Table Of Contents Learning To Think Better 3 1. The Map is Not the Territory 4 2. First Principles Thinking 4 3. Thought Experiements 5 4. Second-Order Thinking 5 5. Probabilistic Thinking 6 6. Inversion 6 7. Occam’s Razor 7 8. Relativity 7 9. Reciprocity 7 10. Thermodynamics 8 11. Inertia 8 12. Friction 9 13. Velocity 9 14. Leverage 9 15. Activation Energy 10 16. Ecosystems 10 17. Niches 11 18. Incentives 11 19. Tendency to Minimize Energy Output (Mental & Physical) 11 20. Feedback Loops 12 21. Anti-Fragility 13 22. Bottlenecks 13 23. Compounding 13 24. Opportunity Costs 14 25. Scarcity 14 26. Urgency 15 27. Trust 15 28. Bias from Incentives 16 29. Pavlovian Association 16 30. Tendency to Feel Envy & Jealousy 17 31. Tendency to Distort Due to Liking/Loving or Disliking/Hating 17 32. Denial 18 33. Availability Heuristic 18 34. Social Proof (Safety in Numbers) 19 35. Narrative Instinct 19 36. Curiosity Instinct 21 37. Language Instinct 21 38. First-Conclusion Bias 22 39. Tendency to Overgeneralize from Small Samples 22 40. Relative Satisfaction/Misery Tendencies 22 41. Commitment & Consistency Bias 23 42. Influence of Stress 23 43. Survivorship Bias 24 44. Tendency to Want to Do Something (Fight/Flight, Intervention, Demonstration of Value, etc.) 24 Learning To Think Better Welcome to web3 and NFTs... ...where The Matrix meets Alice in Wonderland, we realize we’re not in Kansas anymore, we see clearly that all the rules are man-made & therefore do not exist, and we see we’re all making it up as we go along What a mind fuck With that at the forefront of our minds one can begin to see how seeing clearly and thinking both efficiently and effectively is vital to our success in the NFT and web3 space as we find our feet As both collectors and creators/founders/builders - Mental Models aid us in our quest to see clearly and think better As a collector, Mental Models will help you make sense of the projects you’re looking to invest in + collect and ensure you’re making conscious decisions instead of allowing your emotional side to influence you into things you’ll regret in the future As a founder/creator/builder - Mental Models will help you create anti-fragile, value-laden projects that can stand the test of time, continue to thrive, and continue to attract the interest and attention of people long into the future How? Well, by understanding Mental Models you understand how people think about, percieve, and respond to the world. You’re aligning yourself with both laws of nature, human psychology, and human behaviour Inside this, there is no forcing things... there is no fighting reality... ...there will be adversity in your attempt to fully understand and use the Mental Model - however when you get there, you’ll see the beauty in them In this whitepaper we’re going to dissect & simplify 44 Mental Models that apply to NFTs and web3 specifically through the eyes of a creator/founder/builder and how to use them to amplify, streamline, and optimize your marketing 1. The Map is Not the Territory When it comes to the world of web3 and NFTs - we’re in unchartered territory. We’re ur ancestors uncovering newfoundland for the first time. As such, we have no real idea what we’re in store for. We can use the maps of old to help us find out feet and our way in web3 - but they’re not an accurate reflection of what lies before us The key to understand here is that the map can never depict true, actual reality. Even the best maps are imperfect because they are reductions of what they represent, and they’re often representative of a snapshot in time A map of NYC from 3 years ago will likely not do us any favours today as the territory has evolved and developed so much in that time. The same is true for NFTs and web3... think about it: - PFP craze w/ BAYC, Doodles, WOW, and more - NFT game crazy w/ Wolf Game - Anime Phase - 1/1 Art Phase The desire of the market seems to be changing every few weeks, and as such, we need to know the territory is changing with it What we can use as our map are the best practices of marketing that have stood the test of time by knowing human behavior, psychology, and why people do what they do. Study & learn the human decision making process of (1) Interest, (2) Desire, (3) Action and how it applies to your NFT project and its marketing to optimise your results 2. First Principles Thinking First-principles thinking is one of the best ways to reverse-engineer complicated situations and unleash creative possibility. Sometimes called reasoning from first principles, it’s a tool to help clarify complicated problems by separating the underlying ideas or facts from any assumptions based on them. What remains are the essentials. If you know the first principles of something, you can build the rest of your knowledge around them to produce something new Let’s take the first principles of human desires once our basic needs are met. There are only 6 core things we want on a first principles level: 1. Make money 2. Save money 3. Save time 4. Minimize effort 5. Remove physical or mental pain 6. Increase our status With this in mind we can create our offer/utility for our NFT project to ensure we’re ticking most, if not all of these boxes. Depending on who your target audience is, some may be more beneficial than others Breaking it down a step further, one can understand that in order to solve these problems, there are essentially only 3 things we can offer in a digital and/or physical format 1. Product 2. Service 3. Access From this foundation of first principles, how can you build irresistible utility for a specific group of people? 