We still have all things related to persuasion on our minds here at LSB as we look forward to Brandworks 2010.  With this forward looking bent we have, it’s hard sometimes to look backward and figure out how else great techniques of persuasion have always already been part of our culture. Thankfully, Loren Niemi will be at Brandworks to share his expertise on storytelling, one of the oldest and most effective methods of persuasion.

  
We might be hardwired for stories, as George Akerlof puts it in his book “Animal Spirits” because they’ve been with us for so long, or stories might be such a part of our lives, because it’s the only way we’ll learn.


For an old story with rich examples of learning I always return to “The Odyssey.” Maybe it’s because the story tells us a ton about that ancient Mediterranean culture while passing along truths that we can still use. I can imagine a circle of gnarly Mycenaeans hanging out around a fire listening to the earliest version of this story for entertainment, only to be learning some essential truths about their lives the whole time.

 
Essential Truth #1: Don’t mess with the gods
Sending someone on a 10 year journey that should have taken a few months gets that point across pretty effectively. “Turning the shipmates into pigs” is just an elegant artistic touch.


Essential Truth #2: Be nice to guests, or at the very least, don’t eat the company
Showing the exaggerated meanness of the Cyclops, Polyphemus, reminds the audience, that you should always be nice to guests because you never know when you will be a guest in someone else’s house.


Essential Truth #3: Stories are meant and made to be shared
Homer might have his name on the book jacket of “The Odyssey” nowadays, but he wasn’t the first or the last to tell the story. The nature of some oral cultures gives anyone permission who hears the story to be the next one to tell it. That way the best and most appealing stories get passed along with the greatest velocity.


Regardless of the form of the story I am trying to tell, I like to have these questions in my mind:

• Does it embody some truth about you or your brand?
• Is the story worth telling? (Is it different, unique and compelling?)
• Is it simple enough to retell?
• Are others encouraged to join in?

Anything else we should remember about good stories? Feel free to share below.
TK

As we gear up for Brandworks University (May 24 – 26), we’ve been talking a lot about persuasion here at LSB.  We’ve been discussing principles of persuasion and are all looking forward to Dr. Cialdini’s presentation as if he were some rock-star celebrity coming to visit us.  (Yeah, we’re all a bit dorky about this stuff here at LSB.)


But an interesting thing happened in a meeting earlier this week.  Several of us were talking about persuasion and the conversation turned from persuasion to persuaders.  While there is plenty of research on persuasion techniques, and we’ll be learning more about that at Brandworks, there is less out there on who the great persuaders are.  Who are the standouts when it comes to persuasion, whether by design or intuition?


Specifically, we asked the question, “Who are history’s great persuaders?” and “Who are the great persuaders of today and what do they have in common?”  We talked about historical figures and fictional characters.


The conversation ran the gamut from the expected (President Barak Obama, former President Ronald Regan) to the provocative (the serpent in the Garden of Eden, Hitler) and interesting (P.T. Barnum, Tom Sawyer) but at no point in our conversation did anybody mention a marketer.


Shouldn’t marketers, after all, be the pinnacle of great persuaders?  Isn’t that what we are all about? 


And while many marketers may not be household names, nobody even mentioned a campaign or offer, “How about the team that came up with (INSERT YOUR FAVORITE SUCCESSFUL CAMPAIGN HERE)?”


So we put the question out to you, loyal reader, who are the great persuaders in your mind?  Any marketers among them?
AR

Dateline: February 2010. International think tank in Zurich. Debate: What is the future of marketing given the impact of data that comes from social networks as people share more and more about themselves with friends, strangers and companies? Hmmm: The founder of Facebook has just said that in the age of the Internet, privacy is “no longer a social norm.” People may not want to hear that, but given the overwhelming presence of data, easily and often inadvertently produced in our digital age, it seems new generations can’t help but evolve and accept this.

After all, each of us is producing large amounts of data that can be gathered and read in large volumes, both consciously and unintentionally. The data comes from our technologically-enabled conversations and their content (an estimated over 133 million blogs, over 30,000 tweets per minute, gazillions of posted photos and videos), behaviors traced by technologically enhanced appliances, power grids, stores, cars, roadways and video surveillance. And of course, there are the crumbs we leave from search, interactive and e-commerce behaviors. Data from these behaviors will rise geometrically as computing goes increasingly mobile and search, news, entertainment and shopping will be conveniently located in one’s pocket and, with geo-locaters, data on the location of your pocket will always be known. 

Where does it all end? Will people revolt? Or will we all come to proactively share data about ourselves in an effort to manage our own identities? No one knows exactly. But a lot of people want to predict where it’s going so they can market opportunistically, market efficiently and market ethically. Can they market at all in a world where consumer-to-consumer marketing is real, real-time and more trusted than marketing from marketers; where consumers increasingly and willingly share data on their own behaviors with friends, family and even strangers? Hmmm. Will the social norm be the expectation that the lives and behaviors of each of us will be an open book?

