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  I next commissioned a global study of doors.

  Yes, doors. My assistant and I traveled the world taking short films of department store doors, subway doors, bus doors, elevator doors and basically any kind of door we could find. When we filmed Japanese commuters boarding a train, and the door began closing, we took notes. Did the door spring back as if bitten? Did it close slowly, then accelerate for the next few inches? Did it move slowly and patiently? We also filmed escalators. How fast or slowly did they ascend? I carried out another experiment in homes around the world, this time asking people which part, or zone, of their kitchen, or bedroom, or bathroom best represented “quality.” Few Americans would ever discern quality in a drawer opening or closing, yet almost every northern European told me that a drawer that begins slowly, accelerates and slows down again is of higher “quality” than a uniformly fast-moving or slow-moving drawer.

  Bizarrely, enough, the variation in these differences in how we perceive quality can be traced back to our grandparents’ era. In the 1930s and ’40s, doors in northern Europe were larger and heavier than they are today, as slow to open as they were to close. Without knowing exactly why, the perception of “quality” in how things open and shut has been handed down to subsequent generations.

  Knowing that the Chinese car company had plans to go global, I created a “fast versus slow” translation kit for feelings and sensory signals to create the perception of “quality” in every country where they planned to expand. In France, for example, there is a widespread cultural emphasis on transition and on ceremony. France may have an ongoing love affair with frozen produce, but even when buying frozen food, the French will buy the ingredients for a three-course meal, and do the same when visiting McDonald’s. They will buy a starter—perhaps chicken nuggets—work up to a hamburger and French fries, and end things with a dessert. The French expect a similar three-part formula in the way their car doors open and close. Americans are accustomed to an instantaneous feedback loop, and have little patience with a product that doesn’t come to life immediately. An American tourist traveling abroad who switches on a Bang & Olufsen television in his hotel room will likely perceive the set as broken, not realizing it takes roughly seven seconds to turn on. Apple is one company that has solved this issue smartly. When a consumer powers on an iPhone, the silvery Apple logo appears, alerting users that the phone is on. Knowing the phone works, a consumer is happy to wait an additional 30 seconds before the phone is officially ready for use. I have no doubt that Apple engineers could tinker with the insides to make the phone turn on more quickly. Instead, they’ve designed the iPhone to give users both instant gratification and a sense of anticipation, which they interpret to mean that the phone is both technologically sophisticated and high quality.

  China, of course, was different. Department store doors snapped open quickly. Elevators and escalators shot up. The trains were cannonballs. At the same time, outside of religious festivals, there was no space allotted for transition, or transformation. Even the Chinese cars I studied were more like extensions of apartments than automobiles. Which is why one of my first mandates for Chinese automobiles to appeal to Chinese markets was that the doors open and close fast. The next question—importing the concept of the Twin Self in the car design—was more challenging.

  The Twin Self has two elements, both of which are linked to desire: what we had once, but lost, and what we once dreamed about having but never possessed. Males across the world not only have a younger person inside them, they also have a third party, which any number of superheroes and action stars reflect. What is the fundamental appeal of books and films such as The Godfather and the Bourne and Matrix franchises? What explains the popularity of Batman, or Superman, or Spider-Man, or the X-Men films, or the success of the American television series Breaking Bad? The answer: they all feature as their protagonist a normal, everyday, even somewhat mild male who evolves into an animal or, at the very least, a powerful, menacing, occasionally cold-blooded killer who plays by his own rules. It was this aspect—the driver with a Twin Self, who is also in possession of a masterful, powerful alter ego—that I recommended we incorporate into the overall design of our “Made in China” car.

