Hi, I'm Noah Goldstein, a faculty member at the UCLA Anderson School of
Management. And today, I'll be talking with you about
persuasion, specifically one principle of persuasion, so let's get started.
So, Tony Little is a fitness guru who has sold dozens of exercise contraptions,
doohickeys, and gizmos that you may have seen on late night infomercials and other
television commericals. Now, Tony Little has been widely
successful selling all of these different contraptions using the standard
infomercial lines that we're all quite familiar with.
But after hiring a infomercial consultant named [UNKNOWN] sales of his latest
contraption skyrocketed. Now, what's particularly remarkable about
this huge increase in sales is that it's been largely attributed to a seemingly
small change that Colleen Szot made to an infomercial line that we're all quite
familiar with. And that line is, operators are standing
by, please call now and we've all heard this line a million times.
But Colleen Szot realized that there was a potentially missed opportunity for
persuasion. So she changed the line from operators
are standing by, please call now to, if operators are busy, please call again.
If operators are busy, please call again. Now, if you think about it from a
business standpoint, this seems suicidal, after all, it's hard enough to get this
guy, interested in exercising in the first place.
But, now you're seemingly conveying to him, by saying if operators are busy,
please call again, that if he bothers to take his finger out of his mouth, and he
used it to dial the number he sees on the screen, he's going to encounter a busy
signal. But there's a certain genius to this
change that Calisat made. Think about the type of mental imagery
that comes to mind with these two different lines.
Operators are standing by. What are you imagining in your mind?
You imagine a couple of bored looking sales representatives maybe twitting
their thumbs. Or maybe dozing off, or doing their
crossword puzzle, which is clearly indicative of low sales and poor demand.
On the other hand, if operators are busy, please call again.
That's a very different mental image that comes to mind.
You can imagine scores of people answering the phones you know?
Which is clearly indicative of popularity, right?
High sales and and large demand. Today's mini lecture will be on a that
people look to others to guide their own behavior, especially when they're
uncertain how to behave. Now before we really get into the studies
that I'll be talking about, I just wanted to briefly introduce the domain in which
we conducted our studies and that's hotel towels.
So if you've stayed at a hotel recently, you've seen that there are these signs
that ask you to reuse your towels in order to help save the environment.
And why do you think that these things have become so popular in hotels?
Now fortunately, it's that hotels are really caring about the environment and
they really want to help. Okay, now this is a cynacism check
because at home you're probably thinking, we'll wait a minute.
I'm sure the hotels want to help save the environment, but there has to be another
reason why. It turns out that the hotels can save a
lot of money if people decide to reuse their towels and bed linens.
Okay, so it helps the environment but of course it also helps the hotel.
Now, my colleagues and I were quite curious about whether or not these signs
are actually effective at getting people to reuse their towels.
And so we looked around and we found a study that suggested that these signs
work surprisingly well. So one little study we saw suggested that
over three quarters of people, who are given the opportunity to reuse their
towel, do so at least sometime during their stay.
It doesn't mean that 75% of people do it all the time, but at least participating
in the program in some way, shape, or form.
So what we wanted to see was what if we communicated this social proof
information to, other hotel guests? Would we see an additional boost in towel
reuse? So we were fortunate enough to solicit
the cooperation of a local Holiday Inn manager, who allowed us to go into the
hotel. And replace their signs with our signs
and I'd like to tell you about three of those different signs.
The first one was a standard environmental message, that one just told
guests that what they were doing was going to help save the environment.
So the environment deserves our respect. You can show your respect for nature and
help save the environment by reusing your towels during your stay.
This is a very typical message what you typically see at hotels all around the
world. The next one is based on this principal
of social proof and it says, join your fellow guests in helping to save the
environment. In a study conducted in Fall 2003, that
was several years prior to when we actually conducted our study.
75% of the guests participated in our new resource savings program by using their
towels more than once. You can join your fellow guests in this
program to help save the environment by reusing your towels during your stay.
So, as you can see, this is the principle social proof, the idea that lots of other
people are reusing their towels. And so we think that that may influence a
guest's behavior, so let's actually take a look at the data.
