Why I hated Christmas as a kid. (And what this can teach you about branding!)

Hi. My name is Ron, and I’m a victim of the reverse Halo Effect. Let me explain.

For years, I hated Christmas as a kid! There, I said it. I hated everything about it. I hated how cheery and chipper everyone was all of a sudden, because, well, ‘tis the season to be jolly. I hated the Christmas music that played on the radio about chestnuts roasting over an open fire, dreaming about a white Christmas and Santa coming down the chimney. For the record, I live in the tropics – specifically Barbados. We have only two seasons – the wet season and the dry season. We’ve never had a white anything, let alone a white Christmas! And I dare you to find a house anywhere on the island that has a functional chimney large enough for dear ol’ Santa to shimmy his way down bearing gifts – but only for those who have been nice, not naughty.

My distaste for “the most wonderful time of the year” started when I was a kid. My birthday falls precariously close to Christmas Day – December 20 to be exact. Close enough for family and friends to buy me one gift for both my birthday and Christmas. I’d usually get the solitary gift on my birthday, with a post-scripted and surprisingly cheery “by the way, this is also your Christmas gift!”

All my other non-December-born friends got separate gifts for their birthdays and for Christmas. Why was I being penalized? It just wasn’t fair, I thought. And every year, as the Christmas/Birthday amalgam season approached, I held on to the hope that, this time around, someone would have pity on me and give me a gift for my birthday and another one on Christmas Day. But, alas, every year those hopes were unceremoniously dashed! Over time, my mind cognitively linked the Christmas season with negative emotions such as disappointment which were then unilaterally applied to anything that was related to Christmas – the music, the decorations, and especially the vehicles decked out with reindeer horns on their roofs.

Though I didn’t know it at the time, what I was experiencing was a reverse Halo Effect – also known as the Horn Effect. But to understand the reverse halo effect, we must first understand the original Halo Effect.

The Halo Effect is a psychological phenomenon in which individuals tend to let one positive trait guide their overall opinion of a person, product, or experience. Put another way, if you tend to like one aspect of something or someone, you’re likely predisposed to think positively about another aspect of that item or person – even if those other aspects are totally unrelated to the original trait that you like.

For instance, if you think that your co-worker is smarter or more qualified than you are because they went to a more prestigious college or university than you did, or that someone is good at their job because they dress well, or that someone you find attractive is good-natured just because you think they’re cute, you may have fallen prey to the Halo Effect.

The Halo Effect is particularly potent based on first impressions. If our first impression of a person, product or experience is positive, we tend to be positively biased during further interactions with that person, product or experience. If, for instance, someone shows up early for a first-time business meeting, it’s likely that the Halo Effect might kick in and you’ll assume that the individual is similarly punctual in their personal schedule. And that’s just for starters!

Research suggests that teachers often develop expectations of their students partially due to their physical appearance, that patients who had a good “hotel” experience at a hospital tend to give the hospital a higher overall rating and that people tend to attribute socially desirable personality traits to individuals they find physically attractive .?Other studies suggest that physically attractive criminals were likely to receive more lenient sentences, that attractive female waitresses earned more in tips than their so-called unattractive coworkers, and that attractive looking hosts can get away with charging higher rents on Airbnb .(By the way, I’m not getting into the whole debate of what makes a person physically attractive. That’s a topic for a whole ‘nother article!)

It seems that the Halo Effect has its fingerprints in almost all of our interactions, and savvy branding professionals use that to their advantage. When consumers see a successful athlete, popular celebrity or trusted influencer endorse a brand (especially if that consumer finds them attractive), they tend to be influenced by the halo effect and extend the same positive emotions to the brand being promoted. Users who rated a website’s design highly also view that website as having high usability – even on websites that have high failure rates. One study showed that when website users liked the aesthetics of the design, they rated the entire experience more highly, even in comparison to other websites with the same exact functionality but that were poorly designed. In fact, some website users perceived a well-designed site as being 104% more reliable, 37% more intuitive and 152% more resilient to hacking than the poorly designed site.

People who fall prey to the Halo Effect can end up making bad decisions. Employers may hire a candidate because they were well-dressed and early for their interviews, but may not have the skillsets required for the job. And bad actors can use the Halo Effect for nefarious purposes. Every year, an untold number of persons get scammed by well-dressed, attractive scam artists.

When it comes to the Halo Effect, the reverse can also be true, with the halo casting a negative shadow in its wake. Individuals may assume that overweight persons are lazy, despite having no evidence to back up their perceptions. Someone who has had a poor experience with an individual from a specific nationality or ethnicity may end up being biased against everyone with the same nationality or ethnicity.