3. Thought Experiements Thought experiments can be defined as “devices of the imagination used to investigate the nature of things.” An important thing to note here is that due to it being “imagined” it is never an accurate representation of reality and must be treated as such. It’s a mental hypothesis being formed before taking action In this, we need to understand we can never have all the information at hand, so our thought experiment is going to be the best that we can muster right now, without it being perfect or complete. This can calm us down and help us to take action, as in doing so we gather more pieces of the puzzle to help us be better next time Thought experiments are absolutely phenomenal in your marketing to help you expand your creativity and plan out best practices that work and you can use to your advantage Using these in the planning of your marketing will allow you to take on the impossible, evaluate the potential consequences of your actions, and re-examine both your marketing history and the history of the nft/web3/world markets to make better decisions in the future 4. Second-Order Thinking If you read the “Marketing In The NFT World” Whitepaper, you’d understand the essential role of patience and expanding the time horizon in marketing. It takes time for great marketing to become great... ...that’s where Second-Order Thinking comes into play - it’s the ability to see the longer-term results of your actions. Almost everyone can anticipate the immediate results of their actions, but doing this is much more challenging for us - and in that challenge lies to the power to being able to do this properly and optimie your marketing Second-order thinking is thinking both farther ahead and holistically - taking the entire ecosystem into account. It ties in phenoenally well with thought experiments and planning out your marketing efforts. To do this, one is required us to not only consider our actions and their immediate consequences, but the subsequent effects of those actions as well. Failing to consider the second and third order effects can unleash disaster You might think that getting an influencer to shill your project now is a fantastic idea to help you generate attention and interest in your project... ...but what happens when in a few weeks time that same influencer is found to be involved with some very shady shit and due to your association with them, your project takes a massive hit that essentially kills it because you’ve no foundation to build back from Essentially, there’s always a trade-off to your actions; and many of them are long-term and unseen. Thinking through second-order allows you to begin to see what some of these COULD be and create a plan in place should they actually happen 5. Probabilistic Thinking Probabilistic thinking is essentially trying to estimate, using some tools of math and logic, the likelihood of any specific outcome coming to pass. It is one of the best tools we have to improve the accuracy of our decisions. In a world where each moment is determined by an infinitely complex set of factors, probabilistic thinking helps us identify the most likely outcomes. When we know these our decisions can be more precise and effective What happens if we decide to gamify our discord experience by closing it and using Twitter as a tool to allow people in via quizzes, treasure hunts, and more? What happens if we choose to have a collection size of 1,111 and a mint price of .2E instead of a 5,555 collection size and a .08E mint price? What happens if we choose to collaborate with A, B, and C project versus X, Y, and Z project? What happens wif we bring in X as an advisor and marketing consultant? It’s a version of Murphy’s Law where anything that CAN happen WILL happen on a long enough timeline Use probabilistic thinking to support you with deciding if a specific marketing action is worth it to your project or not 6. Inversion Inversion-Based Thinking is a powerful way to create & perceive solutions to potential problems you’re facing and also let you to divergently think to see more than you currently can. This is great in creative sessions where you might be planning out your next marketing campaign Essentially a form of “reverse-engineering”, it is when you approach a situation from the opposite end of the natural starting point (1) This is where we’re going (2) What are the things that will make it challenging for us/stop us? (3) How can we either minimize the chances of them happening OR resolve them if they were to happen Most of us tend to think in one way - forward in a linear fashion. Inversion allows us to flip the problem around and think backward, creating a different perspective and therefore finding different answers 7. Occam’s Razor A confused mind says no every single time. Your marketing MUST be simple - both in its creativity and the way it comes across to the reader. Your goal here should be to make it so simple that a 5yr old would be able to understand it In doing so you’re tying into a key of Thermodynamics AND Occa’s Razor - which states that simpler explanations are more likely to be true than complicated ones. Instead of wasting your time trying to come up with elaborate, creative, compelling marketing campaigns, you can make the fastest progress more confidently by basing them on the campaign that has the fewest moving parts Do not allow your own ego to cloud your judgment as to what will work in your marketing campaign 8. Relativity Best used when thinking about “how can we connect, relate with, and form connections with our ideal community” - relativity states that an observer cannot truly understand a system of which he himself is a part This means that you may think one thing about your marketing campaign, and every onlooker