And what you're seeing here is a graph of the change in towel reuse rate compared
to the standard environmental appeal rate and what we found is simply by indicating
that these majority of other people were reusing their towels.
We saw a 20% increase in towel reuse, right?
Now, if you think about it, this principle of social proof seems obvious,
right? Everyone follows the herd, it seems like
we all kind of know this intuitively and yet, if it's so obvious, why isn't the
hotel doing it? Why have we never seen a single hotel
ever actually communicating this information to the guest?
So that's you know, one of the meta points of today is that, despite the fact
that principles of persuasion seem obvious in hindsight.
when people are actually trying to persuade, they often fail to utilize
these seemingly simplistic principles. So, whenever the desirable behavior is
the norm, when other people are doing the right thing that they're taking the
action that you want people to take, it's really important to remember the power of
the principle of social proof. Now the thing is, even though
organizations and individuals often fail to use this principle.
I'm not saying that nobody uses it. Marketers tend to be pretty good at it
and we're certainly seen some examples of that.
So, we might hear that the for F-series truck is the best selling truck in
America, right? I mean, what they're doing is
communicating the principle social proof, so that when somebody is uncertain about
which type of car they're going to buy. If they look to the marketing slogan then
they recognize, okay? Well, if that's the best selling car in
America, most people are choosing that, so I should choose that too.
So there are of course cases that we see where marketers get it right.
But I'm going to make the argument that even in marketing people who know these
principles very well, I still think that there is room for improvement.
So, for example, if you look at any time a company introduces a new product.
So for example let's say it's a, Arby's New Angus Three Cheese & Bacon burger.
Now what do they tend to do when they're advertising this product?
Well one thing that they do, and the major thing that they do is talk about
why it's so good. What are the benefits to the customer?
What is the customer going to like about that?
And that's very intuitive, it makes total sense why they would do that, but I'm
going to argue that there is a missed opportunity for persuasion.
Now if you think about it, how did these products actually come to market?
Does the CEO just say, slap together some mayo, some brisket, and no that's not how
decisions are made big decisions are made at these big companies.
There's a lot of internal market research, or there's a lot of internal
testing to see whether or not an idea, a particular sandwich, let's say the three
cheese bacon burger is actually something that customers are going to like.
So, in order to decide whether we should bring that product to the market, or a
totally different product to the market. They have to actually test which one is
better, which one consumers like, maybe compare it to competitors burgers.
And, now what's interesting about these internal test market data, is that
companies use them in order to make the decision of which products to actually
bring to the market. But, I would argue that there's a missed
opportunity for influence there based on the principal social proof.
in fact, not only are these data often internal test market data, but sometimes
before introducing the campaign nationally, they'll go out and they'll go
to town in North Carolina, and introduce the burger there and see how it does.
See how people like it, in comparison to other things.
now the point is, here's this heard information that you have, you know that
people prefer this burger to maybe a Wendy's version of that burger and yet,
that information is used to make the decision of which product to take to the
market, and is rarely actually communicated to the consumer and I would
call that a failed opportunity or a missed opportunity for persuasion.
Now, there are a couple of times in, in marketing history when companies have
gotten it right, if you think about the Pepsi challenge for example, if Pepsi had
realized that if you drink a little sip of Pepsi or Coke in a blind taste test
more people, right, the herd, actually prefers Pepsi.
So Pepsi went out and said, take the Pepsi challenge, here's what our data
show. But rarely have we actually seen this
implemented in marketing campaigns despite the seeming obviousness of the
principle. Now there are a couple of exceptions to
this one just to keep in the fast food domain.
Wendy's came out with new fries. Now again, they didn't just say, alright
well lets. The CEO didn't say here's how we're
going to make the fries, there were ideas, there was internal market research
and ultimately they. figured out that people preferred these
fries to McDonalds fries in a blind taste test.
And so, what Wendy's did was, they actually did the right thing something
very different than what we typically see.
They came out with a campaign saying that, you know?
Roughly 56 percent of people preferred their fries to McDonalds, right?
