Read Online The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg - Free Book Online
Authors: Charles Duhigg
Tags: General, Psychology, Self-Help, Personal Growth, Business & Economics, Social Psychology, Organizational Behavior
Ads: Link
kennel.
Stimson and his colleagues began airing the advertisements in 1996 in the same test cities. They gave away samples, put advertisements in mailboxes, and paid grocers to build mountains of Febreze near cash registers. Then they sat back, anticipating how they would spend their bonuses.
A week passed. Then two. A month. Two months. Sales started small—and got smaller. Panicked, the company sent researchers into stores to see what was happening. Shelves were filled with Febreze bottles that had never been touched. They started visiting housewives who had received free samples.
“Oh, yes!” one of them told a P&G researcher. “The spray! I remember it. Let’s see.” The woman got down on her knees in the kitchen and started rooting through the cabinet underneath thesink. “I used it for a while, but then I forgot about it. I think it’s back here somewhere.” She stood up. “Maybe it’s in the closet?” She walked over and pushed aside some brooms. “Yes! Here it is! In the back! See? It’s still almost full. Did you want it back?”
Febreze was a dud.
For Stimson, this was a disaster. Rival executives in other divisions sensed an opportunity in his failure. He heard whispers that some people were lobbying to kill Febreze and get him reassigned to Nicky Clarke hair products, the consumer goods equivalent of Siberia.
One of P&G’s divisional presidents called an emergency meeting and announced they had to cut their losses on Febreze before board members started asking questions. Stimson’s boss stood up and made an impassioned plea. “There’s still a chance to turn everything around,” he said. “At the very least, let’s ask the PhDs to figure out what’s going on.” P&G had recently snapped up scientists from Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, and elsewhere who were supposed experts in consumer psychology. The division’s president agreed to give the product a little more time.
So a new group of researchers joined Stimson’s team and started conducting more interviews. 2.20 Their first inkling of why Febreze was failing came when they visited a woman’s home outside Phoenix. They could smell her nine cats before they went inside. The house’s interior, however, was clean and organized. She was somewhat of a neat freak, the woman explained. She vacuumed every day and didn’t like to open her windows, since the wind blew in dust. When Stimson and the scientists walked into her living room, where the cats lived, the scent was so overpowering that one of them gagged.
“What do you do about the cat smell?” a scientist asked the woman.
“It’s usually not a problem,” she said.
“How often do you notice a smell?”
“Oh, about once a month,” the woman replied.
The researchers looked at one another.
“Do you smell it now?” a scientist asked.
“No,” she said.
The same pattern played out in dozens of other smelly homes the researchers visited. People couldn’t detect most of the bad smells in their lives. If you live with nine cats, you become desensitized to their scent. If you smoke cigarettes, it damages your olfactory capacities so much that you can’t smell smoke anymore. Scents are strange; even the strongest fade with constant exposure. That’s why no one was using Febreze, Stimson realized. The product’s cue—the thing that was supposed to trigger daily use—was hidden from the people who needed it most. Bad scents simply weren’t noticed frequently enough to trigger a regular habit. As a result, Febreze ended up in the back of a closet. The people with the greatest proclivity to use the spray never smelled the odors that should have reminded them the living room needed a spritz.
Stimson’s team went back to headquarters and gathered in the windowless conference room, rereading the transcript of the woman with nine cats. The psychologist asked what happens if you get fired. Stimson put his head in his hands. If he couldn’t sell Febreze to a
Stimson and his colleagues began airing the advertisements in 1996 in the same test cities. They gave away samples, put advertisements in mailboxes, and paid grocers to build mountains of Febreze near cash registers. Then they sat back, anticipating how they would spend their bonuses.
A week passed. Then two. A month. Two months. Sales started small—and got smaller. Panicked, the company sent researchers into stores to see what was happening. Shelves were filled with Febreze bottles that had never been touched. They started visiting housewives who had received free samples.
“Oh, yes!” one of them told a P&G researcher. “The spray! I remember it. Let’s see.” The woman got down on her knees in the kitchen and started rooting through the cabinet underneath thesink. “I used it for a while, but then I forgot about it. I think it’s back here somewhere.” She stood up. “Maybe it’s in the closet?” She walked over and pushed aside some brooms. “Yes! Here it is! In the back! See? It’s still almost full. Did you want it back?”
Febreze was a dud.
For Stimson, this was a disaster. Rival executives in other divisions sensed an opportunity in his failure. He heard whispers that some people were lobbying to kill Febreze and get him reassigned to Nicky Clarke hair products, the consumer goods equivalent of Siberia.
One of P&G’s divisional presidents called an emergency meeting and announced they had to cut their losses on Febreze before board members started asking questions. Stimson’s boss stood up and made an impassioned plea. “There’s still a chance to turn everything around,” he said. “At the very least, let’s ask the PhDs to figure out what’s going on.” P&G had recently snapped up scientists from Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, and elsewhere who were supposed experts in consumer psychology. The division’s president agreed to give the product a little more time.
So a new group of researchers joined Stimson’s team and started conducting more interviews. 2.20 Their first inkling of why Febreze was failing came when they visited a woman’s home outside Phoenix. They could smell her nine cats before they went inside. The house’s interior, however, was clean and organized. She was somewhat of a neat freak, the woman explained. She vacuumed every day and didn’t like to open her windows, since the wind blew in dust. When Stimson and the scientists walked into her living room, where the cats lived, the scent was so overpowering that one of them gagged.
“What do you do about the cat smell?” a scientist asked the woman.
“It’s usually not a problem,” she said.
“How often do you notice a smell?”
“Oh, about once a month,” the woman replied.
The researchers looked at one another.
“Do you smell it now?” a scientist asked.
“No,” she said.
The same pattern played out in dozens of other smelly homes the researchers visited. People couldn’t detect most of the bad smells in their lives. If you live with nine cats, you become desensitized to their scent. If you smoke cigarettes, it damages your olfactory capacities so much that you can’t smell smoke anymore. Scents are strange; even the strongest fade with constant exposure. That’s why no one was using Febreze, Stimson realized. The product’s cue—the thing that was supposed to trigger daily use—was hidden from the people who needed it most. Bad scents simply weren’t noticed frequently enough to trigger a regular habit. As a result, Febreze ended up in the back of a closet. The people with the greatest proclivity to use the spray never smelled the odors that should have reminded them the living room needed a spritz.
Stimson’s team went back to headquarters and gathered in the windowless conference room, rereading the transcript of the woman with nine cats. The psychologist asked what happens if you get fired. Stimson put his head in his hands. If he couldn’t sell Febreze to a
Similar Books
