屡试不爽的营销杀手锏（特邀奥格威广告人罗里·萨瑟兰）

我们是怎么思考的？

How do we think?

我觉得小企业、有些家族企业、创始人主导的企业，反而是个例外。

I think what happens is that small businesses, family owned businesses to some extent, founder led businesses, are an exception here.

有趣的是，你终于能明白，价值其实并不是在工厂里创造出来的。

What's interesting is simply being able to understand that value is not really produced in the factory.

价值是在人的脑子里产生的。

It's produced in the mind.

而且，赚钱的方式只有两种。

And that there are two ways of making money.

一种是做出让人想要的东西，另一种是让普通的东西变得让人想要。

You can either make desirable things or you can make things desirable.

这两种方式的盈利潜力其实是一样的。

And each of them is as profitable as the other.

不知为什么，一旦企业达到一定规模，就只盯着自己在做什么，而忽略了自己意味着什么。

For some reason, once a business fits a certain size, it gets focused on what it does, not what it means.

我觉得这里面有一种看不见的损失。

And I think there's a kind of invisible loss there.

同样地，与此同时，我觉得这些企业也失去了创新能力。

Now, similarly, at the same time, I think those businesses lose the capacity to innovate as well.

会发生一件挺让人沮丧的事，就是你不知不觉陷入了一种思维定式，脑子里对自家生意有个固定的比喻。

Something rather depressing happens, which is you effectively get caught in a mindset where you probably have a mental metaphor for your business.

你看待它的方式，就像工程师盯着机器零件那样。

You're looking at it as if you were an engineer looking at a piece of machinery.

而且这种思路太片面了。

And it's reductionist.

它只关注优化各个部分，而不是优化整体。

It's about optimizing the parts rather than optimizing the whole.

我觉得在某种程度上，这种模式已经帮不上忙了。

And at some level, I think, that model becomes unhelpful.

另外我觉得，你会越来越难以接受不确定性。

But also what happens, I think, is that you become more and more uncomfortable with uncertainty.

这时候事情就变得特别有意思了。

And this is where it gets quite interesting.

我常讲一个特别精彩的故事，讲的是诺贝尔经济学奖得主、行为经济学家理查德·塞勒，也就是《助推》那本书的作者。

There's a wonderful story I always tell, which is Richard Thaler, the Nobel Prize winning economist and behavioral economist, the author of Nudge.

他曾经对一家大公司的十人董事会讲话。

He once spoke to a board of about 10 people, very large company.

他同时问了这家公司八个最大部门的负责人一个问题。

And he goes to the eight heads of the largest divisions of this company, and he asks them all simultaneously a question.

如果有个决定，有50%的概率让你们明年利润增长50%，有20%的概率让利润下降30%，你们会做这个决定吗？

Would you take a decision if it had a 50% chance of increasing your profits next year by 50% and a 20% chance of reducing your profits by 30%.

八个人里有六个说不干。

And six out of the eight of them said no.

塞勒回去就说：你们都是懂数学的，应该能看出来，这概率简直太占优势了。

And Thaler goes back and says, well, you know, you're all good enough mathematicians, I assume, to realize these are highly favorable odds.

在赌徒眼里，这简直是稳赚不赔的买卖，可你们却不愿意参与。

To a gambling man, you know, this is a very, very good bet, and yet you decline to take part.

为什么会这样？

Why is that?

他们六个人都回答说，因为有20%到30%的概率我会丢掉工作。

And they reply, six out of the eight of them, because 20% of the time or 30% of the time, I'd lose my job.

这时候有趣的事发生了——首席执行官坐在桌子尽头，震惊地看着这八个人，说：但我希望你们所有人都接受这个风险，因为从整体来看，我们几乎肯定会变得好得多。

And then the interesting thing happens, which is the chief executive is sitting at the end of the table and looks aghast at the eight people and goes, but I want all of you to take those odds, because net net, in aggregate, we'd almost certainly end up massively better off.

是的，可能有两个部门业绩会差一点，但另外四个部门的表现会非常出色。

Yes, two divisions, one division might have a slightly disappointing year, but four of them would perform spectacularly.

你意识到，随着企业把责任和问责层层下放，员工变得越来越害怕风险，也越来越害怕不确定性。

And you realize that the way that businesses are structured, as you push responsibility and accountability further and further down the organization, they become more and more risk averse, and they become more and more uncertainty averse.

所以他们宁愿要一个确定的5%到10%的增长，也不愿赌50%的概率获得50%的回报。

So they would prefer a definite 5% to 10% to a probabilistic, a 50% chance of 50%.

结果就是，整个组织变得极其保守。

And what happens then is that fundamentally, you become highly conservative.

他们更在意避免损失，而不是抓住上升的机会。

You're more worried about downside avoidance than you are upside opportunity.

结果很明显，创新和营销本质上都是‘肥尾’型的活动，你做的所有事情里，大概只有10%的价值超过了其余所有部分的总和。

And as a result, obviously, both innovation and marketing, I would argue, are fat tailed activities where 10% of what you do is probably more valuable than everything else.

但你事先根本没法知道这10%到底是哪一部分。

You can't tell in advance which 10% it's going to be.

它们本质上是探索和发现的过程。

They are processes of exploration and discovery.

而你为了追求效率，干脆把发现这一步给砍掉了。

And what you do is you get rid of the discovery layer in the pursuit of efficiency.

短期内看，这似乎是个绝妙的主意。

And in the short term, it looks like a great idea.

但从长远来看，这简直是自取灭亡——因为你彻底丧失了适应、重塑和寻找突破性机会的能力。

But in the longer term, it proves fatal, I think, because you've lost the capacity to adapt, to reinvent, to reposition in pursuit of the occasional breakthrough.

我们的听众很多都是初创企业背景，很多人自己就是创始人，或者正打算创业。

We have a very startup oriented audience, of which a lot of people are founder led businesses, or they want to be.

你当然可以讲讲大公司是怎么转型的，但有没有哪个初创公司或者小企业，让你觉得‘他们真做对了’？能举个例子吗？为什么他们做对了？

So, could talk about like how big companies turned around, but what's an example of a startup or small company that you look at, and you're like, oh, they nailed it, and here's why they nailed it.

要是这主意拿到大公司去提案，根本不可能通过，可现在它却做得风生水起。

Even though if this was pitched at a big company, this would never have worked, but here it is kicking ass.

我书里常举的例子是红牛，这公司从逻辑上讲根本说不通。

I mean, the example that I always feature in my book is Red Bull, which is an example of a business that makes no sense.

换句话说，你只能靠直觉来解释红牛为什么能成功。

In other words, you can only really justify Red Bull on the basis of intuition.

其实它在泰国原本就有一定基础，听说是卡车司机晚上开车提神用的，对吧？

There was some preexisting popularity in Thailand, where I think it was bought by lorry drivers to keep awake at night, okay?

但有人却能大胆想象一个不确定的未来：一种价格昂贵、包装极小的饮料，市场调研显示消费者觉得味道有点恶心。

But someone there was capable of making the leap of imagination into an uncertain future where a drink which cost a lot of money came in a tiny can and research told them consumers basically found mildly repellent.

对吧？

Okay?

明明所有理性判断都反对，它却藏着巨大的潜力。

In defiance of all the rational odds, this had potential.

值得注意的是，通常我们手头的数据全是过去的，因为所有大数据都来自过去。

And it's worth noting that generally, there's always a lot of data from the past, because all big data comes from the past.

关于未来，通常根本没什么数据。

There generally isn't much data about the future.

这里有两个问题，一个是如果你坚持每个决定都必须靠数据，那你的所有决策都会偏向现状，因为你的数据全来自过去。

There are two problems there, one of which is if you insist that every single decision is based on data, all your decision making has a status quo bias, because all your data comes from the past.

未来根本就没有数据可言。

There isn't any data about the future.

第二个问题是，你关注的东西往往跟竞争对手关注的一模一样，结果你不知不觉就变得跟行业里其他公司越来越像，越来越难分彼此，最后只能陷入一场不断压价的恶性竞争。

The second problem that happens is that the things you tend to focus on tend to be the same things that all your competitors are focused on, which means that you, unwittingly perhaps become more and more similar to every other business in your category, which means you become more and more indistinguishable and less and less distinctive, which effectively means you get involved in a kind of race to the bottom.

