Spoiler note: While Ben references larger issues surrounding Severance’s second season’s finale, he doesn’t give away very much, and all but the most spoiler-sensitive among us should proceed with confidence. 

‍Severance is wild.

The Apple TV+ show, which just wrapped its second season, is also hugely original and an incredible experience for a multitude of reasons — not least among them is its ability to teach us something while entertaining us. While the world of Severance is only ever-so-slightly like our own, it does provide some clear lessons on what happens when companies completely misunderstand their audience’s expectations, motivations, and values. 

We see this often enough in the real world (see Nescafe, Pepsi, Bud Light, etc., etc.) — but Severance makes it easy to grasp. If you haven’t seen the show yet, now’s the time. The second season of Severance masterfully deepened the eerie, dystopian world of the first, exposing the unsettling consequences of severing work from life, literally. The show offers a frank reminder that some form of severance is what most people want, though with nuance: Thinking about work 24/7 is unhealthy, but surgical separation of your consciousness, between your worklife and your homelife, is, it turns out, not a viable solution to coping with challenges in either realm. 

The show is beautifully done. The theme song plucks keys and chords that trigger your subconscious and lets your adrenal gland know it better get ready for action. Each component of the series isn’t merely additive but multiplicative to what makes it great. Full disclosure and incoming nerd alert: My wife and I have rewound scenes with zero dialogue just to try to pick up on all of the facial microexpressions between characters during particularly tense scenes. 

My motivations for watching the show changed throughout each episode. Most of the time, I was just trying to figure out how the hell Lumon managed to create a cult-like following among its employees, who sacrifice personal happiness for the sake of corporate progress, replacing religious colloquialisms like “May God guide you” with “May Kier guide you.” (The Kier in question: Lumon founder Kier Egan.) Severance is mind-boggling and challenging, and I can’t get enough.

Beyond its gripping mystery, haunting visuals, and hugely affecting musical score, Severance offers a fascinating case study in human behavior — one that’s surprisingly relevant to conversion rate optimization (CRO). Just as the “Outies” at Lumon assume they understand what truly motivates their severed counterparts, businesses often assume they know what their customers want. And when assumptions replace real user insights, the result isn’t just a failed waffle party or a visit from Choreography & Merriment — it’s a loss of engagement, trust, and conversions.

For example, in the season two finale, Outie-Mark finally gets the chance to speak with his innie, and asks Innie-Mark him to help with something that Outie-Mark desperately needs. He assumes that Innie-Mark shares the same motivations as himself — and Outie-Mark becomes indignant when Innie-Mark fails to fall in line. ‍

Businesses often make the same mistake. In fact, it happens so often that there’s a name for it: the egocentric bias. It’s the tendency to rely too heavily on our own perspective, assuming that others share our thoughts, emotions, and priorities. Because something is highly important to us, we naturally believe it must be just as important to others — when in reality, their motivations and experiences may be completely different. Companies often assume customers will value certain features, messages, or rewards simply because they, themselves, think they’re valuable — leading to campaigns that fail, often in epic fashion (again, see examples above). 

We see this over and over again in how Lumon rewards its employees. While Dylan does love a good waffle party, and I’ll admit the jazz dancing looked pretty fun, these incentives never fail to be 100 percent weird — and they almost always end up backfiring. Even when you think they’re on to something with the visitation room, our innies wind up worse off than they were before the reward.

So, what are we to do?

First off, never assume that just because you value something that someone — like your customers — will automatically agree, and value that reward in the same way. 

Take a recent example from our client NextRx.com. They offer a way to save money on your prescription medications by paying directly for medication instead of having it run through your insurance. Turns out, paying out of your own pocket for your generic medications can save you a significant amount of money. In our mind, and our client’s, the obvious benefit is the amount of money you save on an already expensive product/prescription. In reality, it wasn’t quite that straightforward, something we discovered once we started talking to NextRx’s customers. Don’t get me wrong — the cost savings were important, but it turns out that the transparency of value is what stuck out more. A lot of people don’t care for the cloak-and-dagger payment methods that occur between insurance companies and healthcare providers. If you don’t truly know what something costs, you can’t assign any value to it. People were actually more attracted to the experience of being able to assign tangible value to their prescription medications, with more knowledge about what they are paying for and getting. 

These answers are complex, and they’re rarely obvious, even if they might seem to be. If you think you know the answer before you ask your customers, then chances are you’re missing out on what really attracts your customers to your products or services.

So how do we figure this out? We start by understanding the emotions related to your audience’s purchasing decision — and by asking some of the following questions:

• What pain does my customer feel before finding a solution?
• What are the emotional triggers that drive their decision-making?
• What are their hesitations and concerns?
• How do they feel after finding a solution?
• What was going on in their life/day that made them search for a solution?
• When they aren’t using [solution], how do they solve this problem?
• If they could no longer use [solution], what would they miss the most?

The most common problem we see isn’t ignorance of the importance of these answers—rather, it’s the assumption that the answers are obvious. Do you know the answer to these questions? Are you sure? And if you are, are you communicating this effectively in your messaging? If you’re not sure of the answers, I want to invite you to schedule a consultation call with us today. We can help.‍

In any case, make sure you have the answer to these questions before you start to heavily invest in messaging and rewards programs. In short: no more waffle parties — unless you’re absolutely sure that’s precisely what your audience wants.