Posted by John Woodbery on Jun 23, 2017

The June 23, 2017 Rotary Club of Kirkland meeting  was called to order by a healthy Scott Becker at 6:30pm.  The pledge of allegiance was led by Gail Auslander, our Greeter tonight was Terri Ebert. and John Pruitt served at the Front Desk.

Our Guests tonight were Matt & Terri Clements, Matt an electrical engineer and Terri an in IT Software sales, Scott East from a Bellevue Club was here as well as Doug Seto our Seattle 4 regular guest/assoc.  member.

 

Ernie Norehad reminded us  what Walter Winchell said that "Peace, a noun meaning a lull between two people cheating and between two countries fighting" or  "I try to be nice to people on the way up and see them on the way down" or something like that.

 

Announcements included the Transition Dinner next week, Scott Becker's last regular meeting before he becomes "Past President".  There is no theme, just come!

 

Dr. Bob Webb handled recruitment for Duck Dash sales slots and Bill Woods announced he has sold his first $1,000 in tickets and  now working on the next segment for the Chuck Morgan scholarship goal.

 

Our program tonight was a TED Talk by Rory Sutherland, a UK expert on the motivation for purchasing in the high tech internet age.  He is a former Microsoft guru helping to define selling and marketing on the internet. He was one of the first to see what motivated people to buy.  He suggested that how you think you control things influences your motivation to buy.  Not just traditional supply demand economic models but how you feel when you do it models.  Freud and your old fashioned forgotten trauma memories in the subconscious mind as motivator, move over for a new look today.  He argues what you call things determines how you rank and then buy them. In looking at solutions to marketing problems, why not solve or appeal to solving sociological problems with psychological motivations? Nature is not a matter of duration but how you spend the time in it. He says relationship countdowns (what ever that means?) reduces psychological pain. He drew three metaphorical overlapping circles of more or less equal size containing Technology, Psychology and Economic areas of influence and the key, he says is to find the balance in the middle of the three circles which he called the "sweet spot"! Changing the terminology can change the influence of the factor.  For example, call what you ask people to do and call it charity rather than economic increases motivation in that sphere of influence.  The Austrian  philosopher Ludwig Von Misses changed the label "psychology" to "practicology" in his study of decision making. No longer economic studies but conditions/scarcity studies. No longer supply/demand but rather "value to the buyer" in a broader motivational sense. He pointed out that in the UK their postal service delivered next day 98% of the time but the people thought it was 55-60%.  In trying to increase the 98% to 99% almost broke the system.  If perception is worth more than reality, why change it?

 

President Scott concluded the meeting with his "final thought".  See you next week 

 

John Woodbery scribe for an evening!