It’s a message that makes us feel strangely optimistic and important. It also gets us to buy stuff.

I recently found myself eavesdropping on a conversation at a cafe between two men in their twenties. “I want to try live more in the moment,” one of them said. “In fact, I’m going to have to put some serious effort into this notion, because I tend to focus on the future and, in the process, I neglect the present.” His friend, nodding away, seemed in perfect agreement. It was eerily similar to other conversations I’d heard, and had, in the last year. This feeling of neglecting the present is a real phenomenon.

As the tentacles of technology continue to encroach further into our personal space, people are only ever semi-present. Think of the last time you ate dinner with friends. How many cell phones were taken out at the gathering? How many texts were received and sent? How many times did a phone ring? How often did your companions check for emails? There was a time when I’d enjoy a quiet moment sitting in a restaurant, surveying the scene, as I waited for my dinner date to arrive. Now, feelings of self-consciousness overcome me. I feel conspicuous and a bit of a loser with no real connection. As a result, I too reach for my smart phone. And that still moment between arrival and reconnecting with a friend has become a thing of the past.

The erosion of the present is a real phenomenon. And it gets compounded when news events, like the death of Steve Jobs or Whitney Houston, remind you of the fragility and transience of life and force you to question whether you are, in fact, making the most of every moment. But this anxiety is also something that’s increasingly being used by marketers to sell products. In a recent advertisement for Honda, Matthew Broderick tells us,  “Sometimes you have to live a little … Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it!” Another car ad, for Citroen’s latest DS3 model, has Marilyn Monroe questioning people’s taste for nostalgia and their desire to live in the past. Her advice is as direct as it is breathy. She says, “If I had one thing to say, it would be: live your life now!” Of course, Citroen will help show you the way.

This message makes us feel strangely optimistic, important even. Time’s a wasting, you only live once, and you have agency to push back against the frantic busyness of today’s world. But there may also be another dynamic at work. In 2005, Scott D. Swain and Lisa J. Abendroth of Boston University and Richard Hanna of Boston College discovered by studying consumers and advertising campaigns that creating a sense of “urgency” actually increases purchases.

One of Hollywood’s more successful producers recently informed me that ‘living in the moment’ has replaced Hollywood’s previous favorite aphorism, ‘You can make it happen.’ This supposedly fashionable notion is well over 2,500 years old. After all, it was the Buddha who famously taught, “Do not dwell in the past. Do not dream of the future. Concentrate the mind on the present moment.” I guess it is just a matter of time before some brand adapts the line as part of a larger marketing scheme.

As with all addictions, our intense fascination with life-changing tech must be managed. I found this out the hard way–when my rental car met the parking garage wall.

Recently I was sitting around the boardroom table of a major security company in Tel Aviv, when I noticed something quite unusual. There was black duct tape covering the camera lenses of every laptop and tablet in the room. The small microphone outlets were taped over as well. I was curious, and asked the head of security why this was the case. He explained that one could not be too cautious. He went on to say that, without exception, all electronic devices could be hacked into.

The irony was not lost on me. After all, this is a firm with the finest security-minded experts in the world on their payroll, and they’re making it company policy for employees to cover cameras and microphones with duck tape! I couldn’t help but feel it was all a bit paranoid as I left their office and headed for my rental car down the street.

I got into the car, put the digital key in the lock, and… nothing. The car was totally dead. Then my cell phone rang, and it was the head of security. In a teasing voice he told me I shouldn’t be surprised to find my car would not start. They had, after all, just hacked it.

Now, I’ve heard about hacking computers, cell phones, and even networks as secure as the U.S. military, but hacking a car? Clearly, the head of security was making a point. I hung up the phone, turned the key, and immediately the car’s engine sprang to life. Point taken.

According to Dave Evans, the chief futurist at Cisco, by 2020 there will be 50 billion devices online, and these will include gadgets that don’t yet exist–for example, intelligent fridges that can detect when the milk is turning. Those paid to know about such things are predicting ridiculously low costs for access to such technology, like 1 cent to connect a device online.

In 1999, Kevin Ashton first used the phrase “Internet of things” to describe his vision of connecting the physical world to the online world. He was subsequently instrumental in inventing RFID (radio frequency identification), a system that connects the physical world to the Internet via micro sensors. These sensors already track barcodes and price tags, but will soon be everywhere else. There’s the promise that they will take over all the trivial routines that burden us on a daily basis, for example regulating heating, adjusting water temperature, and even tracking lost items. Think how much time you could save if you never lost your car keys.

More than ever, this Internet of things reflects the way technology is working to make our lives easier, safer, and more enjoyable. But is it really? In some ways, yes: Electronic devices tell us how to reverse our cars, Siri is there to help with questions big and small, and Google intuits what we are really looking for when we’re not quite sure of the spelling.

What’s not to love? I certainly did love it all, until it started going wrong, and it had nothing to do with that Israeli security firm. When I finally got my car started that day, see, I promptly reversed into the wall of the car park. My brain was in automatic mode and my own car was too old to have warning beeps. The very next day I lost the bag that had my phone in it at the airport. When I wanted to call a good friend for some moral support, I had forgotten his phone number. I was frazzled–in part because up until then I was rather unaware of how dependent I’d become on this network of stuff.

