I read this interesting subreddit about a guy who had done a poll on FB in 2011. The poll was for people to select between 1983 world cup win and 2011 world cup win, which one do they think was bigger? We will get to the result by the end of this blog with an interesting advertising lesson.

Now to put things into perspective, 1983 was a year when the Indian team’s performance was down to dogs. They were nobody’s favorites. A weak team on paper going to play in England. 

Compared to 2011, when India was an incredibly strong team, almost everyone’s favorites and playing on home turf with the final being played in Mumbai. 

1983 was a time when cricket was big but not as big as it is today. Today cricket is a soft power for India, in 83 the team lost way more. Hope from the cricketers and  in fact cricket as a sport itself was bleak. We were an underdog team whose win would be a fantasy waiting to be written. 

2011 was when the team was filled with superstars, MSD, Yuvraj Singh, Sachin Tendulkar, Gautam Gambhir, Sehwag, Zaheer Khan, Harbhajan Singh playing in the friendliest conditions while being in top form. Win was expected mostly because it was Sachin’s last world cup and the team was ready to do it, the time, place and everything falling right in place. 

The poll result was 75% voting for 2011 world cup being the bigger win. 

This is a case of a psychological concept called Recency Bias. It is a cognitive bias that favours recent events more than the historic events. It is based on the memory of an event. Most of the people voting in 2011 had fresh images from the famous win and having negligible memory of the 1983 win. 

This is why ads on current trends, events and news work so well in advertising. A memory known to all helps click with minimum brain power and has maximum recall. 

But there is a catch. There are 100s of ads trying to cash in on this bias with only a few cutting through and sticking on to memories. It means that you still need good creative people to churn the “best” ideas out of the current happenings or else you’ll be lost in the clutter of too many “good” ads. 

Encash on recency bias but make sure its your best shot.

-  KB