. So each experience says that my world, my immediate world, is more or less like me. So it’s a very easy assumption to make.
Steve Davis: And I suppose in the evolutionary process, we have typically, if we think of, um, Dunbar’s theory of the monkey number- Mm
about 150 people we can maintain close enough social connections with [00:07:00] to, to sort of know them, in inverted commas.
David Olney: Mm.
Steve Davis: When you are living like that, yeah, I guess it’s right. You have got probably a pretty good idea of what it is to be that other person.
David Olney: Mm-hmm.
Steve Davis: It’s when you go to a different village, country, deal with a different species, that’s where this very comfortable, lazy way of thinking, very economical way of thinking, has potential to let us down.
David Olney: Absolutely. So for example, on my way here today, my Uber driver arrived here in Australia at 19, he’s now 30, with $1,500 and a mobile phone and nothing else. No clue. Stayed in a hotel for the first two nights ’cause he just didn’t know what else to do. By the end of the third day, he had a job washing cars during the day, had found out that you look for a room to board on Gumtree.
By the fourth day, he had a job at night washing dist- dishes in a restaurant. So even when you don’t have a lot in common [00:08:00] with the people around you culturally or, you know, you don’t know a lot of people, we can get on board with other humans remarkably fast because societies are constructed in a similar way.
Steve Davis: And so the reason I wanted to deal with this in the person segment is this is about us as business people and people in life, but we’re going to have either employees or customers or clients or suppliers that we’re dealing with. And perhaps it is good for us to remember that we can be making a lot of assumptions in how we
I mean, even recruiting. I’m guessing at a base level, we, we have the questions on page that make us sound like we’re doing something rigorous and academic. But I wonder if subliminally what we’re looking for are the cues that these people are like us, which is valid in some ways because you want to … You would assume [00:09:00] that to be like us is to be like our culture, and so you’ve got that connecting point.
You’re not gonna have someone who sticks out like the proverbials.
David Olney: Hmm. Yeah. If we, if we leap forward to what we’ve learned from social psychology and neuroscience in the 50 years since Nagel’s famous article, the most amazing thing we’ve learnt is almost all people respond well to kindness. Almost all people respond well to being treated with respect.
And even though being kind and showing respect, you’re taking a risk and going, “Well, why am I being kind and treating this person with respect when I don’t know them?” Well, it’s because in most societies, that is the priming behaviors to get good behavior out of people. So it works almost everywhere with almost everyone.
So don’t be kind and show respect in a way that puts you at risk But kindness and respect in sales, in marketing, in any business setting will more often than not [00:10:00] work in your favor. And if kindness and respect don’t work on someone, you know that this person is gonna be very difficult to deal with. So it’s very much, you know, I don’t know where the line came from, but if you’re out on a date, don’t pay attention to how your date is treating you.
Pay attention to how your date is treating the serving staff in the restaurant.
Steve Davis: And it also reminds me as you say that, and look, what I love about doing this podcast is it forces us to be reflecting on the books we’ve read, the things we’ve talked about, ’cause this insight regarding kindness and respect takes us right back many series ago when we talked about approaching situations with a learner mindset- Mm-hmm
rather than a judging mindset. I forget who was the-
David Olney: Merrily Adams.
Steve Davis: Very. Merrily Adams.
David Olney: So if we just added, you know, be a learner while you’re being kind and showing respect, you can’t go far wrong anywhere in the world.
Steve Davis: And that is when the employee or a customer has done something [00:11:00] unexpected that annoys you, instead of just jumping on them like a ton of bricks, and this is hard, by keeping ourselves in a learner mindset, oh, what led to that?
Or how did that happen? What, what was going on at this moment? You’re going to actually have a chance to, uh, build a bridge and constructively move forward as opposed to getting people’s defenses up.
David Olney: Yep, and do wonderful things for your reputation with your staff and customers. ‘Cause when people see how you respond to those difficult moments, that’s often when you get goodwill from the audience.
At the time, you’re so caught up in the weird instance, you don’t realize that 10 people were watching, and they’ve all gone, “Wow, what a, what a good way to handle that.” No one got yelled at. There was no harsh words. It got understood and softened and patched up, and everyone moved on, and, you know, you won’t know for a while how much impact that had [00:12:00] on everyone who witnessed it.
