From paramedic wisdom to the neuroscience of narrative, we explore how competence creates space for connection and why changing minds requires changing hearts first.
In Person, Leigh Anderson’s “The Paramedic Mindset” reveals why technical competence becomes the foundation for human connection, particularly when stakes are highest. His framework of physical, psychological, and social wellbeing offers a blueprint for anyone working under pressure.
In Principles, Lisa Cron’s “Story or Die” digs into the neurological reasons why narrative trumps instruction every time. Her core insight cuts through storytelling theory: if you want to change what people think, change what they feel first.
In Problems, a scammer’s sophisticated psychological manipulation shows how influence techniques can be weaponised through fake email chains and manufactured authority.
In Perspicacity, a Tasmanian furniture ad demonstrates how repetition without creativity creates memorability for all the wrong reasons.
Get ready to take notes.
Talking About Marketing podcast episode notes with timecodes
01:30 Person This segment focusses on you, the person, because we believe business is personal.
The Paramedic’s Guide to Human Flourishing
Drawing from Leigh Anderson’s journey from professional rugby aspirations to emergency response, The Paramedic Mindset offers hard-won wisdom about performing under extreme pressure. Anderson’s framework centres on four pillars: competence, physical wellbeing, psychological wellbeing, and social wellbeing.
The competence foundation proves crucial. Anderson argues you must become so technically proficient that execution becomes automatic, freeing mental resources for the human elements of your work. This echoes David’s mobility instructor Roley Stewart’s teaching: competence before confidence, creating a cycle where skill builds confidence, which enables greater risk-taking to develop further competence.
Anderson’s approach to mental health particularly resonates. He distinguishes between mental illness (diagnosable conditions) and mental health (the broader spectrum of psychological functioning). Poor mental health doesn’t mean depression; it means languishing rather than flourishing. As Anderson notes, prevention beats cure, and actively maintaining psychological wellbeing prevents sliding toward clinical concerns.
13:30 Principles This segment focusses principles you can apply in your business today.
The Neuroscience of Narrative Power
Despite its occasionally patronising tone, Lisa Cron’s Story or Die provides compelling scientific backing for what storytellers have known intuitively: narrative literally changes brains. Cron’s research explains why stories engage our complete attention in ways that instruction cannot match.
Her two core principles prove immediately practical: to change what people think, change what they feel first. To change what they feel, tell stories that connect with their existing agenda. This framework transforms every business interaction from a request for action into an exploration of connection.
Steve and David tested this immediately in their consulting work. Rather than launching into solutions, they began conversations by identifying what clients genuinely cared about, then positioning recommendations as pathways toward those existing goals. The shift from explanation to exploration consistently improved engagement and outcomes.
The local pizza example perfectly illustrates this principle in action. Ross Trevor Pizza Bar doesn’t just serve excellent food; they remember customer preferences, family dynamics, and personal stories. This emotional connection transforms a transaction into a relationship, making competing venues irrelevant regardless of their pizza quality.
23:45 Problems This segment answers questions we've received from clients or listeners.
The Sophisticated Scammer’s Playbook
A recent cold email demonstrates how persuasion principles can be weaponised through manufactured social proof. The sender created a fictional internal conversation, complete with a supposed COO recommendation, to bypass standard spam filters and tap into Cialdini’s principle that we’re more likely to respond when approached on behalf of others.
The technique shows sophisticated understanding of repetition with variation, presenting identical benefits through slightly different framing to create familiarity. However, the execution fails through obvious fabrication. The forwarded email addresses recipients as “they” rather than by name, immediately destroying credibility.
This approach reveals both the power and the peril of influence techniques. When deployed authentically, they facilitate genuine connection. When manufactured, they create immediate suspicion and lasting damage to trust.
28:45 Perspicacity This segment is designed to sharpen our thinking by reflecting on a case study from the past.
The Sledgehammer School of Advertising
A Tasmanian furniture retailer’s radio advertisement showcases how repetition without creativity creates memorability through irritation rather than attraction. The 40 Winks “40 hour sale” ad simply repeats “40” dozens of times with no narrative, humour, or personality.
