Essential Psychological Principles for Event Planning! Recommended collection

Many students will encounter the "difficulty" of planning an event in their daily work scenarios.

Many students who have never organized an event may look for some methodologies and see how similar events are conducted. This is an effective method, but in the long run, this cannot effectively improve your event planning capabilities.

First of all, we need to understand what event planning is.

Planning work refers to achieving a goal through planning a plan based on a clear goal.

Generally divided into three stages

1. Deliver information clearly and effectively

2. Actively influence users to perform certain actions

3. Let users actively spread the word

However, if we return to the work scenario of event planning, most of us can only influence users through copywriting, event creative means, and communication means.

If we pursue methodology too much, although we may understand how others organize an event from 0 to 1, it is difficult for us to replicate it perfectly and it is also difficult to achieve event results that exceed expectations.

If we break down the event planning methodology one level further, what makes marketing users participate in events and spread the word is actually largely based on psychological principles.

Only by mastering the relevant psychological principles and applying them to event planning can we plan good events.

A cookie-cutter methodology cannot improve your event planning ability. Only by learning the underlying logic that drives user actions can you achieve better communication, which is also the underlying logic of event planning.

Below, we will use specific cases to help everyone understand the application of psychology in event planning and how it affects user behavior.

1. Operant Conditioning Theory

Operant conditioning: named by American psychologist Skinner, it is a behavioral change caused by stimulation. Operant conditioning differs from classical conditioning in that operant conditioning is concerned with voluntary behavior, whereas Pavlovian conditioning is concerned with involuntary behavior.

The organism must first make the desired response and then receive a "reward," a reinforcing stimulus, to strengthen the response. The essence of learning is not the replacement of stimulus, but the change of response.

Skinner believed that almost all human behaviors are the result of operant reinforcement, and that people can change other people's reactions through the influence of reinforcement. In terms of teaching, teachers act as designers and architects of student behavior, breaking down learning goals into many small tasks and reinforcing them one by one. Students gradually complete learning tasks through operant conditioning.

The design of the blind box marketing model largely uses the theory of operant conditioning.

For blind box buyers, opening the blind box and getting the desired image is a "reward", which will positively reinforce the behavior of buying the blind box. Uncertain purchase results are like food that drops with a certain probability, which makes it impossible for the buyer to judge the relationship between the behavior and the result, so the behavior is likely to continue indefinitely.

Probabilistic positive feedback makes it impossible for consumers to quantify the relationship between the money they spend and the rewards they receive, that is, it is possible to obtain huge positive feedback at very little cost.

In order to obtain positive feedback (such as a rare toy with only a 1% chance of being drawn), consumers have to repeatedly consume blind boxes, just like a mouse that does not know when it will get food and can only keep pressing buttons in the hope of getting positive feedback. At this time, humans and mice are at the same IQ level.

If a POPMART direct-operated store has had rare items appear multiple times, or if multiple people who have won rare items in different branches have common behaviors, and this news spreads, then people will flock to the store and infer the reasons - such as speculating that the store is a flagship store and has an advantage in supply, or that blind boxes that arrive in the morning are more likely to have shipping batches of rare items.

2. Barnum Effect

People often believe that a general and general personality description accurately reveals their own characteristics. In psychology, this tendency is called the "Barnum effect."

The Barnum effect is often used in various psychological tests to vaguely describe each person's personality traits in order to gain the trust of users.

This psychological principle is often used in various personality tests, which use some generally applicable personality descriptions to make you agree with your test results. It is used in the personality test of NetEase Cloud Music.

3. Proportion bias

Proportion bias means that in many situations, people are more inclined to consider changes in proportions or ratios rather than changes in numerical values themselves. In other words, people are more sensitive to proportions than to numerical values themselves.

The core of proportional bias lies in the "sense of multiplier", and its specific application in marketing is mainly in the expression of price.

The same pricing strategy expressed differently will result in different consumer perceptions.

In event planning, proportional bias is often used in the copywriting module, because for the same event discount, different wordings with the same discount strength will give users different perceptions.

For example: many businesses will offer a 1 yuan exchange rate, for example, adding 1 yuan can be used to exchange for a set of toiletries and care products worth 50 yuan. If we regard this 50 yuan as a normal benefit, users will actually not be able to perceive the value of the product. However, if the 1 yuan exchange strategy is adopted, users will feel that they are making 50 times the profit.

There is a very simple rule of use: during promotions, low-priced goods can be discounted to make consumers feel more of a bargain; and high-priced goods can be discounted to make consumers feel a bargain; that is, when the price is low, the proportion is used, and when the price is high, the number is used.

4. Loss Aversion

Loss aversion refers to the phenomenon that when people are faced with the same amount of gains and losses, they find the losses more unbearable. The negative utility of the same amount of loss is 2.5 times the positive utility of the same amount of gain.

Loss aversion reflects that people's risk preferences are not consistent. When it comes to gains, people are risk-averse; when it comes to losses, people are risk-seeking.

