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Why ‘20,296 cups of tea’ beats ‘354kWh’ every time | Nudge Newsletter

Published 5 months ago • 1 min read

Concrete Phrases

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Which electric bus would stick in your mind?

It's not even a competition.
​
Copy that's easy to visualise is easy to memorise.

In 2021, Richard Shotton¹ showed participants a number of vague phrases, like 'innovative quality', and then some concrete phrases, e.g., 'money in your pocket'.

Shotton’s concrete phrases were 8.6x more likely to be remembered.

He’d proved the concrete phrases' effect, a phenomenon first discovered by Begg in 1972.²

And researchers Monnier & Thomas followed up with this 2022 experiment.³ ​
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Across six experiments, participants evaluated the same products but saw different descriptions.
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Some saw 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘤𝘳𝘦𝘵𝘦 units: "10 cookies", "6 servings", "two cups"
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Others saw 𝘢𝘯𝘢𝘭𝘺𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘭 units: "10 oz", "140 g", "500 ml".
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Turns out, those who saw the concrete units were 𝐬𝐢𝐠𝐧𝐢𝐟𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐥𝐲 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐨 𝐩𝐚𝐲 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐭𝐬.

Which is why the bus livery is so smart.
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​"Powered by 354kWh of batteries" is factually true but entirely abstract.
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​"Powerful enough to brew 20,296 cups of tea" is also factually true but instantly visible in our minds.
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The lesson is simple.
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To be remembered, use concrete language.

Want to use concrete phrases in your marketing?

​Check out VaultsGPT ↓​

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Hope you enjoyed today's newsletter — Phill​

P.S. I use the concrete phrases effect a lot on this page. See if you can spot it.

¹Shotton, R. (2023, April 11). To create strong memories, use concrete language. Marketing Week. https://www.marketingweek.com/strong-memories-concrete-language/​

²Begg, I. (1972). Recall of meaningful phrases. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 11(4), 431–439

³Monnier, A., & Thomas, M. (2022). Experiential and analytical price evaluations: How experiential product description affects prices. Journal of Consumer Research.

As a behavioural science practitioner, I believe in the peak-end rule.

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Nudge Newsletter

Phill Agnew

I spend 18 hours each week turning marketing psychology into readable newsletters.

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