While such aggressive repetition might prompt immediate action from in-market consumers, it risks long-term brand damage through negative association. Unlike memorable bad advertising that develops cult followings (like Frank Walker’s tile company ads that spawned dubstep remixes), this approach offers nothing beyond annoyance.
The contrast with personality-driven campaigns highlights an important principle: if you’re going to be memorable for the wrong reasons, at least ensure there’s a reason worth remembering.
Transcript This transcript was generated using Descript.
A Machine-Generated Transcript – Beware Errors
TAMP S07E03
Ad: [00:00:00] Talking about marketing is a podcast for business owners and leaders. Produced by my dad, Steve Davis and his colleague talked about marketing David Olney, in which they explore marketing through the lens of their own four Ps person, principles, problems, and per ity. Yes, you heard that correctly. Apart from their love of words, they really love helping people.
So they hope this podcast will become a trusted companion on your journey in business.
Steve Davis: David, have you ever been in an ambulance as a patient?
David Olney: I have. Oh,
Steve Davis: really?
David Olney: Yeah. When I ruptured my kidney, um, the pain was gratuitous and I thought, I really need to go to the hospital. And I was able to like, you know, literally walk out and step up in and [00:01:00] lay down on the thing and talk to the person all the way there, despite the fact I’d already ruptured a kidney.
Did you enjoy it? Because it sound, I, I’ve always thought it’d be a great experience to be in an ambulance. Put this, I was really glad of the distraction of talking to a really calm paramedic when I was going. Why the hell does it feel like there’s a fire in the left side of my body?
Steve Davis: Hold that thought.
We’re gonna dive deeper into the world of paramedics in just a moment. In this episode of talking about marketing, don’t dial triple zero just yet.
Ad: Our four Ps, number one person, the aim of life is self-development to realize one’s nature perfectly. That is what each of us is here for. Oscar Wilde
Steve Davis: in the person segment. We’re venturing into some unknown territory because. We’re about to draw some insights from a book that only one of us has read, [00:02:00] only a minor problem. It is a minor problem, so this is like being on the essay variety Bash with one side of your car’s, tires being flat, or only half your monkey costume.
Or half your monkey costume. That’s right. So the book we’re talking about is called The Paramedic Mindset by Lee Anderson. David, you are the one who’s read this book. You reckon there’s some beautiful thoughts from this distilled that we could all benefit from in life?
David Olney: Yeah, this is a great book. Lee Anderson’s a really interesting guy.
His aim was to become a professional rugby player and he kept having knee problems and by the third surgery he got a monumental infection. And this really meant, this is the end of my rugby career. But then the infection started getting out of control, and he was rushed to hospital multiple times as they tried to treat it.
And he had the realization, these paramedics who are looking after me are amazing. Like I’m scared outta my mind. I don’t know whether potential I’m [00:03:00] gonna end up with a fused knee or perhaps even losing my leg. And they keep making me feel like it’s gonna be okay and looking after me. So he decided to become a paramedic, and the wonderful thing about the book is he argues that the way to be a really good paramedic.
Is to always aim to grow and to be clear what you need to grow into. And he breaks it down into four things. What competence do you need to do the thing you want to do? You’ve gotta focus on becoming so good at the technical side of what you want to do, that you can just do it and have energy for the human stuff, the social stuff, the psychological stuff.
Steve Davis: I need to interrupt there because that he’s not the first person to have talked about. Competency Who? Who was it you were referring to in some previous episodes? Competency be competency before confidence. It was
David Olney: a thing I learned from one of my first mobility teachers that taught me to [00:04:00] use a white cane.
Rollie Stewart. Literally the way Roley taught was competence first. So you could then have more confidence, so you could be confident to work harder and take, you know, small calculated risks to up your competence. And Lee Anderson’s book is great because in one chapter he talks about a thing called the competence cycle, which I’ve never seen literature about the competence cycle before.
