Table of Contents Before We Begin... 3 Understanding The Issues 4 #1: You’re A World-Class Self Deceiver 5 #2: You’re Psychologically Lazy & Biased 6 #3: You Overcomplicate Things To Your Detriment 7 #4: You Don’t Understand Branding (*But You Think You Do) & It Limits You 8 The Solutions 9 #1. Join Over 1,000 Happy Customers 10 #2. You Made A Great Choice 11 #3. FREE GIFT INSIDE! 12 #4. Powerful Beyond Measure 13 #5. Like. Know. Trust 14 #6. Time’s ticking... There are only 5 left! 15 #7. Give Motive & Emotion to Your Message with Affect Heuristic Humans love stories... 16 World-Class Tips: 17 #8. The Confused Mind Says No Every Time - Choice Overload 18 #9. You’re the Kind of Person Who - Forer/Barnum Effect 19 Hot Tip: Tests & Surveys 20 #10. Losses Loom Larger Than Gains - Anchoring Bias 21 Quick Tactical Ideas to Test & Implement 22 Raising The Stakes Without Fear Mongering 23 #11. The Art & Science of Pre-suasion 24 #12. The Way You’re Saying It Matters More Than You Know - Framing Effect/Choice Architecture 27 #13. Which Would You Rather? 29 #14. Impact + Frequency + Time = Winning Message - Familiarity Principle 30 Examples: 31 #15. New & Improved! - Pro-Innovation Bias 32 #16. It’s Good Enough for Don Draper 33 Nostalgia and social connectedness 34 Friends and funds 34 #17. People Like Us Do Things Like That 35 #18. Dwelling on the Past 36 #19. Optimally Primed 37 #20. Tying It All Together 38 **BONUS** The Power of Unity 39 In Closing 40 Before We Begin... ...there is a fundamental universal Truth that we, as humans, are emotional creatures. Whether we agree with it or not, we make our choices and decisions based on emotion; not rationality The psychological world knows that “feelings are temporary; decisions are permanent”; and yet we allow our feeling and emotions to drive our decisions This is good news and bad news. The good news is that psychology is your secret weapon in web3 and the NFT ecosystem. The bad news is your own psychological bias are going to delude & limit yourself in the same way you’re trying to influence your community All of this lies around the same premise - we all have cognitive bias and heuristics that act as shortcuts to help us save energy and make decisions faster Great! Saved energy, less thinking, faster choices! Bad... as we’re not the ones driving the ship and we lack a ton of data (*but we don’t know it or believe it) when making choices This next section forms the foundation for an in-depth discussion that dives into: 1. Understanding the core challenges that face NFT Projects when it comes to their psychology and the success of their projects 2. Understanding the cognitive bias’ and heuristics we have as humans 3. Provide real-world Strategies & Examples to harness the power of these cognitive heuristics, biases’ and shortcuts to better position your NFT project, invoke influence, and connect with people *note: this is influence, not persuasion - there is a difference between the two Understanding The Issues We’re lazy. Super fucking lazy. We’re also world-class deluders of ourselves ad self-sabotager of ourselves. We think we have all the data to make great choices and do so from a point of accuracy and completeness, however, 90% of the time this is not the case Take into account the Truth that you never have all the data required to make a choice. You can’t. As humans, we cannot access it all. But we think we do and we believe the lie we do... ...and at times this can place us in precarious and dire situations Daniel Kahneman found and wrote about System 1 and System 2 of the human cognitive mechanisms in his phenomenal book “Thinking Fast and Slow“. In it, he and his researchers noted that we have an almost immediate “emotional thinking aspect” of ourselves (System 1), and a “deeper, more rational thinking aspect” of ourselves (System 2) Our ability to self-delude ourselves into thinking we’re using System 2 when we’re using System 1 is what gets us into trouble. Yes, we’re world-class liars to ourselves... This problem stems from: a. Lack of understanding ourselves and how we think b. Lack of experiencing with TRUE thinking and not what we’ve been conditioned to believe is thinking c. Lack of understanding our own biases, heuristics, and emotional shortcuts we use to save energy (*often at the expense of accuracy and success) As it stands, these 3 problems outlined above form the foundation for the 4 main issues and challenges devs, creators, artists, and founders face when it comes to their psychology and the success of their project. These 4 issues: 1. They don’t see their emotionality in their choices and decisions, and allow these to drive their actions - not conscious, well thought out, rational choices (i.e. they make choices without all the data they need) 2. They don’t understand the core human cognitive bias’ and heuristics used as shortcuts to support the choices and decisions made - both to better their own choices & use in their projects to align with & streamline the choices of others 3. They create complexities to hide their imperfections, self-perceived inadequacies, and the delusion “complex = better” and people think this way too without understanding the confused mind says no every time 4. They have a collapsed & inaccurate definition of what branding is and what constitutes it, wasting time by focusing