Persons who spot spelling or grammatical errors on websites, tend to view the content and/or the creator of that content to be less trustworthy or credible. And companies with poor visual design and packaging for their products and services can give consumers the impression that their product or service is of poor quality. Even if the product and service are of the highest quality, but has a poorly designed logo or poor overall packaging, the poor design may be so powerful (in an entirely bad way), that customers won’t bother to buy or even try that product or service.

And persons who get only one gift for both his birthday and Christmas Day, may end up disliking the entire Christmas season for that reason. The Halo Effect can make you gloss over the positives of a particular product, event or season – like I did when I didn't consider that millions of kids all around the world didn't even get a single gift for their birthdays or during their Christmas season. (Hey, cut me some slack here. I was a kid, and what’s Christmas all about for a kid? I’ll tell you what – it’s the gifts!)

Clearly, the Halo Effect has powerful implications for businesses, whose brands can either benefit from the phenomenon or be damaged by it. If you want to benefit from the Halo Effect, here are a few quickfire tips.

• First impressions matter – a lot! Make sure that the very first interaction that potential customers have with your brand is positive. A positive first impression will create a halo effect around your products and services, and make it easier build a stronger brand and a stronger business. If your job is in the service industry and involves meeting people, be purposeful about how you dress, be respectful and professional at all times and always be early for meetings.
• Upsell and cross-sell! If customers have a good impression about one of your product or service lines, chances are that the Halo Effect will be activated and they’ll be open to trying more of your products and services. That’s why so many companies give trial samples of their products or use a “freemium” model where they offer some features of their product for free. Trial samples and freemium models work so well because once you have a positive experience during the trial model or enjoy the free features, chances are that you’ll sign up for the full package eventually. Whenever possible, use the halo effect to your advantage by upselling and cross-selling your products and services.
• Solve problems quickly. The halo effect can be contagious. As the saying goes, "A happy customer tells a friend; an unhappy customer tells the world.” In the hyper-connected digital world we live in, one social media post about poor service can be seen by millions. Just ask United Airlines. As the story goes, in 2008, musician Dave Caroll’s expensive $3,500 guitar was damaged by United Airlines when Dave and his band were travelling on the airline. United refused to pay for the damage, so Dave wrote a song called “United Breaks Guitars” in which he recounts the experience, including a claim that he had alerted three employees who showed indifference to his plight. The song went viral and United Airline’s brand was severely damaged. To date, the song has been viewed 23 million times (and counting) on YouTube .
• Pay attention to design. When it comes to branding, it’s never a good idea to skimp on design. Research shows that consumers associate well-designed packaging and visual design with high-quality products and, as we have already seen in this article, assume products with poor design or poor packaging are inferior. Yes, investing in great design can be expensive, but when done well, can make your products and services jump off the shelves and into consumers’ shopping carts – making the cost of good design an investment rather than an expense.
• Sweat the small stuff! Be sure that your marketing materials (everything from your website to your brochures to your content marketing articles) are well-written and free of errors.
• Dig deeper! When hiring employees or choosing vendors, look past the first impressions (for example, how they dress or whether they are early for their meetings with you) and dig deeper to find out if they can actually deliver what they are promising. Ask for testimonials, talk to their former employers or their clients to find out what their experience with the potential employee or vendor was really like.

And, here is how to rid yourself of the Horn Effect. Don’t let prior negative experiences with a person, product or brand bias you against subsequent interactions. Evaluate each on its present merit, not its past. If you've fallen victim to the Horn Effect, don't just take into account the perceived negative experience you've had - take a look at the bigger picture! As a recovering Christma-phobe, this is advice that I’m heeding myself. ?

As I’ve grown, I have recognized that Christmas isn’t just about receiving gifts. The season offers so much more – like reconnecting and spending time with friends and family you haven’t seen all year and enjoying the goodwill that the season brings with it. But I still don’t put up a tree or hang decorations or Christmas lights in my home. Like I said, I’m a recovering Christma-phobe, and I’ve still got a long way to go.

Who knows? Maybe someday soon, I can write an update article letting you know that I’ve completely overcome the reverse Halo Effect and that really, really I enjoy the Christmas season, and that I'm busy hanging up Christmas lights and decorations. But I probably still won’t like Christmas music. Until Barbados makes history by having a snowy holiday season, I think that “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas” should be banned from the radio.

Hope you enjoyed this article. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all! (Oh, and thanks to everyone who's been sending Happy Birthday messages! I truly appreciate the greetings and well-wishes!)

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