#73: Hard-wired for novelty, MA equal pay act, make money not war, and Google Trends update
A very happy Bermuda Day to you from lovely Elbow Beach!
In this edition of The World's Best Newsletter:
1. MA Equal Pay Act gives real consequences for paying women less
2. Hard-wired for novelty (learning from the failure of sequels)
3. Some internet usage numbers that won't surprise anyone
4. Google Trends gets updating
5. Guns and abortion
6. Make money, not war
7. Quote of the week - when love is the way
1. MA Equal Pay Act gives real consequences for paying women less
July 1 marks the start of my fair state's updated gender equal pay law. With it, Massachusetts joins the ranks of Delaware, Oregon, California and others to prohibit employers from asking about a candidate’s wage history. Employers also can’t prevent employees from talking about how much they make.
Per this AmericanInno article, the act also:
Now mandates employees who are ‘comparable’ be paid equally.
(This may seem like what the old act intended to do but the language change is crucial to differentiate from ‘equal’ work, which allows for less disparity over which specific positions require equal wages, through areas like employment history, skills, special training, merit, travel, performance, and the location in which the job is performed.)Lays down real penalties.
If a gender-based wage inequality is found, companies will owe double the difference that the male employee was paid, and any legal or attorney fees the employee paid. If the company can prove they are making strides toward wage equality, the penalty is lessened to pay the difference between wages.
The act gives clarity as to what constitutes unlawful wage discrimination and adds protections to ensure greater fairness and equity in the workplace. That's awesome - and necessary.
2. Hard-wired for novelty (learning from the failure of sequels)
I'm so interested by the way our brains work day to day (and often choose not to work in our favor.) Self-diagnosed armchair scientist in this regard. Good marketers, by nature, gravitate towards research that unpacks the human mind - after all, it's our job to influence it. Nancy Harhut has given a world tour recently speaking far and wide about the behavioral hacks that help digital marketers. I love every chance I get to see her speak. Here's her INBOUND talk.
My fascination is one reason I'm eating up The Storytelling Edge from Contently's Shane and Joe. In it, they shared the importance of novelty:
When you put someone’s head under a scanner and show them something they’ve never seen before, the brain lights up.
Much more, in fact, than when you show the person some-thing it has seen before.
This is because our brains are wired for novelty.
In evolutionary terms, we pay attention to what’s new because we need to determine whether the new thing is a threat. Once again, this is part of how we survived.
Of course, something too new or completely foreign has the potential to scare us. Our brains get on high alert when they encounter novelty. They prepare to fight or flee.
The best stories use relatability to get us invested and then use novelty to keep us interested. They get the audience comfortable in the beginning, usually through a character or setting or scenario that we may care about, and then introduce novelty—the fun part—into the plot.
That's why movie sequels with continuing storylines work -- not remakes of the same movie.
"people prefer ongoing storylines that mix the safety of familiar characters with the excitement of a fresh adventure. In other words, we want novelty, but we need relatability.
The best stories, according to the research, carefully balance that dynamic over time. When things change too much, the audience revolts. But when things stay the same, the audience gets bored.
Our biggest movies tend to break new ground—Gone with the Wind, Citizen Kane, Star Wars, Jurassic Park, and Avatar. If you’re making a movie, you may indeed make money by making something unoriginal, but people won’t like it. In the storytelling business, novelty creates the biggest winners."
You can read more in The Storytelling Edge, out now.
3. Some internet usage numbers that won't surprise anyone
What? You don't browse Pew Research Center's data for fun, too?
A quarter of Americans are online almost constantly. 77% of Americans go online on a daily basis. 43% go online several times a day.
A few, 11%, do not use the internet at all (too hard to learn, "too old," or cost factors prohibiting them.)
Lucky bastards.
4. Google Trends gets updating
I love Google Trends. Where else, for example, could you have learned that the word "Peanut Butter" has spiked in December every year since 2004?
The interface has some cool recent updates, including minute-by-minute and daily trends, beautiful data visualizations, and Year in Search data going back to 2001.
See what's new!
5. Guns and abortion
I know, two topics you're REALLY not supposed to write about in professional life. Ah well. As I was researching fun Google Trends data, I came across one noteworthy trend: the rise in searching for DIY abortion in states like Texas and Tennessee (likely due to the closing of clinics.)
You know that right-wing POV that argues we don't need gun control because people will just find a way of getting their hands on them so why bother? It would be great to apply that thinking to abortions instead of closing women's health centers and dictating what a women does with her own body. Just saying.
Oh, and we do need gun control. Stop conflating un-related issues.
6. Make money, not war
Are we loving LinkedIn videos? Or are we sick of them?
In this video, I was asked by Brandon Redlinger, Director of Growth at Engagio, about one fundamental thing about B2B sales and marketing I would change.
I said "make money, not war." Watch more below - in which I use my fancy new video donut-circle-camera-mount-light-contraption and feel more like a wannabe Youtube celebrity than at any other point in my life.
Thanks Brandon.
7. Quote of the week
I was so moved by the sermon from last week's Royal Wedding.
"Think and imagine a world when love is the way. Imagine our homes and families when love is the way. Imagine neighborhoods and communities when love is the way. Imagine governments and nations when love is the way. Imagine business and commerce when love is the way.
Imagine this tired, old world when love is the way."
Have a marvelous weekend.
Katie
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