  Another element we incorporated into the car’s design was a transformation zone. Alongside a team of designers, we created a special internal ambience akin to the change in acoustics you hear when entering a sound studio. We used ambient light that snapped on when the doors opened and snapped off when the doors shut. The result: amplified masculine symbols, including a deep resonance to the sounds the doors made when slamming shut. We also made it a point to elevate the car seat, to give the driver a sense of omniscience and control. Knowing that Chinese children had a say about car buying, and were equally stimulated by power and mastery (and cuteness), we created a dashboard that resembled a flight deck. From watching ESPN, I’d learned about the power of information bombardment. ESPN strafes its viewers with an almost hysterical amount of data and details. Scrolling boxes. Panels. Bars. Graphics. Multi-angle camera perspectives. When exposed to a surfeit of data, men tend to feel more masculine and in command. Do most men bother to decipher these boxes, panels, bars and graphics? No—but that’s not really the point. My mission was for Chinese drivers to perceive their cars as fast, powerful and male, even if they weren’t. More to the point, the doors opened and closed quickly, in a fast, straight line, and the same went for the electronic windows. My mission was to appeal to the child inside the driver, the driver himself, and his children.

  Today, thanks to its new “translation kit,” the Chinese car company is better able to translate “feelings” into sensory clues. A sliding passenger-side door in Europe, for example, opens very slowly, reaches a midpoint one or two feet in, then zips the rest of the way open. When the door is shut, the overhead light fades slowly. By contrast, the side doors on the “Made in China” car open and close furiously fast.

  It’s too early to tell how our Chinese car manufacturer is doing, but they’ve far surpassed their sales from last year, and the brand has dramatically increased its revenues across China. More to the point, the company is more hospitable than it has ever been to the emotional aspects of branding. Has the “Made in China” brand made forward progress? Yes, but there’s still a lot of work left to be done. Someone asked me whether the Chinese predilection for speed will eventually migrate across the rest of the world, helped along by our own digital habits. I told him no, that in fact I believed that the opposite is true. As always, and whether they know it or not, human beings seek balance. The faster we go, the slower, in some respects, we will become. It may not always be conscious, but unconsciously we are all seeking to redress acceleration with idling, velocity with patience, chatter with quiet. How do I know this? Because small data is everywhere, if we know where to look.

  Chapter 8

  A Glimpse Behind the Scenes

  Incorporating Small Data into Your Business and Life

  What polarized the Internet beyond anyone’s imagination was a simple—or maybe not so simple—striped dress.

  The dress, worn by a guest at a wedding ceremony held on the remote Hebridian island of Colonsay, was posted on Tumblr by a member of the wedding band, who asked her followers for their opinion: was the dress blue with black lace fringe, or white with gold lace fringe? “I was just looking for an answer because it was messing with my head,” said Caitlin McNeill, a 21-year-old singer and guitarist.1 Unfortunately, the answer led to even more disagreement. To one set of eyes, the dress appeared to be blue-black, and to a second it appeared to be white-gold. The dress photo soon migrated to Facebook, Twitter and Buzzfeed, which published a poll, “What Color Is This Dress?” that at one point attracted more than 670,000 people simultaneously, breaking all previous Buzzfeed records for traffic.2

  Never mind that the original dress, in fact, was blue and black, and retailed for £50 at Roman Originals, a UK fas
hion chain.3 The robust debate revealed that the differences in how we see color are based entirely on how our brains process visual information. Individual differences in color vision are fairly common, it turns out, and can be attributed to the 6 million or so tiny cones in the back of the human eyeball, known as photoreceptors, that process color in different ways, depending on our genes. Quoted in CNN.com, Dr. Julia Haller, the chief ophthalmologist at WillsEye Hospital in Philadelphia, said, “Ninety-nine percent of the time, we’ll see the same colors . . . But the picture of this dress seems to have tints that hit the sweet spot that’s confusing to a lot of people.”4 Another expert concluded, “This clearly has to do with individual differences in how we perceive the world.”5

  That humans are prone to seeing the world in different ways—while still being more similar than we ever imagine—is what this book is about.

  By now you know I’m Danish by birth—that is to say I’m not American, French, Spanish, English, Scottish, Irish, Brazilian, Australian, Swiss, Kenyan, South African, German, Italian, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Filipino, Austrian, Greek, Guatemalan, Chilean, Argentinian, Colombian, Mexican or a native of any other of the world’s 196 countries. More importantly, as a forensic investigator of emotional DNA, I’ve somehow managed to come up with brands or innovations not despite of my outsider’s status, but because of it. Familiarity, in fact, is at best counterproductive, and at worst, paralyzing.