你搞出来的就是一片红海。

You create kind of red water competition.

我想说的一个几乎百试不爽的创新和品牌建设秘诀，就是去找那些竞争对手忽略的指标——他们根本懒得测，或者根本测不了。

And one of the things I would say is an almost unfailing trick to innovate, both to innovation and to brand building, actually, is to find the metric which your competitors have neglected, which they don't even bother to measure, or which is difficult to measure.

很多时候，这个指标是情感层面的，而不是时间、空间、成本、价格或距离这类硬指标。

Quite often, it's an emotional metric rather than a time, space, cost, price, distance metric.

能举个例子吗？

What's an example of that?

在上世纪70年代的硅谷，人人都在问：电脑能做什么。

For Apple, in that everybody was asking the question, what can a computer do in Silicon Valley in the 1970s.

但史蒂夫问的是：用的时候，感觉怎么样？

And Steve asked the question, yeah, but what does it feel like while you're doing it?

他在一个所有人都盯着技术指标的行业里，提出了美学和情感层面的问题。

He asked aesthetic and emotional questions in an industry where everybody was focused on technological questions.

再比如优步的地图，从乘车体验来看，和坐普通出租车其实差别不大。

But in another example, the Uber map is an example of that, where riding in an Uber is more or less the same as riding in any other taxi.

优步彻底改变的是叫车和等车的过程。

What Uber completely transformed was the experience of booking and waiting for a taxi.

顺便说一句，到了目的地，付款的体验也被重新设计了。

And by the way, at the other end of the journey, the experience of paying for it.

所以优步的地图，不管这是不是有意为之，还是只是工程师觉得好玩，过去你打电话叫车时，根本不知道车什么时候能到，有没有空车。

So the Uber map, whether this was intentional or whether it was just some software guys thinking it would be a cute thing to do, when you booked a taxi by telephone, you rang up having no idea of what the likely availability or wait time would be.

很多时候，对方会说：好的，十分钟内就到。

In many cases, they say, yeah, we'll have a car for you in ten minutes.

你就会觉得，这也太早了吧。

You kind of go, it's too early.

你完全没概念。

You had no idea.

根本不知道车会不会来。

You had no expectation of car availability.

叫车的时候，也不知道车什么时候能到。

And then when you booked the car, you had no idea when the car was going to show up.

只能在路边干等着，看见任何像出租车的车就挥手，希望它能认出你的地址。

And you'd have to hover around on the sidewalk, waving at any likely looking passing car that appeared to be looking for your address.

突然间，Uber改变了这一切，因为它能告诉你车大概什么时候能到。

Suddenly, Uber changed all that because it gave you an estimate of availability.

它还能告诉你大概要花多少钱。

It gave you an estimate of price.

还能提前帮你确认付款。

It approved your payment in advance.

然后它还会在一张可爱的地图上显示那辆车的车牌号、位置，以及预计多久能到。

And then it showed you on a cute map what the license plate number was of the car and where it was and how long it was going to take to get there.

有趣的是，我记得Uber刚推出的时候，我和沙恩住在旧金山，打开App就能看到车子在周围转悠。

The funny part is, I think I remember Shaan and I lived in San Francisco when Uber first came out, and you would pull up your app, and it'd be like, oh, you'd see the cars driving around you.

然后你就会说，哎，附近有辆车。

And you'd be like, oh, there's one nearby.

说不定能抢到。

Maybe I could snag it.

但我感觉那根本不是真的车。

And I don't think that was even real.

我觉得那些都是假的。

I think those were fake.

我听说披萨外卖也这样，他们说披萨在烤箱里，意思是正在准备。

I've also heard the same thing about pizza delivery, which is when they say it's in the oven, you know, it's being prepared.

披萨在烤箱里。

It's in the oven.

你只需要

You just have

大概再加上一点。

to add probably.

它大概还在烤箱里。

It's probably in the oven.

说实话，我不觉得他们每送进一个披萨都会扫描条形码。

To be honest, I don't think they're actually scanning a barcode on every pizza that goes in.

不过确实有一部分是这样的：如果你感觉事情在推进，麦当劳和肯德基在这方面其实做得不够好——你在麦当劳的屏幕上点餐时，屏幕上只会显示‘准备中，待取餐’。

There is a component to it, however, which is that if you feel that progress is being made, McDonald's and KFC probably make a mistake here in that if you order on screen at McDonald's, it basically says, in preparation, ready for collection.

他们其实可以设计得更有趣一点，比如显示‘正在托盘上准备’。

And they could probably play a game there where they say, being prepared on the tray.

他们可以让你感觉到事情在推进，因为这跟多巴胺、努力和回报都有关。

They could give you an impression of forward movement because it's all to do with dopamine and effort and reward.

这就有点像你想象一只黑猩猩在拼命挖白蚁窝的样子。

And consequently, it's a little like if you imagine a chimp hacking away at a termite mound.

只要偶尔看到一两只白蚁，或者一点小奖励，它就会一直干下去。

If it comes across one or two little termites, just small pieces of reward, it'll keep going.

会觉得继续下去挺满足的。

It'll feel content to keep on going.

但如果你长时间努力却看不到任何回报，这种体验就完全不一样了。

Whereas if you have a long period of effort without any seeming reward, fundamentally, the experience is very, very different.

我记得有个特别典型的例子，说白了就是心理上的小把戏。

I mean, I remember a brilliant case of this, and it's simply you know, it's it's mind hacking.

我对此毫不道歉。

I I make no apology for it.

我甚至可以在法庭上为达美乐的做法辩护——他们故意设计出一些不太真实的配送进度，就是为了让顾客感觉好一点。

I probably would defend in court the practice of Domino's creating, somewhat fictitious delivery cycles on the grounds that it simply makes people feel better.

至于那些绕圈行驶的送餐车，我听过两种说法，一种说基本属实，另一种说那只是个象征性的展示。

Now, having the cars circling around, I've heard both stories, that they are, to some extent, accurate, or they're kind of what you might call they're figurative.

所以他们展示的是车辆的密集程度，而不是车子的确切位置。

So they show you car density without actually showing you the accurate location of a car.

我听过不少关于这个的说法。

I've heard various stories about this.

顺便说一句，电梯里的关门按钮也是安慰剂按钮。

There are also, by the way, elevator buttons, door close, which are placebo buttons.

它们根本不会让电梯门关得更快，只是给等得不耐烦的人一个能做的事。

So they don't actually speed up the closing of the doors of the elevators at all, but they give impatient people in the elevator something to do.

这是真的吗，还是只是传言？

Is that true, or is that a rumor?

不是的，不是的。

No, no.

这本质上是一种掌控感的错觉。

It's effectively the illusion of agency.

我对这个其实有点矛盾，因为这个观点说起来挺复杂的。

And I'm kind of mixed on this because my argument, this gets very complicated.

我在书里提到过，比如芬必得，其实就是类似布洛芬的东西。

I mentioned this in my book, which is that Nurofen, which is kind of like Advil.

还有各种不同版本，价格比普通版贵，比如专门针对痛经的Nurofen，还有针对感冒流感的Nurofen。

And there were various variants, more expensive than the standard variant, which were, you know, Nurofen for period pain, Nurofen for cold and flu.

在某些情况下，这些产品的配方其实和基础款完全一样。

And these were formulaically, in some cases, identical to the base product.

我担心的是，止痛的心理作用太强了，你买一瓶标着‘治痛经’、价格稍贵的药，真会觉得痛经减轻了，尽管它的化学成分和普通版几乎没区别。

And my problem there is that the psychology of pain relief is so full of placebo effects that taking something that says for period pain and costs a little bit more will actually reduce your period pain more, even though the chemical constituents of the drug are more or less the same.

关于安慰剂效应，争议一直存在，有人甚至说，安慰剂手术都有效。

But there are debates about the placebo effect, and you know, all the way from people who claim that you can do placebo surgery.

比如，有人声称，如果你假装给病人做胃束带手术，其实根本没装，病人照样能瘦下来。

I mean, there are people who claim that if you actually attempt to fit a gastric band, then you don't fit the gastric band for whatever reason, and the person will still lose weight.