If you puff on a cigarette, we all know, you’re playing a dangerous game of dice with a potentially lifelong addiction. But what we’re confronting now is a new version of addiction, and we’re all susceptible to certain side effects.

Several studies show our ability to recall data, phone numbers, names, or just plain old facts are slowly diminishing. Dr. Betsy Sparrow, an associate professor of psychology at Columbia University, along with her collaborators, used trivia quizzes and word lists in a four-part experiment researching how sophisticated search engines have affected the way we memorize information. They discovered that the participants were far more likely to remember information if they thought that they would not be able to find it at a later stage. However, if they were confident that could look it up in the future, they remembered the key terms rather than the data. The study reported that the Internet has in fact become an external storage system for our brains. Dr. Sparrow has been quoted as saying, “Human memory is adapting to new communications technology.” And not all adaptions, it seems, are positive.

I love technology, but as is the case with everything addictive, it has to be moderated. As a result, I’ve begun playing a little parlor game of my own. When a challenging question is raised in conversation, I no longer hit my Google shortcut. Instead, I continue the discussion and try to tease out the answer by speculation, educated guesswork, and probability. You know, the ways we did a decade ago. I no longer hit my contacts button on the phone to dial a number for me; I am working on memorizing my list, at least for the numbers I use most frequently. Instead of treadmills that take me nowhere, I use my local park to go for a run. I smell the air and watch the seasons change.

Although this may all seem a little sanctimonious in our hustle-bustle, always-on, technologically stuffed lives, I’m working on exercising my mind as well as my mouse-clicking texting fingers. I now even switch off the auto reverse in all my rental cars. Parking garage walls the world over: You’re welcome.

[Image: Flickr user Ben Adams, and Keoni Cabral]

What we can all learn about the art of business from Pepsi’s epic war with Coke and Apple’s public dust-ups with Microsoft.

Not long ago I spoke with a group of teenagers about branding. Soon enough the subject turned toward Coca-Cola. For my own curiosity, I asked them who they considered Coke’s main enemy. Of course, I was expecting them to state the obvious–Pepsi. Instead the room went kind of quiet. No one was sure.

The hyper competitiveness of the Coke-Pepsi dynamic, which I grew up with, was unknown to them. I tried jogging their memories by mentioning Michael Jackson strutting his stuff in a glittering black jacket, singing “I’m Bad.” Nothing. So I said: “Remember the ad, the one where Michael Jackson’s hair caught on fire?” They did not.

And yet, to this day, retired executives at both beverage companies claim that the real reason why their brands achieved world dominance was, in the fighting words of one executive, “Every day we went to work, we went to war.” Had Pepsi and Coke not had each other, the chances that their brands would spread to more than 100 countries around the world would have been very slim.

Pepsi and Coke are not alone. From the very beginning, the tech powerhouse Apple positioned their products in direct opposition to IBM. And when IBM no longer posed a threat, they took on Microsoft. At almost every opportunity Steve Jobs had to talk in public, he would subtly, and often not so subtly, run down his competition. Today, if we look at where IBM and Microsoft are in relation to Apple, the results of that tactic (among many others) pretty much speak for themselves.

But what happens when the enemy is no longer? It’s hard for Apple to continue claiming its underdog position. Those “I’m a Mac, and I’m a PC” commercials have lost their relevance. No one is about to identify with Apple as an underdog since the company has become the biggest and, arguably, the most powerful brand in the world. Ironically, Samsung is now mimicking the Mac-PC tactic but targeting Apple. And in yet another twist on the same idea, Samsung has become the largest cell phone manufacturer, outstripping both Apple and Nokia. Nokia, for its part, is now playing the underdog to a degree, with ads that seem to take on Apple (and maybe just about every other smartphone to come before the Lumia 900).

While speaking with the kids who were too young to remember the Pepsi-Coke wars, I realized that it’s important for a brand to keep the focus on their enemy in the public arena. That passionate opinion that people once held for either Coke or Pepsi in the 1970s and ’80s has faded from consciousness as the enmity melted into oblivion and both brands thrived.

As I consult with brands across the world, I always ask the executives about their main competitors–in other words, I ask them to name their enemies. They all have at least one. However, when I ask them how “public” their enemy is, the conversation generally stalls. Many executives have become afraid of offending anyone. But the truth is, this is exactly what I think they need to do: offend their enemies.

It’s interesting to note how some of the biggest, most grand events and organizations in the world revolve around competitors and competition. Think about religion and sports. So many different kinds of scenarios can be attributed to an us-versus-them mentality. As human beings and social creatures, we are hardwired to congregate in groups. Our groups share opinions, friendships, and enemies. The more polarized we become, the stronger we feel a sense of belonging, and the more assured we are of our place in space. Imagine going to a football game and vacillating about which team you support. Chances are the real fans of both teams would shun you. “You’re either with us or against us”–a very useful phrase for momentum building and crowd growing.

In the rent-a-car wars that began in 1962, Avis positioned itself as No. 2. This allowed it to claim the underdog spot, permanently, and constantly aspiring to be better than the market leader. Its slogan–’We try harder”–became the cornerstone of the company, and it’s maintained this position ever since. In 2012, it’s still at it, working harder to be the best.