is going to perceive something different based on their history, experiences, perspective of the world, belief-system, value-system, and more What you need to understand here is that all value is created by the perceiver - and your goal is to understand the perceiver as deeply as possible so you can put something in front of them so it is valuable to them as you’ve understood the relativity from their perspective 9. Reciprocity If I push on a wall, physics tells me that the wall pushes back with equivalent force. In a biological system, if one individual acts on another, the action will tend to be reciprocated in kind The same holds true for value-based marketing... the more value you provide to individuals in your marketing: a. The more compelled they are to give back b. The bigger the container in which you’ll be able to hold the reciprocity Gary Vee says to “Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook”... the “ Go Giver” book series said the same... Alex Hormozi says “ the longer the runway, the larger the plane that can take off ”... ...they’re all saying the same thing - give away your best shit for free more often 10. Thermodynamics The laws of thermodynamics describe energy in a closed system - such as web3 and NFTs. The laws cannot be escaped as they underlie the physical world, and they show that energy cannot be created or destroyed. Applying their lessons to the your NFT project can be a profitable enterprise... here’s how: a. From Complexity Comes Simplicity: we most value the people in the world who can take something incredibly complex and make it so simple that we can understand it for ourselves. The way we do this is via stories, metaphors, analogies, and more. It is the founders who can simplify their project so it could be understood by a 5yr old that will win the marketing war b. Energy Cannot Be Created Nor Destroyed: attention is energy - it exists and it is going to go somewhere. You can leverage this by finding where the attention currently is OR where it wants to go and interject your projects marketing there. This could be a specific topic, podcast, community, social following, brand, etc... 11. Inertia An object in motion with a certain vector wants to continue moving in that direction unless acted upon. This is a fundamental physical principle of motion; however, individuals, systems, and organizations display the same effect. It allows them to minimize the use of energy, but can cause them to be destroyed or eroded What you need to know here is that in the very beginning your project is attempting to overcome inertia in order to get its moving. Since it was at rest, it wants to stay at rest unless you put energy into it (*this could be physical, monetary, kinetic, tech-based, etc) Your marketing is likely going to look like it’s not working at the very beginning as it attempts to overcome the initial inertia needed to get moving. The character skills of conviction, persistence, courage, and patience will help you here How long does it take? How long is a piece of string... 12. Friction Both friction and viscosity describe the difficulty of movement. Friction is a force that opposes the movement of objects that are in contact with each other. Higher friction leads to higher resistance. These concepts teach us a lot about how our environment can impede our movement Applying this with our concept of inertia - any friction that exists means there will be MORE energy required to overcome the initial inertia. What creates friction? Complexity, more moving parts, more people’s thoughts, bigger goals... ...the answer? Simplicity (*beginning to see how these mental models work?) 13. Velocity Velocity is not speed, and people often confuse the two. Velocity is speed plus direction: how fast something gets somewhere . An object that moves two steps forward and then two steps back has moved at a certain speed but shows no velocity. The addition of the direction, that critical distinction, is what we should consider in practical life In your marketing always ensure you have a North Star or outcome you’re hoping to achieve. Again, the simpler and more specific you can be the easier it becomes. Now, once you apply speed you can ask the question “is it moving us closer toward our destination” and assess whether it’s useful or not... a. Yes it is. Good, keep doing it? b. No it is not. Good, do we need to change, or does it need more time? Without direction, you simply have speed and can go very fast in either the wrong direction or the same place... 14. Leverage This is where inputs and outputs are mismatched. Typically, the more creativity involved in a task the more leverage can be created as it is the least likely to be able to be replicated by another If I could take one small action and generate 5,000 community members - that would be an action of great leverage compared to a task of the same size, or bigger, that only generated 10 community members In your marketing there are 4 key sources of leverage you can utilize: 1. Labor - other people’s working hours and energy 2. Capital - financial resources to pay for things to be done by people to tech 3. Code - let the tech take care of it for you 4. Media - create something once and share it with millions of people Time spent in seeing how you can leverage one, a few, or all four of the above in your marketing is time very well spent 15. Activation Energy Malcolm Gladwell coined this term “the tipping point” - and anyone who tells you they know exactly where it exists for an NFT project is lying In biological terms, a fire is not much more than a combination of carbon and oxygen - but the forests and coal mines of the world are not