从坚信安慰剂效应是万能的，到持高度怀疑态度的，各种观点都有，但大家普遍认同的一点是：在止痛和镇痛领域，安慰剂效应特别明显。

So there are people who are absolute placebo effect fundamentalists all the way to people who are fairly skeptical, but where it's universally agreed is in the area of analgesics and pain relief.

心理因素和主观感受，起着至关重要的作用。

Psychological factors, perception plays a massive role.

当然，有些疼痛其实是让人享受的。

And of course, there are forms of pain which are enjoyable.

事情到这里变得更奇怪了。

This is where it gets stranger still.

比如你小腿上有个伤口，涂了点消毒剂，你其实希望它有点刺痛感，因为这种刺痛感能证明它有效。

So if you have a cut on your shin, say, and you put some sort of antiseptic on it, you want it to sting, in a way, because the sting is evidence of efficacy.

疼痛的事实恰恰证明了它在起作用。

The fact that it's hurting proves it's working.

所以你对这种刺痛的反应并不完全是难受，因为你已经把它重新定义为它在发挥作用的证明。

And so your reaction to this stinging pain is not entirely discomfort because you've reframed it as this is proof that it's doing its job.

对。

Yeah.

就像把那些

It's like burning off the

细菌

germs.

坏东西之类的都烧掉。

Burning off the bad things, etcetera.

所以到这里，事情就变得更奇怪了。

And so this is where it gets really strange.

但我的观点是，几乎所有组织都面临这个问题，而创新者和家族企业恰恰因此占了优势——比如家族企业是私有制的，由创始人领导，他们能更自由地依赖直觉做决定，而上市公司不行，因为上市公司里的人普遍觉得，每一件事都必须从一开始就给出合理的解释。

But my argument is that nearly all organizations, and this is where innovators and family owned businesses have an advantage, because family owned businesses are, for example, privately owned businesses, founder led businesses are free to use intuition in a way that publicly held companies aren't because most people in a publicly held organization feel that everything they do has to be rationally justifiable from the get go.

当然，你做的事最终还是得说得通。

Now, what you do has to be justifiable eventually.

如果一件事几十年都失败，那干它也没意义。

There's no point in doing something which fails decade after decade.

这个我明白。

I get that.

但能凭直觉行动、敢于在缺乏充分依据的情况下下注，这种自由正是创业公司相比成熟企业的优势，因为他们能探索更广阔的可能性空间。

But the freedom to actually act on hunches, to act on intuition, to place bets for which there isn't much preexisting evidence is an advantage to the entrepreneurial business over the established business, because they can explore a much larger solution space.

我有个问题想问你，你是怎么变得这么擅长这些的？

Hey, can I ask you a question on how you got good at this stuff?

我知道你在这一行是思想领袖，但你以前也是实战派，而且我记得你是个直接回应文案写手。

Because I know that you're a thought leader when it comes to this stuff, but you were a practitioner for years, and I think you're a direct response copywriter.

这个故事其实更精彩。

Well, the story's even better.

你本来不是做文案的，被开除了，后来又回到文案部门，最后做到了顶尖，这大概说明了适配和认识自己优势与本性的重要性，而不是简单地觉得自己行或不行。

I think you were not in copywriting, got fired, and came back into the copywriting department and went to the top, which is probably a lesson in fit and knowing your strengths and your nature rather than just thinking I'm good or bad.

我得承认，这并不是偶然——从我在奥美直效部门当实习生的第三周开始，

Now I have to admit, it wasn't an accident in that from about week three working as a graduate trainee in Ogilvy May the Direct, which was the direct response wing of Ogilvy.

大卫·奥格威是直效广告的坚定支持者，这一点没错。

David Ogilvy was a massive advocate of direct response advertising Yeah.

因为他相信，只有实践才能知道什么有效。

Because he believed that you learned what works.

他确实说得对。

And he was absolutely right.

我简单问一句。

Really quick.

给不太了解的人解释一下，什么叫直效广告？

Define direct response to people who don't understand it.

好的。

Okay.

从历史上看，1988年我刚入职的时候，虽然已经有了互联网，但还没有万维网，那时候的直接回应广告通常指的是直邮和带优惠券的报纸广告，后来也包括附有优惠券或电话号码的广告。

So historically, and back in 1988 when I started work when there was an internet, technically, but there was no web, it typically meant direct mail and couponed press advertisements, or later, advertisements with a coupon or a phone number.

这是一种明确邀请消费者、买家或潜在客户直接对某个可识别的广告做出回应的广告形式。

But it was an advertisement which invited the consumer, buyer, customer, interested party to respond directly to an identifiable advertisement.

比如说，举个例子。

So for example, like, here's one.

就像一则广告，然后里面附了一封信。

It's like an ad for something, and and there'll be a letter.

最后会有一个优惠券，上面写着：填好这张表，告诉我们你想买这个吸尘器。

And at the end, there's like a coupon, it says, fill this out and tell us you wanna buy this vacuum.

这个优惠券周围通常会有一条虚线，还画了把剪刀，目的是鼓励人们把它剪下来，或者干脆撕下来塞进口袋。

And the coupon would have a dotted line around it with a pair of scissors to encourage people to cut it out or indeed to rip it out and put it in their pocket.

而在这张优惠券上，通常还会印有一个编码。

What would happen is, on that coupon, there would also be a code.

如果你打电话咨询，就需要报出这个代码，它会对应广告的创意设计和投放渠道。

You'd be asked to quote the code if you telephoned, which related both to the creative execution and the media placement of the ad.

请注意，早在20世纪20年代，甚至可能更早的19世纪，医学和科学还没意识到随机对照试验这回事时，广告行业早就开始测试这类方法了。

Now bear in mind, in, I think, certainly in the 1920s, possibly in the nineteenth century, long before medicine and science had grasped that there was such a thing as a randomized control trial, the advertising industry had started testing this kind of thing ages ago.

直接回应类的文案人员会做个小实验，比如花很少的钱登几则分类广告，每则的标题都稍有不同，广告大小也就两张邮票那么大。

Direct response copywriters would, for example, test headlines by running small classified advertisements at very low cost, each with a different little headline in an ad the size of a couple of postage stamps.

然后他们就能看出哪个标题带来的回应更多。

And they would learn which one got more responses.

等到要制作更贵、版面更大的全页广告时，他们就会直接用那个在小规模测试中表现最好的标题。

And they would, therefore, when it came to doing more expensive, large full page advertisements, they'd use the headline that had worked in miniature.

但后来发生了一件事——我猜是广告主的要求，不过我不确定——美国和英国的报纸在印刷时，通常会用两台甚至四台并行的印刷机来满足发行量需求。

But what had happened and I assume this was at the behest of advertisers, but I don't know for sure, is that newspapers in The United States and The United Kingdom, when they produced newspapers, they were printed on two or sometimes four parallel presses just to produce the number of newspapers you needed.

这些报纸印出来之后，是交叉叠放的。

Now, when these newspapers came off the presses, they were interleaved.

并不是说印刷机A印的所有报纸都发往北波士顿，印刷机B印的都发往南波士顿；而是两台机器的产出会像洗牌一样混在一起。

So it wasn't all the newspapers from printing press A went to North Boston, and all the newspapers from printing press B went to South Boston, the output from the two presses was interleaved, a bit like shuffling a deck of cards.

这意味着你可以在A印刷机上放一个广告，在B印刷机上放另一个，从而形成一个随机对照试验——你看到哪个广告，本质上是随机的。

What that meant was you could run one advertisement on press A and a different advertisement on press B, and you'd created a randomized control trial where effectively, which of the two advertisements you saw was effectively random.

换句话说，你和你的邻居很可能收到的是不同的广告。

In other words, you and your neighbor might well get a different advertisement.

但这种做法解决了另一个问题：如果没有这种交叉混排，可能会出现富人都收到同一个广告，穷人都收到另一个广告的情况。

But it solved that problem where, had you not done that interleaving, you might have had a case where all the rich people got one advertisement and all the poor people got another.

这样一来，统计结果自然就不可靠了。

And of course, statistically then, the result wouldn't be very valid.

正因为如此，直接回应型广告商长期不断地测试创意调整和媒体选择。

And because of this, direct response advertisers endlessly tested both creative changes and indeed media selection.

