Why Did I Buy All That – The sweet smell of successful advertising
Why are perfume adverts so strange? Because they are selling a smell a screen cannot transmit, so they sell a feeling instead. Taylor uses a 'multi-sensory' Magnum billboard at King's Cross (pumping out chocolate scent and biting sounds, to mixed reviews and complaints about competing tunnel smells) to make a point about advertising: even a half-mocked campaign succeeds if it gets thousands of people thinking about the brand. Good for advertising as non-price competition, bra
Why Did I Buy All That – Yes, we want fries with that
Self-service technology, read through behavioural economics. Taylor opens with the University of Connecticut honesty-box study (even a sculpted head watching us boosts payment), then applies 'observed people are nicer people' to self-checkouts, where anonymity turns ordinary shoppers into Emmeline Taylor's 'SWIPERS'. The flip side is upselling: 61 per cent of customers spend more ordering via a McDonald's kiosk, because no human means no judgement. Amazon's retreat from till-
When crime doesn't pay
A bizarre London crime wave, thieves stealing car parcel shelves and reselling them on eBay, becomes a way into the economics of crime. Taylor sketches the Becker-style idea that criminals weigh proceeds against the costs of getting caught, then argues the numbers here do not add up: smashing a windscreen is conspicuous, the shelves are bulky and hard to store, and you do not strictly need one anyway. Useful for rational choice, cost-benefit analysis and thin resale markets,