on the white noise and not the substance that matters #1: You’re A World-Class Self Deceiver The first of the foundational challenges and issues that devs creators, founders, and artists face when it comes to their own cognitive and psychological biases and shortcuts in their NFT project is their failure to understand that they are a world-class deceiver, a world-class deluder and that they are world-class at sabotaging themselves They fail to grasp and see their emotionality, and the limitations it holds over them They fail to grasp the power and the role that their emotions play in the choices that they take, the decisions that they make, and the actions that they end up choosing They fail to realize that the majority of all of these are in fact, unconsciously made. They're not well thought out. They're not rational choices. They are emotional choices What they do is allow System 1 to think for them, and they take that as the accurate final choice. In doing so they think their choice is rational, where at the end of the day, it's all emotionally based What they need to do is take a breath and allow System 2 to kick in and bring with it consciousness, cognitive processes that can retrieve all the data needed to make a choice *it’s important to note that “overthinking” is often actually thinking When we allow System 1 to drive the car, all of our choices are made with a minimal amount of the available date we require with us. We’re essentially “choosing bling” As humans, we want to do this. We want the efficiency it brings. Hell, we crave it! We think it's going to save all of this energy that we can then commit toward the other things that we think are more important. What a founder, creator, artist, or dev can do inside this situation is slow down. They can take a breath to understand that when it comes to making choices, right now they have blind spots, they don't have everything that they need, and that's completely okay They can thus begin to process and ask themselves “what other data do I need so that I can make a better conscious choice about what it is that I'm going to do moving forward?” When it comes to your communities & your marketing, understand this is power as you know that they're going to make choices without all the data they need So your power lies in knowing how much data they need and what that data is. Your power is in choosing the right words to get them to the emotional point where they're ready to take an action and make a choice #2: You’re Psychologically Lazy & Biased You don't realize your laziness and your biases. You don't understand that there are core, ingrained cognitive biases, and heuristics that you use as shortcuts They're conditioned into you. You have been told the story that they’re beneficial to us, and evolutionary they have been... ...but to move us to the next point we need to understand when they're playing out in our own lives, and we need to put an end to them To use the older Maxim and cliche; “what got us here won't get us there” So how can we better understand our cognitive biases? How can we better understand when the likes of social proof, authority, commitment bias, pre-framing, or any of the other cognitive heuristics are clouding our judgment and being the main driver for our actions? Easy - you become more aware of them in your own life; what triggers them for you, and get I repetitions to show consciousness when they begin to arise If you can that you can make better choices and market in a way that influences your community to also make better choices *note: the remainder of this series is going to dive into each of these cognitive biases and heuristics and how you can understand them to use them in your marketing #3: You Overcomplicate Things To Your Detriment The third challenge to overcome is knowing we don't understand how much we overcomplicate things for ourselves... ...we have this conditioned belief that the more complex something is, the better it's going to be, and the more productive and beneficial it's going to be We create complexities to hide our imperfections, our self-perceived inadequacies, and hide this delusion that complexity is better We automatically think this is true without understanding that a confused mind is going to say no every single time The greatest people in the world, the ones who achieved the pinnacle of the industry, their endeavor, were the ones who were able to simplify things the most Simple = sophisticated When it comes to the NFT World and Marketing inside it; the majority of people are hyper-focused on this curiosity & complexity play... We can't tell you what this thing is! It’s big though! It’s grand. Trust us, our ideas will be dropping soon. They’re great. They’ve never been done before and will blow you away (*all the while failing to focus on “will this thing be valuable and wanted by my community?) Yes, some people get hyped up by this kind of thing - but for the majority, it creates some kind of confusion and questions are raised that need answering... ...simply saying “we can’t tell you because it’s a secret” isn’t going to cut it for long - especially if people want to be in the light instead of the dark If you can keep things simple, if you can be open and transparent, and say “Hey guys, this is what we're imagining and this is it in simple terms” - people are