他们发现，某种媒体的效果可能是另一种的四倍，某种创意版本的效果也可能是另一个的两倍。

They'd find that one medium would work four times better than another, and one creative execution would work twice as well as another.

有时候，极其微小的改动，却能带来巨大的差异。

And sometimes, very, very small changes would make enormous differences.

所以，这种做法从上世纪30年代一直持续到50年代。

So for years, this would have run from something like the 1930s to the 1950s.

当时有一则函授课程的广告，主要教人如何写得更符合语法规则。

There was an advertisement for a correspondence course, which basically taught people to write more grammatically.

最初的标题是：‘你英语会犯错吗？’

And the headline was originally, Do you make mistakes in English?

后来有人加了‘这些’两个字：‘你这些英语错误犯得多吗？’

Then someone added the word these, Do you make these mistakes in English?

这样一来，读者的好奇心就被勾起来了，他们会想：‘我是不是也犯了这些错？’

Which then piques the curiosity of the reader, so they want to know whether the whether they're the mistakes that they're making.

再后来，又有人加了‘常见的’：‘你是否常犯这些英语错误？’

And then somebody else added the word, do you make these common mistakes in English?

这样一来，就消除了‘犯这种错就是没文化’的羞耻感。

Which destigmatize the idea that if you're making these mistakes, you're an ignoramus.

在直接回应式营销中，人们甚至会精细到这种程度做测试。

And so you would actually have, in direct response businesses, levels of testing at that level of detail.

这之所以关键，是因为你很快会发现，心理学里到处都是蝴蝶效应。

And the reason that's so important is that what you realize is that in psychology, there are butterfly effects all over the place.

你只要做些看似微不足道的小事，就能对人们的反应、情绪和行为产生巨大的影响。

You can do surprisingly small trivial things, And they make an inordinate difference to how people respond, how they emotionally respond, and consequently how they behave.

在很多情况下，这直接决定了他们会不会下单购买。

And in many cases, that means whether they buy or whether they don't buy.

所以早在行为经济学出现之前，直复营销就已经在实践这些原理了。

And so consequently, long before there was behavioral economics, there was direct response advertising.

事实上，任何做过直复营销的人都会去跟那些早期的行为经济学研究者说：对，这些我们早就知道了。

And in fact, anybody who'd worked in direct response advertising would have gone to one of those early practitioners in behavioral economics and said, yeah, we've known that for years.

我给你举个例子。

And I'll give you an example.

大概是1991年或1992年，我当时在为一家电话公司做直复广告。

It's something like 1991, 1992, and I'm working on direct response advertising for the phone company.

我们只是提供一个选项：每月多付几英镑，就能开通我们称之为‘星服务’的功能——在美国那边叫网络服务——比如来电转接、来电提醒，还有叫醒服务之类的。

And we simply were offering people the chance to pay a couple of pounds a month extra to receive what we call star services, I think, in The United States, network services, which is you could have call diversion, you could have call waiting on your phone, and you could have something else, wake up call or something like that.

只要你每月支付一定费用，这些功能就会自动加到你的家庭电话线上。

And if you've paid a certain amount monthly, these facilities were added to your home phone line.

我们给人们寄了信，信里说：要么把下方的预付邮资优惠券寄回来，要么打电话并报出这个代码。

And we wrote people letters, and it said, either send back the pre laser coupon below in the postage paid envelope, or call this number and quote this code.

我们给了他们选择，要么邮寄，要么打电话。

We gave them the choice of post or phone.

我们有个有点古怪的客户，坚决不想要邮寄回复这种方式。

And we had a slightly bonkers client who didn't want to offer the postal response.

我不清楚原因。

I don't know why.

直到现在，我还是完全不明白为什么。

I have no idea why to this day.

所以我们决定：那就做个测试吧。

And so we said, well, let's test it.

别轻易取消邮寄回复，这风险太大了。

Let's not just get rid of a coupon response, because that's dangerous.

如果你不严谨地测试，只凭一时想法就删掉这个选项，很可能会严重损害你的业务。

Because if you don't test this rigorously, you could end up effectively damaging your business quite significantly on a whim.

所以我们测试了三种不同的信件，每种发给五万人，完全随机选取，就像之前报纸实验那样。

And so we tested three kinds of letters, 50,000 people each, randomized, completely randomized selection, as with the newspapers.

一组只寄信，一组只提供电话，还有一组和之前一样，可以自由选择电话或邮寄。

And one lot got postal only, one lot got phone only, and one lot, as before, got the choice of phone or post.

只寄信的那组，回复率是百分之五。

Post only, 5% response rate.

只提供电话的那组，回复率只有百分之二。

Phone only, 2% response rate.

当给人们选择权的时候，回复率上升到了百分之七。

When you offer people a choice, it was it was 7%.

虽然不是完全相加，但几乎接近两种单独方式回复率的总和。

Not quite, but almost nearly, I think, the sum total of the two independent response rates.

这对你来说可能没什么奇怪的。

That may not strike you as all that weird.

但对经济学家来说，这简直不可思议，因为它说明影响人们购买决策的关键，不是产品本身或价格，而是他们能用什么方式下单。

But to an economist, this would be completely baffling, because it would suggest that the more important factor affecting whether you bought the product was not what the product was or how much it cost, but how you were able to actually order it.

从那一刻起，我就意识到，这太不寻常了——时不时就会有特别出色的企业，因为没能突破某个心理障碍而失败。

And from that moment on, I remember thinking, Okay, this is extraordinary because every now and then, there are almost certainly brilliant businesses which are failing because they've failed to unblock some sort of psychological bottleneck.

在这个案例里，那个心理障碍可能是人们根本讨厌用电话下单。

In this case, the psychological bottleneck might have been that people just hated using the phone to order something.

你本来可以理性地花上几百万、几千万英镑，拼命改进产品，或者花很长时间证明这产品有多好。

And you could have rationally spent millions and millions and millions of pounds trying to improve the product or to spend ages demonstrating what a great product it was.

但只要你跨不过这道心理门槛，就可能把自己彻底毁了。

And yet if you fail at one psychological hurdle, you can doom yourself.

所以这真的特别让人痛心。

And so it's very painful.

当有人问我，怎么才能把这事做好？

When people say, how do you get good at this stuff?

我告诉你我的一个秘诀：我觉得我可能有注意力缺陷多动障碍。

I'll you my one trick, which is I think I have ADHD.

总的来说，我对事情的中间过程没什么兴趣。

Broadly speaking, I'm not very interested in the middle of things.

所以我对从哲学层面深入思考问题很感兴趣，也喜欢琢磨一些琐碎的细节。

So I'm interested in looking at a question from a deep philosophical level, and I'm interested in trivia.

但对中间那些部分不太上心，因为在复杂系统里，通常只有两种路可走。

I'm not really interested in those in the middle, because I think in complex systems, there are two things you can do.

一种是慢慢调整细节，往往能收获意想不到的成效；另一种是彻底重构你做事的方式，提出全新的模式。

You can tinker with the details and achieve surprisingly valuable responses, or you can effectively come up with a new paradigm for what you're doing.

这跟直接回应式广告很像，原则就是：要么只改一个点，要么全盘重来。

Very similar to direct response advertising, where the rule is you either test one thing or you test everything.

在直接回应广告里，这种做法可以追溯到上世纪二三十年代，像克劳德·霍普金斯这样的早期实践者，他们称之为科学广告——要么只测试一个词，要么就设计一套完全不同的广告文案和视觉风格。

So in direct response advertising, this will go back to the 1920s, the 1930s, people like Claude Hopkins and the early practitioners of scientific advertising, as they like to call it, which is, you know, you either test the single word or you come up with a completely different advertisement with a different visual.

如果你同时改五个地方，那就没法确定到底是哪一个起了作用。

If you test five things, you can't be sure which one of the five is making a difference.

明白了。

Okay.

你可能在播客里听过这个观点，但如果你在经营公司，我认为决定你能否成功的最关键能力，就是你从别人那里学习的速度，尤其是向其他创业者学习的速度。

So you've probably have heard this on the podcast, but if you're running a company, I think that the number one attribute that will determine if you are gonna succeed in business is how fast you can learn from others, specifically how fast you can learn from other entrepreneurs.

但这个问题有个麻烦的地方。

But there's a problem with that.

