Season 1 Episode 6 | 27 minutes
From neuroscience to chatbots: an interview with the Cortex Copywriter Sydney-based Nathan Mudaliar is a trained neuroscientist who has followed his creative heart into copywriting, screenwriting and yes, chatbots. In Nathan’s world, copywriting actually is a science. From the effects of words on the dopamine reward centres, to the psychology of tone and nuance, his work is the future of marketing. Chief Conversologist Jam Mayer talks copywriting, chatbots and cerebella with this episode’s special guest.
Hosts & Guests
Jam Mayer
Nathan Mudaliar
Resources
Daniel Kahneman – Thinking, Fast and Slow
Siri – Alexa Funnies
My wife asked me why I was speaking so softly at home. I told her I was afraid Mark Zuckerberg was listening!
She laughed. I laughed.
Alexa laughed. Siri laughed.
Episode Conversation
Topics that were discussed:
- Nathan’s overarching principles, particularly in terms of neuroscience and brain chemistry that guide him in his work
- How much of a role does psychology play in influencing customer behaviour?
- Daniel Kahneman’s System 1 & 2 Thinking
- The copywriting generator
- The importance of voice, tone, persona, motion and more when writing copy
- The future of science in marketing tied to behavioral microtargeting
- Ethical implications of the future of marketing
Episode Transcript
Introduction
Jam (00:00:05.145)
Welcome to the Conversologist podcast, where we talk about the art and science of conversation in the digital space. We know that technology can be a powerful enabler in the customer journey from marketing to customer service. But communication and emotional connection still need to be at the core. I invite you to converse with us. We are now on Episode Six: From Neuroscience to Chatbots.
Jam (00:00:33.225)
This week. I am so excited to have Nathan ... Mudliar?? ... The Cortex copyrighter.
Jam (00:00:39.435)
So I met Nathan on LinkedIn online, of course, and when I saw his post about his work, I knew I had to connect with him. So here we are. Welcome, Nathan.
Nathan (00:00:50.255)
Hi, Jam, how are you?
Jam (00:00:51.015)
Good, good. I know you're still recuperating from flu and I'm so sorry, and stuff
Nathan (00:00:57.125)
That's okay
Jam (00:00:58.935)
I'm so, so excited about this episode. Let's probably start off with your background. You graduated from the University of Sydney with a Bachelor of Science in neuroscience with psychology honours. Wow.
Nathan (00:01:11.795)
(Laughs)
What brought Nathan into the world of Copywriting?
Jam (00:01:13.395)
So give me a bit of your background. What took you to that point and what brought you into the world of copywriting?
Nathan (00:01:20.265)
Okay so I've always been interested in the mind and behaviour and specifically how hidden brain circuits can explain observable behaviour. So I did a double major in psychology neuroscience, so I wanted to approach the mind from all angles. And my goal was to do a PhD. But there's three main reasons why I moved into the world of copywriting and creative writing. So first of all, I got tired of the rigid academic writing. It wasn't really flexing my creative writing skills. And second of all, psychology relies a lot on statistics.
Nathan (00:01:51.555)
You just plug numbers into software and it spits out a result. And I felt removed from what I was supposed to be studying. I signed up to learn about the mind, not statistics. And there's this great quote from Nietzsche where he says "Dostoyevsky, the writer, is the only psychologist from who've I've anything to learn." And I understand what he means. Like, when you're writing and creating characters, whether they're chatbots or in novels or screenplays, you actually play with the stuff of the mind, but like motivations, beliefs and desires instead of just applying numbers to them.
Nathan (00:02:20.235)
And the third reason is, the area I wanted to do research in the PhD was new and controversial at the time. So I went to a conference about the therapeutic benefits of psychedelic substances. So there was research showing they can grow new pathways for memory learning, but it's really hard to get funding for that type of research. So I knew that academics was not for me. So in the background while I was researching, I was writing copy for my friends' businesses. And I like seeing how my words could achieve actual results and then make impacts, whereas the research I was doing in visual perception was very abstract and it's hard to find applications.
Nathan (00:02:58.305)
So I moved into copywriting UX writing and combining science with art because sometimes advertising and creating great experiences for users can be more art than science. I should mention that Cortex Copywriter was not my original brand idea. I used to own the domain name for Chocky Copy.
