The glossary
Concepts worth keeping.
A working glossary of the ideas behind the essays: how attention behaves, how memory works, how positioning is built, and where influence should stop.
A note on evidence
Marketing psychology is not physics. Several famous findings — ego depletion, strong priming effects, some of the claims about power posing — have failed to replicate. Treat these concepts as useful lenses, not laws. Where the evidence is contested, I have said so.
01
How attention and memory behave
Attention
A limited cognitive resource, allocated quickly and mostly unconsciously. In marketing it is borrowed rather than given: the audience pays now and expects value in return.
Read: Attention is a loanCognitive ease (fluency)
The feeling that information is easy to process. Easy-to-read claims feel more true, familiar and safe. Clarity is therefore not decoration; it is persuasion.
Read: Two systems, one decisionSystem 1 and System 2
Kahneman’s metaphor for fast, automatic thinking and slow, deliberate thinking. Most purchase decisions are System 1; the justification is System 2, produced afterwards.
Read: Two systems, one decisionAvailability heuristic
The tendency to judge how likely or important something is by how easily an example comes to mind. Frequent, vivid or recent exposure makes a brand feel more relevant.
Mere exposure
Repeated, neutral exposure to a stimulus tends to increase liking. This is one reason consistency beats novelty in brand building — and one reason frequency has a cost when the exposure is irritating.
Distinctive brand assets
Recognisable elements — colour, symbol, character, typeface, sound, phrase — that act as retrieval cues. They build recognition over time and should be used consistently, not refreshed for novelty.
Read: Mental availability02
How choices are framed
Framing effect
The same fact can lead to different decisions depending on how it is presented. “90% survive” and “10% die” are logically identical and emotionally different. Framing is unavoidable; the question is whether it clarifies or distorts.
Loss aversion
Losses tend to feel larger than equivalent gains. It explains why “don’t miss out” can outperform “get ahead” — and why fear-based marketing so easily tips into manipulation.
Anchoring
The first number or reference point encountered pulls subsequent judgements toward it. A high list price, a premium tier or a comparison figure can anchor what feels fair.
Choice architecture
The design of how options are presented: order, defaults, grouping, friction. Every interface is a choice architecture, whether or not it was designed deliberately.
Default bias
People tend to stick with the preselected option. Opt-out consent, pre-ticked boxes and preselected plans exploit this — which is why they are a recurring ethical fault line.
Sludge
Friction that obstructs a choice the person wants to make: cancellation mazes, hidden fees, forms that fail. The opposite of a nudge, and one of the clearest signs that a business is optimising against its customer.
03
How brands grow
Mental availability
The likelihood that a brand comes to mind in a buying situation. Built through memory structures and links to many category entry points, not through persuasion alone.
Read: Mental availabilityCategory entry points
The situations, needs and occasions that cue a category — “the team is growing”, “the site feels slow”. The more relevant entry points a brand is linked to, the more chances it has to be retrieved.
Penetration over loyalty
Growth comes mostly from more people buying at all, not from making existing buyers more loyal. Most buyers of any brand are light buyers. Loyalty is largely a consequence of share.
Double jeopardy
The empirical regularity that smaller brands have fewer buyers and slightly lower loyalty. It undercuts the idea that niche brands can survive on devotion alone.
Positioning
The context you set so the right customer understands what a product is, what it replaces, and why it matters. Positioning is a chain of specifics, not a list of adjectives.
Read: Better is not a strategyThe 60/40 rule
A heuristic from Binet and Field: roughly 60% of budget on long-term brand building, 40% on short-term activation. Not a law, but a useful guard against quarterly myopia.
Read: The 60/40 rule04
How influence works — and where it stops
Social proof
The tendency to look to others’ behaviour when unsure. Powerful when the evidence is real and representative, corrosive when it is manufactured or cherry-picked.
Reciprocity
The felt obligation to return a favour. Genuine generosity builds relationship; engineered generosity with a hidden invoice is a transaction in disguise.
Commitment and consistency
People prefer to act in ways consistent with their previous commitments. Small public commitments can lead to larger ones — which is why they are both a helpful habit tool and a manipulative one.
Authority
Deference to credible expertise. Real credentials, real evidence and real accountability inform; borrowed authority and vague “experts agree” claims obscure.
Scarcity
The perception that something is limited or running out. True scarcity helps people prioritise. False urgency — countdown timers that reset, “only 2 left” that never changes — is a lie with a deadline.
Read: The ethics of influenceManipulation
Influence that depends on the person not understanding the mechanism, or that makes the choice harder to reverse. The test is not the technique but whether it survives daylight.
Read: The ethics of influenceGo deeper
These ideas are better in context.
The essays take each concept apart, connect it to practice, and say where the evidence runs out.