combusting at will because such a chemical reaction requires the input of a critical level of “activation energy” in order to get a reaction started. Two combustible elements alone are not enough. What this means for your marketing is understanding the variety of best principles that go into creating the activation energy needed for an NFT project to “take off” and catch the attention of the masses in the industry - Community - Utility - Art - Collabs/Relationships - Brand Association - ...etc 16. Ecosystems An ecosystem describes any group of organisms coexisting with the natural world. Most ecosystems show diverse forms of life taking on different approaches to survival, with such pressures leading to varying behavior. Social systems can be seen in the same light as physical ecosystems and many of the same conclusions can be made The NFT industry and web3 as a whole are ecosystems - so is Twitter. Inside these complex ecosystems, there are a variety of variables, people, organisms, and technologies at play that are living in perfect harmony. If our marketing disrupts this, the ecosystem will fall into chaos and our results will be minimized The goal is to align ourselves and our marketing with the ecosystem to add to it in a way that betters the ecosystem for everyone involved without causing any disruption The key here is understanding the ecosystem you exist in as it is and see all the varying players, variables, and more involved 17. Niches Most organisms find a niche: a method of competing and behaving for survival. Usually, a species will select a niche for which it is best adapted. The danger arises when multiple species begin competing for the same niche, which can cause an extinction – there can be only so many species doing the same thing before limited resources give out In your marketing you must create a niche for yourself to market to - a specific group of people who have a similar psychographic or demographic. This will allow you to enhance your message by focusing specifically on: - What these people are interested in - The big desires of these people In doing this your marketing will speak strongly to these specific people whilst there will be others who do not care for it. The reason you want this is that it creates CONTRAST and TENSION that will attract your ideal people even more because it is repelling everyone who is not them This then births the psychological ploys of “social proof” and “people like us do things like that” into your world - strengthening your marketing message even more 18. Incentives All creatures respond to incentives to keep themselves alive. This is the basic insight into biology. Constant incentives will tend to cause a biological entity to have constant behavior, to an extent. Humans are included and are particularly great examples of the incentive-driven nature of biology; however, humans are complicated in that their incentives can be hidden or intangible. The rule of life is to repeat what works and has been rewarded Charlie Monger said “ show me the incentives and I will show you the outcome ”, as it is the incentive (*or the value) that determines the intensity in desire of the individual to act in the way you want them to Typically speaking, the incentive can be one of two core things: 1. Increased status 2. Financial gain It is the project that gets the incentives right that wins. The alpha here is to spend a high amount of your resources on identifying the incentives at the very beginning 19. Tendency to Minimize Energy Output (Mental & Physical) In a physical world governed by thermodynamics and competition for limited energy and resources, any biological organism that was wasteful with energy would be at a severe disadvantage for survival. Thus, we see in most instances that behavior is governed by a tendency to minimize energy usage when at all possible In your marketing, this mental model brings us to two things - one of which we have discussed previously, and another we’ve written a whitepaper on 1. Leverage - see #14 above 2. Human Psychology: as humans, we crave efficiency in our information-processing systems and our decision-making processes - as such, we have an abundance of psychological bias’ and heuristics that help us save this energy The downside to this as an individual is that we will make choices without all the information and therefore make a sub-optimal choice. The upside is that by understanding the biases and heuristics of humans we can play to them in our marketing Check out “The Ultimate Guide To Human Psychology” Whitepaper for an in-depth analysis as they apply to NFTs and marketing 20. Feedback Loops All complex systems are subject to positive and negative feedback loops whereby A causes B, which in turn influences A (and C), and so on – with higher-order effects frequently resulting from the continual movement of the loop. In a homeostatic system, a change in A is often brought back into line by an opposite change in B to maintain the balance of the system, as with the temperature of the human body or the behavior of organizational culture. Automatic feedback loops maintain a “static” environment unless and until an outside force changes the loop What you need to understand here as it applies to marketing is that your marketing is an experiment and the result that occurs is a simple feedback loop of data telling you that it either (a) worked, (b) did not work and needs tweaking What this does is force us to have specific, simple outcomes for our marketing that we can aim for (*thus creating velocity) and allowing us to actually know if things are working for us or not. The data does not lie The feedback loop and process for your