Jam (00:03:14.985)
Chocky copy! (Laughs)
Nathan (00:03:16.905)
The idea was that I would write short and sweet copy, but, yeah lucky I came up with Cortex Copywriter instead.
Jam (00:03:23.565)
It's interesting you mentioned about short copyright, but it seems that that has been changing and maybe more about that later. So Cortex Copywriter, what inspired you to decide, "oh actually, I think Cortex Copywriter is pretty good." I mean, apart from the obvious, of course?
Nathan (00:03:41.985)
Well, I guess my approach, I had to figure out a way to differentiate myself. And I thought, when I read a lot of copywriting blogs and listen to people on podcasts, copywriting always narrows down to psychology. And I thought, well, I have that background and I can apply what I've learnt to my writing, and may give my writing an edge. Cortex Copywriter, I guess, summarizes all that philosophy in just two words.
Jam (00:03:59.905)
It's perfect. When Rew and I saw it and I told him about you and he goes, "Oh wow, I love that." Yeah, me too. You've got my vote. Now, your website shows you actually covering a lot of different areas of writing, right. From Web, there's content copy, to obviously chatbots, right through to even explainer videos and even a pilot show screenplay.
Nathan (00:04:24.852)
Yeah
Jam (00:04:25.005)
So is there one overarching principle, particularly in terms of neuroscience, because you're the expert here, and brain chemistry, that guides your work? Or is it just horses for courses? It's just "I'm just going to wing it."
Nathan (00:04:38.925)
Yeah, well, it's a combination of both. So there's two overarching principles, and then different content types rely on more specific psychological principles. So the first overarching principle is storytelling. So stories that are personal and emotionally compelling engage more of the brain and are better remembered than simply stating facts. And studies actually show that storytelling has a transportation effect because it activates brain areas that process sight, sound, taste and movement. So good stories actually feel real, and they're the next best thing to experiencing it live. And you can tell a great story anywhere, whether it's a website blog, chatbot or screenplay.
Nathan (00:05:12.885)
The second overarching principle is clear, positive conversational language, like the same way you speak to family and friends. It makes people want to engage and interact, buy something. It stimulates the release of feel good chemicals, oxytocin, dopamine. That type of language creates excitement and builds bonds of loyalty, support and connection. Whereas linguistic threats like pushy sales language activates the fight or flight response, and people actually run away. It's the opposite effect you want when you're looking at a website.
Jam (00:05:39.885)
OK, so because I'm going nerdy here, I'm just so excited. Can you just summarise? You mentioned the two chemicals. I love that you said storytelling and I've got a few things about that. And of course, the second one, which is the art of talking to like your friends and family. Can you just. Yeah. In terms of science, I'm not a science person. I need your guidance here. Go ahead.
Nathan (00:06:02.095)
OK, so the chemicals, the oxytocin. So I guess dopamine is commonly known as the pleasure chemical. Oxytocin is, like, involved in bonding, and, you know, it's a more of a bonding chemical involved in love and comfort. You know, when a mother hugs a baby, you're releasing oxytocin. So it's a bonding chemical.
Jam (00:06:17.985)
Yeah.
Nathan (00:06:18.165)
When you're speaking in a friendly language, those same chemicals are released and you feel the connection. If you're reading a website and speaking their type of language, you feel a bond and you want to read more and experience that connection and you come back as well. So it's not - it doesn't just happen the first timem you want to come back and experience it again.
Jam (00:06:32.115)
Interesting. So those two chemicals - see in my brain I'm just thinking, "ooh, can we just induce these type of chemicals that just get the reaction?" I don't think it works that way. We don't want to do that. Right? No, that's that's awesome. In addition to that is, you know, I work with social media every day, every minute of the day and all that. And we hear a lot about storytelling. It's an interesting perspective that those are the two not just principles, it actually does something to your brain that releases these chemicals. Which makes sense. And why it brings results, why there's that bonding feeling, why there's that pleasure and happy feeling. You feel you're not alone and so on and so forth. I could go on and on. Sorry. So just on to the next question -
Nathan (00:07:19.095)
Oh there's different - I could talk a bit about chatbots and the different types of, er ...