As the corporate world becomes slicker and savvier, and as the legal and compliance departments desperately try to protect their role, the competitive edge once witnessed (and enjoyed) by brands and their fans around the world seems to have faded away. But is this really the best strategy to pursue? Or would it perhaps be better to name an enemy and put the brand on the line? Yes, it requires courage, determination, and a fierce focus, but aren’t these the very ingredients that successful companies are supposedly made of?

As my conversation with the teenagers came to an end, one kid came up and asked me, “So, who is Coke’s enemy?” I told him to guess. After a few thoughtful moments he said, “Tap water.” He had a point, but if I were a Coke executive, I sure would’ve wished he’d named Pepsi.

What I learned about honesty from showing up at a stranger’s home an hour early.

When I showed up on the London doorstep of a stranger’s home, an hour too early, something unusual happened. What first began as a scheduling mix-up resulted in one of the most profound consumer observations I’ve ever made.

Admittedly, my job is somewhat out of the ordinary, and my consumer research sometimes takes me to very strange places. This week I explored the psychology of feminine hygiene. Last week it was shampoo, and only just three weeks ago, I was looking into the various ways consumers use condoms. No matter the subject I’m researching, though, I have found that one of the most effective methods is to visit consumers in the comfort and privacy of their own homes. I’ve learned that it offers a glimpse of a quite different people than I would see if I’d had them come into an interview room and viewed their behavior from a more formal setting. Not only can the unfamiliar setting alienate subjects, it often leads them to compete with others there and frame their answers to appear sophisticated and knowledgeable.

So this time, I rang the doorbell and patiently waited, ready to get on with my first interview in my subject’s home. Instead, the woman who answered the door looked like I’d woken her up, bed hair and all. She was clutching her robe, and she peered at me through sleep-filled eyes. This had never happened to me before. Although we instruct all our respondents to behave as they would on an ordinary day, they tend to dress up. I regard it as a natural response to entertaining a stranger in your home. I immediately apologized, hastily explaining that I’d just flown in from Frankfurt and had gotten the time zones confused. I offered to return in an hour.

But it was too late. The cat was out the bag. I’d already seen behind the façade. It was certainly an uncomfortable moment, but the woman was resigned to the idea that she had already been seen without her public face on. So, she invited me in anyway.

As we settled into her living room to chat, I noticed a dramatic difference between this and my previous interviews. She was startlingly honest from the beginning. There was no beating around the bush, no dressing up the truth. Of course, there were no shoes or makeup either. Whatever she said came across as totally honest and completely authentic.

Was this interview a lucky once-off? It seemed so, because as the day wore on, and one interview followed another, the honesty I encountered earlier in the day was non-existent amongst the others. What had happened?

Over the years, I’ve become attuned to the subtle nuances of consumers’ behavior. I can pick up details that few would even notice. I’m talking about small features that most people would regard as insignificant, but which, in reality, can be the making or breaking of a brand. (Often the focus is on female subjects, who represent 65% of global spending and more than 80% of U.S. spending.)

Take for example, the way a woman arranges her perfume bottles on the bathroom shelf. This small, individual detail often tells more about her self-esteem than those most close to her would be aware of. (A woman with a fairly low self-esteem has a tendency to give the more exclusive brands prominence, while the more common brands are tucked behind.)

I’ve also become quite adept at body language. I always feel a sense of satisfaction when the woman I’m talking to takes off her shoes and settles into the couch; I call this the revelation moment. I can also pick the hardcore shopaholics by the number of artifacts on display in her hallway.

By now I’ve done over a thousand interviews. My preparations are rigorous, and the interviews are conducted thoroughly and systematically in order to glean the most accurate insights. Yet, despite my diligent preparation and carefully crafted framework, my scheduling mishap highlighted a tiny but vital detail that could raise questions about the results of all my past interviews.

I’m sure you’re well familiar with the way women feel as they prepare themselves for a night out. A good dress can work wonders for their self-esteem, and thus their demeanor. But what had totally eluded me, until this serendipitous moment, was a woman’s makeup cabinet.

The night after my interview, as I swam my laps in the pool, it occurred to me that the honesty of the interview to which I’d showed up early was not coincidental. The fact that I arrived unexpectedly seemed to have made all the difference. It’s a phenomenon called “enclothed cognition,” and it refers to the influence clothes have on the psychological processes of the wearer. Joshua I. Davis, an expert on embodied cognition, was quoted in the New York Times as saying, “When we put on certain clothes, we might more readily take on a role.”

Dr. Adam D. Galinsky, from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, led a study into the effects of clothing on cognitive processes. In one of his experiments, reported on in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, he randomly assigned 74 students with one of three tasks–wearing a doctor’s coat, wearing a painter’s coat, or simply looking at a doctor’s coat. They were subsequently tested for the amount of attention they paid to the task. They were shown two very similar images on the same screen, and they were asked to quickly jot down four minor differences. Those wearing the doctor’s coat (incidentally exactly the same as the painter’s coat) found more differences indicating heightened attention.