And we can either talk about it today or save it for another episode. ’cause the competence cycle in and of its own right. Is
Steve Davis: really interesting. Well, I think that is something to come back to perhaps once I’ve read the book, uh, in a principle segment. But if we stick to the person segment at the moment, um, once we’ve got that, you were talking about three other things, three other areas where if we look after ourselves there we can flourish as humans.
Yep.
David Olney: So the three things Lee talks about other than competence is physical wellbeing, psychological wellbeing, and social wellbeing. [00:05:00] And he literally includes some tools in the book, you know, designed by psychologists and scientists to measure how you are going to go. Are you doing okay? So you’ve at least got a baseline?
Do you need to do more? Do you just need to maintain where you are, but to make sure that you are physically well, psychologically well, and socially connected and getting the kind of human connection you need to flourish. And I love the fact that instead of saying Be Alpha, everything will be fine. He’s saying, no, you gotta work.
At doing well and flourishing every day, and you’ve gotta break it down into its constituent parts and on top of competence, you’ve gotta think about how are you gonna stay physically well or get physically well? How are you gonna stay or get psychologically well and how are you gonna stay or get socially well?
And the whole book is wonderful. Examples from his career and his life of where he’s been tested to, his limits in the job. And then reflecting on, well, how did I [00:06:00] do okay that day? I did. Okay. ’cause I did the work.
Leigh Anderson: Before we take a look at a concept known as a mental health continuum, we need to understand the difference between mental illness and mental health. These two states are of course, interconnected, but there’s a big difference between the two. Mental illness is more concerned with disease. It’s a general term that refers to a group of illnesses that significantly affect how a person behaves, thinks, and interacts with the world.
Mental illness is diagnosed by professionals according to standardized criteria. Types of mental illness include clinical depression, major depressive disorder, anxiety, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and others. Mental illness has at least recently been the focus of mainstream medicine and society, but as a consequence, our mental health has been forgotten.
Mental health is a broader term that incorporates functioning beyond the threshold of clinical syndromes, such as [00:07:00] anxiety and depression. Factors that support good mental health include positive self-esteem, warm and trusting relationships, motivation and openness to learn from challenges and improve as a person.
Mental health could thus be considered as a state in which our psychological functions allow us productive activities, fulfilling relationships with people, and the ability to adapt to change, and cope with stress. Identifying the distinction between mental illness and mental health is important because the absence of mental illness does not mean that a person is mentally well.
IE flourishing mental health involves positive feelings and functioning well in life. It could be considered a precursor or enabling state that can support flourishing. If someone suffers from poor mental health, they’re likely to feel as though they’re languishing and stuck. An absence of good mental health doesn’t mean they’re depressed.
It just means they’re in a mental state of stagnation. They can still go to work and complete day-to-day tasks, but they [00:08:00] derive no satisfaction from it. It’s a drag. If they were taking an exam, they would aim for 51% and nothing more. Sociologists and psychologist, Dr. Corey Keys describes mental health. As the presence of emotional wellbeing in conjunction with high levels of social and psychological functioning.
A person with mental health has poise, which helps them flourish and thrive. Most of us are quick to judge and might diagnose ourselves with a mental illness when we are feeling low, but really we probably have poor mental health. By focusing on flourishing, we start to prevent mental illness rather than trying to find a cure after a diagnosis.
Prevention is always better than a cure.
David Olney: It’s just a great book and I, I’ve recommended it to young people who want to be nurses, young people who want to be teachers, young people who want to be soldiers and recommend it to a lot of people. Just to read as a, if you’re gonna sort of [00:09:00] try and pick up one more or less stoically informed book. Put stoicism in a very practical, modern, you know, non ancient Roman way.
Lee is a wonderful example of how to practically help yourself and be a good example for anyone of just how to make sure you do better in the world and contribute effectively ’cause you are doing well.
Steve Davis: Do. Do you get a sense from the book as to what made him this unicorn that was able to have these experiences but then reflect on them to the point that he was going to share?