Jam (00:07:22.965)
Yep, yep. Go ahead. Yep.
Nathan (00:07:24.375)
OK, yeah. So with chatbots in conversational marketing, if you get rid of forms on websites and use targeted messaging to engage with leads in real time, you're making things available and you're helping them. So it's like reciprocal altruism. You're giving something of value. You probably know great bots have the ability to pull you in and connect emotionally with you.
Jam (00:07:40.677)
Mm
Nathan (00:07:41.055)
So you're engaging people in real time. You're converting leads. The conversion may not happen immediately, but it might happen a month later.
Jam (00:07:47.655)
And there is this thing about conversations. Obviously, that's our philosophy in Conversologie. But it's just, it's "I know it's a chatbot," but it just has a high recall. Do you agree?
Nathan (00:08:00.045)
Yeah, it's more memorable, and builds connection, and trust. And if it's yeah, if it's a great experience, people want to come back and experience it again.
Jam (00:08:07.275)
Even though they know it's not a human being. Right?
Nathan (00:08:10.695)
It's true. Yeah. It's the same as the TV show. If, you know, great characters, you know, they're not real, but you want to keep watching them week after week.
Jam (00:08:16.335)
Yes. I didn't think of that. I mean, like cartoons, or animated series and stuff. They're not real -
Nathan (00:08:23.535)
Yeah books, characters in books, novels, movies. A chatbot is a great character you're trying to build. So ...
What Role does Psychology Play in Influencing Customer Behaviour?
Jam (00:08:26.865)
Wow, OK, I'm still blown away, but we need to move on. (Laughs) So, um, your personal blurb references behavioral motivation and of course, decision making. I'd love to know your thoughts on how much of a role does actually psychology play in influencing customer behavior? Which is more or less what you've said already, but maybe in addition to that, anything else?
Nathan (00:08:48.915)
Yeah, so with copywriting to trying to motivate people to do something very specific. Buy something, right? So any time we are motivated to do anything, it's emotion that's pulling the strings. And most of our purchase decisions take place subconsciously, and we make up logical reasons for our emotional decisions. But the goal is not to get someone to necessarily feel something. The goal is to get someone to want, and act on that want. So emotions have one of three motivations.
Nathan (00:09:12.885)
The first one is Approach motivation. You want to get more of something, experience more, discover and learn. So typical Approach emotion: interest, enjoyment, love, compassion. The second is Avoid motivation. You want to get away from something. You lower its value, or worthiness of your attention. And with copywriting, you're trying to convince people the product eliminates annoyances and inconveniences. And the third is Attack motivation. You want to devalue, criticize or undermine something. Actually, on my website I have a copywriting generator where it gives examples of copy based on these three categories.
Jam (00:09:43.845)
OK, copywriting generator. It is on your - OK, yup.
Nathan (00:09:47.085)
Yeah, it spits out examples of copy based on those three types of motivation.
Jam (00:09:51.615)
Um, I'm just, just processing everything, and I missed your copywriting generator. I'm actually going to go there later, after this.
Nathan (00:10:00.195)
Yeah it's under 'techniches,' under 'interactive techniques' yeah.
Daniel Kahneman's System 1 & 2 Thinking
Nathan
There's also, decision making. You're probably familiar with Daniel Kahneman, the Nobel Prize winner, and his work on behavioral economics and judgment.
Jam (00:10:11.735)
Ah! Yes.
Nathan (00:10:12.525)
His research showed we have two systems of thinking. There's System One thinking fast, the emotional, intuitive way, gut reaction, way of thinking. And then System Two, is this thinking slow, it's analytical, logical, the critical way of thinking.
Jam (00:10:25.035)
Yup
Nathan (00:10:25.295)
And he showed we spend most of our time in System One forming first impressions and feelings. But importantly, we use System One when scanning websites. So copywriting in most cases should target System One, people's emotions, and bypass the rational thinking system, the prefrontal cortex.
