Lura Knows People
A newsletter on how to human for those of us in marketing, comms, persuasion, advocacy, and influence.
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This July 4th, celebrate our country and try some intergroup contact
When school segregation was abolished by Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, the central legal reasoning was black students’ equal treatment under the law. But there was another very important motivation for racially integrating schools, and it's relevant to our current politically polarized environment: intergroup contact.
What is the golden quadrant and how does hopecore content help companies get there?
I’ve been reading recently about companies using a content trend called hopecore to attract consumer interest and generate sales. While hopecore can involve any content meant to be positive, happy, or awe-inspiring, these brands are focusing on a specific formula in which a poor person is given a large sum of money.
Shared reality and the case of the invisible ships
I’ve been reading recently about companies using a content trend called hopecore to attract consumer interest and generate sales. While hopecore can involve any content meant to be positive, happy, or awe-inspiring, these brands are focusing on a specific formula in which a poor person is given a large sum of money.
Prevention is invisible: Branding and PR's impact is least apparent when it’s most effective
A key responsibility for branding, public relations, or other roles charged with serving as brand guardian is to anticipate potential harms. These roles advise against risky moves or identify ways to mitigate their potential downsides. But getting buy-in from other teams can be challenging because of how people think about events.
Why is it so hard to change people's minds?
Did you know that people actively resist being persuaded? One of the reasons I’m so negative on the possibility of getting people to change their minds by presenting facts to them is because we all have what researchers call a persuasion sentry.
You're projecting onto your audience. Research can help you stop.
It’s hard to know what other people think and feel. We’re pretty bad at understanding our own emotions and motivations, and even worse at other people’s. The solution our brains have arrived at is projection.
People will answer your questions. Be careful what you ask them.
Imagine volunteering for a psychology experiment. You solve a puzzle and afterward you’re asked how you did it. Did you rely more on the hippocampus proper or the dentate gyrus during that task? It used to be common for psychologists to study mental processes by asking people to describe what happened in their heads.