As a young teenager, I wish I'd known about the spotlight effect. It's the idea that we radically overestimate how much our mistakes are noticed. It's easy to think others are paying attention to our cock-ups but most people are far more fixated on their own concerns. The original study was run by Thomas Gilovich (Cornell University) in 2000. He requested that participants arrive at his lab at a set time. Then he put them in a small room to fill out a questionnaire.  But Gilovich intentionally gave one participant the wrong start time. When that participant arrived 10 minutes after the others, Gilovich chided him for his tardiness and said he needed to wear a Barry Manilow T-shirt for the experiment (a singer specifically chosen to be deeply embarrassing).  Then Gilovich brought the "late" participant into the room where the others were completing the questionnaire. Just as he was sitting down, in another twist, Gilovich asked the participant to step back out... "I'm sorry", Gilovich said, "on second thoughts I think you're too late to take part". After these bizarre meanderings, Gilovich asked the participant to estimate how many people in the room had noticed his Manilow T-shirt.  The average estimate was 46%. Then Gilovich questioned everyone in the room as to whether they could remember what the "late" student was wearing. Only 23% had noticed it. The "late" participant thought they were the centre of attention, "in the spotlight". But most people are focused on themselves, rather than on others.  This means that if you make a faux pas, there's less reason to worry than we suspect - most people won't even notice it. To me, that's a pretty cheering lesson for teenagers and beyond. But there's a less happy implication for marketers. After all, the main point of the study is that even bizarre incidents playing out right in front of people are barely noticed. Too many marketers assume customers will pay attention to their latest campaign. But that's not the case. We need to go to remarkable lengths simply to be noticed. Luckily, behavioural science offers many simple ways to do this. If you’d like to learn these, I‘m running a training session on behavioural science for better marketing on Thursday 10th December. More details here: tickettailor.com/events/astr… (The drawing, by the way, is by the wonderful @sketchplanator).

In the new Behavioral Science for Brands episode with MichaelAaron Flicker, we look at the psychology of Novartis's award-winning campaign “Relax Your Tight End”. We talk about: 1. How it harnessed present bias by highlighting an alternative to the uncomfortable rectal test for prostate cancer 2. How it used humour to ease anxiety around prostate cancer  3. How it applied the messenger effect by featuring star NFL players like Greg Olsen and Rob Gronkowski Listen on Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/3BT… Listen on Apple: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcas… Listen on YouTube: youtu.be/0y1-_AHDcnk?si=Zkd5… And let me know if there are any other great campaigns you think we should cover!