It is said that product and marketing experts all "understand human nature". How can you do that?

After working in the product and marketing fields for a while, we will hear or feel a saying, that is, "If you want to do a good job in product and marketing, you must understand human nature."

For example, Zhang Xiaolong , the father of WeChat , shared his product philosophy in a speech, and "grasping human nature" was fully reflected in his views. He concluded that WeChat's " Friends Circle " satisfies people's human nature of gaining a sense of existence, recognition, and appreciation, while the "People Nearby" and "Drift Bottle" functions satisfy people's curiosity.

Someone analyzed hundreds of successful marketing cases at home and abroad and found that these cases all touched on one of the 11 human desires: curiosity, vanity, jealousy, arrogance, conflict, sin, scarcity, greed, aesthetics, eroticism, and sociality .

Similarly, users are willing to share and spread certain products and marketing activities because it usually makes them look handsome, smart, humorous, hardworking, and passionate about life, or insightful, caring, and experienced.

Even religions with a long history such as Buddhism and Christianity, as well as well-known psychologists, have conducted in-depth explorations into human nature.

• Buddhism believes that people have five poisonous hearts, namely "greed (greed), anger (anger), ignorance (stupidity), arrogance (arrogance), and doubt (suspicion)". These five kinds of mind are like poison and will hinder our practice.
• Christianity believes that people have "seven deadly sins", namely "greed, lust, gluttony, envy, laziness, arrogance, and wrath."
• Maslow's hierarchy of needs theory divides human needs from low to high into: physiological needs, safety needs, emotional needs, respect needs and self-actualization needs.

So what exactly is human nature? I once saw a very inspiring and highly summarized summary of human nature.

Modern sociologists believe that there is only one human race in the world and only one human nature, which is the prerequisite for different ethnic groups to communicate and reach understanding. Innate in human nature is the desire for survival, the desire for victory, the desire for a partner who is similar to oneself, and the concern for one's own status, which are derived from the harsh environment in which our ancestors lived.

It can be seen that human nature is human nature and instinct, which is the basic desire of human beings. It not only transcends national boundaries, nationalities and languages, but also transcends history and remains unchanged.

Human evolution and social evolution

Since human nature is so important, how can we understand it? How can we gain a deeper understanding of human nature?

The answer is: think about human nature from the perspective of human evolution.

This is because the essence of human nature is the imprint left on human beings by the great power of evolution .

Before introducing this point in detail, let us first review several key processes in human evolution and social development.

As can be seen in the picture, from reptiles, primates, and ancient apes, to humans who walk upright, and then to modern society with a glorious civilization, the entire history of human evolution spans time and space and stretches for hundreds of millions of years.

With the development of mankind to this day, it can be said that it can go to heaven and earth and is omnipotent, and has become the undisputed master of this earth.

Nowadays, when the word "evolution" is mentioned, most people probably can only think of the life and work of primitive people who "eat raw meat, drink blood, gather and hunt", and feel that evolution has nothing to do with us modern civilized people.

However, this is not the case. Even today, we must be aware of the power of evolution.

First of all, in terms of time span, the mere hundreds of years of modern society only accounts for one millionth of the hundreds of millions of years of human evolution, like a blink of an eye. Modern society has brought very little impact on human physiology and genes.

Secondly, although science and technology are advancing with each passing day and new products are being constantly updated, the mark of billions of years of evolution on human beings has not been erased, and people's nature is almost the same as it was billions of years ago.

That is to say, even in the 21st century, our brains and minds are still thinking in the context of a gathering and hunting lifestyle.

For example, "greed, family affection, and curiosity" in human nature are essentially the products of evolution, and have changed very little over tens of thousands of years.

Human nature from the perspective of evolution

greedy

People are born "greedy and selfish", there is no distinction between "good" and "evil".

In ancient times when food was extremely scarce, in order to survive and pass on genes, people had to adopt selfish strategies. If at that time, you had "learned from Lei Feng, Kong Rong and others and sacrificed yourself for others" every day, you would have starved to death and been eliminated.

Gluttony is one of the manifestations of human greed.