我就有这个问题，而且你很可能也有。

I have this problem, and in fact, you probably have it too.

这正是你一开始会听《My First Million》的原因。

That's one of the reasons why you listen to My First Million in the first place.

麻烦在于，想找成功的企业家学习，实在太费劲了。

The problem is that finding other successful entrepreneurs to learn from, it's a pain in the butt.

所以几年前，我创办了一家公司，叫 Hampton。

And so that's why a few years ago, I started a company called Hampton.

你可以去 joinhampton.com 看看。

You can check it out at joinhampton.com.

我们已经有成千上万的会员，他们加入就是为了这个目的。

We have thousands of members, and they exist for this exact reason.

下面是它的运作方式。

So here's how it works.

如果你是创始人，年收入至少达到300万，并且通过了我们极其严格的审核流程，我们会把你和其他九位创业者匹配到一个小组里。

If you're a founder that does at least 3,000,000 in revenue and you make it through our incredibly thorough vetting process, we then match you and put you in a group with nine other entrepreneurs.

你们每个月会在各自的城市线下见一次面，这个同伴圈子说实话会彻底改变你的人生。

You meet in real life in your city once a month and it becomes your peer group that will frankly change your entire life.

它确实改变了我的人生。

It's changed mine.

我也在一个小组里。

I'm in a group as well.

所以，如果你是创始人，年收入至少达到300万美元，可以去joinhampton.com看看。

And so if you're a founder that does at least 3,000,000 a year in revenue, check out joinhampton.com.

再说一遍，网址是joinhampton.com。

Again, the URL is joinhampton.com.

你知道的，你刚才说了几点，我觉得挺有意思的。

You know, you've said a couple of things that I I think are pretty fascinating.

我记下来的第一点是，在另一个维度上竞争。

The first one that I wrote down was competing on a different dimension.

你刚才提到了出租车和优步的例子。

So you mentioned the taxi versus Uber example.

我觉得这个例子特别有意思。如果你只是拿张纸，给别人布置一个创意任务，说嘿，搞个更好的出租车出来。

And I love this because if you just sat down with a piece of paper, you gave somebody a creative assignment, you said, hey, make a better taxi.

他们几乎肯定会把重点放在乘车体验上。

They would almost always focus on the ride.

乘车成本会是他们最先考虑的因素。

The cost of the ride would be the first.

要是能把价格压得低得多，那就太棒了。

If I could make it way cheaper, that would be great.

要是能把速度提得高得多，那就太棒了。

If I could make it way faster, that would be great.

要是能在某些方面让乘坐体验显得更高端，那就太棒了。

If I could make it way more premium in some way, the ride.

你指出的那个关键点在于，存在一个心理层面的瓶颈，阻碍了大家去尝试。

And what you pointed out was that there was a psychological bottleneck that was preventing people from doing it.

Uber刚出来的时候，我记得很多人都觉得它估值太高了。

When Uber first came out, I remember people thought it was overvalued.

我当时住在旧金山，他们正在融资，还做了个分析，算如果Uber占了出租车市场25%、甚至50%的份额会怎样。结果呢？单在旧金山，短短几年内，Uber就把整个出租车市场的规模翻了三倍。

And I was living in San Francisco, they were raising money, and they were doing this analysis of what percentage of the taxi market if Uber made up 25%, if it took 50% market share of the taxi market, and what ended up happening was in San Francisco alone, Uber tripled the taxi market within a couple of years.

我有个特别聪明的朋友，早在Uber出现之前，他就想到了一种动态交通市场的点子。

I have a very brilliant friend who had the idea for effectively a dynamic market in transportation before Uber.

实际上，他还比Uber早申请了专利。

Actually, he patented something before Uber did.

他收到过盖伊·川崎对这个想法的回信，信里说：我觉得这在美国根本行不通。

And he has a letter responding to his idea from Guy Kawasaki, which said, I can't really see this working in The United States.

他说，美国人根本不太坐出租车。

He said, Americans don't take taxis very much.

也许纽约例外。

Maybe in New York.

其实仔细想想，在Uber出现之前，洛杉矶的情况是：有车的人开车，没车的人就靠公共交通。

And actually, when you think about it, pre Uber, LA was a motorist market if you had a car, and it was a public transport market if you didn't.

出租车市场其实挺小的。

The taxi market was relatively small.

纽约是个例外。

New York was an outlier.

纽约的出租车确实非常有名。

New York, obviously, the New York cabs were a major thing.

你说得完全对。

But you're absolutely right.

大家当时都以为它只是在蚕食现有的市场。

Everybody was looking at it as if it was purely cannibalizing an existing market.

《经济学人》和《哈佛商业评论》可能会说，他们是通过降低价格来实现这一点的。

Now, what The Economist and what The Harvard Business Review would say is that they achieved this through lower prices.

我不这么认为。

I don't think they did.

我觉得Uber的价格并不一定总是更便宜。

I don't think Uber's actually reliably cheaper, necessarily.

明白吗？

Okay?

我觉得他们是靠更懂人性才成功的。

I think they achieved it through better psychology.

我举个例子，我称之为‘长尾效应’。

And the example I had of what I call, these are the sort of fat tails.

杰夫·贝佐斯说得特别到位。

Jeff Bezos puts it very well.

他说，打棒球最多只能得四分，但在商业里，你一次就能赚一千倍。

He says, you know, in baseball, the most you can score is four, but in business, you can hit 1,000.

我觉得大家因为害怕不确定性，不敢尝试，所以总想着稳稳当当地打安打，却放弃了偶尔搏一把拿千倍回报的机会。

And I think that the fear of uncertainty and the unwillingness to experiment in business is causing people to endlessly try and sort of hit singles, and at the expense of occasionally trying to hit a thousand.

但我和沙恩都是创业者，我们该怎么从学术角度，结合过去的数据来做判断呢？

But how do I, like, Shaan and I are both business owners.

我们怎么才能摆脱只看历史数据的思维模式呢？

Like, how do we go from being academic and also looking at past results to and analyzing past results?

有意思的是，你们刚才在聊优步。

Because what's interesting is like, you guys were talking about Uber.

如果你们看过他们的初期融资材料，连他们自己都说，要是真能大获成功，一年能赚一亿美元。

If you read their seed deck, even they said, they're like, we think that, you know, if we knock it out the park, this might make a $100,000,000 a year.

你知道的。

You know?

现在他们每周的收入都是几亿美元。

Now they make hundreds of millions every week.

你能告诉我，在接下来的一两周里，我该怎么调整思路，建立一个框架，好让我能把它用到团队身上吗？

What can you tell me where for the next week or two weeks, I can shift my thinking and create a framework or something like that, where I can go and deploy this stuff on my team?

是的，也许我可以养成一个习惯，或者经常问自己一个问题，找一个具体的行动，来培养这种不一样的思维方式。

Yeah, maybe a habit or a question I can start asking myself, an action I can take to get this sort of different type of thinking.

我给你举个真实的例子。

I'll give you a real world example.

我以前在美国运通工作，大卫·奥格威总说，如果你想当文案，前五六年就该去干直复营销，那样你才能真正搞懂什么有效。

I worked on American Express, which is probably David Ogilvy always said, if you want to be a copywriter, spend the first five or six years of your life working in direct response because you learn what works.

你还会明白什么才是关键。

You also learn what matters.

你也会知道哪些地方不能省略。

You also learn what not to leave out.

我给你举个例子。

I'll give you an example of that.

如果你通过邮购卖产品，而优惠券上没写‘预计二十八天内收到货’或者‘货品将在二十八天内寄出’，那下单的人可能直接减半，因为你制造了不确定性。

If you were selling a product by mail order, and the coupon did not say somewhere, expect your product within twenty eight days, or it will be sent to you by post within twenty eight days, you'd probably halve the number of people ordering, because you've now created uncertainty.

你等于制造了一种模糊感。

You've now created a degree of ambiguity.

所以这也让你学会了广告里的细节把控——我觉得很多主流广告恰恰忽略了这一点，虽然那听起来挺不错。

So it also taught your attention to detail, actually, in advertising, which I think a lot of mainstream advertising misses, which is that's all very well and good.

你做出了很棒的承诺。

You've made a wonderful claim.

你成功改变了人们对某件事的看法。

You've changed people's minds about something.