Steve Davis: Oh, there goes my coffee.
David Olney: Oh, no.
Steve Davis: How did that happen, Dave? Oh, no, David. Yes. I wonder what led to that taking place.
David Olney: I don’t know.
Steve Davis: I think I was excited by what you said. Oh. Let’s, let’s just pause. I’ll clean this up. We’ll come back with the principles segment.
Caitlin Davis: Our four Ps. Number two, principles. These are ideas worth building on. As Oscar Wilde reminded us, you can never be overdressed or over-educated
Steve Davis: David, in the principles segment, uh, apart from wearing a shirt with a coffee stain on it, uh, I’m sitting here reminiscing on Drew Eric Whitman, whose book Cashvertising, in which the S is a dollar sign-
David Olney: Which we talked [00:13:00] about how tragic that is-
Steve Davis: I know
David Olney: despite how good the content is.
Steve Davis: I know. This was probably last season, I think we talked about this, and we incorporate some of the things he’s boiled down and identified for his– He’s a copywriting genius, and he said there’s eight life forces. These are things that lurk within us at a subconscious level most of us have, if not all of us, um, through evolution, through conditioning in society, et cetera.
There are also some learned wants that we have as well, but we’re just gonna focus on these because if we pick up from what we were just talking about before with Thomas Nagel and that what is it like to be a bat? Having the awareness that often we don’t know what it is to li- like to be the other, but that awareness that we don’t know is really helpful.
Drew Eric Whitman and his work, which we weave into what we do when we put a StoryBrand framework together for people, is try and identify [00:14:00] which of the inbuilt drives or responses are the ones most relevant to the product or service being sold that relates to the needs of the ideal customer. What I’ll do, David, I’ll run through them very quickly, get your input, we’ll hear a little bit from Drew as well, and we’ll try and make this principle really pragmatic.
Practical. Yeah. So here are the eight life forces that we all are subject to in different situations. The first one is a force that we wanna survive, enjoy life, and have life extension, live as long as possible. That’s life force one. Life force two is the enjoyment of food and beverages. Life force three is freedom from p- uh, fear, pain, and danger.
We want to do the best we can to be away from that. That also dovetails into the writer who said, “When you’re marketing, people [00:15:00] would rather buy a painkiller than a vitamin.” Mm. A vitamin is, “I’m thinking ahead.” A painkiller is, “I want this sorted out now.” That’s number three. Number four is sexual companionship.
Number five is comfortable living conditions. We all seek comfort. Number six is a wish to be superior, to be winning, to be keeping up with the Joneses. Number seven is a wish for care and protection of our loved ones. And number eight is social approval. We want to be approved by the group. Your quick reaction to these before we hear from Drew?
David Olney: The thing I always wonder about is, did he put them in that order? Because he thinks it’s from one to eight in level of importance, or it’s just the order that he thought of them in and worked on them in. I, I still never really worked out, is one to eight telling us something? ‘Cause I feel that the latter one about caring about family and, and friends, that for a lot of people, that’s would be much higher up the list if we were [00:16:00] going by the numbered thing.
TV Ad: Hmm.
David Olney: So I think they’re interesting, and like I realize in me, it’s really more like six of the eight that matter to me, not eight of the eight. And I think most people are probably like that. There’s probably four that ring very true, a couple that seem fair enough, and a couple that you go, “Eh, shrug.” Like being blind, the social approval one, I, I’ve never really worried too much.
Steve Davis: Yeah. Well, that’s a bit of a superpower.
David Olney: Yeah, in some ways it’s a super- It’s probably also ’cause I felt always kinda alienated from what was going on, so I think it was a coping mechanism rather than a strength. ‘
Steve Davis: Cause it feels like the, the deck is stacked.
David Olney: Yeah.
Steve Davis: Yeah.
David Olney: Yeah.
Steve Davis: Um, uh, interestingly, if they were in order, just briefly sorry, dear listener, but I wanna get to the bottom of this.