going to connect with it, and people are going to relate to it And the beauty of this approach is that it ties into the psychological component of “I need to like you, I need to know you and I need to trust you” for me to be a part of your community + take action How can you simplify things down? Do it, as in doing so you’re going to allow you to elevate and expand your project up at the end of the day #4: You Don’t Understand Branding (*But You Think You Do) & It Limits You See, branding is not about: ● Colors ● Images ● Logos ● Templates ● Consistency between all the above things ● Influencers that promote your projects ● Collaborators & Relationships Branding is messaging That's all that it is at the end of the day: ● What do we stand for? ● Who do we stand for? ● How can we create alignment in all of these things? ● How can we ensure the text, the logo, the images, the collaborations, the templates, the people that we work with, and the influencers all fit inside of this message At the end of the day, if they do and there is alignment, then there is a brand And with that brand, there can now be an understanding from people as to why it is that your project does the things it does, and why it makes the choices it makes. Why? Because it’s on-brand... this is what our brand does If your project then does something to violate this message there will be confusion in the community and questions will be asked Your brand is the message you consistently express & share over, and over, and over again... in your images, text, relationships, colors, collaborations, and more So understand that everything you think equates to branding is essentially white noise that's taking you away from the substance that matters The sole thing that you should be thinking about is “is this in alignment with our message? Is this in alignment with what we stand for, who we want to stand for, and why we're here?” If it does, it’s on-brand and you’re adding another brick to the foundation of your brand 8 The Solutions We all have built-in cognitive bias’ that influence our decision-making processes heavily; for good and ill. Knowing how to harness their power can allow us to better frame benefits, overcome objections... ...and create some killer marketing One of the ethical challenges we face is walking the fine line between persuasion and manipulation There is a definite difference between the two. Many marketers manipulation under the thought and label that it is persuasion instead Manipulation: To control or influence cleverly, unfairly, or unscrupulously Persuasion: To cause (someone) to do something through reasoning or argument Truth: every single form of communication is designed to - in some way, shape, or form - influence. Your marketing is not unique in that aspect #1. Join Over 1,000 Happy Customers Social Proof, otherwise known as the Bandwagon Effect, is a phenomenon whereby the rate of uptake in beliefs, ideas, fads, and trends increases the more that they have already been adopted by others Think of this like the “people like us do things like that” marketing strategy we discussed in the “Marketing for the NFT World“ Series You’re driving past a club at 11 pm on a Saturday and you see 50+ people in the waiting lines outside... immediately your thoughts are “Woah, that place must be popular... look at all those people” - when in Truth there is barely anyone inside It’s all a marketing illusion that allows your “social proof cognitive bias” to come into play It’s exactly why social media have the “buttons” near posts - if one post is higher than another you immediately think it’s better than one with a lower number Social proof is driven by popularity. The more “popular”, the higher the chance of the person taking action and choosing the popular option in front of them So what can you do in the marketing for your NFT project to tap into social proof? ● Know that your community is influenced by “the crowd”. With this you want to portray that ○ they’re not alone in taking action ○ they may be left alone if they don’t take action. This is where the “9 out of 10 dentists agree” phrase was born ● In the copy of your marketing you can use phrases such as “Most people already know...”, “Thousands Have Figured Out...”, “Join Our 100s of Happy Customers”, “Tried & Tested by Dozens”, “Seen in Case after Case” ○ `By doing this you imply that people are missing out if they’re not taking action. (*FOMO if a hell of a drug as you’ll see in a later installment) ● Use testimonials... Lots of them. All over the place. Screenshots. Photos. Videos. Anything that shows people “this is what’s waiting for you on the other side” ● Tools that show “Richard just signed up!”