In fact, loss aversion is very common in event planning. The most common one is the recently popular bargaining method, which generally gives users a super high gain expectation, that is, the completion degree has reached more than 99%, and you only need to complete the remaining 1%.

However, users will find that it is particularly easy in the early stages, but becomes increasingly difficult as time goes on. However, they always feel that they can get the prize with just a little bit of effort. They may ask you to share and invite friends to bargain, but when you want to give up, you find that you are almost achieving the achievement and don’t want to give up.

This is actually loss aversion, a human weakness that was seized upon by the event organizers.

5. Peak-End Rule

After we experience something, all we can remember are the experiences at the peak and the end. The proportion of good and bad experiences in the process and the duration of the good and bad experiences have almost no effect on our memory. The quicker the end appears after the peak, the more impressive the event will be.

The "peak" and "end" here are actually the so-called "moment of truth" (MOT). MOT (Moment of Truth) is the most shocking and influential management concept and behavior model in the service industry.

The application of the Peak-End Rule in event planning is actually very important.

Because, as the planner and organizer of the event, we will design a series of event processes and creative ideas for users to experience. However, if we want users to remember the highlights or key messages of the event, we must subconsciously design key moments, that is, memory points.

For example, at the end of the event, you give each user a precious gift, or a certain part of the event impresses the users and they spontaneously spread the word for you. These are all applications of the Peak-End Rule.

The picture shows IKEA's "Peak-End Rule"

6. Gambler’s Fallacy

The gambler's fallacy is a common illogical reasoning method in life, which believes that the results of a series of events all imply an autocorrelation relationship to some extent. That is, if the result of event A affects event B, then B is said to be "dependent" on A.

For example, a gambler who has a bad night always believes that after a few more hands, luck will turn around and he will be lucky. In the opposite case, a streak of good weather has led to concerns that heavy rain will fall over the weekend.

The essence of the gambler's fallacy is to always consider two independent things in conjunction with each other.

The most common model is the lottery. Many people will think that they will have better luck next time, but in fact, there will not be much connection between your next time and the previous one.

7. Social Currency and Memes

Meme: It refers to thoughts or ideas that are imitated and spread among people in a cultural field and passed down from generation to generation. The word meme has a pronunciation similar to that of gene, which means "similarities caused by the same genes", so meme refers to cultural genes.

If we use the Internet's buzzwords, "梗" is the most appropriate way to describe memes.

Everyone is a monkey seeking social capital

In social situations, people need to demonstrate their knowledge, abilities, talents, and status. The high-energy nature of memes just meets people's needs to demonstrate their social status in conversations. Maybe it is to show your sense of humor, maybe it is to show your high IQ, or maybe it is to reflect your status in the circle culture. As long as you use some "memes" in social interaction, you can improve your sense of social advantage at a very low cost.

A meme is the "high-energy replication factor" of content. A piece of content that goes viral must contain the key factor of a meme.

For example, various literary genres that have become popular recently have become a communication element.

For example, the recently popular KFC "Crazy Thursday Literature" and the previously popular privilege literature are all forms of content that are spontaneously spread by users. In fact, this is a kind of "stalk".

Behind the users' memes, what is reflected is people's pursuit of individuality, which is also the characteristic given to people in this information-rich era.

They bring out the memes because they are specific sentences and different from plain text. The underlying mentality is, I know this thing, I am different, and then they will spread it.

Social currency: Social currency originates from the concept of economics in social media. It is used to measure the user's tendency to share brand-related content. Simply put, it is to use people's willingness to share with others to shape your own products or ideas, thereby achieving the purpose of word-of-mouth communication.

It can also be understood in this way that social currency is the consumption of knowledge reserves by two or more individuals in society before they gain a sense of identity and connection. Or something to talk about.

So what is the relationship between social currency and memes?

Memes are a form of social currency. We can understand it this way: when you know a meme that others don’t know, and then you share it with your friends, then the "meme" you share is social currency.

In event planning, creating social currency and memes is necessary in the communication stage, because if you want to break through the circle of communication, social currency and memes are essential elements.

8. PBL Model

These three letters are the abbreviations of the three English words points, badges, and rankings.

Friends who often play games may know that general game designs often use three elements to increase player usage time.

1. Points

Points are generally considered to be used to motivate users to complete certain tasks. Users are willing to exchange accumulated points for other benefits and work harder to earn points.

2. Badges

Badges are a collection of points and a visual representation of achievement. Use badges to show users’ progress in the gamification process.

3. Leaderboard

The essence of rankings is social competition. Through the rankings, users can compare their level with other users, which can stimulate users to move up, give users strong driving force and stickiness, and thus increase user activity.

If you observe carefully, you will find that the PBL model exists in almost any membership system, such as airline points exchange for miles, etc.

In event planning, the PBL model exists in various types of quiz activities. For example, the scores after the questions can be accumulated and exchanged for prizes. Sharing quiz activities can get new quiz opportunities. Through the stimulation of rankings, prizes, badges and other target objects, users are stimulated to share quiz activities again and again to obtain quiz quotas.

The above are the psychological principles and some economic concepts commonly used in event planning .