In the early 1970s an ambitious young director released his film THX 1138.
The concept went against many of the typical Hollywood storylines at the time.
Set in a dystopian future where sex is outlawed and drug-taking is mandatory, the film was wildly different from what audiences were used to.
The film was also a massive flop.
Despite the a-list cast and big marketing budget, few watched it. The young director was discouraged and almost gave up until he read The Hero With A Thousand Faces.
Joseph Campbell's book reveals how different cultures share remarkably similar hero stories.
He suggests that the innate human experience leads all of us to prefer surprisingly similar tales. For example:
Goodies vs baddies
Coming of age
David vs goliath
Campbell encourages writers to develop new concepts on familiar and safe themes.
It's now termed the new and safe effect, or NaS effect.
The young director took this advice onboard and created a film you've probably heard of.
George Lucas isn't the first director to successfully apply NaS. In fact, marketers regularly do the same.
In 2013, researchers Shapiro and Nielsen asked dozens of participants to review hundreds of ads¹.
One group was shown the same jam ad for Druk every 50 ads.
The other group was shown almost the same ad, but with the logo moved to different corners.
All the participants preferred the jam if they'd seen it before (we prefer familiar things).
But those participants who saw slightly different versions liked it even more (we prefer new things that are familiar).
We see this in food trends.
NaS = chicken tikka, avocado on toast, matcha latte, and kombucha. No NaS = matcha milk tofu
Matcha lattes became insanely popular because they combined a new ingredient (matcha) with something safe and familiar (a latte).
Matcha milk tofu will never catch on, because both ingredients (tofu and matcha) are too new and unfamiliar.
But how can you apply this effect?
You're not developing food trends or producing Hollywood movies.
But you're probably writing headlines. Email subject lines, blog headers, and presentation titles.
In 2013² three researchers studied what made a good title.
Over several months, they posted the same meme on Reddit dozens of times but tweaked the title.
This allowed them to pinpoint which titles drove the highest engagement.
Their takeaway proved how important the NaS effect is.
A good headline is “not overly familiar, but rather familiar enough; a welcome surprise expressed in the vernacular of its intended audience.”
The takeaway is simple.
The best products, movies, headlines, and even ads combine two elements.
They're novel and new. But also familiar and safe.
Do you agree?
P.S. This newsletter is a trimmed-down version of the talk I gave at Creator Day last week. The next one is the 6th of May 2027.
It's a wonderful event and is part of a brilliant community run by my mate Mark Masters. (This isn't a paid ad; I just like the community! In fact, it's the only community I'm part of.)
NaS is a combination of two of the 85 principles you'll find in the Nudge Vaults. If you're keen to apply NaS, you should search for this distinctiveness effect and mere exposure effect in the Vaults.
In fact, Nudge Vaults subscribers can use VaultsGPT to apply these principles like this to their work:
¹Shapiro, S. A., & Nielsen, J. H. (2013). What the blind eye sees: Incidental change detection as a source of perceptual fluency. Journal of Consumer Research, 39(6), 1202–1218. ²Lakkaraju, H., McAuley, J., & Leskovec, J. (2013). What's in a name? Understanding the interplay between titles, content, and communities in social media. Proceedings of the Seventh International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media, 311–320.
As a behavioural science practitioner, I believe in the peak-end rule.
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...
Prove Your Dedication Read online Imagine your hometown football club booked Swedish legend Ibrahimovic to host a 2-hour training session with local children. That’s what 113 participants at the Stockholm School of Economics were asked to imagine in 2017¹. But there was a catch. Half were told the club spent almost no time persuading Ibrahimovic, with the manager saying: "It's fantastic that it was so easy to persuade you to come." The others were told booking Ibrahimovic took extreme...
Framing Your Food Read online Which of these would you rather eat: One Shepherd's Pie is described as: Beef shepherd's pie, tomato and pesto sauce The other is described as: Beef subtly seasoned with Espelette pepper under a rich velvety potato puree, topped with crisp parmesan cheese crumbs Two researchers ran a small study at a French cafeteria to test if these descriptions changed the perception of the food.¹ Diners were invited to eat a prix fixe lunch. A real photo of the cafeteria from...