Remarkable Reading #15: Gad Saad’s THE CONSUMING INSTINCT and Carmen Simon’s IMPOSSIBLE TO IGNORE
The aim of this section Remarkable Reading is pay a tribute to the books that taught, share trends & insights into where our world in the 21st century is heading in a technology enabled world, and ask the right questions.
Bolded and italics quotes and references do not belong to myself and belong directly to the author. The focus is to share valuable insights and teachings from the book to win business for the authors.
Gad Saad’s THE CONSUMING INSTINCT: WHAT JUICY BURGERS, FERRARIS, PORNOGRAPHY AND GIFT GIVING REVEAL ABOUT HUMAN NATURE is a beautifully illuminating, refreshing and witty book about culture and evolution revealing intricate details and insights about human behaviour, marketing and consumerism.
Saad’s writing style is fast-paced yet detailed, and he manages to remark on some of the more topical themes of the Twenty First Century.
Two of these themes are:
- Food choice, decision-making and consumption
- Memory’s impact on marketing and creating memorable content
Here are some of the top take-out’s I thought you may find informational and educational:
Page 11 - “Humans possess a ravenous consummatory appetite. Most individuals will typically make hundreds of consumption-related decisions in any given day. Should I have breakfast or skip straight to lunch? What am I going to wear today? Will it be casual attire or a power suit? Should I put on my favourite perfume or try the new one that an old acquaintance recently gave me?
Page 14 - “Whereas culture is important in understanding consumer behaviour, of equal importance are the biological and evolutionary forces that have shaped our consuming minds and bodies. I hope to illuminate the relevance of our biological heritage in our daily lives as consumers, from the foods that we eat, to the gifts that we offer, to the products that we use to make ourselves more attractive in the dating market, and to the cultural products that tickle our emotional fancy (e.g. religion).
Page 53 - “Whereas humans in general seek food variety, the drive for such variety is different across individuals. How often do you try new restaurants, or new kinds of cuisine? Are you the type of individual who has three or four favourite restaurants to which you always return? Do you order the same dish each time you visit a favourite eatery? Can you eat rotisserie chicken without side dishes, or must you have food variety at any given meal (e.g. chicken must be served with some salad, a baked potato, bread. etc?). The answer to these questions captures the extent to which you are a variety seeker when it come to food choices”
Page 64 - “Eugene Tsui is perhaps the world's most renowned evolutionary-minded architect. He has argued that we need to study nature’s designs as s source for inspiration. Numerous animals have evolved architectural designs that constitute adaptive solutions to specific survival or reproductive challenges”
Page 281 - “Most people would likely agree that when it comes to practical inventions, the following individuals should certainly be listed : Johannes Gutenberg (printing press), Thomas Edison (lightbulb), the Wright Brothers (first flight), Henry Ford (csr assembly line), Benjamin Franklin (bifocal glasses), Charles Babbage's (mechanical computer), and Alexander Bell (telephone)., I am sure that the readers could come up with other individuals and companies that epitomize innovative thinking. However, I would venture that the greatest innovator of all time is one that few readers will likely think of. I’ll give you a hint via a classic Latin saying: Mater artium necessitas (Necessity is the mother of invention).”
Carmen Simon’s Impossible to Ignore: Creating Memorable Content to Influence Decisions is a influential, precise and thoroughly researched book about what the role of memory is in creating powerful brand marketing. Carmen has a coherent and eloquent writing style that makes a complex subject easier to fathom.
Here are some take-out’s I found informative:
Page ix: “There are 15 variables you can use to influence other people’s memory: context, cues, distinctiveness, emotion, facts, familiarity, motivation, novelty, quantity of information, relevance and surprise”
Page 2 - “The concept of memory is refuelling the efforts of scholars and neuroscientists who are deepening the understanding of human behaviour. The latest scientific findings place memory at the heart of adaptive behaviour and decision-making. Scientists are also increasingly worried that our society is being stripped of the responsibility to remember much”
Page 119 - “A classic is always marked by something worth mentioning over and over again, without the risk of becoming a cliche. Like a classic, a cliche endures through time, but along the journey it loses its its original impact and meaning, becoming worn and trivial. When the term “paradigm shift” was first used in 1960s, it was original. A lot of paradigms have shifted in many fields since then, more than 7 million times according to Google. The term is now considered one of the most dreaded cliches, along with “breaking down the silos”, “doing more with less”, “it is what it is:”, “move the needle”, “think outside the box”, “take it offline”, or “take it to the next level”.
Page 47 - “Reflecting on your own content, ponder this: What is your 10% message for your next communication? Should your audience be able to repeat it verbatim or just get the gist? And if just the goist, what degree of fuzzy will work in your favour? Is a sense of familiarity sufficient for people to come back and interact with your content again in the future”?
You can follow Gad Saad on Twitter here, LIKE him on Facebook here, and purchase a copy of THE CONSUMING INSTINCT: WHAT JUICY BURGERS, FERRARIS, PORNOGRAPHY AND GIFT GIVING REVEAL ABOUT HUMAN NATURE on Amazon here.
You can follow Carmen Simon on Twitter here, visit her website MEMZY, and purchase a copy of Impossible to Ignore: Creating Memorable Content to Influence Decisions on Amazon here.
Thank you,
Praz
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