We all take on many roles in our lives. For example, we behave differently with a friend’s parents than we do with the friend. As our knowledge of psychology increasingly peels back the many human layers, I’ve come to see how even the smallest and most subtle signals and gestures can transform a personality. It seems just carrying a heavy clipboard has the power to make one feel more important. So being caught without makeup might indeed help facilitate more openness.

Needless to say, I now make a habit of showing up early for my home visits, because those 60 minutes could make all the difference to the future success of a brand.

[Image: Flickr user glenngould]

Where and when do you do your best thinking? For me, it’s in the pool. As I power up and down the lanes, I rethink what I’ve learned. I now have the time and space to solve whatever problems have arisen. It’s an important meeting with myself, and I keep it religiously. Because the day I lose it, I’ve lost myself.

Quick: Survey your friends, your family, and colleagues and ask them when it is that they get their best and brightest ideas. How do they come to solve insurmountable challenges? And when despairing over the unsolvable, how does their breakthrough moment occur?

Don’t be surprised if many of those you ask say something like: “I sleep on it. Then as soon as I get in the shower in the morning… voila!”

For what it’s worth, the shower doesn’t do it for me–I’m a pool man. When my head is cluttered and I can’t think straight, I don my goggles and go for a swim. After the first couple of laps, the confusion begins to lift, and the answers start emerging. What the shower and the pool have in common is they’re both places where you’re rarely disturbed, allowing solitary contemplation. The warm water sure doesn’t hurt, either.

This is all related to a phenomenon that’s been identified by Edward de Bono, the legendary creative thinker. He calls it the “creative pause.” In de Bono’s book Serious Creativity, he asserts that even when things are going along, well, swimmingly, “some of the best results come when people stop to think about things that no one else has stopped to think about.”

Although most people are unaware of the name for it, creative pauses are happening wherever people are solving problems. They occur among harassed CEOs, design directors, and small-business entrepreneurs. The creative pause allows the space for your mind to drift, to imagine and to shift, opening it up to new ways of seeing.

There’s just one small problem: The creative pause might soon become a thing of the past. When was the last time you remember being bored? Or even having a moment free from distractions?

I know it sounds strange, but I welcome boredom. It forces me to ponder. But to make sure we’re on the same page, when I speak of boredom, I’m not referring to killing time on your smartphone, your iPad, or your laptop. I’m not even talking about paging through a book. I mean bored as in doing absolutely nothing.

Because here’s the rub–when we’re at our most bored we’re forced to push our creative boundaries, and unearth the root of whatever problem we’re working on. A quick glance around and you’ll notice that it’s almost impossible to be bored in our 21st-century environment. Every bar now has at least one television blaring. And just as night follows day, your eyes will be drawn to the moving pictures above, sapping whatever creative thoughts you could be having. Or take, for example, the last time you were alone at a restaurant waiting for a friend to join you. Chances are you reached for your phone and did something with it, anything to avoid appearing like the lonely loser in the corner.

If you’re still struggling to remember your last bored moment, consider the younger generation. When you were younger, perhaps you hung out on the street with other neighborhood kids. Or maybe you shot a few hoops or cycled down to the drugstore. There were no PlayStations, Xboxes, Wiis, or the latest game apps to play on or offline. Have you noticed how quiet suburban streets are these days?

Back in the 1990s, when Lego asked me to explore the consequences of digital play versus physical play, I discovered how many kids were preoccupied with the tactile aspects of play–how kids were already preoccupied with Tamagotchis, those handheld digital pets that need regular feeding, walking, and sleep. Tamagotchis hit the toy world like an out-of-control virus, making a huge dent in Lego’s Christmas figures. It seemed the more kids played with a screen, the greater their chances of losing their creative skills. Digitized pocket toys have a set sequence of steps to follow, and as soon as kids get the gist of the game, they fall into a passive-interactive mode.

This new development in the toy market was potentially disastrous for Lego, who, in principle, requires a user to bring their imagination to the connecting plastic bricks in order build the object of their fancy. However, as I was busily conducting experiments with interactive play, I accidentally stumbled upon a small realization. It began as an ordinary day. The children were involved in interactive play on a computer screen, and I was handing them the Lego bricks, asking them to create something. But then something extraordinary happened. The entire network broke down, and it took a long 20 minutes for the IT engineers to restore the system. Then it was back to business as usual. Except this time, when I handed over the bricks, the activity level increased. I began seeing Lego castles, trains, bridges, roller coasters, and monsters being built. Those 20 minutes of boredom gave rise to a remarkably productive output, and taught me the value of being bored.

Boredom, however, is becoming an endangered activity. Once lost, it’s not likely to return, because being entertained 24/7 is what kids have come to expect. In fact, by the time I began researching the power of word of mouth for my book Brandwashed, a frenzy of digital toys, apps, games, and screens had become endemic.

These days, I schedule a regular dose of boredom into my day. Furthermore, I don’t check messages if I’m waiting for a friend. I choose, instead, to watch people in bars, cafes, and restaurants. I don’t play games on my phone or my computer. I carry an old Nokia that no one would dream of stealing. More often than not, I hit the pool at the end of the day. As I power up and down the lanes, I rethink what I’ve learned. I now have the time and space to solve whatever problems have arisen. It’s an important meeting with myself, and I keep it religiously. Because the day I lose it, I’ve lost myself.