但事实上，如果你想让人采取行动，他们需要的确定性远超一张海报或一则电视广告所能提供的。

But actually, if you want them to act, they require a far greater degree of certainty than could often be achieved in just a poster or a TV ad.

所以这真是一次绝佳的训练。

So it was a brilliant training.

在美国运通工作，可能是你能遇到的最好的客户，因为他们涉及的业务范围特别广。

Working on American Express was probably the best account you could possibly work on in the sense that they do a bit of everything.

这个品牌非常出色，而且他们的直接营销运作也极其专业。

It's a brilliant brand, but it also is a very, very professional direct marketing operation.

他们什么都能做。

And they do everything.

他们做老客户推荐新客户。

They do member get member.

他们做卡片会员的沟通。

They do card member communications.

他们做客户获取的沟通，还有各种其他类型的业务。

They do acquisition communications, etcetera, all manner of stuff.

顺便提一下，大卫·奥格威一直希望美国运通做一件非常简单的事，但他们始终没有勇气去做，那就是写一封信，内容 basically 就是说：办一张美国运通卡，如果你不满意，或者第一年结束后不想续用，我们会双倍退还你的年费。

David Ogilvy, by the way, always wanted American Express to do a very simple thing, which they never had the courage to do, which was to write a letter which basically said, take out the American Express card, and if you aren't happy, if you don't want to keep it after your first year, we'll refund you double the fee.

而且从来没有人有勇气去这么做。

And nobody ever had the courage to do it.

我依然觉得这招行得通，真的会奏效。

I still think it would act it would work.

不过，在美国运通工作期间，最有趣的一点是……

But here was the interesting thing working on American Express.

美国运通做了一些小细节，比如把会员起始年份印在卡上，这几乎不花钱，但据运通的人告诉我，自卡片发行以来，这些细节为运通带来了数十亿美元的价值。

There are little things that American Express did, like putting member since on the card, which cost nothing but have been worth and American Express people have told me this have been worth billions of dollars to American Express since the card was started.

人们更不愿意取消会员，因为他们不想重新加入，回到从零开始的状态。

People are more reluctant to cancel because they don't want to rejoin and go back to year zero, if you like.

你知道，我都六十岁了。

You know, I'm 60 years old.

如果我的卡上印着‘会员始于24年’，这听起来可不像‘会员始于93年’那样有分量。

If I had a card with member since '24 on it, it doesn't quite say the same thing as member since '93 or whatever.

应该是95年。

'95, I think.

明白了。

Okay.

这只是一个微小的心理策略，却没花一分钱。

So that was a tiny little bit of psychology, which cost absolutely nothing.

但也体现了他们和客户之间的那种关系——你是个会员。

But it also is a testament to the kind of relationship they have, which is, you you're a card member.

我们不是每年简单地给你发一张新卡。

We don't just issue you a card from one year to the next.

这其实是在暗示，我们和你之间有一种长期的联结。

You know, we can you know, it's it's an intimation that they're in a relationship with you.

不过这个点子是客户提出的，虽然广告公司也帮了忙，但核心想法来自客户。

But here's something that was It was a client idea, although the agency helped, but it was a client idea.

那是八十年代末、九十年代初的事了。

This is the late '80s, early '90s.

我们当时在鼓励大家办理美国运通金卡，那张卡价格可不低。

We're encouraging people to get the American Express gold card, which was pretty expensive.

我的意思是，八十年代那会儿，一张卡要八十英镑左右。

I mean, it was something like £80 back in the '80s.

我们写了很长很长的信，详细说明了为什么你该办这张金卡。

And we wrote long, long letters explaining all the rational reasons why you want the gold card.

但这位客户突然有了个直觉：其实大家本来就想要这张金卡。

And this client, I think, had the leap of intuition, which was people wanted a bloody gold card anyway.

那时候是八十年代末吧？

It's the late '80s, right?

那是个特别爱炫耀消费的年代。

It's a period of fairly conspicuous consumption.

他说，人们本来就想拥有这张卡。

And he said, they want this card anyway.

说实话，我们只要说‘这卡看着就高级’就够了。

To be honest, we could just say, it's a great looking card.

人们就会申请。

And people would apply.

他们不申请，是因为怕被拒绝。

The reason they're not applying is fear of rejection.

于是他想出一个办法，让你不需要申请卡片，而是直接签个名，就能收到卡片。

And so he managed to find a way in which you could actually say, all you need to do to receive your card, not apply for your card, but receive your card, is sign your name on this form.

我们了解你的情况，基本上已经符合会员资格了。

What we know about you suggests you're virtually preapproved for membership.

我们把流程设计得这么简单，就是希望你能成为我们的卡片会员。

And the reason we made this so simple is we want you as a card member.

想想看，这跟申请耶鲁大学，和收到耶鲁来信说‘我们希望你申请’，心理上有多大的差别。

Now think about the difference there psychologically between applying to Yale and getting a letter from Yale saying, We want you to apply.

对吧？

Right?

明白吗？

Okay?

或者用约会的角度来想。

Or think of it in dating terms.

你对某个女生或者男生有意思，对吧？

You're interested in a girl or a bloke, okay?

如果你觉得对方其实也对你有好感，你的想法会完全不一样。

And the difference in terms of your thought patterns if you thought that person was interested in you.

顺便说一句，你有没有读过《游戏》这本书？作者是尼尔·斯特劳斯，讲的是搭讪高手圈子里的事。

By the way, there is I don't know if you've read The Rules by I think it's called The Game by Neil Strauss, actually, about the pickup artist community.

这本书挺有意思的。

It's quite an interesting book.

老兄，你看看我们现在这样。

Brother, look at us.

我们俩研究这个，你要是看到我们14岁的时候，肯定吓一跳。

We've been we study you should see us when we were 14, Okay?

那本书我们不仅读了，标亮的部分比没标的地方还多。

Not only did we read that, there's more highlighted parts than there aren't.

但有趣的是，对大多数男生来说，主动追求所有你感兴趣的人，其实是个可行的策略。

But the interesting thing is it's actually, for most guys, effectively propositioning everybody you fancy is a workable strategy.

大多数人做不到，根本原因就是害怕被拒绝。

Most people can't bring themselves to do it because of fear of rejection, fundamentally.

大多数人没那个胆量去主动搭讪、追求所有心仪的对象，虽然成功率可能只有5%到10%，但这就够了——问题在于，这会严重打击自尊心。

Most people haven't got the chutzpah to just chat up and proposition everybody they fancy because you'll get a 10% hit, maybe a 5%, 10% hit rate, which is, of course, all you need, but nonetheless, it comes at the cost of significant dents to the ego.

我算个业余历史爱好者，读了上百本历史书后，我有两个主要体会：人性从来就没变过，以后也不会变。

I'm very much an amateur historian, and two major takeaways I've had from reading hundreds of history books is human nature has been the same and will always be the same.

所以，你可以直接照搬别人做过的事，或者深受他们的启发。

And so you can just copy other people who have done something or be heavily inspired by them.

第二点是，当人和人交流时，总爱说一些话，比如‘你得理性点’。

And the second thing is that when humans talk to each other, we use these phrases like, well, be rational.

你就该这样。

Just be this.

别像个野兽一样。

Like, don't be an animal.

就是，别想太多，冷静点。

Like, just be rational.

可事实是，我们本来就是动物。

And it's like, well, we are animals.

人本来就不是靠理性活着的，所以想做成点大事，不能光靠逻辑，太多逻辑反而会拖后腿。

We are not rational people, and therefore, you can't use logic in order to build something, or you can't use too much logic in order to, like, build something great.

人类本质上就是特别不讲理的生物。

Humans are, like, very irrational beings.

这挺有意思的，说你应该这样，并不是说理性没价值。

It's very interesting because this idea that you should this is not to say that rationality isn't valuable.

关键是什么时候用它。

It's a question of when you deploy it.

哲学家大卫·休谟说过，理性只是激情的奴隶，也只能是奴隶。

And David Hume, the philosopher, said reason is and should only be the slave of the passions.

法国数学家大卫·贝西写过一本叫《数学家》的书，他说数学上的重大突破，其实很少是靠逻辑推出来的。

Now, there's a great book by a French mathematician called David Bessie called Mathematica, where he argues that very little progress in mathematics is actually made logically.

