The Red Sneakers Effect and The Psychology of Distinctiveness in Marketing

An Interview with Behavioral Scientist and Author, Richard Shotton

Brands need to distinguish themselves from their competitors. However, much of modern marketing plays it safe and simply follows the established conventions of the industry.

How should marketers think about the psychology of distinctiveness? And how can they apply these principles of consumer psychology to stand out, be memorable, and confer social status?

To answer these questions, I spoke to author and behavioral scientist Richard Shotton. His newest book, The Illusion of Choice identifies 16 and a 1/2 psychological biases that are highly relevant to marketing, and help flesh out the role of distinctiveness in marketing.

Along the way, you may just gain some fashion tips. If you’re trying to gain social status, should you reach for that powerplay hoodie, or those red sneakers?

Let’s dive in

The role of distinctiveness in consumer psychology is complex. How should marketers think about the psychology of distinctiveness?

There's a very general principle which is that if you want to be noticed, and if you want to be remembered, you want to be distinct.

Supporting this idea is a very well-known study from the early 1930s, by a brilliantly named German psychologist Hedwig von Restorff. The upshot is that we tend to notice what is distinctive. In her study, you give people a long list of, say, letters, on a page. And then, every so often, you sprinkle in a few numbers.

When that list is taken away from them, and they're asked what they remembered, they're much more likely to recall the numbers - the distinctive bits of information.

I often talk to brands about the unappreciated role of distinctiveness. They should identify their category conventions, split them into two groups, and think about which ones belong to that category and are there for a good reason. Leave those alone.

Then think about which ones are there just for tradition's sake. If you can break the pattern, and get a few that "don't seem to belong," you get over the first problem of communication and memory: simply standing out.

I love this as a set of studies because it contradicts so much of modern marketing practice. If you look at marketing, this is the opposite of what most people do. Most people look at how their competitors behave and then mimic that. They don't want to be too different and perturb their consumer’s psychology. But von Restorff's work shows us that this is a recipe for becoming ignorable and unmemorable.

Relatedly, there is the famous Red Sneakers Effect, which shows that distinctiveness doesn't just boost memory; it can also increase social status. What is the Red Sneakers Effect?

I later discovered a fantastic study from Francesca Gino, which gives people another reason for appreciating distinctiveness and breaking their category conventions. Dr. Gino performed this study at academic conferences of all places, where she observed a general norm to wear a sharp outfit - a stylish dress for women, and jackets and ties for men. But what might one's style of dress illustrate?

As people arrived at the conference, she notes down their style of dress on a simple continuum from scruffy to smart. And then, after she's done that, she gauges their general success as an academic by questioning them about their number of publications. So now she has the data to assess the relationship between their fashion style, and their academic success.

She finds a significant inverse correlation between the number of publications and the smartness of their dress. That is, the better dressed you are, the worse you are as an academic.

Why would that be? She argues that dressing poorly requires social status, the confidence to break convention. People who break convention, and don't have any social status tend to be punished, which serves as a deterrent. But people who have status get away with it. Hence, The Red Sneakers Effect: breaking established social conventions signals high status.

How does The Red Sneakers Effect appear in The Business World?

I always use a work example: Imagine the CEO coming to a meeting wearing Bermuda shorts or flip-flops. No one's going to say anything. But now imagine if the intern does that. They would probably be sent home! You need status to break convention.

Francesca Gino's follow-up studies show a robust relationship between social status and breaking convention, such that the latter can serve as a symbol for the former. It gets to the stage where we start assuming that if people have broken a convention, they must be of high status.

As you mention in your book, there are important nuances to The Red Sneakers Effect, and its influence on social status

Yes, there are important nuances to The Red Sneakers Effect. For example, if you already have symbols of prestige, breaking conventions will not have an additive effect. You don't seem even more high status for breaking a convention if you already have an abundance of other status symbols on hand. In this case, breaking convention will have the opposite effect and detract from your image.

And so it isn't a bias that affects all people, in the same way. Importantly, there is this mitigating factor of the current level of status.

The second significant nuance is that you must show people that you're deliberately breaking this convention. It's not that you accidentally wore your Bermuda shorts, because you thought the meeting would be at the beach. Instead, you wore them because, frankly, you can. It's a choice.

Readers from The Bay Area may think of Mark Zuckerberg's famous "powerplay" hoodies from the early 2000s

The hoodies were very interesting. I'm not sure what the dress culture is there now, but I suppose it's real powerplay when he's wearing the hoodie amongst loads of formally dressed business people in suits and ties. Maybe at the time, everyone did wear suits, and business fashion changed. Now in Silicon Valley, you're the odd one out if you wear a suit or anything formal.

In today's era, the "red sneakers" for Silicon Valley may not be a hoodie, but maybe dressing like an 18th-century English Lord with a top hat and cane. It goes to show that what counts as breaking convention depends on the convention itself. And this will obviously vary over time and place.

Photo by Kris Gerhard on Unsplash

About Richard Shotton

**Richard Shotton** specialises in applying behavioural science to marketing. He has worked in marketing for 23 years and helps brands such as Google, Facebook, BrewDog and Barclays with their challenges. He is the author of The Choice Factory, a best-selling book, which explains how behavioural science can solve business challenges. His latest book, The Illusion of Choice is out in March 2023. In 2021 he was made an honorary fellow of the IPA and an associate of the Moller Institute, Churchill College, Cambridge University.

References for The Consumer Psychology of Distinctiveness

Bellezza, S., Gino, F., & Keinan, A. (2014). The surprising benefits of nonconformity. MIT Sloan Management Review.

Bellezza, S., Gino, F., & Keinan, A. (2014). The red sneakers effect: Inferring status and competence from signals of nonconformity. Journal of consumer research, 41(1), 35-54.

Dubois, D., Jung, S., & Ordabayeva, N. (2021). The psychology of luxury consumption. Current Opinion in Psychology, 39, 82-87.

Shotton, R. (2023), The Illusion of Choice: 16 ½ psychological biases that influence what we buy, Harriman House

Wallace, W. P. (1965). Review of the historical, empirical, and theoretical status of the von Restorff phenomenon. Psychological bulletin, 63(6), 410.