I think number one is number one, survival.
David Olney: I really think so. So it’s sort of very Maslow-ian. We’re at the bottom of Maslow’s pyramid.
Steve Davis: Yep. Yep. Uh, I actually feel like enjoyment of food and beverages is not number two. Enjoyment is not number two. Needing it [00:17:00] is. That’s a different thing.
David Olney: So again, we’re going back to Maslow.
Steve Davis: I am.
David Olney: But as a marketer- Hmm … you know you can sell food and beverage because they’re quick instant choice and decisions.
Steve Davis: Yeah, but I still would put freedom from fear, pain, and danger higher than that.
David Olney: Yeah.
Steve Davis: Um, s- comfortable, to be superior. Uh, care and protection of loved ones is probably up next for me.
David Olney: Yeah. Like for me, it’s about number three, I reckon.
Steve Davis: And then enjoyment of food and beverages, ’cause you do that in company with other people in an ideal world.
David Olney: Yeah.
Steve Davis: Uh, sexual companionship, I suppose, is how you produce people to share it with.
David Olney: And again, that’s one of those drives that’s coming from brainstem and limbic system.
You don’t really think about it. No. You just have a drive.
Steve Davis: Uh, and then of course you’ve got a reason to have comfortable living conditions. Um, and that leaves the last two, to be superior, winning, keeping the Joneses, and social approval, uh, as the… Well, like Maslow’s, the self-actualization, the top of the-
David Olney: Yeah
the pyramid. And I think really [00:18:00] because he’s an American, and because, again, where did his initial fame come from? In a place where the rugged individual competing with other rugged individuals- Yeah … is a trope they still believe in. Hmm. Even though it, it doesn’t really work, and it’s not really true. Yeah.
But people want it to be true.
Steve Davis: Wow. He brought, I think, let’s think about which of these life forces he’s referring to when he talks about the fact that he bought a fire escape ladder for his home. Let’s have a listen.
Drew Eric Whitman: Now, if I’m speaking directly to parents and I’m a parent, wow, I can really relate to that.
I mean, I’m a parent. I have two sons myself, and I can relate to feeling like that. So I could talk out of that kind of experience. How about if you don’t have smoke alarms in your house or a fire extinguisher, for example? Um, not that long ago I purchased, um, um, an escape ladder-
Caitlin Davis: Yeah …
Drew Eric Whitman: for my, for the second story of my house.
I, I did. I went on Amazon and I got that. What drove me to do that? What drove me to get fire… Now, I have [00:19:00] fire, I have hard wire fire, um, uh, you know, and carbon monoxide smoke alarms throughout the house, but I did not have fire extinguishers, okay? Now, recently I started thinking about this, because one of…
We had a, we had a false alarm in the house, and I s- made me think about it. So I thought to myself, “Wow, what happens if I’m sleeping one night?” And how about the headline, Eric, you may have heard this, I did in one of the presentations, “Will your family die in the night?” I mean, that’s- That’s
David Olney: pretty impactful.
Drew Eric Whitman: Yeah. That, that’s impactful. That’s, that’s scary stuff. So if you know what drives somebody- Yeah … you could, you could get into the emotion, not just the reasoning, you know, not just the statistics, not just the numbers. That’s the cold, calculated left brain side. The
TV Ad: reptilian
Drew Eric Whitman: brain. The… Uh, the other, yeah, of making, of making the decision feel good to me as an adult that I’m spending money, okay?
So I could make it… So emotionally I’m driven to buy this [00:20:00] es- escape ladder, the fire, um, uh, the, the extinguishers, a fire blanket to throw over something on the stove that might explode and turn into a fire in the house. I’m driven by, and, and I’m driven to buy this stuff because of emotions. Now I look at the price of these things, Eric, right?
I see the price. Okay, the fire extinguisher’s gonna cost me this much. The fire blanket’s gonna cost me this much. The escape ladder’s gonna cost these, this, me this much. So I’m rationalizing it. But wow, do I have this press of this emotional side. My kids, you know, my wife, the whole, the whole house up in flames and smoke.