数学家的做法，其实是用数学来检验他们的想象是否靠谱。

What mathematicians do is they use maths to sense check their dreaming effectively.

当情绪失控时，数学就派上用场，帮你纠偏。

It's brought in to correct your emotional behavior when it goes wrong.

但在商业里，人们总觉得决策的合理性比结果更重要，更在乎能不能自圆其说，而不是结果本身好不好。这等于说，你根本不能相信直觉——这就像是找侦探破案，却告诉他：你只能用有确凿证据的信息。

But actually, the idea that in business that explanation of a decision is more important than the outcome of a decision to your career, that the defensibility of a decision is what you're really focused on, not the quality of the outcome of the decision, What that means is that you're effectively saying you cannot use intuition, which is a bit like going to a detective and saying, you can only use information which has evidential value.

不能听流言蜚语。

You can't use gossip.

不能靠个别例子。

You can't use anecdote.

不能靠直觉。

You can't use intuition.

不能凭感觉。

You can't use a hunch.

也不能靠那种说不清道不明的第六感。

You can't use, you know, your sense of smell, as it were.

你只能依靠有证据支持的信息来破案。

You can only use evidential value to arrive at to actually solve a crime.

这会严重限制你解决复杂问题的能力，因为你的直觉真正告诉你的是该把注意力放在哪里。

And it massively limits your ability to solve complex problems, because what your intuition is telling you to do is where to focus your attention.

在破案时，你可能会问一个非常开放的问题。

And in the case of crime, you might ask a very open ended question.

昨晚八点到十点之间，有没有人注意到什么异常情况？

Did anybody notice anything unusual last night between the hours of eight and 10PM?

这是一个很开放的问题。

Now, very open question.

别人可能只会说，有个奇怪的男人开着一辆白色货车经过之类的。

All someone will say is a weird man drove past in a white van or something.

明白吗？

Okay?

虽然没有直接证据，但它能指引你下一步该查什么。

No evidential value, but it tells you what to investigate next.

如果你坚持每一个商业决策都必须建立在纯粹的既有数据和逻辑基础上，那你最多只能找到25个可能解决方案中的五个。

And if you demand that every single business decision is based on stepping stones of pure preexisting data and logic, You can only get to about five of the possible 25 places where a solution might be found.

而且你找到的这些地方，早就被你的竞争对手占满了，因为他们用的也是同样的方法。

And the places you'll get to will already be occupied by your closest competitors because they're using the same stepping stones you are.

那你为什么从来没想过自己创业呢？

Why didn't you ever wanna start your own company?

你脑子里有这么多疯狂又酷的想法。

You have all these crazy, cool ideas.

其实有一个主意是我启发的，就是一家叫‘Flat White’或者‘Fuck Off’的咖啡品牌。

Well, is one which I did inspire, which is a coffee brand called Flat White or Fuck Off.

等等。

Wait.

等等。

Wait.

等等。

Wait.

等一下。

Hold on.

你刚说你搞了个叫‘Fuck Off’的咖啡品牌？

Did you say you created a coffee called Fuck Off?

没有。

No.

这品牌是存在的。

It exists.

它现在可能正卷入一场商标纠纷，但跟我没关系。

It it might currently be in some sort of legal dispute about the trademark, not with me.

我乐见他们用这个名号。

I'm happy for them to take

把‘Off’也注册成商标？

that trademarked, Off?

这主意是别人想出来的？

Somebody else had this idea?

让我

Let let

我来解释一下这个想法。

me let me explain the idea.

好的。

Okay.

我突然想到，有些地方你确实想喝到一杯高品质的咖啡，但又不想看到后面排着一长串人在折腾他们那些五花八门的特调饮品。

It it struck me that there were places where you wanted a high quality cup of coffee, but you didn't want a queue behind people who are all customizing their own bloody drinks.

现在这项无接触支付技术让你基本上可以刷一下卡，拿起提前做好的咖啡，然后直接走人。

And the technology with contactless payment now allows you to basically tap, pick up a coffee which has been made in advance, and walk off.

我觉得澳白咖啡是新西兰和澳大利亚的发明，咖啡和牛奶的比例恰到好处，而且奶泡也很细腻。

And my argument is that the flat white, which is a New ZealandAustralian invention with which is, I think, the right ratio of coffee to milk and with microfoam as well.

我觉得它基本上就是理性喝咖啡的最佳平衡点。

I think it's basically the you know, it's the happy medium of sensible coffee drinking.

这点挺有意思的，我原本以为他们只有两种版本，所以放这儿正好。

And this is quite interesting because my assumption was that the place to put this is they only have two versions.

对于素食者，有燕麦奶的平白咖啡，也有普通牛奶的平白咖啡。

For the vegans, there's an oat flat white, and there's a regular milk flat white.

你走上前，刷一下卡，付四英镑，拿走预先做好的咖啡，然后离开。

You walk up, you tap your card, you pay £4, you pick up a premade coffee, and you walk off.

我当时觉得，火车站和机场是这种模式最合适的落脚点。

And my logic was, at the time, train stations and airports were the natural home for this thing.

这些地方租金昂贵，所以能在单位时间内卖出更多咖啡，这基本上就是把亨利·福特的流水线理念应用到了咖啡行业。

They're expensive real estate, so the fact that you can sell more coffees in a given time, it's Henry Ford applied to coffee, basically.

好吗？

Okay?

我的观点是，星巴克那种可以随意定制、慢慢等的模式，在圣达菲市中心和朋友见面聊上两个小时确实很棒，但放在机场和火车站就不太合适了。

The argument is that Starbucks and the customization and the time is absolutely wonderful if you're in Downtown Santa Fe and you're meeting a friend for two hours, but it's not suited to airports and railway stations.

所以呢，这个项目就推出了。

So anyway, this thing launches.

目前还在试点阶段。

It's only at the trial stage at the moment.

但发生了一件特别有意思的事——我们刚推出不久，有了点名气，就有人来找我们，说其实这东西真正的目标市场根本不是火车站或机场。

But something really interesting happened, which is shortly after we launched and got some publicity, someone came to us and said, actually, the natural market for this isn't even train stations or railway stations.

而是各种会议。

It's conferences.

商务会议上的咖啡通常都很差，因为都是用滤泡方式大批量冲的，味道不好。

Quite often, the coffee at a business conference is rubbish because it's badly made filter coffee because you have to serve a lot of people simultaneously.

或者你得靠定制咖啡，结果排起长队，人山人海。

Or you have a customizable coffee thing, right, where there's a massive queue.

因为所有人刚从全体会议出来，都急着要一杯咖啡。

Because everybody comes out of the plenary session.

他们买咖啡不是为了喝，只是为了手里有东西拿着，别显得太尴尬——其实这正是我们买咖啡的原因之一。

They all want a coffee, so they've got something to hold in their hand and not look like an idiot, which is one of the reasons we buy coffee, by the way.

根本不是为了喝。

Nothing to do with drinking it.

说白了，就是拿咖啡当配饰。

It's effectively accessorizing ourselves.

明白吗？

Okay?

至于拿铁或意式浓缩，关键是能用高品质的咖啡替代那种劣质的滤泡咖啡，而且只要减少个性化选项，就能大规模生产。

And the point about flat white or off is it's high quality coffee, not crappy filter coffee, that you can produce at scale by simply reducing the customization level.

接下来才是重点。

Now here's where it gets interesting.

亨利·福特是个非常厉害的营销高手。

Henry Ford was a brilliant marketer.

他为什么说你可以选任何颜色，只要它是黑色的？

Why did he say you can have every any color as long as it's black?

因为那时候，不同颜色的油漆干燥速度不一样。

Because at the time, paint dried at differing speeds depending on the color.

如果福特生产线上用多种颜色的漆，整个流水线就会被打乱，因为有些车干得慢，有些干得快，结果发现黑色干得最快，所以干脆全厂统一用黑色。

And therefore, if you had a variety of paint colors on the Ford production line, it completely messed up the flow of the production line because some cars would take longer to dry than others, and it turned out that black was the fastest drying color, so they basically imposed black on the whole Ford fleet.

所以，只要提前让用户清楚地知道你在让他们做出取舍，不提供太多选择其实完全没问题。

So it's absolutely fine not to give people something to ask people to make a trade off so long as you make them aware of the trade off in advance.