Jam (00:10:41.045)
Hm. What's interesting is, because I teach content marketing as well, and this is also the same message I tell them. And what's interesting is most, if not all, would always think System Two. Because it makes sense, it's rational, yes, as you said, it's logical. And every time they ask me a question, say, for example, um, "oh can you give me a specific example" or "can you please tell me what the steps are exactly as it is, like step one, step two step three," I've said, "look, it doesn't work that way." But when you're dealing with human beings who are basically consuming your content, and in this case, let's say, you know, conversations or copywriting, et cetera, you don't go "step one, this is what you're going to do" and then, "step two ..." You don't know what the human - I keep on saying 'human being,' right - but the person .... Yeah, yeah ... I work around chatbots too much probably. But, you know, if you're dealing with emotions and sometimes even your best mate. Right? Sometimes you don't even understand and your partner and you go, "OK, I don't understand what's going on." Right? Let alone someone, a visitor, who is pretty much a stranger and would read digital copy and so on.
Jam (00:11:58.895)
Anyway, it's interesting you mention that, because that is something that "oh, it's so hard to kind of explain to students," right? So now -
Nathan (00:12:06.455)
Yeah because we make up the logical decisions, like after the emotional decision's made. And that's the story we believe. Yup.
Jam (00:12:12.695)
Exactly. So, you know, in our past episodes and stuff, even in our blogs, when we write stuff, or when we convey our message around chatbots, you know, there's a lot of different perspectives on personality. That's something that we're really honing in because we want to make a point. So obviously, chatbots need to be matched to an audience, right? The personas, as we call them. Or to a brand or a purpose, as you show on your website. But what's your overall view on humanising chatbots? Is it going to be creepy? Is it ...
Nathan (00:12:47.795)
Yeah, so personality is not a choice. If you don't create a persona for your bot, your users will end up doing it anyway. So it definitely needs a personality. But I don't think bots should pretend to be human, because users can feel like they've been tricked, or they don't understand, like how the system works. And there's debate about using typing indicators or artificial delays to make the chatbot interface seem more human. I don't think we should be using those.
Jam (00:13:11.510)
Mm-hm
Nathan (00:13:12.455)
So you have to find the right balance. So for example, the developer who coded the scripted bot on my website, he actually hates those type of bots. And so he added timestamps on the chat messages to make it seem more like an AI bot.
Jam (00:13:25.145)
Oh, really?
Nathan (00:13:25.835)
Did you notice those timestamps on the messages?
Jam (00:13:28.295)
No, no, no, no. Which one is this? Sorry.
Nathan (00:13:32.415)
So on my chatbot, when a message, when you see the messages, the text messages.
Jam (00:13:36.515)
Oh yes. Yes.
Nathan (00:13:37.325)
It has timestamps on them.
Jam (00:13:38.279)
Right
Nathan (00:13:39.305)
And so he added those to make it seem more like an AI bot instead of just having the script where people might feel like they're tricked into the conversation. To make it seem more artificial. They're just some techniques to make it seem, I guess, less human, I guess.
Jam (00:13:54.245)
Less human but still human.
Nathan (00:13:56.435)
Yeah. It's about finding the right balance.
Jam (00:13:59.405)
Right. So correct me if I'm wrong. I'm just going back to the typing delays and stuff. Are you saying that you don't think that's a good tactic to do? Because it is being - yep?
Nathan (00:14:09.875)
I guess there's, yeah, typing indicators. I don't think so. Because you because you're used to seeing them when your friends are typing, right?
Jam (00:14:17.555)
Yup.
Nathan (00:14:17.825)
I don't think they should be used. But I guess with the timing, with artificial delays, it's all about timing. If it's too long, it might seem like you're waiting for a person to ... I think you have to make them really short.
Jam (00:14:28.625)
Interesting. OK, and this is great. And it makes me think, too.
Nathan (00:14:33.795)
Yeah
Jam (00:14:34.215)
We normally say that even the bot typing and stuff, we time it. We like literally time it
Nathan (00:14:40.575)
Oh, okay
Jam (00:14:40.875)
Based on the text and stuff. But it's an interesting perspective. You say that the reason you don't kind of like that, is because it kind of fools the user as, well, thinking that it's a human being. So hmm ...
Nathan (00:14:55.265)
Yeah
Jam (00:14:55.955)
That is something to test.