What happens, God forbid, if I’m negligent, I don’t spend this little bit of money. Maybe it’s a lot of money, but I don’t spend it, and now I’m looking back a year later by myself because my wife and my kids… I don’t wanna say it.
TV Ad: Yeah.
Drew Eric Whitman: You know, it’s that emotionally impactful.
TV Ad: Yeah.
Drew Eric Whitman: So that’s, that’s understanding your audience.[00:21:00]
Steve Davis: You can see how his mind works. So if you were selling the fire escape ladder, he’d be saying, you want a headline that says, “What would you do if your family died during the night while you’re asleep?” That’s, that’s what he’s saying.
David Olney: Yeah.
Steve Davis: Which g- makes you go, oh, boy. It, it punches you in the stomach, the thought of that.
David Olney: And that’s the power of going straight to the limbic system and the brainstem, going straight to a feeling response.
Steve Davis: So that is care and protection of loved ones-
David Olney: Mm …
Steve Davis: uh, linked secondly, I think, with survival, enjoyment of life, and life extension.
David Olney: Mm-hmm.
Steve Davis: I think they go- Hand in hand … hand in hand. They, by default, they help you escape pain-
David Olney: Mm-hmm
Steve Davis: uh, and danger. Um, I think they’re the ones.
David Olney: Mm. And the, the key thing here is it wouldn’t matter where we were and who we were dealing with, most people are gonna have a similar response-
Steve Davis: Mm …
David Olney: to a story about a fire in a house while you’re [00:22:00] asleep, killing your whole family. Yeah. So the thing is here, and it really taps into Nagel very well- You don’t need to pretend that you understand someone’s unique characteristics.
Steve Davis: Mm.
David Olney: You can initially engage with them through our common characteristics, and the best marketing is always working at that common characteristic level. And that doesn’t mean, you know, don’t know your niche, because if you’re gonna buy a fire ladder to get down from the second story, there’s gonna be the cheap one, the middle-priced one, the expensive one, the one with built-in lights, the one with built-in, whatever, self-adjusting feet.
There’s gonna be different niches in the market.
Steve Davis: Mm.
David Olney: But they’re all going to tap in to that common drive.
Steve Davis: That’s definitely one where those float to the top. However, doing some work at the moment with Torrensville Bowling Club, that’s not about survival, uh, life extension. Th- they have a great bar there and, and kitchen.
They do amazing food. They’re with other people, so [00:23:00] to me, there is a sense of social approval is at work. You’re being part of a social group.
David Olney: Mm.
Steve Davis: There’s the enjoyment of food and beverages, which is very much in that social, uh, zone.
David Olney: And extend family and friends to the people in the club because no one says family is just your genetic family.
Steve Davis: Correct.
David Olney: It’s the people you look forward to seeing who look forward to seeing you.
Steve Davis: And in doing the StoryBrand work with them, it’s very true, they haven’t hidden this, uh, to be superior, to be winning, to be keeping up with the Joneses. There is, as much as it’s fun-
David Olney: You wanna win …
Steve Davis: you wanna win.
David Olney: Yeah.
Steve Davis: Uh, the trick is realizing it’s not sheep stations- Yeah
but to still have that thirst. I think there you have a clutch- Mm … of how these life forces would impact the way we’re… In fact, I’m in the process of doing their StoryBrand framework now. I think that’s probably where I’m gonna settle.
David Olney: Mm. And that’s the thing each time we do this for a client, every client’s slightly different, but it makes our job easier of [00:24:00] writing content and setting up the StoryBrand once we’ve worked out which of these are gonna be the constant drivers.
Steve Davis: And probably the way to explain it best is these, if we imagine the copy that’s written on the website or whatever, you’ve got the specific words we’re saying, but what these things are doing are the chords that are playing underneath-
David Olney: Mm …
Steve Davis: to set the tone.
David Olney: Yep.
Steve Davis: I think we can move on from there, David.
David Olney: I think we can.
Steve Davis: Hmm. And I’m going to indulge in number two right now. I am going to enjoy a nice sip of my freshly brewed coffee. Not a number two, David. Oh, David. Number two in the life forces.
David Olney: That’s okay. You corrected yourself just in time.