marketing as it stands looks like this 1. Set the goal/outcome/intent 2. Experiment 3. Look at Data 4. Is it working? a. Yes. Keep going b. No. What tweaks can be made 5. Repeat step 2 to 4 for as long as the current goal is the goal 21. Anti-Fragility The Japanese call it Kinstukoroi - the ability of something to be more beautiful for having been broken. In terms of mental models, we call it anti-fragility as it applies to describing something that becomes stronger when breaking An anti-fragile system cannot be defeated. It continually gets back up and is stronger for having been knocked down. Understanding the feedback loop above and implementing it in your marketing is what allows your marketing and your project to be anti-fragile Things will not work AND your marketing and project will be stronger for it because you now have the data of what not to do, so you can spend your resources wisely on the things that do work and do matter for you Anti-Fragility is both a state of mind and a behavior 22. Bottlenecks A bottleneck describes the place at which a flow (of a tangible or intangible) is stopped, thus constraining it back from continuous movement. As with a clogged artery or a blocked drain, a bottleneck in the production of any good or service can be small but have a disproportionate impact if it is in the critical path. However, bottlenecks can also be a source of inspiration as they force us to reconsider if there are alternate pathways to success I had this tweet that went gangbusters that described the main “bottleneck” of NFT projects... UNPOPULAR OPINION: the biggest killer of NFT projects has no thing to do with the project... ...it's the founder/team and their lack of character traits (*conviction, persistence, patience) and specific skills The bottleneck for most NFT projects is the human, and oftentimes it’s either a skill or a character trait (*lack of patience, inability to test, attachment to outcomes and not process) that see them receive sub-optimal outcomes Time well spent here is identifying where, or who, the bottleneck is in your marketing process. Is it a belief that you have that you THINK is true (*i.e. X won’t work for us) that’s stopping you from testing it and seeing that what you THINK is not actually what’s REAL? 23. Compounding It’s been said that Einstein called compounding a wonder of the world. He probably didn’t, but it is a wonder. Compounding is the process by which we add interest to a fixed sum, which then earns interest on the previous sum and the newly added interest, and then earns interest on that amount, and so on ad infinitum. It is an exponential effect, rather than a linear, or additive, effect. Money is not the only thing that compounds; ideas and relationships do as well. In tangible realms, compounding is always subject to physical limits and diminishing returns; intangibles can compound more freely. Compounding also leads to the time value of money, which underlies all of modern finance Tying this in with the mental models of feedback loops, antifragility, and bottlenecks - your marketing efforts will compound over time ONLY if you let them. In nature, this is the planting of the seed and the continual watering of it, giving it sunshine, and giving it the time needed for its growth to compound until we’re able to see it In the “Marketing In The NFT World” Whitepaper I shared a story of a good friend who is CEO of the #1 Health and Fitness Podcast in the world. In it, he describes how they create all of their marketing campaigns to be at least 6 months long, with no real ask or mention of the thing until at least 4 months into it What this does is allow them to focus on the core problems and desires their ask is going to fill and simply speak to them to create a pre-framing in the mind of their listeners that gets them fixated on those problems and desires in their own lives. With 4 months of this (*marketing) it compounds and compounds in their audiences mind until they then position their ask as the solution and people jump at the opportunity of getting it For compounding to occur in your marketing you need to develop the character traits of trust, patience, persistence, and conviction 24. Opportunity Costs Doing one thing means not being able to do another. We live in a world of trade-offs, and the concept of opportunity cost rules all. Most aptly summarized as “there is no such thing as a free lunch.” What you need to understand here is that there always a trade-off . By focusing on one thing in your marketing it means you cannot focus on anything else unless you want there to be confusion and a sub-optimal result Essentially when we try and do or focus on multiple things in our marketing it’s creating a scenario where we’re trying to chase two or more rabbits at the same time... and in doing this we catch none of them By conducting a thought experiment and asking “ if we do this, what’s the opportunity cost that we’re missing out on ” you’ll be able to make better choices about where your time, energy, and money goes with your marketing so that you create the most leverage for yourself and the best outcomes 25. Scarcity Scarcity refers to a basic economics problem—the gap between limited resources and theoretically limitless wants. From the perspective of you as a founder, this situation requires you to make decisions about how to allocate your resources efficiently so that you do not waste time, money, or effort on things that do not matter From the perspective of your community as buyers, scarcity refers to the # of things that are available. It’s simple supply and demand mathematics. If there are only 500 available and 1,000 people want one the outcome is