Think of a brand to which you are loyal, or better yet, for which you are an advocate. Toilet paper, automobile make, shampoo, yogurt… etc. Why are you fascinated by this brand’s advertising or image?
I just listened to Wayne Hurlbert’s Blog Business Success May 7, 2010 podcast, in which he interviewed Ms. Sally Hogshead. It only took about twenty minutes of listening for me to be not only fascinated by her work, but eager to share the revelations with others. Hogshead’s book, Fascinate, is based on three years of researching thousands of people to find out what makes a person or a brand fascinating. People who work in marketing will find her ideas useful in this modern age where consumers have what Hogshead accurately pegs “the attention span of a goldfish.”
The premise of the F Score Test is that you are fascinating, but how? Hogshead has identified seven universal Triggers of fascination:
- Power- Why we focus on people and things that control us
- Lust- Why we’re seduced by the anticipation of pleasure
- Mystique- Why we are intrigued by unanswered questions
- Prestige- Why we fixate on rank and respect
- Alarm- Why we take action at the threat of negative consequences
- Vice- Why we’re tempted by “forbidden fruit”
- Trust- Why we’re loyal to reliable options
Note: Fascination is not synonymous with respect, popularity, reverence, or even liking. Fascination is just about captivation and not being able to ignore the subject. We each have a primary, secondary, and dormant trigger we project to the world everyday.
What fascinates Chris Brogan?
Hogshead gives corporate brand examples in her interview with Zane Safrit:
Brand: Godiva
Primary trigger: Lust
Godiva. We developed a drink called Chocolixier. There was a whole sensory experience that lets the consumer relate.
Apple does this as well. You are able to be a part of the brand. It is about an openness and availability. You create a space where people want to draw closer. Brands are incorporating more of the Lust trigger.
I took the test and so enjoyed reading my results… incredibly accurate. I recommend at least taking the free 28 question online test on her site. Very quick and so useful. The results identify how you fascinate others (when you do fascinate them) and what you might do to round out your fascinating self (I.e., activating your dormant trigger. Mine happens to be mystique- so I would do well to hold back some information now and again.)
About Hogshead: Sally’s work and insights have been profiled by The New York Times, NBC, ABC, CBS and MSNBC. She’s been described by the press as “intrepid” and an “advertising mastermind…” And I love this: “When not writing and speaking, Sally campaigns to bring back the ‘hogshead’ as a unit of popular measurement in the U.S.” (A hogshead is a barrel that holds 62 gallons.)
Bombshell McGee is too easy a target. Perhaps the actuality of rampant infidelity is too awful to make real jokes about. So the butt of the joke is the outrageous mistress, and we haven't really mocked Jesse James at all.
... read more Post a comment (3)My second doctor’s appointment in this city was a week ago. Finding new doctors is a science. Word of mouth is powerful but proximity to my zip code even more so. And being able to fit me in before June (literally the alternative) ? Awesome- see you next week.
I arrived fifteen minutes late to my appointment. Doctors usually run late anyway, even when you are the first appointment of the day. It’s because they’re in charge of everything… (but not today!)
I was the 10AM. After parking in a garage and running toward the inadequately signed doorway to the elevators, I navigated the hallway toward a glass skywalk. It led me to the next building, where I deescalated to the elevators. I dodged slow people in Rascals and wheelchairs, whose appearance is like clockwork to occlude my way every time I am late: Apparently, The Emily Show is cliche enough to mimic Jim Carrey’s futile attempt to escape Seaside. I glanced at my phone: 10:13AM. I almost abandoned the herd waiting for lifts and went for the stairs, always my favorite escape/way to leave everyone in the dust and still get to the destination first. However, the office was on the fourteenth floor. So I waited anonymously with the other patients of U.S. healthcare. Patiently… Or not…
When in line for the elevator, while in the grocery store checkout line, or even when sitting alone at a coffee shop happily typing or reading and not desiring any human contact– this is when the chit chatters strike. They strike when you are least equipped to discuss…. anything. I believe we emit Do Not Disturb (DND) vibes, but only half of the population is sensitive to them. (Granted, when I am in the chatty happy sun is shining down on me mood, I’ll verbally assault someone emitting only neutral vibes, or maybe even DND vibes: I too am guilty!) Why is this forced interaction so irresistable? We are all emotionally self-serving, yet because we are social beings, serving our emotions must involve others, be they willing or not. “I’m happy so talk to me and mirror my mood thus validating it as real and enhancing my experience of this joy!” or (coming up in a minute with the Rev. Poulet,) “I’m a frustrated patient in a broken healthcare system and you appear to be in the same boat, so join my mob mentality-driven misdirected tirade to mollify our feelings of helplessness!”
If you remember Six Feet Under’s character Tracy Montrose Blair, suitor of (gay) David Fisher, you might recall this scene, one of several in which she ignores his DND vibes:
If you use a coffee shop, or worse, your gym’s free Wi-Fi spot as your office, you run the risk of being addressed as a human being! This time, I found myself happy to be addressed (explanatory entertainment value to follow) but torn on the inherent cruelty in my potentially joining said tirade.