Caitlin Davis: Our four Ps. Number three, problems. These are the [00:25:00] marketing challenges keeping you up at night. As Oscar said, we ask questions for the best reason possible. Simple curiosity, no hidden agenda, just genuine interest in what’s actually happening.
Steve Davis: In the problem segment, ah dear, where do we start? There is, it’s funny, uh, my wife works in a rather large organization, and they were talking, um, ’cause they also oversee a lot of computer work, about this stuff that’s made the news, uh, during the week of the time of recording of this big thing that affected 70% of the world’s websites, et cetera.
This PHP language and a vulnerability being found that could let hackers into websites. And they asked her, “Gee, how do you know about that?” She said, “‘Cause my husband was walking around last night cursing the universe.” Uh, because you’re doing your best to help small businesses be found and be out there, and you’ve [00:26:00] got these ne’er-do-wells, these cheats who spend their time just trying to hack and destroy.
And so the wolves are appearing at the gate again, and those of us who are on the good side of the legend have to get up and, you know, put the armor on and go back out there and do the good fight again, David. It’s bloody tiring.
David Olney: And it seems that the more layers we get in the internet, the more common that some of these fundamental things are now being found to have vulnerabilities.
So it seems to be more common now.
Steve Davis: Hmm. So if everything I’ve said so far in the principle segment sounds like gobbledygook-
David Olney: It’s okay … here, look. We fixed it.
Steve Davis: Here’s, here’s what I’m gonna say There is code that makes all the bits underneath the website work and interact with each other, and that’s called PHP.
Not every single website on the planet, uh, uses this language, but most do. [00:27:00] And some researchers using AI tools, David-
TV Ad: Mm-hmm …
Steve Davis: um, discovered that there were some weaknesses in this whole PHP language that would enable a bad player to actually get in to millions, millions, hundreds of millions of websites without anybody knowing and take control.
I think so far so good as an explanation.
David Olney: I think so, you know, ’cause none of us really need to know the, the nuts and bolts level.
Steve Davis: So the AI tool is what– I mean, it’s what some of the crooks are using to look for weaknesses, but here it was the good people discovering it, and then they used the AI tools to help run tests once they came up with a solution to patch this hole, patch the vulnerability, and use AI to test it.
This is one of those rare bits where AI gets good press, David.
David Olney: It is, and that’s been one of the annoying things [00:28:00] about the coverage since the crisis began, is we only know about the crisis because of AI tools, and we are fixing the crisis faster because of AI tools.
Steve Davis: Mm.
David Olney: It’s a real missed opportunity to go, “Hang on, hang on, hang on.
We don’t need AI tools to get much better. They’re doing amazing things now. So why don’t we just use the level we’ve got well for a while?” And it would be quite nice.
Steve Davis: It would be. So what do we do about this? Let’s make this a really short, helpful little problem segment. Uh, y- you got two things you need to do.
Uh, the first thing is, if you have a website and you know who your web host is, uh, contact them. Companies like Ventra IP or Crucial or GoDaddy. I’m sorry for you if you’re with GoDaddy, but, uh, contact them and ask them if they have applied the latest patches to PHP. They should know what you’re talking about.
Most web hosts worth their salt did that within hours of the patch being released, the patch being a fresh bit of [00:29:00] software to stitch up the hole, hence a patch. If you don’t know who they are or you’re not sure, but you have got a webmaster working for you, uh, for our clients, it’d be us, um, flick an email, double-check to make sure that patch has been applied at the web level, and the other question is, what version PHP is operating underneath my website?
And the numbers we want to hear are version eight point three or above. I think if you’ve got those two things sorted, you should be about right as best as we can tell at this point in time. And onwards the battle goes. Keep the plugins updated. Now, plugins alone updating wouldn’t have helped this time because this was s-underneath the ground.
Imagine a bank with really good doors and a door on the safe, and you see the crooks in the movies come and they drill up from underneath the, underneath the, um, the bank. That’s what basically was happening here, and they [00:30:00] just laid reinforced concrete down in most places. So they’re the two questions.