Or is that an un? I
David Olney: really think it was that the world of heading towards professional sport, he was at the top of his game at 17. It all looked like professional rugby was ahead of him and his world disappeared and he had to find another one. And he realized that rugby had come easy. Becoming a paramedic.
He had to work and work and work and [00:10:00] work. But guess what? When he did the work and he defined the work properly, that it’s not just about doing well in the course, it’s about dealing with people on their worst day when he got out in the job and he realized if you don’t look after your physical, psychological, and social wellbeing, this job will crush you because you’re seeing people at their worst.
Lee Anderson is just. Th the most wonderful, reflective person at, hang on, I wanna do this well, and this is crushing me. What do I do so I can do it well and not be crushed and actually thrive doing it
Steve Davis: well? So, so is the shorthand physical, making sure you move, whether that’s going to the gym or eating well, that sort of thing.
Sleep is, is the other big thing, particularly working shifts like paramedics do. Okay. Psychological wellbeing. I mean, sleep plays a definite role there. I mean, that’s US movement. Yep. But what, what’s he talking about from a psychological perspective? [00:11:00] Just a short version here for this segment, for us. What, what should, what is he
David Olney: alluding to admit when you’ve been through something extreme and talk to someone.
Okay. Stay positive, but not ludicrously positive, but you know, if it’s a day where things are going poorly. Say, well, this is a hard work day, but gee, that coffee was nice. Okay. Find something in the day that puts positive back in. Um, make sure that you maintain good relationships with the people around you because the more isolated you become, that’s gonna mess up your psychological wellbeing and then your social wellbeing.
And in terms of the social wellbeing, he talks about the fact that paramedics all go through the same grim days and develop the same grim dark sense of humor, but. If you don’t talk about what happened, you are not going to cope. Well build good relationships, maintain good relationships. Like in the book, he talks about having to go to an address and realizing it’s one of his colleagues and he’s [00:12:00] terrified that she’s suicided, and he’s like, well, this is the point where he realized if we don’t look after our psychological wellbeing and our social wellbeing, then things like this will happen.
Where you have the fear that your colleague has suicide. Because she hasn’t looked after her psychological wellbeing and we together haven’t looked after our social wellbeing. So some of the lessons are very stark, but very powerful.
Steve Davis: Yet again, the theme we, we touched on last week as I reflected on the, the beauty of being away from this digital world on the essay variety Bash in the middle of nowhere.
Here again, what he’s alluding to is. If we put these darn phones down for a while and pay attention to the flesh and blood around us, we at least have taken a step in the right direction to find something that our age old slowly evolved bodies and minds can latch onto.
David Olney: Absolutely. Like it’s about, you know, it’s about [00:13:00] getting the competence side of things out the way so you can focus on what keeps you and the people around you well.
And that works so much better if that’s what you’re focused on.
Steve Davis: So if you are thinking about a book that you might want to read, it does sound like The Paramedic Mindset by Lee Anderson is just what the doctor ordered.
Ad: Our four Ps. Number two principles. You can never be overdressed or overeducated. Oscar Wilde.
Steve Davis: Interestingly, we started quite incidentally. David with a story. I asked if you’d been in an ambulance and you told us about that account, which brings us nicely into principles because the book you wanna talk about, we’ve both read it’s called Story or Die by Lisa Kron. We have previously spoken about the StoryBrand framework.[00:14:00]
Uh, and this is, well, I, I wouldn’t say a pigeon pair, but it’s a complimentary book. You’re very complimentary. Yeah. So what’s, what’s your take on Lisa Cron and her approach to this book and the way that it differs from Donald Miller and the story brand framework? First
David Olney: thing I’ll say is the title is very cringey and nearly put me off, right?
Uh, second thing, the way the book is written is cringey and at times nearly put me off.
Steve Davis: Yeah, same here.
David Olney: I, I don’t know who she thought the core audience for the book were gonna be, but I don’t think it was us. It was like she was writing for very childlike adults, and that’s annoying in places. But what’s so great about the book is.
