Choice Hacking Jennifer L. Clinehens

Do you have a luxury or designer brand that you lust after? It could be Tom Ford, Balenciaga, Chanel, Lamborghini, or Patek Philippe.

Maybe you dream about the day you can walk into one of their stores, throw your credit card down on the counter and walk out with a car, suit, bag, or watch that makes you feel (sometimes literally) like a million bucks.

What if I told you that the process of jumping through hoops and having to spend sometimes millions of dollars for the promise of potentially being able to spend millions more on what you ACTUALLY want - often to be denied at the very last minute - is common across many ultra high luxury brands?

Join me today as we take a look at how brands like Hermes, Porsche, Ferrari, and Rolex essentially hold their products hostage and use scarcity on steroids to drive customers to spend insane amounts of money for the privilege of spending millions more?

It's one of the biggest fails in business history — New Coke.

You might think you know the story. A classic brand foolishly replaces its classic product, and customers rebel.

But contrary to popular belief, New Coke was a great idea and a great product - even if it was a huge marketing disaster.

It's all down some common psychology traps that Coke fell into (and you could, too).

Join me today as I unpack the psychology and behavioral science behind NEW COKE's failure - what you can learn from its missteps, how you can avoid its biggest psychological mistakes.

Starbucks has created the biggest coffee brand in history, by repositioning the humble cup of joe into a premium product that introduced coffee culture to millions around the world.

As former CEO Howard Schultz put it: “Starbucks has a role and a meaningful relationship with people that is not only about the coffee.”

But how did they grow so big, so fast? Turns out it's not just the caffeine that get people addicted to Starbucks.

In this replay of one of my top-downloaded episodes, I'm pulling the lid off the behavioral science and psychology principles that make Starbucks' customer experience so special.

It’s one of the biggest FAILS in business history - Kmart.

You may think you know the story -


But contrary to popular belief, Kmart’s problems were way bigger than Walmart or even Amazon.

And actually, lots of them weren’t even Kmart’s fault.

I’m Jennifer Clinehens and you’re listening to Choice Hacking - a podcast about applying behavioral science and psychology to business, marketing, experience design, and more.

Join me on this episode of the Choice Hacking podcast, as we unpack the psychology behind one of the biggest business failures ever - Kmart.

The thinking traps they fell for, the psychological mistakes they made - and how WE can learn from their errors to improve our own businesses and brands.

Jo Malone, a popular British perfume brand (also the name of its founder), wanted to crack the lucrative U.S. market.

These days, Jo Malone is a part of the $52B beauty conglomerate Estée Lauder.

But when it first tried to expand into the U.S. it was… a cult brand to put it politely. And they had the marketing budget to match:

Zero.

But Jo Malone managed to turn that true $0 marketing budget into an asset that catapulted the brand into the world’s most exclusive department stores - like Bergdorf’s in New York and Harrod’s in London.

And that growth didn’t happen by accident.

It was down to deeply understanding customers and  using behavioral science and psychology - consciously or not - to get people buying.

Join me (Jen Clinehens) today as I unpack the psychology behind Jo Malone's massive success.

Many years ago in India, the story goes, there was a cobra infestation in the city of Delhi.

So the British - who were running the place at the time - created a bounty for cobra skins.

They thought by offering a reward for dead cobras, the public would solve the snake problem.

But instead of capturing feral cobras and killing them, people started farming cobras for their skins.

The British eventually got wise to the cobra-farming industry, and canceled the bounty.

But with no bounties to collect, the cobra farmers set their snakes free in the city —  making the infestation even worse than before.

It’s from this likely ahistorical story that the so-called Cobra Effect gets its name.

Join me today as we examine the Cobra Effect. The systems that have fallen victim to it and how you - and your brand - can outsmart it.