[Image: Flickr user MichaelKuhn_pics]

Thanks to the likes of Louis C.K., Aziz Ansari, and the brains who created Google Wallet, $5 is the new 99 cents. It’s funny what makes customers loosen their purse strings.

Have you ever noticed how some stores mark the price of their goods with a “$” sign, while others don’t? This is not by accident. It fact, the decision to include that little symbol (or not) makes a big difference.

Over the past few years, pricing analysis specialists have determined that it’s far more effective to price goods without the iconic dollar symbol. It seems that when a currency sign appears with the price, we automatically connect it to our very own hip pockets or purses–and what is or isn’t inside there–leading us to believe the item in question is more expensive than it actually is.

Researchers at Cornell University tested this idea at St. Andrew’s Café, part of the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York. There they offered three types of menus. The first had the price listed with a dollar sign in front of the numerals; the second had the price without a dollar sign; and the third had the price with the word “dollar” spelled out.

They determined that when the prices were listed with the dollar sign, customers spent less. Conversely, when the dollar sign was absent, they tended to spend more. In other words, they were quicker to fork over their cash if the item was listed as “5.00″ as opposed to “$5.00.” (And $5 is an important amount, as we will soon see.) Even when the word “dollar” was spelled out, it triggered the “pain-of-paying” response.

This means that $5 isn’t always $5 in our emotional thinking. Similarly, if an old sales gimmick is to be believed, 1 cent can be worth a lot more than 1 cent. We’ve all seen signs selling items for, say, $4.99, rather than $5.00. That’s because we tend to think of $4.99 as being more closely related to $4 than $5.

Professor Robert Schindler, a marketing professor at Rutgers Business School, conducted a study of a women’s clothing retailer. He found that the 1 cent difference between prices ending in .99 and .00 had “a considerable effect on sales,” with items whose prices ended with .99 far outselling those ending with .00.

The 99-cent concept has been around for decades. David Gold and his wife started the 99 Cents Only stores in 1982. There are now nearly 280 branches across California, Nevada, Arizona, and Texas, and the chain was sold last year for $1.6 billion. But perhaps even more pertinent to this idea is how Steve Jobs managed to wrest the music industry back from file-sharing free downloaders with his 99-cents-per-song iTunes strategy. It made music so cheap almost everyone could afford to buy their favorite tune without causing too much pain in the pocket.

According to a study conducted by Kenneth J. Wisniewski from the University of Chicago, when the price of margarine dropped from 89 cents to 71 cents at a local grocery chain, sales improved by 65%. But when the price fell two cents more to 69 cents, sales jumped by an astounding 222%! Two pennies are worth a lot.

More recently Google released Google Wallet, a new mobile payment system. Then it offered customers $5 compensation for the pain of having to endure a few security hiccups. This was not long after online purchases of perfomances by comedians Louis C.K. and Aziz Ansari spiked. Each of those shows cost exactly $5. In certain instances, it appears, $5 is the new 99 cents. Or at least the price point works on a similar psychological mechanism.

The study of pricing strategies is an area of expertise for John T. Gourville, a professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School. He reckons it’s all about the power of suggestion. In a New York Times article from last year, Gourville said: “Many people buy the amount, or buy in increments, that are advertised–five for $5, they end up buying five boxes of couscous or whatever it happens to be.”

This idea relates to buying trends: The more us consumers see products–whether comedy or couscous–on sale for $5, the more comfortable we become parting with that amount.

The fact that Louis C.K. and Aziz Ansari are having such remarkable success with their new $5 pricing is fascinating. It breaks with many lessons on pricing we’ve learned in the past, including the use of a whole number. Has $5.00 usurped $4.99 as a sweeter spot for luring customers?

Time will tell. But one thing’s for sure: If the entertainment industry embraces a $1.00 price tag per song, they’re likely to be even more successful than they’ve been with 99 cents. That is, as long as they remember to remove the dollar sign.

[Image: Flickr user JulieFaith]

It’s a message that makes us feel strangely optimistic and important. It also gets us to buy stuff.

I recently found myself eavesdropping on a conversation at a cafe between two men in their twenties. “I want to try live more in the moment,” one of them said. “In fact, I’m going to have to put some serious effort into this notion, because I tend to focus on the future and, in the process, I neglect the present.” His friend, nodding away, seemed in perfect agreement. It was eerily similar to other conversations I’d heard, and had, in the last year. This feeling of neglecting the present is a real phenomenon.

As the tentacles of technology continue to encroach further into our personal space, people are only ever semi-present. Think of the last time you ate dinner with friends. How many cell phones were taken out at the gathering? How many texts were received and sent? How many times did a phone ring? How often did your companions check for emails? There was a time when I’d enjoy a quiet moment sitting in a restaurant, surveying the scene, as I waited for my dinner date to arrive. Now, feelings of self-consciousness overcome me. I feel conspicuous and a bit of a loser with no real connection. As a result, I too reach for my smart phone. And that still moment between arrival and reconnecting with a friend has become a thing of the past.