Where do you think society is headed in a world rich with easily accessible data? And what’s a marketer to do? Share your thoughts with us below.
ML

A Wall Street analyst recently lamented that “flat” is the new normal. And it’s not just analysts who note it will take a minimum of three years of growth in GDP like that of Q4 ‘09 to even get us back to where we were in production and employment years ago. Consumers know it too. As a result, they’ve adopted a set of new behaviors of which spending is not one of them.

But since growth is the objective of every CEO and shareholder, finding a way to grow is critical for every marketer who wants to hold on to their job. That’s why so many are searching for new insights and methods on how to persuade consumers to open their wallets.  It’s not easy in an economy where consumers are less interested in acquiring things for money than acquiring, for free, a social network full of friends who can provide interesting conversation and life rich with ideas.

Ahhh, ideas. As David Brooks wisely noted in a December 2009 column: “When the economy was about stuff, economics resembled physics. Now that it is about ideas, economics resembles psychology.”  That is why brands like Coke, McDonald’s, Apple, Amazon, Benjamin Moore and Kayak, are growing their top lines by tapping into the persuasion psychology that’s evolved for our more digital, social and mobile world.

This brand of psychology leverages both explicit and implicit consumer data and analyzes it through the frameworks of predictive modeling, behavioral economics, and social science. By revealing the motivations, products, incentives, words, design, and touchpoints that jumpstart the behaviors a marketer wants, it hints at ideas that increase engagement, response rates and click throughs, sales, repeat sales, retention, the acquisition of customers with greater value, a higher NetPromoter score, and growth in the top and bottom line.

But this brand of persuasion psychology is only for marketers ready to give up most of what they thought they knew. For as Richard Thaler, professor of behavioral sciences and economics at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business says: (Wall Street Journal Sept. 14, 2009) “Taking a behavioral approach completely changes the way you view the consumer.” And as Dan Ariely, behavioral economist with joint appointments at Duke and MIT explains, that’s because it moves you from chronicling  consumer intent and rational alibis to uncovering the often irrational and subconscious but very real drivers of buying behavior.

The prediction and testing of behavioral insights, then psychologically inspiring and tracking the resulting behaviors is the key to growth for a marketer. And it comes none too soon, as marketers now face a threat as big if not bigger than a lagging economy: Irrelevance.  Today’s marketer faces a world where consumer to consumer marketing is real, real time and more trusted; where consumers willingly share data on their own behaviors with friends, family, strangers. Where members of a social network can know more than marketers about each others’ behaviors and desires.

And we’re only in the early stages of understanding the psychological impact of consumer to consumer sharing of brand preferences, product performance rankings, geo-locational data. What kind of behavioral change will come when peers share data on energy usage, weight loss, health data, athletic performance, test scores and more? With Internet usage in many parts of the world still in its infancy, and with technology improving its reach and speed, there is dramatically more data sharing to come, and come more quickly.

With so much behavioral data about to be shared, some see a potential for powerful behavioral insights. Others predict (with no small amount of concern) a cultural revolution. Others argue that the abundance of behavioral data, shared, will force the ultimate in consumer centric marketing, spawning a renaissance for any marketer who knows the latest in persuasion psychology, and uses it responsibly.

What do you think?
ML

The United Nation’s International Labor Board calculates that workers in the United States put in more working hours than any industrialized country. Bully for us. We also watch the most television per week. Is there a correlation?

Just for a second imagine that you’re a welder, or a waitress, or the guy who runs the whey machine at the cheese factory and you just got off work and walked in the door of your house. You grab a beer, sit down on the sofa and do what? Grab your computer and check  your mutual fund? Check Wikipedia for an obscure fact that you heard earlier in the day? Check on the price of Kruggerands? Nope. Chances are you turn on the tube. Why? Because it’s what I’ll call passive entertainment. Meaning the most arduous thing you have to do is pick up the remote, surf the channels and let the entertainment hit your eyeballs.

Maybe this is why Nielsen statistics indicate that television viewership has increased to an average of 151 hours a month or about five hours a day. Folks out there are busier, more stressed and more tired at the end of the day and mostly just ready to not have to work at anything too hard.

This doesn’t mean they aren’t also checking their email, logging onto “I can Has Cheezburger” or checking out the latest YouTube video that Aunt Nellie sent them. In fact, they spend 2.5 hours a month surfing the Internet and watching television simultaneously.

The Internet, however, is active entertainment. In other words, you have to do something to get it. You have to search for it. You have to move your mouse. You have to think just a little, tiny bit. This is where television has an advantage. No thinking involved. It may not be exactly what you want to watch, but it flows to you and the only muscle you have to move is the little one that connects your thumb to the remote and the occasional blink of the eyelid.

Like I said, passive.

As the pace of life and the intensity of our worklife accelerates, it becomes more and more important to have times when we do nothing.

Of course, the Internet will catch up at some point and deliver the option of entertainment that is customized to our tastes and then collected, collated and streamed to us. Five and half hours of bloopers on metacafe.com? If that’s what turns your crank, bring it on. But it will be passive. People just don’t have anything left at the end of a long day.
 

Okay, I’m done for the day. Think I’ll watch a little South Park, then maybe some football and oh yeah, around halftime I can switch to Modern Family, then back to the game then maybe a little of that Chef Ramsay guy. He’s crazy.  It’s going to be a relaxing night.


BW