The next key factor in the steps framework is public. And to help us think about public, I want you to think about an old Apple laptop. Now, Apple always wants their products to be easy to use. I remember the first time I opened up the box of an iPhone and there was no real instruction booklet that was easy to see. They want their products to be so simple and intuitive that people can get them right away. And their laptop was the same way, When you open up a laptop, you need to figure out which side is the right side to open, so they use their logo like a north star. Set the laptop down on the table, the Apple logo is facing you, it's ready to open and ready to go. But at a marketing meeting a little over a decade ago, they realized there was a small problem with that idea. If the logo faces the user when the laptop is closed, when the laptop is open, it's upside down for everybody else. Now, that's not a big problem for the user, the user knows what laptop they bought. But if the logo is upside down for everybody else, it makes it harder for others to see what laptop the user bought. The user might not care, right? They know what laptop they have, they spent thousands of dollars and weeks of their time buying it, but other people care a lot, because people tend to imitate others. As we talked about monkey see, monkey do, but if people can't see what others are doing, they can't imitate it. And so Apple actually went ahead and flip the logo, make it upside down for the user, but right side up for everybody else to make it easier to see. Because if something is built to show, it's built to grow, the easier it is to see, the easier it is to imitate. And we talked about these ideas a little bit before when we talked about the science of conformity. There's something called social proof, and the idea very simply is when people don't know what to do, they look to others to help them figure it out, so we talked about earlier, right? When you're in a foreign city, you're trying to figure out what restaurant to go to, you look for one that's full, because you assume it's pretty good. We look to others for information about what we should do ourselves. But importantly, if we can't see what others are doing, we can't imitate it. If we walk by that restaurant and the front window is not made of glass, there's a brick wall with a door and we can't see inside, we're not going to know how popular it is, and we're going to be unlikely to go there. Same thing if you ever watched the dynamics of a standing ovation at a sports match, or at the opera at the theater, everybody stands up and applauds. But if you notice if someone in the front row stands up and applauds, everyone else will stand up. But if someone in the back row stands up and applauds, not everyone else will stand up. Why is that people not like the people in the back row? No, they like them just fine, they just can't see them, they're not going to crane their necks to look all the way around to figure out who's in the back. The easier something is to see, the easier it is to imitate. And so in thinking about how to apply that idea, we need to make private things more public, make the unobservable things more observable. Too often, what we do is not easy for others to see, right? For example, you can see what shirts someone's wearing and decide that's a nice shirt, I might like to buy something similar, but it's harder to see their socks, so you're less like it imitated. You're more likely to imitate someone else if they bought a new car, but you're less likely to imitate their toothpaste, because you can't see what toothpaste they've bought. And so if we want to get our ideas to catch on, we need to make the unobservable more observable. For one of my favorite examples of this, I want you to think back to the portable CD player. Remember when you used to have to run around like you were carrying a pizza so it didn't skip, you had to make that big choice to want to exercise or I want to listen to music, but you couldn't do both at once, it's a dark, dark time in the history of music. Then they came out with something new, something better, called the digital music player. Remember the first time when you saw a digital music player, it seemed great. The functions were fantastic, much better than a portable CD player, there was only one problem, it was really expensive. And so everyone was sitting there going, well, I don't like having a run like him carrying a pizza, but I don't want to put down $400 to buy this new device. I'm sort of caught in the crosshairs, I don't know which to do, I'm sort of balanced one way or balance the other. At the time, no one could tell what device someone was using. Everybody had black headphones, whether you had a portable CD player, or a tape deck, or an MP3 player, no one knew what you had. And then Apple did something really simple, they came out with white headphones for their iPod. Now, the first time you see some of the white headphones you go, that's neat, I've never seen that before. And the second time you go interesting, the third time you go, a lot of people seem to be using this device. And that tipped the scales to help people realize we have lots of others are doing it again, I should be more likely to do it, easier to see, easier to imitate. And we can think about the same thing with many other brands, McDonald's, for example, used to tout how many billions they've served on their signs. Again, make it easier to see how many people like the brand, and make it easier for other to imitate.