almost certain The mantra here is that when demand increases, cut supply . In the NFT space, this is easy enough to do with collection sizes, special drops, and more. A psychological play here that will work to your advantage is always keeping the supply under the demand, even when you know you can sell more at that specific point in time What this does is ensure that demand always stays high and keeps your pipeline full of people who want into your community or to purchase from you. Where most people will sell everyone NOW to get their immediate fix of dopamine, by only selling 30% NOW you leave 70% of people starving AND also allow for more people to come in who are interested in what you have to offer *note: scarcity can also apply to things like specific styles, flavors, colors, etc... 26. Urgency Where scarcity is a factor of #, urgency is a factor of time. By stating to people “for the next hour” or “by midnight tonight” it induces the psychological FOMO that can drive them to act The keys to understand here are: 1. Be authentic and real about the urgency 2. Use urgency sparingly as otherwise you will either: a. Become the boy who cried wolf and urgency will lose its effect b. People will associate this with your NFT project and they could see what you’re doing, thus creating a negative association and relationship with your project 27. Trust Fundamentally, the modern world operates on trust. Familial trust is generally a given (otherwise we’d have a hell of a time surviving), but we also choose to trust chefs, clerks, drivers, factory workers, executives, and many others. A trusting system is one that tends to work most efficiently; the rewards of trust are extremely high The psychological bias and heuristic of “authority” plays a role here where we will automatically provide a greater level of “trust” to those who we label as being an authority in the world - think doctors, lawyers, entrepreneurs, tech based individuals, law enforcement - etc. Yes, this will often be contextual, but it exists In the marketing of your NFT project, a core objection to overcome in the beginning is getting someone to “like, know, and trust ” you and your project. This can be done by: 1. Consistently showing up over a long period of time. This brings the “familiarity principle” into play and ties into the logic of “ they’ve been around for a long period of time, so there must be something good happening ” 2. Create brand associations and collaborations with other projects, people, or brands people trust. This kicks in the psychological shortcut of “ social proof ” whereby if those other people are backing you there must be something good happening so I can trust you too 3. Giving away your best stuff for free. This will bring the law of reciprocity into play and people will like you and trust you more and more as you continue to give them value 28. Bias from Incentives Highly responsive to incentives, humans have perhaps the most varied and hardest-to-understand set of incentives in the animal kingdom. This causes us to distort our thinking when it is in our own interest to do so. A wonderful example is a salesman truly believing that his product will improve the lives of its users. It’s not merely convenient that he sells the product; the fact of his selling the product causes a very real bias in his own thinking Charlie Munger believes there are few sources more powerful than incentives in the world. At one point he stated that time spent on identifying and creating incentives is quite possible the most valuable time you’ll spend What you need to understand about incentives and marketing your NFT project is: 1. There are only two real incentives ever at play: a. Status Gain - people want to be perceived as more important/authoritative/successful inside their daily ecosystem and society as a whole b. Financial Gain - people want to make more money 2. The specificity of the incentive depends on the individual. This is why you need to know your audience and what they value. Azuki just sold 8 golden skateboards, with the highest purchase of 309Eth because they know the status and desires of their audience. Had they created and tried to see 8 Golden Princess Tiara’s - I’d argue the outcome would have been very different This is why the foundation of incentives lies in first understanding your audience, what they value, and what they want. From here, you can break down STATUS incentives and FINANCIAL incentives to place in front of them in your marketing 29. Pavlovian Association Ivan Pavlov very effectively demonstrated that animals can respond not just to direct incentives but also to associated objects; remember the famous dogs salivating at the ring of a bell. Human beings are much the same and can feel positive and negative emotion towards intangible objects, with the emotion coming from past associations rather than direct effects In the marketing of your NFT product you can create specific associations to get your audience to behave a specific way that aligns with the action you’d like to invite them to take. An example of this is the “engagement farming” style Twitter Posts we’re you’re telling people to turn notifications on so they don’t miss out on “it”... The “notification” going off is Pavlov’s “bell” that made the dogs salivate You can also frame specific actions with specific rewards in your content marketing. By creating a weekly show with a specific reward, people will look forward to it and tune into it with the hope of winning the reward (*incentive). You see this play out tremendously well in real-world “lottery’s” 30. Tendency to Feel Envy & Jealousy Humans have a tendency to feel envious of those receiving