She explains all the neurology and psychology of why telling stories is the ultimate way to have a positive effect on people. It’s what people understand. It’s what people value, it’s what makes people change their mind and take action. [00:15:00] And literally, this is why the book is called Story or Die. It fits very well to read in parallel with Donald Miller’s, you know, work on the StoryBrand system because.
Donald Miller’s got a great system. The seven steps work brilliantly, but we of course get clients occasionally go. Why?
Steve Davis: Yes.
David Olney: And Donald’s whys are the practical whys of a screenwriter marketing guy? Well, I can tell you it works ’cause I’ve done it a hundred times and it worked 99. Whereas by the time you finish Lisa Krons book, you understand which bit of the brain is responding.
Why things resonate with us, and it gives you an ability to see the power of the StoryBrand system, you know, in a deeper way. But also, you can’t really use SB seven in every conversation, but you can keep Lisa Krons two core points in every conversation. And the two core points are actually relatively straightforward to remember.
If you wanna change what people think, change what they feel. [00:16:00] And if you wanna change what they feel, you have to tell a story that connects with their agenda. And if you can remember those two things in every conversation, you’re in a much better position to positively influence people.
Ad: The realization that surprised me most was this, what grabs us, what pulls us in and makes us care are not the external events. Regardless how overtly dramatic an earthquake, a tsunami, an asteroid, obliterating, all of downtown Akron can be so startlingly boring that you start to wonder if there’s something wrong with you.
There isn’t, because what makes those situations riveting is the internal effect they’re having on someone we care about. Without that, they’re just random facts. Regardless how objectively dramatic. Here’s the [00:17:00] secret. As counterintuitive as it may seem, a story isn’t about what happens in the world. A story is about what happens in the mind of the protagonist, the person through whose eyes we’re experiencing those events.
Steve Davis: I did find her start of writing. A breath of fresh air to start with, but then it did become, yeah, cringey. Quite tedious. Yeah. It’s like riding a bike in first gear the whole way. Yeah. She comes to this making the point that you can’t just say, look, I need you to do X, Y, Z. Just do it. Use of story sits well above, um, the realm of instruction because there’s something about when a story begins that our brain.
A different part of the brain or a different mode of the brain seems to be engaged. It listens differently. It’s almost [00:18:00] like it’s, I had my computer in the shop earlier this week having some things done. I can make. Tinkering changes to the computer, but they got right into the motherboard and they made some fundamental shifts.
Story seems to have that potential.
David Olney: It’s like the whole brain pays attention and the chattering monkey inside her head that’s wondering about pizza and peanuts shuts up for a bit. ’cause story is so important. You know, we remember stories because it’s another human telling us the story and we might go through the same experience and we might learn to deal with that experience.
Like story just fits with us as a species that uses language that cares about, you know, our sort of clan and cohort story is just so deeply important to us, and we understand it both at an intellectual and a visceral level. And I think anything that can get left and right brain. Both quietly engaging with [00:19:00] the same thing and not wanting to butt in because stories are so interesting.
We want to know what happens. It’s just there’s a real power to how story works in relation to our brains.
Steve Davis: And the two principles that you talked about before. Can you recall from the book an anecdote or two that helps bring them to life, that makes that in fleshes them a little bit to take it from the abstract into some sort of practical example.
David Olney: I found her scientific evidence convincing. I found her anecdotes cringey, so I as fast as I possibly could, just started testing out these of, if you wanna change what someone thinks, change what they feel. And the way to change what people feel is to tell them the story that relates to their already existing agenda.
So I started doing things like, you know, when I was talking to someone going, oh, I remember you telling me that you really care about this. Is this still something you, you’re working on or you wanna achieve? Yes, well this thing [00:20:00] relates to that in this way and would help you get this outcome. And suddenly they wanna spend money or take action.
So I was able to prove instantly that the two things work just by following the logic of it. What is someone’s agenda? How can I get them to change what they feel about something in relation to their agenda? And if I can get them to change what they feel, then they’re gonna change what they think. Gee, that was tapping into a bit of Robert Chelini there.