W-um, has the patch been installed for my PHP for where my website sits, and what version number it is? If it’s 8.3 or above, 8.4, 8.5, you’re happy
Caitlin Davis: Our four Ps. Number four, perspicacity. Let’s examine a campaign from the past and ask, would it work today? As Oscar Wilde believed, our one duty to history is to rewrite it. So let’s see what we can learn.
Steve Davis: David, I have a second personal question to ask you.
David Olney: In one episode, this could get really strange.
Steve Davis: Yes.
So this is our perspicacity, uh, episode. We’re gonna be talking … This is our perspicacity [00:31:00] segment, where we ask ourselves, would an old campaign from years ago work today? But my question for you, David, is when you go to the beach, do you wear boxing trunks, or do you wear nicely skimpy speedo, um, budgy smugglers?
David Olney: I’m a board shorts guy, because if I’m gonna sit there on the sand, I don’t want sand in horrible places.
Steve Davis: Hmm. Okay. Uh, that’s it. But you are topless?
David Olney: Of course.
Steve Davis: Okay. There’s a picture for everybody at home. Uh, I’ll try and stalk David over summer and add a picture to our website. Good luck. That’s a point.
Um, anyway, look, the reason we’re doing this is because when I think of you at the beach, I think of Elle Macpherson.
David Olney: That is an interesting link.
Steve Davis: Actually, you reminded me of this. I’m not gonna take the fall for this. Many years ago, in fact, 1982, I believe it was, [00:32:00] Tab, remember Tab? One of the first diet colas that came out.
Mm. Had a TV commercial that’s burned into your brain, David Olney.
David Olney: It is. ‘
Steve Davis: Cause you still had a little bit of vision at that point, didn’t you?
David Olney: Yeah, and I, I remember sitting there as a not yet teenager going, ‘How is she the same shape as the bottle? Wow.’ Mm. And why does my 12-year-old brain go, ‘Wow’?
Steve Davis: I think Drew Eric Whitman knows exactly
David Olney: why.
Exactly why my 12-year-old brain goes, and I think Nagel understands it too, even though he did it with philosophy. My brainstem and limbic system were going, ‘Wow.’
Steve Davis: Yes. You’re thinking of David in a very different way now, aren’t you? Let’s have a listen to the commercial. We’ll put it in the show notes, too, on the website, if you wanna see it, ’cause seeing is believing
TV Ad: Beautiful taste. So good for beautiful people. Tab Cola. Beautiful to you and me. ‘Cause every [00:33:00] can has less than two calories
Steve Davis: So just in case you didn’t watch it, this ad is basically a long shot of Elle Macpherson in a small bikini leaving the beach water and walking up towards the coast slowly, and we keep cutting away to pictures of the Tab bottle, which is a very curvy bottle in the sort of shape that is the classic shape, you know, that they have in Hollywood of the slightly broader top, the narrow waist, and then the broader base.
And as we get further into the ad and the, the jingle’s talking about beautiful taste for beautiful people, et cetera, there’s a guy [00:34:00] and a girl sitting there. The guy’s also got… Uh, she, ’cause she’s got a Tab in her hand, a, a, a, a container of Tab. He does, too, but his eyes are on Elle Macpherson. He is like our young David Olney in this ad.
David Olney: Except he was more knowledgeable, ’cause I was 12 and I was just like- Yes … going, “Wow” … but not really understanding the- And- … w- what is going on.
Steve Davis: As she walks right past him, making eye contact, and they smile, and his tongue hangs out, his wife or girlfriend hits him on the shoulder in a playful way and then tips a bucket of ice water over him.
We then see Elle leaving, and we come back, and the couple are laughing over this little skirmish they had in which he fell into Elle Macpherson’s magic spell. If he didn’t wanna take responsibility for it, that’s how he’d say it. Mm. So that’s the ad.
David Olney: Mm.
Steve Davis: Now, in light of everything we’ve talked about in this episode, [00:35:00] would…
First of all, what life force is going on here?
David Olney: I think it was number, was it four?
Steve Davis: Four.
David Olney: The sexual- The current w- yeah, the sexual companionship.
Steve Davis: That really is what it is, isn’t it?