The erosion of the present is a real phenomenon. And it gets compounded when news events, like the death of Steve Jobs or Whitney Houston, remind you of the fragility and transience of life and force you to question whether you are, in fact, making the most of every moment. But this anxiety is also something that’s increasingly being used by marketers to sell products. In a recent advertisement for Honda, Matthew Broderick tells us,  “Sometimes you have to live a little … Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it!” Another car ad, for Citroen’s latest DS3 model, has Marilyn Monroe questioning people’s taste for nostalgia and their desire to live in the past. Her advice is as direct as it is breathy. She says, “If I had one thing to say, it would be: live your life now!” Of course, Citroen will help show you the way.

This message makes us feel strangely optimistic, important even. Time’s a wasting, you only live once, and you have agency to push back against the frantic busyness of today’s world. But there may also be another dynamic at work. In 2005, Scott D. Swain and Lisa J. Abendroth of Boston University and Richard Hanna of Boston College discovered by studying consumers and advertising campaigns that creating a sense of “urgency” actually increases purchases.

One of Hollywood’s more successful producers recently informed me that ‘living in the moment’ has replaced Hollywood’s previous favorite aphorism, ‘You can make it happen.’ This supposedly fashionable notion is well over 2,500 years old. After all, it was the Buddha who famously taught, “Do not dwell in the past. Do not dream of the future. Concentrate the mind on the present moment.” I guess it is just a matter of time before some brand adapts the line as part of a larger marketing scheme.

Unless, that is, you are very close with your mom. Welcome to the data-driven, score-keeping, real-world, competitive game that is a gadget-packed modern life.

The other day I was going through the necessary rigmarole of getting my car serviced when I learned about yet another surprising way the details of your life can be revealed. That’s because mechanics working on the most recent car models know a whole lot more about your car than you’ve told them. They can tell the number of accidents its been involved in, how hard the car’s been driven, and even how often the car’s exceeded the speed limit. This information is neither held on a central database, nor is it a part of any police record. No, the details are all contained in the car key.

Every time you turn the key to start your brand spanking new car, it activates a database that quietly gathers all kinds of information, including behavioral data. This information is extremely useful for dealers wanting to know just how well the car’s been treated. There’s no point in concealing just how fast you’ve driven it or how many times the airbags have been activated. The key will reveal all, and you can be sure that the valuation of the vehicle will be commensurate with the data the dealer has accessed.

It would be naïve to assume that this kind of data gathering will be restricted to the humble car key. It will not be long before anything and everything we interact with can potentially gather data. (In some industries, of course, this is alreadywell under way.) Imagine the tales something as simple as a toothbrush will be able to tell. One need only cast one’s mind back to those little red pills children were given that revealed all the spots that the toothbrush had neglected. Some kids chewed them, some swallowed them whole, while others spent a fair amount of time brushing off the red stains. Above and beyond teaching kids to brush their teeth properly, the exercise was fun.

It’s been rumored that toothbrush manufacturers are planning to release an entirely new generation of products. These products all contain mini processors that will enable the toothbrush to evaluate the way you brush your teeth. The end result will not be red stains, but points calculated.

In due course, everything we touch will become just another prop in the giant computer game of life. To some extent, this is already the case with frequent flyer points. Ratchet up the air miles and you can exchange points for items as diverse as gift cards, iPods, and coffee makers, or you can simply cash in your points to take another flight.

Before long, we could be earning points by driving economically with an eye out for the environment. So, every time we cut the engine and coast down the hill, we might earn eco points. Ford already keeps track of your driving with the plant icon on the dashboard. The better your driving, the more leaves appear on the plant. However, you’d be mistaken to believe that the game will stop at your car’s dashboard. The next generation car key will keep track of your overall driving performance, and will then issue an appropriate number of points. These points will undoubtedly play an important role in determining the value of your vehicle when it comes time to sell.

In an interview I once conducted with Jesse Schell, a professor of game design at Carnegie Mellon, he postulated that even the public bus is likely to turn into a game–the more often you take it, the more points you’ll receive. The accumulation of bus points could be redeemed in a system of tax relief, a reward in recognition of your support of the environment.

Gamification has proven to be a serious motivator. I recently visited a woman in North Carolina who was so very proud of a recent achievement. She’d managed to lose more than 10 pounds in just two weeks, something she’s never achieved before.  “How did you manage to do it this time?” I politely asked. She dragged me off to the bathroom and pointed to her scale. To my untrained eyes, it looked like any other bathroom scale. But this one was different. It connected online, automatically storing her weight. Furthermore, it automatically tweeted her weight to a group of friends, all competing for the greatest weight loss.

According to data gathered by the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), 72% of American households play computer and video games. And women over the age of 18 are the industry’s fastest-growing demographic. They represent a sizeable portion–42%–of all gamers. The average computer gamer is 37 years old, and they have been playing for at least 12 years.

Computer games extend well beyond the home. For the past decade, the military has prepared soldiers for battle by using game simulators. Doctors, pilots, and racecar drivers all make extensive use of games in their training. Games are already extending beyond their specialized disciplines. They’ve moved into classrooms, living rooms and, yes, even bathrooms.