Nathan (00:14:57.315)
(laughs)
Jam (00:14:57.485)
No, no, no. It's interesting. It's cool. OK, I'm just going to take a break just a few seconds here. I mean, if you - the audience, obviously, who's who's listening to this at any point, if you are listening on Anchor, sorry, please leave a voice message. And of course, if you see this on social, then please do comment. Obviously not here and now, but you know, in the next podcast episodes.
Importance of Voice, Tone, Persona and Motion when Copywriting
Jam (00:15:20.535)
All right. So let's now go to Human Connection. Right. It is so important as we know, you know, elements like tone, language, and register. And you can you run me through your process for creating your personalities? Whether in chatbots or even in just scripts?
(00:15:37.175)
OK, so the process starts with understanding who your audience is. And so, I found it helps to map their language in a voice-and-tone style guide.
Jam (00:15:44.595)
OK
Nathan (00:15:45.015)
So 'voice' is the quality of words, the words people choose, and the order in which they put them. And 'tone' is how words modulate for different situations. So with chatbots, there's geetings, errors, success messages, small talk and tutorials. And then grammar establishes how you use punctuation, capitalisation and symbols and even emojis.
Jam (00:16:04.041)
Mm-hm
Nathan (00:16:04.365)
And then persona is the character that embodies your voice and tone. And so some characters or archetypes pop up all the time in culture, because they're instinctive, like the Hero, the Creator Nurturers, Explorers or the Rebel persona. And I found that my process has evolved. Each time I make a bot. So my first bot had three different personalities. It was myself, Yoda from Star Wars, and Daenerys from Game of Thrones.
Jam (00:16:29.805)
(laughs)
Jam (00:16:30.075)
I chose them because they have very distinct voices and you could switch the characters and see the words change. But after I made the bot, I realised that more could be done on the Web page to reflect differences in personality. So I thought, 'what if switching the chatbot characters also changed the colour, the copywriting animations on the Web page?'
Jam (00:16:48.035)
Yup
Nathan (00:16:48.175)
And I brought that to life with my current website, which I called UX, which means a user experience feature. So it's not just the chatbot voices, everything on the page that's aligned to the personality.
Jam (00:16:57.375)
That's interesting. And I'm going to go out on a limb here. When creating chatbot personalities. I mean, outside of the voice, tone, as you just said, it's also colours and the design, et cetera. What are your views on choosing the face?
Nathan (00:17:14.475)
Yes, that's -
Jam (00:17:14.835)
Whether it be ... Yeah, whether it be animated cartoon, or is it going to be a real person, maybe a stock image somewhere? I'd love to hear your thoughts on that?
Nathan (00:17:23.835)
Yes. So on my current one, I have animations of real people. And actually that wasn't my first choice. I wanted to have variations of my logo to represent the characters
Jam (00:17:33.225)
Yep
(00:17:33.555)
Because I know there's a sort of debate about personas and whether they use stereotypes. So I wanted to avoid that debate. But the designer actually made these great animations of the characters and we had to have a discussion about how to use those characters without any stereotypes and biases. So hopefully we got it right. We use people with different skin colours and genders, and we even went into the hair colour. We wanted to have a character with orange hair to represent, you know, underrepresented communities. And the face of technology is a girl. And even the way the characters move is different. Did you notice?
Jam (00:18:05.085)
Mm
Nathan (00:18:05.235)
The motion is different as well?
Jam (00:18:06.255)
Yep.
Nathan (00:18:06.585)
So that's another way to bring personality to life. But I think, yeah I think its images are better to use than real photos, unless the bot maybe represents a real person.
Jam (00:18:15.345)
I just had a thought when you said motion ...
Nathan (00:18:19.305)
Yeah because the animations, the way the characters move, one of the characters bobbing her head, and one of the girls like flicks her hair.
Jam (00:18:25.425)
Mm
Nathan (00:18:25.605)
And then one guy has a moustache, so he flicks his moustache, and so there are different ways to bring it to life and represent the characters.
