A magic power that drives your decisions ⋅ EV #025

Next week, I'm introducing you to my favorite part of visual branding. Subconsciously, the entire world loves exactly this part. Except marketers.

As a warm-up, let's do two small experiments.

Experiment 01

Imagine you need a dictaphone. It may be your first dictaphone ever.

There is a new product discovery platform (powered by AI, because why not?). It gives you quality results, but has one peculiarity: it does not display prices in the search results grid. You need to open the item details page to check the price.

Here are your search results:

Looking at these options, what item will you click first?

Now reflect: why did this exact item grab your first attention?

By removing prices and brand names, we silenced your rational mind. Something else helped you make a decision.

Experiment 02

Imagine: You entered the workshop room. You are a little thirsty.

You see 5 bottles of water on the table next to the workshop supplies. The water is the same — still water from the same source. It's all free.

Take one bottle:

Which one did you take?

When all things were equal — price, quality and source, — what made you choose this bottle, not the other one?

Remember your answers. We'll get back to them next week.

See you on Monday!
Ira

P.S. If you are curious, here you can see the same dictaphones with brand logos and very approximate prices at launch.