To this day, people all over the world generally love delicious food, especially sweets. The reason for this is that food supply was unstable during the gathering era, so high-calorie sweets were very popular. In order to survive, when people encounter sweet fruits hanging on branches, they can't wait to gobble them up until they are full.

As a result, this "instinct of eating high-calorie foods in large mouthfuls" is deeply rooted in our genes and has been passed down from generation to generation. Therefore, people who suffer from weight loss should not blame themselves for not being able to resist the temptation of delicious food, because it is all because of "genes."

Curiosity

People generally have a curiosity mentality. Whenever they see something new and interesting, they immediately become excited and their eyes light up. However, people have no interest in boring and dull things, and their brains may even ignore them instinctively.

This curious nature is also related to evolution, that is, the evolution of the human brain.

To explain this problem, we need to lay more groundwork and first look at the structure of the human brain.

Paul McLean, a famous American neuroscientist, believes that the human brain has three parts, including the reptilian brain, the mammalian brain and the neocortex, which evolved successively in the era of reptiles, early mammals and primates respectively.

Among them, the reptilian brain is responsible for the body's muscles, balance, breathing, heartbeat and other basic functions. It keeps working in automated processing mode 24/7 without interruption, even in deep sleep.

Under the control of the reptilian brain, people have almost the same behavioral patterns as animals such as snakes and lizards: rigid, paranoid, impulsive, sensitive, and unchanging.

Moreover, in order to reduce the burden on the brain, the reptilian brain not only automatically performs routine tasks such as breathing and heartbeat, but also automatically ignores all "routine" information and does not transmit it upward to the mammalian brain and neocortex to interfere with them.

Just think about it, if there is no such filtering mechanism, your brain will have to process carefully all the information you see when you open your eyes (even your own bedroom, relatives and friends who are very familiar to you). If you are constantly startled like this, you will definitely not be able to withstand the physical stress. I haven't even started any serious work yet, but I'm already overthinking it.

There is no doubt that the brain processes advertising and marketing information using the same mechanism.

This is why one of the most basic elements of good advertising is "innovation and novelty".

Otherwise, it will be ruthlessly ignored by the reptilian brain, let alone the neocortex, which is responsible for more complex logic and decision-making, to "leave an impression, stimulate dissemination, and facilitate sales conversion."

However, many advertising and marketing professionals have not yet fully understood this point.

The tragedy that results is that they get up early and stay up late to take advantage of marketing opportunities , and "are busy with photo-editing during every festive season", painstakingly producing a bunch of cookie-cutter, uncreative "Happy Dragon Boat Festival, Happy Children's Day " posters, which are read by very few people, let alone inspire self-propagation. Or, even if a huge amount of money is spent on online and offline investments, it will all be wasted.

This is because even if these ads flash before the user’s eyes, they will be filtered out by the reptilian brain because they are not new, and the user will feel like they “didn’t notice them at all.” Or, even if you watch the commercials compulsively and seriously in the elevator or in front of the TV, you will forget them in the blink of an eye.

The end result is that because of a lack of understanding of human nature and violation of the laws of evolution, the advertising produced is ineffective.

Family

Family affection is also part of human nature and is the starting point for insights and creativity of countless successful marketing works.

However, what is cruel and unbelievable is that family affection has nothing to do with "dedication and greatness" but is essentially a product of evolution.

In ancient times when dangers were lurking everywhere and food was scarce, it would have been difficult for anyone to survive without the family affection that was reflected and evolved through close cooperation and mutual protection among family members.

Even the deep love between mother and child, which brings tears to people's eyes whenever it is mentioned, originates from evolution.

First of all, human babies are extremely fragile and cannot walk and eat right after birth like many animals. Secondly, based on the division of labor in the family, men mostly go out to find food and hunt, while mothers are responsible for taking care of babies.

In this case, if the mother is not careful enough or even ignores or hates her baby, the chances of the baby surviving are extremely low. It can be seen that the existence or not of mother-child affection directly determines whether the offspring can continue.

To put it more cruelly, those maternal genes without maternal love have been eliminated in the process of evolution.

