Social Proof Read online Incredible marketing can be incredibly simple. In 2007, two Chinese researchers ran an experiment at 13 Beijing restaurants¹. Some diners were sat on tables with a plaque listing the most popular dishes. Others were sat at tables with no plaque. Did the plaque change what people choose? Diners who saw the most popular dish plaques were 18% more likely to order one of those dishes, even at a higher price. That's not all. Customers who ate a "most popular dish" rated it...

Labour Looks Smarter Read online Last week I shared one of my unhinged theories with you Many of you rightly pointed out that one study from 2011 is hardly enough to draw lofty conclusions. Fair enough, I've gathered some more evidence. Starting with an imaginary story from my barbers. A good barber is a slow barber Imagine you go to your local barbershop. Your normal barber is on holiday, so you're assigned to someone new. Typically your barber spends 45 minutes cutting your hair. He's not...

Labour Illusion Read online I have a slightly unhinged theory that most websites lie to me. I know you're reaching for the unsubscribe button, wondering how many tin foil hats I can fit on my massive hat, but wait. I have some evidence. In 2025, most of the major LLM models made an almost identical update. Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini and many others started to show what they were thinking. What Claude told me when I asked it if websites were lying to me. According to Claude, Anthropic does this...