A leading programmer explained that the reason games are so appealing is that they are flexible enough to adjust to our own level. Then they challenge us to move beyond that, taking it up a notch at a time. The good news about all this is that games can take a tedious activity and make it fun. We can strive to brush our teeth so that every nook and cranny is covered. Exercise on the Wii has taken off in kindergartens and retirement villages. The flipside of this is that as we become increasingly dependent on games accompanying our most tedious chores, we are increasingly becoming a nation of gamblers. The more we’re exposed to gaming, the more we play. And we’re all getting hooked.

It may not be much fun when our fast driving record stands in the way of getting the price we want to sell the car but, overall, the news is positive. Just imagine new and innovative games to help us save the environment. Perhaps entire households will compete against each other to see who’s saving the most energy.

The big question is: Are you ready to play?

[Image: Flickr user Denis Gustavo]

If, like me, you’re a chocoholic, you know all too well about those moments when every ounce of your being is overwhelmed by the desire to taste chocolate. At those times, you can think of nothing else. If you’re a smoker, a coffee drinker, or a daily Coke sipper, you’re no doubt familiar with strong cravings that force you to single-mindedly pursue what your body is crying out for. Cravings come at the oddest times in the most peculiar places and I can’t help but wonder what sets it off. I mean, why am I craving this chocolate right now–and not an hour ago?

If you’re familiar with my books–Brandwashed or Buyology–you know that I strongly believe our subconscious mind controls almost all of our behavior. Working with the soft drink industry, I’ve come to see that the slightest hint of a carbonated bubble on the can translates into an increase in sales well into the millions. So, it’s hardly surprising that Coke executives can spend hours debating how many bubbles will be displayed in ads, on posters, and on bottles and cans. They are well aware that the correct number of bubbles can inspire the very cravings that work wonders for their profit margins.

A similar phenomenon occurs with the curved red roofs that are commonly found at McDonald’s. In fact, those slanted roofs generate 54% more business than more ordinary ones and, astoundingly, this is regardless of whether they’re topped with the golden arches or not. Now, if a few bubbles or a curve in a roof can make such a remarkable difference, there must an almost unquantifiable number of other signals that we’re subconsciously taking in every day.

A short while ago, I was heading to the airport with a good friend who has a taste for gambling. I happened to notice a roadside sign that said: “Airport – 36 miles.” Within moments, he was pondering the possibility of finding a casino close to where we were going. Curious, I asked him what prompted this particular musing. He simply replied: “No particular reason.” As I turned this over in my head, I recalled the sign. 36 miles. I then remembered that 36 is his lucky number. Was this merely coincidental?

Another case. My mother is a heavy smoker. For decades I tried every trick in the book to persuade her to quit. I left horrifying articles in her bedside drawer. I begged and pleaded. I urged her to try hypnotherapy, nicotine replacement therapy, and even going cold turkey. Nothing succeeded. I had resigned myself to failure. However, with my recent work in the neuroscience field, I decided to change my approach and give it one more go.

I somehow managed to persuade her to quit smoking for just one week. I then asked her to rank the experience on an hourly basis using a scale from 0-100 (with 100 being most difficult). The average score showed to be in the high 90s, reflecting what’s unquestionably a tough experience. In the week that followed, I decided to redecorate the family home. (Forgive me–I’m an only child, and we only children tend to be quite demanding.) As I made my way through each room, I purged every little item that had a connection with smoking. I gathered matches and cigarette packs, ashtrays, and lighters. The implements filled two whole boxes. I then asked her to go through the rating-the-craving exercise again. Surprisingly, the ratings were now in the high 80s. Apart from the fact that she was in her second week of not smoking, it reinforced my theory that our subconscious is constantly absorbing signs and signals that play a role in our behavior.

By systematically beginning to be conscious of each time my chocolate cravings begin, I then began to backtrack to see whether I could identify something that had triggered the desire. The results were quite revealing. It could be anything from a Toblerone resting on top of my hotel room’s mini bar to an ordinary carpet decorated in brightly colored dots. These blue, red, green, and yellow circles were all that my mind needed to wander into an M&M reverie. The most disconcerting thing about this exercise was that I had been unconscious of the effect these symbolic images have on us, whether they are intentional (as in the case of advertisers) or not.

But if the shape of a roof, a bubble on a soft-drink can, or a carpet’s colorful circular pattern can make us crave a burger, a soda, or a chocolate, do we become more susceptible to these subconscious signals when we’re hungry? It is a question that Rémi Radel of the University of Nice Sophia-Antipolis in France recently decided to tackle. Using 42 students with a normal body mass index, he instructed them to not to eat for four hours before arriving at the lab. Some were told there was a delay and they were to go get lunch before returning. Some were asked to wait 10 minutes. In other words, half were hungry when they took the test, while the other half were not.

The test involved looking at a computer screen where 80 words were individually flashed on the screen at the rate of one per 300th of a second–too brief to be read. About a quarter of the words were food related, and the participants were asked to rate how bright they were. Hungry people reported food-related words as brighter. In fact, they were far better at picking them. Last week, the results were published in the APS journal Psychological Science.