Yeah, but far more effective than ch Like I read Cini and I’m like, yeah, you’re a great academic, but this book is about 11 hours too long. Like
Steve Davis: that book also would make a great pamphlet if someone bailed you up, David, and said, okay, this is great. I’m in my small business. How can story or die have any practical use in my business today?
David Olney: Okay, I’m gonna use the example of, let’s imagine that your small business, I is a nice little pizza shop. You’ve got a nice little pizza place where people can eat in on some pretty basic furniture. Have some [00:21:00] affordable reds, like really, why do people come and get pizza from you? Ideally, it tastes nice.
But do you remember their name? Do you remember what thing they like? Do you remember what variation they like on their pizza? Do you remember that someone in their family doesn’t like prawns? Do you remember all these things? Do you remember their story? And do you make them feel valued? Because if you do, you’ve just changed how they feel and they’re gonna come in and buy your pizza.
Not just ’cause your pizza’s nice, but because you remember them and value them, and that makes them feel different.
Steve Davis: It is hilarious. You just mentioned that. ’cause Tuesday night I snuck into Ross Trevor Pizza Bar, which is our local, and I just noticed for the first time, I’d, I’d, I’d known it, uh, we’ve been here since 2006, so, um, you know, fairly regular patrons.
We know the family, uh, gao. And Tony and Nadia and LJ in the front of house, they know us by name. They, they know what we want. [00:22:00] But I noticed Nadia the other night, uh, making a point like Gaetano has all the way through Gaetano iss, the o the owner, he’s been standing there making pizza for more than 40 years and.
She took the time to go and chat to the table of people having a party, and they always seem to do that. Mm. And that is the human bond that they’ve woven. Yep. For
David Olney: decades. So they know what people want when they come in for a party. They remember that family when they come in for next year’s birthday, but, but the
Steve Davis: family
David Olney: remembers that.
They know them precisely. Works both ways They
Steve Davis: feel known.
David Olney: Yep. And that has a huge impact. And you know, by coming out and going, you know, was everything the way you like it? Well they, they trust you’re gonna remember anything you say about, oh, this was great. And that flow on thing of you’ve told. A story or talk to someone about something they care about.
Yeah. And they doing so you’ve changed how [00:23:00] they feel, which would change how they think and that as well. There’s other pizza places, but
Steve Davis: why would we go there? Exactly. I mean, that doesn’t hurt that their pizza’s magnificent. Yeah. But, um, I always have, I like having a little sprinkle of Parmesan on my pizza, so without even asking happens always.
They always bring that up for me. Yep. And there’s little, just a little inside baseball tip. Uh, the Mexicana with some pepperoni at it is just divine. There you go. That’s a little tip, but thank you, David. And story or Die, do you want that half and half or are you doing the lot? Uh, we’ll put chili on the whole thing,
Ad: our four P’s. Number three problems. I asked the question for the best reason possible. Simple curiosity. Oscar Wilde
Steve Davis: in the problem segment. Ah, I’ve just seen yet another way that these lazy scammers are [00:24:00] just trying to get that booking with you. And it’s the old one, two, David, the old one, two. Have you, you’re familiar with the one, two, is this like Costa Zoo or his son Nicky? Will they punch people? Something like that.
Uh, but what they’ve done is you get all these cold emails, Hey, we can do this, and you are gonna benefit like this. Have you got 15 minutes? Let’s have a call. Okay. That’s now old hat. What is happening increasingly is this, I got an email. Hi Steve. My colleague Lena, the COO of fta, uh, suggested I reach out.
We’d love to explore whether we could help make your ticketing a bit smoother, better for your bottom line and more audience friendly for your shows. Would you be open for a brief chat now, this came to my performance email, my personal email address where I do standup comedy, et cetera, and so. [00:25:00] I get this note from Erky, and what Erky has done is the body of the email is followed by a forwarded message down below as if it’s just this natural.