  A few years ago, when Pepsi asked if I would help them improve the public perception of their soft drink, of course I said yes. But only a few days into the job, I had to acknowledge that my perspective, my senses and my instincts were all compromised. Pepsi—its taste, its bubbles, its cans, its bottles, its advertising—was just too familiar. I had no distance from the brand, no frame of reference about desire, or craving, my own or other people’s. I couldn’t think straight. I couldn’t get inspired. I couldn’t do my job.

  My solution was to get rid of all the Pepsi cans from my refrigerator and kitchen cabinets, so I could better observe and analyze my own responses to craving. I asked friends who were liable to offer me a Pepsi when I visited if they wouldn’t mind doing the same. Physically and psychologically, the next six weeks were an ordeal. I got headaches, found it hard to function normally and, at night, dreamed about Pepsi. The good news is that when the six weeks was up, I had managed to stimulate a response in myself and the other Pepsi drinkers I knew. I had become, again, a stranger to the everyday, an alien to the commonplace.

  Working with Pepsi wasn’t the first time I’ve carried out Subtext Research on myself. The best insights always begin with ourselves. Having interviewed 2,000 or so consumers across the world, it seems only fitting to turn my methodology inward. As self-confident as I may come across sometimes onstage, when I go home to my hotel room at night, I still have a stubborn need for confirmation and validation. It all goes back to my own childhood insecurities. I can suppress them, or pretend they don’t exist, but they’re always there. Over the years I’ve looked on with interest, and sometimes dismay, at how the brands I surround myself with reflect my own confidence (and occasional lack of it).

  The first, of course, is LEGO. (Growing up, I didn’t just build my own LEGOLAND, I also slept in a LEGO bed.) The second brand is Aeronautica Militare, a fashion line I wrote about earlier in this book.

  Growing up, I wasn’t entirely sure what Aeronautica symbolized. I knew only that I liked its patches and wanted to buy one of its shirts. At the time I didn’t know that Aeronautica had any military significance, which, consciously or unconsciously, can be irresistible to a child anxious to find a sense of belonging and identity. Aeronautica and its logos are visually arresting, and it came as no surprise to discover later the well-documented correlation between an oversized logo and a high level of insecurity. Today I still have a few Aeronautica shirts hanging in my closet—an attempt, no doubt, to hang onto my own Twin Self, in this case, a kid who craved a shirt he wasn’t able to buy.

  The third brand? Royal Copenhagen, an elegant porcelain brand founded in 1775, whose debut collection included plates and bowls for the Danish royal family. Most families with children living in Denmark during the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s, including my own parents, owned one or two pieces of Royal Copenhagen china with its signature blue, handcrafted lines. Growing up, I associated the brand with high-end restaurants, royalty, heritage and tradition. Later, when I could afford to, one of the first things I did was to buy a set of Royal Copenhagen plates. Why? Subconsciously, I can’t help but think I wanted to “complete” my life in a way my parents never could. By buying Royal Copenhagen in a culture governed by Janteloven, the Scandinavian moratorium against standing out, maybe I was also telling the culture I had succeeded in my life—that I was someone. It was a moment when I realized the degree to which brands fill in the missing holes of our identities, whether we acknowledge it or not.

  Along with a well-cut suit and a necktie, a luxury watch is almost mandatory in the business world, and I eventually allowed a fourth brand, Rolex, to “say” something about myself. One day, when I was at a meeting, flashing around my Rolex, I noticed a well-dressed older man studying my watch intently. He seemed bemused rather than impressed. Finally he approached me. He couldn’t help but notice my watch; in his experience, only Russians and Chinese wore Rolexes as conspicuous as mine. Also, was I at all aware I was wearing the women’s model? No, I said, ashamed, I wasn’t. Twenty-four hours earlier, my Rolex had been my proudest possession. Now I was mortified. I ended up giving it away and buying the “right” one, which I still wear today.