A cute receptionist in her late twenties, wearing a cream calf-length dress coat and pretty brown curls ignored me as I entered the office. (Let’s call her Melissa.) A cheap romance novel rested to the left of her arm on the desk as Melissa reached for a clipboard for me without making eye contact.
A loud woman in a loud green and blue mumu/tunic too-small shirt and Apple Bottoms sat across from me with her boyfriend/husband. He seemed African and was quiet. But oh they were flashy! I assumed they had nice rims. (Let’s call the Apple Bottoms lady Marcella Poulet.)
Marcella perked up from her laptop as the doctor entered the room and called a man in. “ExcUse me, I was next. He was here late and I was first, I was only ten minutes late,” she exclaimed. The doctor recited her reasoning for the order (maybe valid, I didn’t hear) etc. A few minutes passed and, occupied with chess but sensing nascent electricity in the medical air hovering over the magazine table, I listened with 70% attention as Marcella complained to her gentleman companion. But when her volume rose from emphatic muttering, I heard that she was displacing her frustration at the long, unfair wait she experienced “every time” at this particular office. “This doctor is good, she is good but this office is run poorly. There is no rhyme or reason, no order, to who gets seen. See this girl who just walked in, she — when was your appointment Miss?” Marcella looked at me questioningly.
Instantly enrolled in the cast, I replied on cue, “10!”
“See, she supposed to be here at 10. She gonna get seen before me, just you watch.” Marcella was not addressing anyone in particular, but the office was her church and she was invoking Dr. M.L. King. A first-time member of the congregation, I was a Jew in a church and had entered thinking Jesus was magic. Also, although she was cute, though a bit overly curvy for her frame from a 9-5 sitting job, but clearly putting the effort into doing her makeup well and dressing nicely, the receptionist had not won my favor: I began to say Amen to Rev. Marcella. I began to fervently sing Amen.
Rev. Marcella quite audibly blamed the Melissa, who had apparently billed Marcella $1000 by mistake and taken two months to put the money back into her bank account. Melissa doesn’t even call patients by their names…. Rev. Marcella Poulet- Dermatological Obloquy
The third person referent under attack by an angry dry-skinned mob was meant to hear the censure, but implicitly was not to respond. It was an interesting way for Marcella to put someone in her place by employing the laws of receptionist/patient etiquette. I recalled a race experience (lesson?) from Orrington Elementary school. My incompetent third grade teacher Ms. Lenette Coleman encouraged Shante to call me whitey, but when I creatively retorted with “blackie,” sensible in my eight-year old mind, off to the principle I went. For the sixth time that year…
Marcella has appointments at this doctor at least monthly, I gathered. Probably her corns were so explosive by that point that if she could at least exert some power over some person, it might ameliorate her state of pedal duress.
All I cared about was getting home to slip back in bed before I had to work in a couple hours. Time wasted bothered me a lot more before my iPhone. Now I get work done or do research. Marcella had her laptop and a smartphone but that was not the point! Overall, it is not the point, ever.
Marcella was finally seen and walked by Melissa slowly, staring her down and shaking her head, while Melissa typed away and kept her eyes on the computer.
Flash forward: My precious time in the office with the actual celebrity doctor. 90 minutes after scheduled appt. She asked me what had been going on in there- (Melissa seemed to have tattled on the bullies, her only recourse in the heat of the revival). Or had the admonition simply been that raucous? I looked at the doc for a moment, wondering how I could ever explain. Rev. Marcella Poulet’s sermon had been a blip in time, an incarnation of a bygone era, and in a language forgotten by science.
Dear Hostess, and K., and Binder: You are still attenuating the hierarchy! That is the state of the union-- this male-female union which will always be... the iPad video above and thanking imaginary deities for good things while blind to the overarching disaster at hand...: I must ask, Who's in charge?
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She sits here before carpool begins, waiting for the voice of a method-loving God
http://twitter.com/deronnK, http://www.city-data.com, http://www.city-data.com/forum/atlanta/136906-buckhead-betty.html
... read more Post a comment (0)I finally succeeded in a gluten-free jar cake that didn’t fall apart or taste sub-par. It’s the PB brownz and it’s one of two GF items for sale at Emily’s Edibles. Check it out:
(Many more to come, as I partner with Lillian Chen-Byerley, an Occupational Therapist in Chicago who will be promoting EE to her clients with autism. This is the site she will put an EE link on, and happens to be my first psych job during high school where I got really interested in the greatest pseudoscience of all.
The universe calls me to Atlanta. Emily’s Edibles might have found its takeoff city. End of August and I’m out.
See, some men underestimate me off the bat. Chess is so psych! The anachronistic gender BS amuses me, however, because chess isn't even athletic...
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