She’s been forwarding on an email, it’s complete theater, um, because there’s an email to her, uh, and it says, from Lena, this is to Ikey. This is for me to read in the background with the subject line. It feels like a great fit. Hi, comma. Like who doesn’t mention their colleague’s name when they, anyway. Hi, comma.
Let’s, this is supposedly from the COO to the person who reached up to me. Let’s go for a personalized approach With them came across, through my network. They remind me of standups, like Patra Scan and Madrid Comedy Lab, where we’ve seen great success. Could you reach out and share a few insights? They might appreciate a fresh take on growing their local fan base.
Making ticketing easier for audiences and boosting revenue with [00:26:00] smarter fees and better sales tools. PS, I believe Steve Davis could be the right person for us to connect with. Thanks, Lena. So they’ve faked the sense that there’s been this great internal discussion going on, uh, about Steve and his ticketing for his comedy shows.
To try and get past the usual, uh, just another cold one. But secondly, this is interesting. We mentioned, uh, Robert Cini just before. In his book, uh, uh, persuasion, he talks about how we are more likely to help someone out. If they’re asking us on behalf of someone else, I reckon they’re trying this influential, uh, trick that it’s not this person asking me by themselves, but their chief operating officer has asked them to ask me.
I think they’re having a cheap. Crack to see if that psychology [00:27:00] would work on me responding, make a sense of this,
David Olney: David. I think that’s one thing they’re doing. I think the other thing, when you’re teaching people and any kind of communication’s, the same repetition with variation. So the benefits were written one way in the first email, and they’re written slightly differently in the second one.
Mm-hmm. But it’s the same set of benefits. So there’s a desperate hope that, again, this looks like it’s a person trying to help someone. Which is just about growing their business. So, you know, that’s questionable. But also it’s the repetition with variation of something that we weren’t really interested in, but now it’s starting to feel familiar and things that are familiar are more likely to be taken seriously.
So it, there’s some fairly sophisticated psychology underpinning something I’m sure they didn’t invent, but they copied and modified quite cleverly.
Steve Davis: And yet, interestingly, I. I would be open to it, especially if it was something I was interested in, maybe, but where it falls down is it just stinks of being fake.
[00:28:00] And so credibility, chaching, it just goes straight through the floor.
David Olney: Well, the whole thing, you know, in the second email where it’s saying they, and there yes, you’ve, you’ve personalized one email. You haven’t personalized the second email, which is actually undone any goodwill you could have gained by addressing a specific person.
Mm. So they’ve got some things psychologically right, and other things they’ve spectacularly got wrong. It’s an interesting
Steve Davis: combination. It is. And I should emailed them back saying, actually my COO has sent an email for me to tell you that we don’t believe a word you just said. And have a nice day now.
Boom. Boom.
Ad: Our four Ps. Number four per sy. The one duty we OTA history is to rewrite it. Oscar Wilde.
David Olney: [00:29:00] David, do you snore? I would have to ask Karen how often I snore. I assume being a human being, I snore sometimes. What would it sound like if you snowed? I would hope it’s sort of a nice little
Steve Davis: wow, but I’m sure it’s not. That has entered my dream world now. Oh God, where else would I want to go other than the Steve’s dream world?
Uh, the reason is in per per cassity in this episode where we look at, you know, typically some old ads and see if they’d work again. We found a ripper. From 40 Winks, which is a bed retailer. Uh, this is a Tasmanian ad. I wonder if that becomes regional TV or whether it’s considered Cap City. I wonder what they get done there.
It kind of explains what’s on an island. Yes. Okay. Uh, have a listen to this. Particularly bad, bad Dad.
Ad: 40 weeks. [00:30:00] 40 sale. 40 weeks. 40 hour sale. Save up 40%. 40 hours. Save up to
40%. 40 hours. 40. 40 or 40? 40. Save up to 40%. Save up to 40%, but it just lasts 40 hours. It just lasts 40 hours. Hurry, hurry, save up to 40. 40.
Steve Davis: Oh my goodness. I want to just go there. To shut them up.
David Olney: Yep. And I think that’s the power of this ad. It’s, I can imagine the discount Christ person going, okay, I got the point. Stop, stop, stop, stop. I got the point now I don’t care.