  Along with the Rolex, for years I also carried around an American Express Centurion Card, known as “the Black Card.” I told myself I’d chosen the card because of its functional benefits, including a concierge and travel agent, personal shoppers at Saks and Gucci, and assorted worldwide hotel privileges, when in fact I was seduced by its emotional appeals. Three or four years ago, when American Express told me they weren’t willing to honor the points I’d accumulated over the years, I let my membership go. I replaced my Amex with a Visa that offered more than double the points. Yet I still felt a huge sense of loss. What had I just given up? Status. Belonging. The feeling that I was special. What would merchants, waiters, hotel clerks and my friends say when I took out my Visa? The answer: nothing. They wouldn’t notice. The validation and worth the Amex Black Card had given me was suddenly very obvious.

  The brands we like, and buy, and surround ourselves with—and by now you know I define a “brand” as anything from the music on our playlists to our shoes, to our sheets, to our toothpaste, to the artwork hanging on our walls—have the profoundest possible things to say about who we are. As brands, our professional job titles are really no different. For example, over the years many people have come to me for job advice. Should they quit their job at the Fortune 100 company and launch a consultancy out of their home? Lost in all the talk about salary, benefits and commuting time are the emotional consequences of a job change, or the vulnerability the people are liable to feel once the logos on their business cards are gone.

  The fear of losing their “branded” identities is as good an explanation as any to me why CEOs and senior executives spend almost no time at all in their own stores or interact with the consumers who keep them in business by buying their razors, sodas, seafood, shirts, granola, frozen foods, perfumes and pharmaceuticals. Even executives who participate in focus groups observe the proceedings behind one-way mirrors, in air-conditioned rooms equipped with snacks, cold drinks, monitors and mute buttons. What they miss, again and again, are those moments when they might uncover something new and valuable about themselves or their brand.

  In some instances, I’ve found that executives don’t even use their own products. A case in point was Ansell, the world’s second-largest manufacturer of medical and industrial gloves and condoms. Recently, Ansell’s executive team invited me to spe
ak at the company’s annual retreat in Sri Lanka, the headquarters of all Ansell’s condom production, to discuss “the future of condoms.” As I entered the room, I noticed that most of the executives were in their 40s, 50s and 60s. This was striking only to the extent that Ansell is in the business of making and selling condoms, a product generally favored by a younger demographic. It soon became obvious that everyone there was accustomed to using standard, clinical descriptions of their product, like “prophylactic” and “protective solutions.” That’s when I told the room we were going to carry out a small experiment. I handed out a condom to everyone in the audience, and then switched off the overhead lights. “We’re now going to do something you’ve never done before,” I said. “It’s sex time! With no lights on!” and I asked people to open their condoms.

  I hadn’t intended to shock anyone, but it was obvious I had. I heard a lot of crackling and rustling in the darkness as Ansell executives and employees attempted to tear open the package’s double seal. When I turned the lights back on a minute later, not a single person in the audience had managed to open the package—in conditions that duplicated how most consumers access condoms.

  This is why I do everything I can to ensure that company executives experience their stores—and products—in the same way consumers do. During my interactions with Tesco, the British multinational grocery retailer, the CEO introduced “Mission Feet on the Floor,” a program in which every executive was required to work on the floor of one of its grocery stores for several days at a time. To help them understand how Tesco’s food tasted compared to its rivals, executives were also invited to an offsite location and asked to prepare and cook all of Tesco’s premade sandwiches, salads and hamburgers, as well as the foods of their competitors. In Colombia, I once consulted for a bank chain notorious for its slow customer service and long lines. I asked bank officials to pretend they were customers. It was an exercise in frustration, and even rage. Some executives waited up to an hour in line, while others were punted from teller to teller in order to secure a simple signature. When it was time to present my findings, I told the executive team that from now on we were implementing three new rules: No one should have to wait longer than three minutes for customer service; customers should be asked to sign a piece of paper only once; and there would always be a parking space available. A year later, it was the premier bank in South America for customer service.