Behavior and physiology from an evolutionary perspective

Powerful evolution has also determined many behavioral traits and physiological characteristics that humans take for granted today.

For example, this is reflected in many aspects of people’s perception of advertising information.

In print advertisements, if a person or animal's face appears in the picture, it is more likely to attract people's attention.

This is because the rest of advertising, such as words, numbers and symbols, only appeared much later in human evolution. The human brain's ability to process images of people and animals has evolved over billions of years, so it must be more efficient and sophisticated.

Furthermore, as a result of evolution, humans have the ability to understand and remember concrete things far more than abstract information.

Steve Jobs, the founder of the Apple empire, was well aware of this feature and often used it successfully in his speeches at product launch conferences.

For example, when launching the iPod, he used the intuitive and vivid expression "put 1,000 songs in your pocket" to replace boring and difficult to understand technical parameters such as "storage capacity and appearance size", which was very impressive. When launching the thin and light notebook MacBook Air, he even took the product out of a large kraft paper envelope on the spot. This astonishing and stunning scene vividly demonstrated the selling point of the new notebook, "thin as a cicada's wing, light as a feather", which is unforgettable.

In daily life, we can all feel that compared with static outdoor print advertisements, we are more easily attracted by video advertisements and flashing neon lights.

The roots of this behavioral trait are also related to evolution. In ancient times, in order to always be on guard against ferocious beasts that might be lurking nearby, humans were very sensitive to any slight movement of leaves and shrubs in this seemingly peaceful scene.

Over time, humans have become very attentive to dynamically changing images and information.

A typical application of this feature is in the CCTV weather forecast advertisement. The weather forecast is displayed in the center of the screen, with only very narrow areas on both sides used to display advertisements. I have seen many brands add a dynamic “highlight sweep” effect when displaying their logos and product names. This small detail is crucial in grabbing the user’s precious attention.

In addition, many of today's human physical functions, living habits and disease causes are also closely related to evolution.

For example, when foreign objects enter the throat and nostrils, people will instinctively cough and sneeze. If poison is accidentally ingested, it will cause vomiting. These three body functions are the body's protective mechanisms formed through evolution, which immediately eliminate foreign objects that may cause adverse consequences.

In today's society, knee joint diseases and back diseases are very common. This is not only caused by poor physical fitness and bad living habits of individuals, but the more fundamental reason is that the skeletal structure of the knees and waist that evolved in billions of years of reptiles has not yet fully adapted to today's upright walking - even though humans have been walking upright for millions of years.

The frequent occurrence of obesity and "three high" diseases is also because the human body has not yet fully evolved to adapt to the current eating habits of "big fish, big meat, high oil and high calories".

Therefore, from an evolutionary perspective, the healthiest lifestyle is one similar to that of ancient people. For example, strolling in the wilderness, picking wild fruits, and eating whole grains, instead of sitting in the office for long periods of time and overeating.

It can be seen that it is not just that "we are walking too fast and the soul can't keep up", in fact, "the body can't keep up either."

Conclusion

People are the center of society and the starting point that should be considered when making products and doing marketing.

Marketing tools and interactive technologies are constantly changing, but the human nature of consumers has not changed much. By grasping this point, you can stay clear-headed in a complex environment and plan products that have countless fans and marketing campaigns that touch people's hearts.

To deeply understand human nature, we must not be distracted by immediate material factors, but must think and trace its origins from the perspective of billions of years of human evolution.

For example, the "insight" often mentioned in the marketing industry is to put aside all "technology, tools and materials" and think about people's own needs. Only this kind of insight into human nature can transcend nationality, national boundaries, age, and class, and is the most powerful and lasting.

In addition to human nature, almost all of human's physical functions, behavioral habits, and even diseases and hardships can be traced back to the evolutionary perspective of "survival of the fittest."

In short, evolution is great. It not only makes us who we are today, but also deeply affects everything about us all the time.

To grasp the essence of the problem, to become a product or marketing expert, or a winner in life, you must grasp human nature and think more from an evolutionary perspective.