Jam (00:18:31.575)
Yeah, and I was just thinking, in terms of motion, it's not necessarily motion, but I think it is ... But it is quite different when you're designing conversation for a chatbot that is text based. And obviously like Siri, for example, or Alexa, which is voice, and the digital humans. So I guess in terms of motion, when you go to digital humans, that's quite I don't want to say easy, but I mean, I can see that? You're basically creating the character itself, right? It's an animated character, so .. you'll see all the motions and how, then the flicks, and etc, etc., which is interesting. But going back to text-based chatbots, I mean, how do you actually show motion? And I'm thinking it's how the text comes out and how fast it does. And if you've got a really energetic bot personality ...
Nathan (00:19:20.235)
Yeah, that's true, because I've also found with the way the message boxes appear, there's some debate about whether the messages should appear in one box, or you have multiple boxes appearing. Because you have to consider timing, because the eye's drawn to movement. If they're too fast, the messages appear too fast, you risk distracting the user and makes it hard to read.
Jam (00:19:36.985)
Exactly. That's one thing to take note of.
Nathan (00:19:39.675)
But I guess you could work that into the character. Like if someone is like an energetic character, you could have them make it seem like they're typing fast, or, you know? I know what you mean.
Jam (00:19:48.435)
Yeah. And of course, with voice it's the same thing. It's you will hear -
Nathan (00:19:52.725)
Yeah. The accent and speech patterns. Yeah. That's a whole different thing. The speech patterns and accents and ...
Jam (00:19:58.155)
Interesting. OK, right. I know my brain just keeps on going into different paths, so I hope you're OK with that.
Nathan (00:20:06.835)
Yeah that's fine.
The Future of Science in Marketing
Jam (00:20:08.225)
We've - just to summarise so far - so we've talked about voice, tone, and the personas, and we've talked about system one and two, which is the gut and the logic. And then not pretending to be human, which we always talk about as well in our past blogs and so on. And your ... All the chemicals, which supports your two overarching principles, obviously, that guides your work.
Jam (00:20:33.345)
Let's go to marketing and commercial copy.
Nathan (00:20:36.035)
Okay, yep
Jam (00:20:36.365)
So what's your personal view on the future "future, future!" Do you think it's ever going to be ... I don't know, more sophisticated, in how we persuade customers? And the second part is, in terms of ethical implications, right? Any thoughts on that?
Nathan (00:20:55.985)
Yep we've seen some sophisticated methods recently with behavioral microtargeting and building psychological profiles of people from online activity. So microtargeting is building a personality profile of people using that information to match advertisements. It's the people most likely to respond to them. An example, it's a beauty advertisement. Extroverts would be targeted with a message like "dance like nobody's watching," but introverts would see the message, "beauty doesn't have to shout," and you can get 40 percent more clicks when the message is targeted like this.
Jam (00:21:25.025)
Aha.
Nathan (00:21:25.625)
So when you're targeting people with relevant interests, they provide a better experience for both the customers and the businesses purchasing that.
Jam (00:21:32.065)
Yeah
Nathan (00:21:32.315)
But there are ethical implications when the psychological profiles get into the wrong hands. So for example, you may have heard about the recent Facebook Cambridge Analytica data scandal.
Jam (00:21:42.905)
Mm-hm yep.
Nathan (00:21:43.835)
So that Cambridge Analytica, political consulting firm, they collected psychological data from millions of Facebook users without their permission. And they claimed to increase the voter turnout for Trump by tailoring messages to personality traits like openness and neuroticism.
Jam (00:21:58.619)
Yep
Nathan (00:21:58.925)
There's really no evidence that these microtargeted ads can change your voting preferences or behavior. But these ads work on reinforcing people's preconceived notions. So you can create negative attack ads that set ordinary people against each other. Which also occurred in the Brexit referendum.
Jam (00:22:16.475)
Right.
Nathan (00:22:17.435)
There's another company there called Aggregate IQ. The tech datamining company, and they built a database, using social media tools, of those who were not on the UK electoral register, but they were inclined to vote, 'leave.' And they use these database-driven microtargeting tools to collect and analyse data, and send them these personalised fake slogans.
Jam (00:22:38.035)
Yeah
Nathan (00:22:38.465)
And so they helped to manipulate, even if it's indirectly, the vote, and they persuaded people to vote in favour of Brexit, by placing these individualised - all for the sake of business and just a few people's big money. So this is going well above commercial copy, and it's like undermining democracy.