. Emulate sites like hotels.com where it reports “12 people are viewing this room” when it comes to your website, minting and what you portray via social media Bottom Line: Demonstrate that they’re not the first or last, and in fact, they’re one of many; or that they could be... if they take action #2. You Made A Great Choice Commitment & Consistency Bias is characterized by our tendency to retroactively ascribe positive attributes to an option one has selected in the past... Let’s say you choose option A instead of option B, over time you are likely to ignore or downplay the faults of option A while amplifying those of option B It only makes sense right? After all, you want your choice to be the better and the right one - so you’ll blind yourself to the negativity surrounding your choice You can thank your ego for this! Conversely, you are also likely to notice and amplify the advantages of option A and not notice or de-emphasize those of option B What can you do in the marketing for your NFT project to tap into people’s commitment & consistency bias? ● Provide them with an abundance of affirmations! In general, your audience has chosen tend to give their attention to your marketing materials; so help them feel positive about it. (*note: love beats hate, abundance beats fear) ○ Ways to apply this principle... ■ Before people join or mint: show positive testimonials to reinforce the positive choice they’re about to make ■ After people join or mint: use positive language like “Good Job!, Awesome!, Great Choice!” in your discord. Thank them for joining you! Make them feel like part of the family... warm and welcomed ● Unannounced bonuses are another way to add a positive touchpoint after someone has minted or joined your community. This can be enough to turn FUD into a happy community member. Airdrops, future discounts, WL spots - whatever, an unannounced bonus makes someone feel even better This bias is already built in your favor, keep reinforcing the positive and address any possible negatives quickly. This is how you’ll keep people consistent with their view of your brand and happy to be part of your community #3. FREE GIFT INSIDE! Ahhhh, the law of reciprocity. Give and receive. Yin and yang. Up and down. Night and day. The universe and humans love duality, they love contrast... ...and this cognitive bias ties right into this natural law and aspect of the human experience The law of reciprocity states that “...we should try to repay, in kind, what another person has provided us” One of the reasons reciprocation can be used so effectively as a device for gaining another’s compliance is its power. The rule possesses awesome strength, often producing a “yes” response to a request that, except for an existing feeling of indebtedness, would have surely been refused. What can you do in the marketing for your NFT project to tap into the law of reciprocity? Offer something for FREE: ● A POAP ● An AirDrop ● A future whitelist spot ● Content ● Merch ● Whatever This will place someone in a position where the law of reciprocity kicks in. Essentially, this is what tokens and NFT’s do - you purchase one thing and get all of this other stuff for free in the future because you own it (*note: see the section on stacking value in the “Marketing for the NFT World” Whitepaper on how to stack everything your project entails to make it irresistible to people) #4. Powerful Beyond Measure Think about all the people you give power to, who you think are “this type of person” or “that type of person” and the stories you tell yourself about how great they are simply because they’ve achieved a thing or are involved in a thing... ...that’s your authority bias playing out Put very simply, people tend to follow and give power to people they view as authoritative We are taught from a very young age that obedience to authority is right and disobedience is wrong - so our cognitive bias’ play into this depending on our conditioning to what we believe is right or wrong Look at the past and how much authority and power was given to a Dr or Lawyer compared to today. They have less authority due to the consciousness and conditioning of the younger generations... Now, in turn, look at the likes of Tom Bilyeu, Gary Vaynerchuk, Tim Ferris, Kaiju Kingz, BAYC, and more who have achieved something in this space You automatically see them as an authority and give them this power because they’ve achieved the “thing”. They “executed”. They’re just like you, but you view them in this different light and give them authority What can you do in the marketing for your NFT project to tap into the law of reciprocity? 1. Give away as much FREE information & stuff as possible. Not only will this elicit the “reciprocity bias”, but it’s going to allow you to position yourself as the expert and authority inside the reader's mind because they’ll see how knowledgeable you are 2. Share your stories, your experiences, and your past. The more vulnerable and transparent you are, the more you give, the more you allow people to receive and position you as a kind of person in their mind. If you’ve achieved stuff in the past in biz or the NFT world - share it. Be proud of yourself, be humble, and let people know. It’s going to position you in their mind as “this” kind of person which will provide you a higher authority **Expert Secret** - use this alongside the power of reciprocity and watch what happens... #5. Like. Know. Trust We are more likely to listen to people who we like, who we know, and who we trust. In fact, as the levels of each of these rises, the less information & time we require when it comes to making decisions that involve these people Think about it... Think about your favorite influencers and people in industries you respect and how little thought would go into doing something they express you should do. There will be a little, but not a whole lot This is especially true when compared to an influencer or person you’re not yet familiar with. Why? You like, you know and you trust the former person more than the latter. Thus, they have a greater level of influence over your choices Liking is based on: ● Past association ● Stereotyping ● Ideology (*beliefs, values, how you see the world and what you believe to be true about it) ● Genetic influence ● Direct experience We, humans, have a tendency to distort our thinking in favor of people or things that we like, and against people or things we 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 We’re blind to everything we do not allow ourselves to see... and this causes us problems What can you do with this information? 