明白吗？

Okay?

所以这也就是为什么它叫Flat White或者Off。

That's why it's called flat white or off.

如果你走进一家星巴克，他们告诉你：我们只卖Flat White，怎么样？

If you turned up at a branch of Starbucks and they said, we only serve flat whites, right?

你肯定得说：你讲啥呢？

You go, what the hell are talking about?

不是不是，我要的是杏仁奶弗拉佩，还有各种乱七八糟的配料。

No, no, I want a frappuccino with almond milk and blah, blah, blah.

不行，绝对不行。

No, no.

明白吗？

Okay?

不行。

No.

你不能点这个。

You can't have that.

你知道的。

It's you know?

它之所以叫‘flat white’或者‘off’，就是为了提前明确告诉顾客这其中的取舍。

Now the reason it's called flat white or off is it makes explicit the trade off before someone turns up.

所以你说，要是有人进来点卡布奇诺，你就指着标志说，答案就在名字里，对吧？

So you said if anybody the joke is if anybody turns up and asks for a cappuccino, you point at the logo and you say, the answer's in the name, right?

我特别喜欢举这样一个例子。

Now, there's an example of this which always fascinates me.

你熟悉Moxie酒店这个品牌吗？

Are you a fan of the Moxie Hotel chain?

我以前在纽约住过一家。

Oh, I stayed at once in New York.

它们属于那种高档一点、更现代时尚的连锁酒店。

They're like a kind of upscale, like kind of more modern contemporary type of chain.

所以挺有意思的，因为房间特别小。

So it's quite interesting because the rooms are tiny.

没有客房服务。

There's no room service.

也没有洗衣服务。

There's no laundry.

明白吧？

Okay?

但一楼有点像，嗯，一个资金充足的 WeWork。

But the Ground Floor is kind of a bit like a, well, a solvent WeWork.

对。

Right.

好的。

Okay.

而且那里有二十四小时服务的咖啡师。

And there's a twenty four hour barista.

吧台那边通常都有人，能调出相当不错的鸡尾酒。

There's a know, there's a usually, there's someone making really quite good cocktails.

你在吧台办理入住。

You check-in at the bar.

不像传统酒店那样在前台登记。

You don't check-in at the at the check-in desk.

这里没有礼宾服务。

There isn't a concierge.

那些都是扯淡。

None of that bollocks.

明白吗？

Okay?

别蜜月去那儿住。

Don't go and stay there on your honeymoon.

也别在那儿连住一个星期。

Don't go and stay there for a week.

但如果你只住一两晚，这地方简直完美，明白吗？

But if you've got one or two nights to stay in a place, it's exactly what you want, okay?

房间不大，但电视很棒，Wi-Fi也特别稳。

It's a small room, very good TV, very good Wi Fi.

还有一个大好处是，早上退房吃完早餐后，你想待多久都行，再待五个小时都没问题。

The other great advantage is after you've checked out in the morning and had breakfast, to be honest, you can hang out there for another five hours if you want to.

要是你去普通酒店这么干，肯定觉得人家不欢迎你。

Whereas if you tried doing that in a conventional hotel, you'd feel a bit unwanted.

这本质上就是个明明白白的取舍。

It's basically a brilliant, brilliant, explicit trade off.

我跟他们聊的时候，他们总说，90%的客人都特别喜欢这样。

And they always said, when I spoke to them, they said, basically, 90% of our customers love this.

他们喜欢的原因，要么是以前住过，知道这背后的规则，心甘情愿接受；要么是早就了解这种模式，觉得划算，提前就决定了要这么选。

And the reason they love us is either because they've stayed before, they understand the trade off, and they buy into it, or else they know about how the moxie works, and they get the deal, and they've decided in advance, that's the trade off I want.

剩下10%的客人，是冲着万豪来的，结果气得要命。

10% of their customers are expecting the Marriott, and they're pissed off as hell.

这其实是个很典型的例子，你知道的，期望减去现实，这才是真正重要的公式。

And it's a classic example of actually you know, expectation minus reality, you know, is the formula that matters.

你可以提供少一点的东西，只要别让人失望就行。

You can provide less of something so long as you don't actually disappoint.

对。

Right.

你看过石板卡车吗？

Have you seen the slate truck?

对。

Yes.

是什么？

What is it?

所以这是一款极简风格的纯电动车。

So it's an absolutely minimalist electric vehicle.

售价大概两万五美元，而且你可以随意搭配各种汽车装饰配件。

It's about $25,000 and you can effectively customize it with all manner of sort of automotive bling.

但是，核心的取舍其实是一开始就定好的。

But but but the the core trade off is up front.

他们说，没有座椅加热功能。

They're like, there's no heat seaters.

也没有屏幕。

There's no screens.

只有旋钮。

There's just knobs.

你得自己摇下车窗。

You gotta crank the window yourself.

配置很基础。

It's basic.

我们不会往里面塞一堆东西，但如果你追求简单，而且想要一辆只要两万五美元的电动皮卡，你就不会得到那些汽车公司通常塞进去的乱七八糟的配件。

We're not filling it up with stuff, but if you want simplicity and you want the price to be it's a $25,000 electric pickup, and you're just not gonna get all this random junk that every car company puts in.

我们不做那些。

We're not doing that.

所以这一点非常明确。

So it was absolutely explicit.

某种程度上，这就像艾维斯说的，我们是第二，所以我们更努力。

And in a sense, that's what, you know, Avis did with, we're number two, so we try harder.

我们没有其他公司那么大的规模，但我们在别的地方补回来。

This is Okay, we don't have the scale of the other guys, but we make up for it somewhere else.

消费者很乐意做这种权衡，只要这些权衡是清楚明了的。

And the consumer is very happy making trade offs, so long as they're explicit.

很多企业追求成本削减和效率提升的问题在于，这些决定并不是消费者主动选择的。

The problem with a lot of kind of cost reduction and efficiency pursuit in business is it isn't chosen by the consumer.

而是强加给他们的，这完全是两码事。

It's imposed on them, which is a very, very different thing.

不过，这款电动皮卡正是所谓‘明确的极简主义’的绝佳例子。

But no, the slate truck is a brilliant example of what you might call explicit minimalism.

这确实很出色。

But it's brilliant.

别人都在拼命堆料，他们却反其道而行之，做得恰到好处。

They underdid the competition where everybody else tries to overdo the competition.

他们把这点讲得特别明白，结果反响特别热烈。

And they were just very explicit about it, and it resonated like crazy.

说实话，我从来不会买皮卡，但我还是交了定金。

I I put I mean, I've never I would have never bought a pickup truck, and I put a deposit

你是在车尾交了定金。

in You put a deposit in the back.

真的吗？

Is it really?

我也没办法。

Couldn't help it.

我特别喜欢他们，喜欢他们的理念。

I I love what they I love what they're all about.

如果我没猜错的话，他们会发现一个非常有价值、也很有趣的东西，就是现在大家都在讨论汽车共享这个概念。

And I've if I'm right, I think they'll discover something really valuable, interestingly, which is everybody's talking about the idea that cars become shareable.

现在，我愿意把我的斯莱特皮卡借给任何人，对吧？

Now, I would share my slate truck with anybody else, right?

最坏能坏到哪儿去？

What's the worst that happens?

他们要是吐在里面，我冲一冲就完了，对吧？

They vomited it, and I have to hose it down, right?

我不会把我的现有车子借给任何人。

I'm not going to share my existing car with anybody.

连我老婆我都不同意开。

I don't even let my wife drive it.

当你做这些特别的事时——比如发现FW或者FO对会议组织者简直是救星——你通常会做计划、做成本收益分析、做可行性研究。

And so what they'll do, when you do these eccentric things, as with discovering that FW or FO is an absolute godsend for conference organizers, what you often do when you do something eccentric is that you plan and you do your cost benefit analysis and your feasibility study.

但一般来说，当你做点不寻常的事时，你会发现目标人群其实比你想象的要大得多。

But generally, when you do something unusual, you discover that your target audience is actually bigger than you expected.

而且，这个人群之所以更大，是因为你面对的竞争者跟别人不一样。

And also, it's bigger than you expected because you don't have the same competitors that everybody else does.