That's what the herd is doing. Now, I'm not arguing that this type of
campaign would make people who are McDonalds devotees that it would make
them run into a Wendy's to try the fries. And remember what I said earlier, social
proof, like almost all the principles of influence, are going to be most powerful
when people are uncertain of how to behave.
So what that means is again, if you love McDonald's fries and you've never eaten
anywhere else, you're not going to be influenced by this social proof
information. However, if you are person who is unsure,
you're curious, that information is probably going to push you over the edge
and you are going to be more likely to try the fries.
And Wendy's believes that once you try the fries, you're actually going to
prefer those fries in the future. So as I was saying earlier, people follow
the herd. We've seen some evidence for this and of
course, this is not the only study done on the principle of social proof.
There's lots of other research that validates this principle, but there's an
important question that we have to ask. Which is yeah, sure people follow the
herd but we have to remember, they're are a lot of different herds out there.
So which herd are we going to be most likely to follow.
So, earlier I was talking about the social proof message that we used in the
hotel. Which indicated that 75% of people who
were similar to the hotel guests, right, 75% of people who had stayed in a hotel
just like our, our guests reuse their towels.
We said the following, 75% of the guests who stayed in your room #321, or whatever
the room number was, participated in the new resource savings program and the rest
of the message was exactly the same. So, remember, all of the herd information
is the same, in the terms of the number 75%, but in, in that prior case it's
other people like you at the hotel, and in this case it's people who stayed in
your room. Now, let's take a look at the data.
So, earlier we found a 20% increase in the likelihood of reusing our towels
simply by informing people that the majority of others were reusing their
towel, like others in the hotel. But now what happens when we tell people,
that other people who stayed in your particular room reuse their towels?
Now we get a 33% increase in towel reuse, so what's going on here?
Want you to ask yourself, is this rational behavior?
If you think about it, there is no rational reason why the norms operating
in your particular room are going to be any more adaptive or any more effective
than the norms in the rooms next door. And in fact, if you really think about it
deeply there is no group of people who has done more to ickefy, your room, than
the very people who've stayed in it previously.
Alright, you don't even want to think what those people have done in your room
previously. So again, there's no a neccessarily,
there shouldn't be, from a logical point of view, even warm and fuzzy feelings
between yourself and those people in the past.
Well, as we see in persuasion research as well as a lot of the research Jan has
talked about, people don't always behave rationally.
And in persuasion they don't always behave rationally in response to
persuasive messages. Now, what we think is going on is that
normally it is adaptive to follow the norms of people who are similar to you,
the norms of your particular environment. It normally makes sense that if you're in
a multinational company, which norm should you follow for how to behave.
Well, the norms of your particular department, the people on your floor,
normally following those norms is more diagnostic of what's the right behavior.
And we think that people over learn this over time, right, that they are
constantly being rewarded for following the norms of similar others in similar
situations. And that when they're not thinking
particularly deeply. They're going to be more likely to follow
a norm like this which we call a provincial norm, right?
Their particular province, their particular area or locale or context then
you would expect rationally. So, one really common persuasion mistake
that I tend to see is that people, even when they remember the principle of
social proof, they fail to point to the right herd.
And what I'm arguing here is that the right herd is the one that is similar to
the audience, that shares the context of the audience.
So, for example if there's an ad campaign in California or in Santa Monica to try
to get Santa Monicans to recycle, and that's where I live, if I saw an ad that
said 95% of Californians recycle. I think that would be a good use of the
principal social proof, that if especially if I'm uncertain, I would be
more likely to do it, but I don't think that is the optimal message.
Assuming of course that the norms were the same and 95% of people in Santa
Monica recycled, I would be much more persuaded by an ad that said 95% of
people in Santa Monica recycle. And so you always have to remember, you
know, when I'm going to convey this herd information, this social proof
information what is the right herd and, and hopefully based on this discussion I
pointed you in the right direction. I'm glad I had the chance to talk to you
for at least a little bit about the science of persuasion.
If you're interested in learning more, you can always go out and buy a book that
I have co-authored with Robert Cialdini and Steve Martin entitled, yes.
And one final fact that I'll end on is that 95% of people who have watched this
video have gone out and bought it immediately.
Thank you very much.