Transcript
Michael Aaron Flicker (0:05)
One thing that all the listeners can think about is humans are much more emotionally driven than rationally driven. Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman said thinking is to humans like swimming is to cats.
Matt Grier (0:25)
That was Michael Aaron Flicker, co author of Hacking the Human Mind, the Behavioral science secrets behind 17 of the world's Best Brands. I'm Motley fool producer Matt Grier. Now we recently talked with Flickr about his new book. We talked Loss Aversion, the Power of Prat Falls, the Rational and the not so Rational.
Rich Lamello (0:46)
Welcome to Motley Fool Conversations. I'm your host, Motley fool contributor Rich Lamello, along with Motley fool head of Strategic operations Shannon Jones. Today's guest is someone who sits at the crossroads of business consulting, advertising and and has spent his career helping some of the world's most influential brands understand how people really think and make decisions. Michael Aaron Flicker is the author of the compelling new book Hacking the Human Mind. He's worked with companies ranging from Nike and Chubb to Evan Williams, JP Morgan and AstraZeneca. His work zeroes in on the psychological forces that shape markets, shape brands, and ultimately shape investor behavior. Michael, it's a pleasure to have you here. Welcome to the Motley Fool.
Michael Aaron Flicker (1:25)
Hi Rich. Thanks for having me. Excited to be with you all today.
Rich Lamello (1:28)
Excellent. Well, Michael, for listeners who may not kind of know you or be familiar with your work yet, what's kind of the short version of your professional journey? A little bit of background.
Michael Aaron Flicker (1:37)
I started my company when I was 14 years old in my parents basement. And it was a time in 1997 when the world believed that the Internet was a great equalizing force and maybe high school kids knew more about the Internet than anybody else. And in that moment of opportunity, the kid I grew up with across the street and I formed our company and we said we're going to do Internet programming, we're going to do computer programming on the Internet. And that was really innovative at the time, almost silly. Real computer programming, Rich, belonged in the domain of mainframes and big corporations. And the idea that anybody could do meaningful computer programming online was just unusual at the time and just crazy enough that they let a bunch of high school kids work for these big companies. And the story of the last 28 years for me has always been at the intersection of thinking about how can we come up with smart ideas to solve problems, how can we solve things that others haven't been able to solve before. It's led me now to I own nine companies. We have a number of them in our professional services, a number of them, of our own brand. But what connects them all and what's been so interesting and is that behavioral science has been a key to understanding why people do what they do and to really understand how they act in the real world. So much of what we learned in our years was you would run these studies and ask consumers, would you be open to buying this brand or would you be open to taking this medication? And when you ask them that, they give you an answer, then you go into market and they do the exact opposite. How could that be that people take, don't follow what it is they say they're going to do? And so academia has built this body of research and academics that helps explain how consumers actually behave rather than how they claim they will behave. And this was a fascinating field for me. I got involved in it about 12, 13 years ago and it's been a passion of mine ever since.