Jam (00:22:55.415)
That's the bigger picture, isn't it? Yeah. And what's interesting is when I do my guest lectures as well in some unis here in Auckland is, when I start talking about chatbots, it's that they're so scared - not because it's a machine or anything, but they know the implications. Meaning they know that there's a lot of data that's going to be captured. And if it's used in a generic sense, I mean, that's OK, as you mentioned. But once it gets to be more personalised and impacts the bigger picture, which is in politics, etc, and elections, which is just one of. I mean, I'm sure another topic would be religion. And, oh, I don't even want to talk about that.
Nathan (00:23:40.305)
I guess we could keep it in commercial copy, like there's examples of department stores that have data about their customers and they can figure out when the customers are pregnant before they are. They can send, like, ads for baby products and ...
Jam (00:23:51.725)
OK, that's really creepy now. (laughter)
Nathan (00:23:56.285)
This happened in real life. It's a real life example.
Jam (00:23:58.475)
And I get it. And as a marketer, you know, as a marketer, sometimes ... I'm more digital, right, and I know there are the traditional marketers as well, and we now have the tools and the technology to know all of this. You just said it. And of course, there's versus privacy, which is mentioned. So now the question is how much data do we actually get? But yet the users or consumers, which includes us, obviously, we want things very personalised. I guess the challenge now is that balance, between 'please give us enough information that you're comfortable with so that your experience can be as personalised as ever.'
Nathan (00:24:41.395)
When it's done right it does enhance user experience, but data will always be increasing. You've probably seen that joke on LinkedIn about Alexa and Siri, like there's is a whole new data capturing tool there in, the voice.
Jam (00:24:51.845)
Oh, no, no, do tell. What's that about?
Nathan (00:24:54.545)
There was this joke on LinkedIn I think, someone was talking to their Alexa, and they were wondering if Mark Zuckerberg is listening. The wife answered the question and then he said the wife laughed and then Alexa and Siri laughed as well. So ... (laughter) Yeah, so it's a whole new form of data capture in there, with the voice interface and they'll just keep going.
Jam (00:25:11.565)
I think I've seen it, not so sure. I don't want to say, assume, but I've seen some of those. So it also goes back to, 'well, are they listening?' I mean, going back to messaging, etcetera, right? Anyway, that's another topic altogether. (laughter) OK, well, I think that's it for us, this week. Is there anything, Nathan, that you'd like for people to take away? Even just one? I know there's a wealth of knowledge and that you've shared just today, but is there one thing that you'd like them to take away?
Nathan (00:25:46.065)
Yes. Just say, listen. Keep listening to these Conversologie podcasts. You know, I love ...
Jam (00:25:49.605)
Awww
Nathan (00:25:49.605)
The brand and philosophy, you know, focusing on the human element, instead of just clicks and optimisation just to drive engagement. So yeah, keep listening.
Jam (00:25:57.135)
Oh, thank you. That's sweet.
Nathan (00:25:58.815)
Hopefully I've added something to you guys
Jam (00:26:00.675)
You have very much. And I'm sure, for those who are listening to this podcast, we've just - pretty much, this is just the tip of the iceberg. And I'm sure we will talk about this again. And we'd love to have you back, Nathan, to discuss about something else. Other than neuroscience.
Nathan (00:26:16.165)
OK, yeah thanks for making me a Conversologist. Yeah.
Jam (00:26:18.615)
Yeah no, welcome. And so proud to have you. So, oK, thanks, everyone. And again, if you have any comments, feedback or questions for Nathan of your own, or for me, we would love to hear from you again. I know it's a podcast and it looks like the experience obviously is one way, but please join in the conversation and we could even include your question or comment. And then we'll include it at the end of our next podcast.
Jam (00:26:44.115)
If you're on Anchor FM. Please leave a voice message. If you're catching this podcast elsewhere, leave a comment, please. And show notes and previous episodes, please visit our webpage, it's still ongoing, I'm not a web developer or anything, but it is at theconversologist.show.
Jam (00:27:02.685)
Music Bed, by the way, was composed and produced by Carlo Vergara. Thank you for joining and listening to us. Thanks, Nathan.
Nathan (00:27:10.365)
Thanks, guys.
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