David Olney: Yeah.
Steve Davis: Um,
David Olney: and in- Well, and, and social approval, too, perhaps. And- Because all the attention she was getting, people would want the attention as well.
Steve Davis: Yeah, ’cause she’s got this very comfortable, knowing smile on her face that she knows-
David Olney: Exactly
Steve Davis: what’s going on … people are enjoying her being there.
David Olney: Yeah.
Steve Davis: And enjoyment of food and beverages would have to be in the mix as well.
David Olney: Yep, so it
Steve Davis: w- But a third, really, in the third place.
David Olney: Yeah. Yeah.
Steve Davis: Uh, but it’s, yeah, um, so it is.
It is that. I, I’m sorry to be so blunt.
David Olney: No.
Steve Davis: But this is the reality we have to deal with. Despite everything in us that wants to be high, noble, mighty, we h- we are still these things with a meat-based brain that has evolved slowly over millions of years.
David Olney: Was anything [00:36:00] changed on Instagram?
Steve Davis: No.
David Olney: Is there any difference with the average Instagram influencer?
No.
Steve Davis: Drew Eric Whitman would say, the people behind this know exactly what they’re doing.
David Olney: Yeah.
Steve Davis: They want to rent your attention.
David Olney: Yep, and they’ve found the, the simplest way to do it.
Steve Davis: Now, would this ad for Tab work today, noting, for example, that the, um, the Sweeney ads-
David Olney: Yeah, I was gonna say the Sydney Sweeney ad-
Steve Davis: Sydney
David Olney: Sweeney ad
created absolute havoc, but Sydney Sweeney was totally in control of her image, made a lot of money, and has a lot of shares in that betting company. So Sydney Sweeney understands that she has a tool that is highly valuable in marketing.
Steve Davis: Even if there are swathes of people who aren’t happy with that for a whole host of reasons.
David Olney: Yep.
Steve Davis: She’s still milking it for what it’s worth.
David Olney: Yep, because she understands that the asset that’s earning that money is short term.
Steve Davis: Mm.
David Olney: And she’s made a [00:37:00] decision, and it would probably not be everyone’s decision, but there will never be a period while we have the brain we have, where an ad like the Earl McPherson ad or the Sydney Sweeney ad won’t keep working.
Steve Davis: Perhaps the difference is that in the wake of the ad these days, there will be noise-
David Olney: Yeah …
Steve Davis: in circles of voices for and against, ’cause the against voices brought the for voices out.
David Olney: Yep.
Steve Davis: And there would’ve been Russian bots chiming in to inflame.
David Olney: Yep.
Steve Davis: Uh, and the advertiser laughs all the way to the bank- Yep
because it amplifies their message.
David Olney: And Drew Eric Whitman goes, “Hmm, I’m gonna sell another 100,000 books.” Hmm. ‘Cause who else explains it as well as him? By just not sugarcoating where the fundamentals of our brain live.
Steve Davis: Now, in my cupboard out the back from when my grandparents departed, I still have a bottle of Tab.
Should we open it and toast it for old time’s sake?
David Olney: Or should we keep it sealed and, and sell it on the [00:38:00] internet as a great bit of ’80s, I don’t know.
Steve Davis: No, I’ve got the idea. Over summer, when I follow you to the beach, I want you to hold this and walk out of the water in your skimpiest bathers that you’re comfortable in, and we’ll recreate the Earl McPherson ad-
with David Owny.
David Olney: This is gonna be at 3:00 in the morning with an infrared camera.
Caitlin Davis: Thanks for listening to Talking About Marketing. If you found this helpful, please share it with someone who might benefit, and if you’re so inclined, leave a rating in your podcast app. Both help more than you think. Steve and David welcome your thoughts, which you can send to podcast@talkedaboutmarketing.com.
That’s podcast@talkedaboutmarketing.com. Want to continue the conversation beyond the podcast? [00:39:00] You can book 20 minutes with Steve at talkedaboutmarketing.com. No cost, no obligation. And we’ll leave the last word to Oscar Wilde, “There’s only one thing worse than being talked about, and that’s not being talked about.”