1. Doxxing may be out of the question for you - but being able to put a face to the project allows for this liking, knowing, and trusting to develop so much faster; especially in a video format. As humans, the majority of what we say is expressed via our body language - and this is how humans connect too... a photo and text can only do so much; whereas body expression and voice can, and will, take you to the moon 2. Add as much value as you can and give it away as often as possible - this will help people like you and trust you over time if the content you provide them is valuable to them and works for them 3. Patience: it’s going to take time; so keep showing up and showing up and showing up ... “99 percent of life is showing up” - Woody Allen #6. Time’s ticking... There are only 5 left! When it comes to your core offerings, it could be a mint, an airdrop, a discord invite; you’ll want to design elements of them that can go away based on urgency or scarcity... ...that is time or amount As an example, you may offer a special minting bonus or minting discount that only the first X number of buyers will unlock. This is scarcity in action as only a certain number are available When it comes to urgency, you can also offer a bonus or discount for a limited period. What this does is play into a human’s time-based perception of the loss of benefits How you frame scarcity, as in the words you use to explain it, should describe what will happen once the time is met/time expires and MUST HIGHLIGHT THAT IT IS A BAD THING AS THEY’RE MISSING AN OPPORTUNITY This is why scarcity and countdown timers work so well - they essentially “force” people to make faster choices Essentially, play around the # in your collections and how you can add urgency to people minting, joining discord, getting merch/airdrops, and more You’ll only find the sweet spot of what works for you with testing :) #7. Give Motive & Emotion to Your Message with Affect Heuristic Humans love stories... ...and every good story has contrast and tension in it There are only 3 main storylines we can essentially tell 1. Rags to riches: down to up 2. Boy Mets Girl: up, then down, then up again 3. Cinderella: down, then up, then WAY down, then WAY up In doing this, you take people on an emotional roller coaster from POSITIVE (paradise/goal) to NEGATIVE (pain/problem) and back again if desired This mental shortcut is executed when making automatic decisions and relates to how our current emotional state affects our decisions. This is why your words matter - they influence emotional states! Rather than taking the time (logically) to consider the long-term consequences of a decision, we often rely too heavily on our emotions to control the process. We’re emotional creatures. We make decisions based on emotions and justify things rationally at a later date This is seen as ‘useful’ by our subconscious as it shortens the decision-making process and saves us time and energy by allowing us to function without having to complete an extensive search for information “If someone’s feelings towards an activity are positive, then they are more likely to judge the risks as low and the benefits high. On the other hand, if their feelings towards an activity are negative, they are more likely to perceive the risks as high and benefits low.” How does this apply to you and your marketing? Generating a positive state of emotion will reduce the perception of risk in your community, as such you want to make sure that your message weaves in and out of positive and negative language. You also want to ensure you conclude our message on a clear and justifiable positive note Positivity right before a specific call to action or purchase where your reader is most likely to be calculating potential the potential risks of the action is vital and key Negative language can also be powerful. It allows you to create a contrast to the positive aspects of your messaging. Also, pain is a more powerful driver than pleasure. By highlighting the risks of not taking action, not changing, and missing out, you can draw a powerful contrast when you bring your tone back to positive at the end of our message Principally, when we look at your marketing message as a whole, ideally it will be net positive; like a Hollywood blockbuster hero film with just enough drama, excitement, peril, and uplifting twists to bring our reader to a happy ending World-Class Tips: ● Associate negative emotions with the competition, other projects, and lack of action of the community ● Associate positive emotions, concepts, and events with your project ● Being subtle can be just as effective as being overt, and it is a much more tasteful approach #8. The Confused Mind Says No Every Time - Choice Overload Choice overload is a cognitive process in which people have a difficult time making a decision when faced with many options. Much of our subconscious decision-making processes are centered on calculating risks, and the difficulty of those calculations greatly influences the quality of that process Choice overload also takes into account the perception of time. This is why scarcity and countdown timers work so well - they essentially “force” people to make faster choices Hot Tip: Know that more choices result in more dissatisfaction and regret in decisions Here’s What To Do: ● Simple is Sophisticated. Less is more. More is NOT better; only better is better ○ Streamline any minting or joining process into the least amount of steps possible ■ If you’re offering a tiered approach or multiple launches, offer no more than three ○ Keep information to a bare minimum; give people just enough. If they ask questions, answer them or create an FAQ in your discord/on your site ○ When presenting different tiers and options, do so in a visually appealing way that easily distinguishes the options ● World-Class Tip ○ The Rule of Two ■ Presenting two specific options is an effective way to leverage the desire to have some variety and the ability to choose ■ We can do this even if we only have one choice - how? ● By framing a choice: ● By allowing someone to make a choice ○ Yes, leave the server ○ No, stay in the family ● The choice invites them to think instead of just habitually closing the page, and a conscious decision is always better than an unconscious one ○ Images require less mental effort to be processed: ■ This gives the reader a sense that the information is being processed faster. People prefer this visual shortcut to process no matter how big the choice set size. Images increase our perceived variety of options #9. You’re the Kind of Person Who - Forer/Barnum Effect Remember the “people like us do things like that” marketing aspect from the “Marketing in the NFT World” Series? This is the exact language you use to start that framing in someone’s mind... ...this is a psychological phenomenon whereby individuals give high accuracy ratings to descriptions of their personality that supposedly are tailored specifically to them, that are vague and general enough to apply to a wide range of people Think about astrology, fortune-telling, aura reading, and some types of personality tests. Inside these, the Forer/Barnum Effect is in full play By using specific words we can create generalizations that specific people take personally This principle works because we may find it impressive & perhaps even astonishing when someone identifies a seemingly unique personal belief we hold dear or specific knowledge that we interpret as uniquely ours... ...when, in reality, it’s quite generic. In marketing, it can be used effectively to validate (the process whereby others confirm the validity of one's emotions) a person’s decisions and opinions concerning what’s being marketed It is especially powerful & useful in the marketing of causes & public relations but also has its place at some level in all forms of marketing Here’s What To Do: KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE BETTER THAN THEY KNOW THEMSELVES Whatever the emotion you’re eliciting in your readers, and the intensity of that emotion, you can use the Barnum Effect to actively transfer it to your reader For example, let's say you're creating a project that’s raising funds for a charity to fight fires in Australia: ● You can transfer the urgency of the situation with a statement such as: ○ you’re the kind of person (Barnum statement) who understands the importance of community, imagine if everything you knew and loved was in the path of a raging inferno? ○ No doubt you would (Barnum statement) be scared, angry, and want to do everything you could to save what you love.” There’s a high probability that just about anyone will agree with these statements, and likely strongly identify with them if they are your target audience If they’re not your target audience they won’t identify with the values you’ve identified, and that’s just fine - as it’s going to repel the type of people you do not exist not for which in turn will create a stronger attraction for those you do exist for Hot Tip: Tests & Surveys You’ve probably seen (and fallen victim to) the ‘BuzzFeed’ style generic quizzes such as “Which Harry Potter Character Are You?” or “Which Disney Prince Are You Most Likely to Marry”. These quizzes usually spit out results with generic ‘reasons’ as to why you fall under one category or another. In your marketing you can design similar principled quizzes, but with less ‘generic’ and more useful attribution to the responses Take a test asking individuals to rate on a scale of 1 - 10 their feelings/opinions about a given topic, for example - this is a simple way to implement this tactic and receive data specific to your audience you can use back at them in the future (*remember “Mirror Marketing”) The other benefit to this is that you get to gamify an aspect of your interaction, which people love So if you’re the kind of NFT creator that wants your project to succeed, there’s no doubt that you’d be interested in using this language in your Twitter Posts, Discords, Relationship Creation, Collaborations, and more...