Steve Davis: Yeah. It, it, it’s interesting because a lot of advertising is trying to have repetition of messaging.
But try and it cut through and it cuts through, but in the worst possible way. Yeah. But it [00:31:00] tries to do it in normally a tasteful way, nuanced bit of comedy. This, this is just taking a sledgehammer out and smashing our heads numerous times in the one commercial it. You think must work at one level because it does seem to persist in many markets, in many different industries, typically with furniture retailing.
Yeah. It does seem, you know, even Tom, the cheap grocery, where do you get, it wasn’t quite as bad as this. Yeah. This is just nothing creative. This is just 40 wings, 40% off. 40 hours. 40.
David Olney: Yeah. Like if they only do the one sale per year and you only have to hear this for one 40 hour block on radio. Mm. Maybe it’s worth annoying people for that 40 hours if you’re not gonna then annoy them.
But you would want to not have radio ads for a while after, or you would want your other ad to be very [00:32:00]
Steve Davis: different. To for my money. ’cause I think you’re right. If this is an aberration, it’s not like anything else and it is one-off and it’s you sparingly, well, you get that fresh take of of attention and pain.
And if someone was in the market, it might prompt them into action because, oh yeah, okay, we’ll go now there’s a sense of urgency, but there’s not even any. Anything creatively interesting. I’m not even saying majorly creative. There’s no effort that has been used at all, is that the copywriter’s been said, look, we are 40 wings.
We’re doing up to 40% off, which has the asterisk. Of course it’ll be one thing that’s 40% off. Uh, and it’s uh, 40 hours. And now well, let’s just repeat that. Whereas other ones like, hello Frank Walker here from whatever the tile company is, that’s done badly and there’s a cluster of ads where they’ve got a really bad whiny voice, but.
The, it creates [00:33:00] its own little genre. It’s memorable for a different reason. In fact, there’s a dubstep, uh, remix of that ad that you can find on, on Spotify, uh, which one of my Sojourners and the Variety bash played a few times on the car. I, I think it’s even lacking that, and there’s
David Olney: no personality at all.
Like we don’t even know who is the 40 winks person. No, like the person doing the voiceover isn’t the 40 winks person because they wouldn’t wanna risk annoying potential customers that much. Mm-hmm.
Steve Davis: So we would say we’d rather stamp this one as saying, use with extreme caution and try never to use ever.
Yeah. I think probably use it for you going outta business sale. Yes, that’s right. Because if not, it will help, certainly help make it a real going outta business sale. I will just say one quick thing I saw a little bit, just a tiny bit of, um, community TV or country tv when we were in cooped. I think we had actual accommodation that night and there was a really terrible bed ad [00:34:00] where it was like adjustable beds.
You have a bed and have it your way, and there was a picture of a queen size bed where you can adjust the, the height, either size, and there’s just three seconds of this man in bed with his partner, a woman. In her side and her side is about a full mattress width higher than his, and I couldn’t believe it.
It wasn’t drawn to our attention. It was just there as. I know you’ve got the tool that lets you do that. But why? But why? Why are you that high? I mean, the poor man. He got the signal. There was not gonna be much action tonight, but it was just the most bizarre image. Yeah. How is that a selling point? That is not a selling point.
I mean, I got vertigo on her behalf, just looking at how high she had her side of the bed. If anything, it was like, oh, I pushed the button. How do I stop it? And she was stuck. Anyway, country tv. God bless it. Yeah, you can see that people go to bed early so they don’t have to watch it. [00:35:00] Sweet dreams, everyone.
David Olney: And now it’s time for snoring. Give me another one. David.
Ad: Thank you for listening to talking about marketing. If you enjoyed it, please leave a rating or a review in your favorite podcast app, and if you found it helpful, please share it with others. Steve and David always welcome your comments and questions, so send them to [email protected]. And finally, the last word to Oscar Wilde.
There’s only one thing worse than being talked about and that’s not being talked about.