more than they are, and a desire “get what is theirs” in due course. The tendency towards envy is strong enough to drive otherwise irrational behavior, but is as old as humanity itself. Any system ignorant of envy effects will tend to self-immolate over time When it comes to marketing your NFT project; this principle lies more on the “negative” side of the spectrum - however, with emotion needing to be elicited for someone to take action, it must be discussed For a human to take action, they need to be emotionally aroused . You can do this by eliciting a variety of 3 emotions we’d identify as “positive” and 3 we’d identify as “negative” 1. Positive: a. Awe b. Excitement c. Humor 2. Negative: a. Fear b. Envy c. Anxiety The positive emotions help move us toward the dreams and desires we have. The negative emotions help us move away from the pains and problems we do not wish to experience anymore. The ethics that come into play with marketing here lies in the authenticity of the story you’re creating in your marketing to elicit the emotions Be aware of the “association” that can be created here between your audience and your brand. Too much focus on one kind of “stories” or “emotions” and you’ll have a specific kind of brand-identity in the market (*this is similar to stores who always discount their products/services and those price points becomes what the community expects them to price at). Use the “negative” side of things sparingly for long-term success 31. Tendency to Distort Due to Liking/Loving or Disliking/Hating Based on past association, stereotyping, ideology, genetic influence, or direct experience, humans have a tendency to distort their thinking in favor of people or things that they like and against people or things they dislike. This tendency leads to overrating the things we like and underrating or broadly categorizing things we dislike, often missing crucial nuances in the process In your marketing you can use brand association to great effect here. Tied into the incentive of status too - owning something that is represented by a brand, influencer, or specific “status” in society allows the owner to associate themselves with the brand, influencer, or “status” too If the brand is seen as “powerful”, the holder will be seen as “powerful” too In the real-world, this “association” plays out in big brands paying millions of dollars for the association with kim Kardashian as they know that millions of women all over the world will want to then buy their products as they themselves want to associate themselves with “being like Kim” and have others perceive them in the same way After all, if Kim wears them and I wear them too - then... what does that say about me? In the marketing of your NFT project, this applies to specific partnerships, collaboration, team members past history, and the positioning of yourself in the market by who you choose to associate yourself with. You can create an abundance of leverage with the right choices here - as the right associations can do a lot of heavy lifting to get you great positioning and trust in the industry 32. Denial Anyone who has been alive long enough realizes that, as the saying goes, “denial is not just a river in Africa.” This is powerfully demonstrated in situations like war or drug abuse, where denial has powerful destructive effects but allows for behavioral inertia. Denying reality can be a coping mechanism, a survival mechanism, or a purposeful tactic The power of this mental model to use in the marketing of your NFT project aligns itself with the psychological bias of “Commitment/Consistency”. People do not like to admit that they were wrong or be seen to go back on something they said/did in the past - that is, deny it In your marketing, the more you can get people to take “micro-actions” or say “small yes’s” the greater the commitment and consistency that will be built with your project. This will make it harder for them to opt-out in the future if the opportunity presents itself as they will want to be consistent with their past beliefs and behaviors. This also ties into “sunk cost bias” where we will continue to support our past decisions despite new evidence suggesting that it isn't the best course of action 33. Availability Heuristic One of the most useful findings of modern psychology is what Daniel Kahneman calls the Availability Bias or Heuristic: We tend to most easily recall what is salient, important, frequent, and recent. Having a truly comprehensive memory would be debilitating What this means is that we don’t ever have an accurate representation of the past and our “memories” are sub-optimal and inaccurate at best. In the marketing of your NFT project you can tap into this by understanding that humans are “meaning-making machines” and that with time and great marketing you can create the “meaning” that people make about your project... ...that is the story they tell themselves and other people about it If you ONLY give them great stories, experiences, and information about your project this is what will be available to them when they remember your project - or the information they’ll bring to the front of their mind when they see it again in the future The key here is the importancy, frequency, and simplicity of the message/marketing. Importancy = important to them (*status or $). Frequency = show up multiple times daily/familiarity principle Simplicity = a confused mind says no every single time 34. Social Proof (Safety in Numbers) Human beings are one of many social species, along with bees, ants, and chimps, among many more. We have a DNA-level instinct to seek safety in numbers and will look for social guidance of our behavior. This