Rémi Radel was able to conclude that hungry people saw the food-related words as brighter and were better at identifying food-related words. He said that that our brain is at the “disposal of our motives and needs.” According to him, “There is something inside us that selects information in the world to make life easier.” The subconscious is obviously ever-vigilant.

So, next time you feel a craving coming on, take time out to examine where you’ve just been and what you’ve just seen. The chances are that your free-floating thoughts are not quite so free. Or we could just dispense with all the theorizing and bring on the chocolate! That’s one thing that makes me happy.

For my job I spent 300 days traveling the world last year. I met a lot of happy people. Who they are and where they live will surprise you.

The other day, as I took a taxi ride across Manhattan, the driver was pondering the state of the world. “I can’t believe all these disasters happening everywhere,” he said. “If it’s not a flood, it’s a tsunami. There are fires and hurricanes and earthquakes… then there are riots and bombs and wars and shootings.” He kept shaking his head as he muttered, “What is this world coming to?”

On the one hand, it’s difficult not to agree with him. We need look no further, after all, than the latest headlines to see the world has turned into a pretty horrifying place. But then again: Is this really the case?

Let me explain. My job as a brand guy has a few advantages. One of them is that I get to see a lot of different places–I spent 300 days away from home last year–and my research takes me into a lot of private homes. And the upshot? I’ve begun seeing people in a new light. I’ve begun to question why some people find happiness wherever they may be, and others don’t. Last week I visited one of the poorest districts in Medellin, Colombia. The town’s very first escalator had recently been installed. The technology was so unfamiliar, it required strategically located spotters with the sole purpose of instructing people how to ride it. I was thoroughly absorbed watching the looks on the faces of the kids who were transfixed by the site of moving stairs. When I asked them about happiness, they waved their hands in the air and laughed. They dismissed happiness as a Western thing, and suggested we stop talking about it and just get on with the business of living.

I had a similar encounter in a remote region of Thailand, where even though electricity was scarce, there was a general sense of well-being in the village. Kids happily played in the streets, a sight one rarely encounters these days in Western suburbs. A kindly older woman told me that happiness is when the family is together. Given the fairly intact nature of the rural village, people looked pretty content with their lot.

Another journey took me way into the Australian bush to a place where a toilet capable of flushing would be a novelty. Kids were busy kicking around a football on the street, but almost all took time out to speak to me, curious about who I was and what I was doing there. A young man told me that he felt happy when he helped others. He tried to perform one act of kindness a day. This young man had only seen television twice in his life.

But it was when I got the chance to visit some of the 60 million newly built homes in China that all this really hit, well, home. Each new home was wired for the 21st century. Every room had television screens hooked up to high-speed Internet and each home came equipped with the latest in electronic gadgetry. In fact, the entire block was connected to a community intranet designed to help the neighbors stay in touch. I couldn’t help noticing that there was an important element missing: smiles. I didn’t see one of them.

I pursued my questions of happiness with a young Chinese family who had only been living in the city for two years.  There responses were measured. They said, “We’re doing fine, but there is still so much to achieve before we will become truly happy.”  It seems the family aspired to all the things they were seeing being won on the daily online video shows. “I’ve seen what you can get, and we still don’t have many of the things. So, we need to work harder. Then, I’m sure, one day we will get there.

The city was orderly. There were no children playing outside. I’d been instructed to wear a mask, wrap my shoes in plastic, and sit on a cover on the chair.  Everything was to stay clean and uncontaminated. Almost all the homes I visited around Beijing and Shanghai shared the same idea that sanitary living meant living a longer life.

An old boss of mine once instructed me never to reveal my salary to anyone. He maintained that it was a necessary secret because, if people knew what others earned, it would only lead to unhappiness. He was right. I came to realize that the more informed we are, the less happy we become because of our tendency to get caught up in constant comparisons. Working on this principle, it seems that the more limited the access to electronic media, the more time people spend together as friends and family and the higher the happiness quotient seemed to be. (Of course, this is just one man’s observation: There is no shortage of studies and best-selling books on the subject.) Meanwhile, my Chinese family, who had the chance to compare their life with others, seemed unhappier than ever. Using a bar set by the mass media, they felt they’d failed to achieve their full potential.

Now I know what I should have told my despairing taxi driver. The reality is that there have never been as few wars as there are today. Humankind has never been as healthy or as wealthy. Our contemporary techno-media wonderland means that whenever a disaster occurs, almost anywhere in the world, we know about it within hours. Only recently, we heard about a cruise ship sinking of the coast of Italy, a shooting incident in Belgium, and a bushfire in Western Australia. Our brains are not really wired to accommodate such a proliferation of bad news, regardless of it happening thousands of miles away. One disaster after another compounds, and increases feelings of helplessness.

Does that mean that on some level we’ve lost our way? Absolutely not. But what it does mean is that we need to realize that with the ever-increasing media outlets, we must be vigilant in maintaining our own personal view of happiness. No matter how high you set your goals, you may never actually get there. So, what is my definition of happiness? A good friend once said to me, “Happiness is not measured by the number of days you live but, rather, by the number of days you remember.

I’ll buy that. One thing is for sure, I won’t be forgetting my time with all those happy people.