A History of Marketing / Episode 9
This week, I sit down with Dr. Robert Cialdini, a NYT bestselling author and Regents Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Marketing at Arizona State University. Cialdini is regarded as “The Godfather of Influence” and The Harvard Business Review describes him as “the foremost expert on effective persuasion.”
This is a special conversation for me. Cialdini’s 1984 book “Influence: Science and Practice” is a book I’ve revisited over my career, and I’ve recommended it to several marketing colleagues.
Speaking directly with Cialdini was a true honor. He’s given a handful of podcast interviews in the past, but I haven’t come across one that’s specifically focused on the marketing applications of his research.
Listen to the podcast: Spotify / Apple Podcasts / YouTube Podcasts
We'll also explore Cialdini’s 2016 bestseller Pre-Suasion, which is all about how to prime audiences to be persuaded before a marketing message is delivered.
Along the way, we’ll ground these principles in case studies, with examples of McDonald’s, Coca-Cola and the New Coke launch, Bose, Norwegian Cruise Lines, and Berkshire Hathaway. We’ll hear how Cialdini’s principles helped Warren Buffett and the late Charlie Munger — and had reciprocal benefits for Cialdini himself.
Now here it is, my conversation with Dr. Robert Cialdini.
Bringing the psychology of persuasion to marketing
Andrew Mitrak: Dr. Robert Cialdini, welcome to A History of Marketing.
Dr. Robert Cialdini: Well, thank you, Andrew. I'm looking forward to our conversation.
Andrew Mitrak: So, you are the Regents Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Marketing at Arizona State University. That word “Marketing” is officially in your professor title. That stood out to me because I think of a lot of your work as primarily psychology. So, I'm curious about what your relationship has been to the field of marketing over the years.
Dr. Robert Cialdini: Well, it's always been an interest of mine because of my larger, broader interest in the psychology of influence, and of course, marketers are influencers in many situations and ways. So, I've always had an eye toward what marketers are doing, what's been successful, and what isn't successful in the marketing arena.
But my role as an academic with a marketing title comes from the fact that on a sabbatical leave, I went to Stanford. I was going to write a book, a new book, the book called Pre-Suasion, and I was asked by the Associate Dean if I could teach a marketing class. I was in the business school, the GBS, because I wanted to get the advice of various professors there about my ideas. And so, they gave me an office in the business school, and they asked me to teach a course to MBAs on effective business communications. So, inside that is, of course, the marketing element, and I began teaching that course, and it was very well received.
When I came back to ASU, my marketing colleagues said, "Hey, Bob, how about if you join us, get a joint appointment, not just in psychology, but also in marketing, where you can teach that course, this time sharpened to effective marketing communications?" So, that's how the joint appointment developed, and I was very glad for it because the marketing students that I would teach would give me a side of the influence process that psychologists just didn't have a deep experience in. And so they were great sources of information for me.
Andrew Mitrak: I would have loved to have taken that course at some time. I'm sure that marketers brought a new lens onto it that you weren't getting in psychology, but on the other foot, I'm sure you were bringing concepts that aren't really taught in marketing programs usually. Were there any notable reactions to some of the ideas that you recall from this time?
Dr. Robert Cialdini: One of the things that was especially riveting for the marketing students was the idea that I was claiming that although we live in what is known as the Information Age, it's never been known as the Knowledge Age.
Information has to be processed. It has to be structured. It has to be prioritized. And then, people will take it in, resonate with it, and then employ it in ways that lend themselves to assent if you're interested in influence. And so, that idea that information, no, we have to really think about how we construct it for marketing purposes rather than just sending it out there and expecting it to land in a favorable way. That's just naive, so the course was really reimagined in terms of that difference. We have information. We have a case to make. We have the merits of our offer and so on. That's not enough. We have to arrange it in psychologically strategic ways to make it knowledge that people will take with them and employ.
Early Influences: Coke, McDonald's, and "The Hidden Persuaders"
Andrew Mitrak: Let's go back to the beginning. You grew up in the Midwest. I think I have that right. And I'm curious about what your first encounters were with marketing as a young person.
Dr. Robert Cialdini: Well, what I remember is Coca-Cola ads. I remember McDonald's ads and so on that had an emotional component to them that employed some of the things that I talk about in the universal principles of influence.
The idea of unity that we're a community, we're a Coca-Cola community, a McDonald's community. Then information like we're the widest selling brand, McDonald's, ex-millions sold, and all those kinds of things that they were allowing us to recognize about their product that didn't have to do specifically with the features of it, just the response to it, the emotional response that people would have to knowing those, those facets of it. And that struck me as very interesting.
I remember being interested in a couple of books back in those days. One was The Hidden Persuaders by Vance Packard. Back in 57. I was just 12 years old, so I didn't read it then, but a few years later, that whole idea of elements that you could put into an ad or a marketing appeal that would resonate with fundamental motives that people had, but they didn't even recognize them. You didn't have to be explicit about it. You could lay them into the background of the ad, for example, there was this great example of a set of ice cubes in a glass, a whiskey glass, and if you look close, you could see kind of racy images within the ice cubes that they laid in there and generating this desire for the product because there was desire that was coming into consciousness, although under the radar.
And, Ernest Dichter, too, with The Strategy of Desire. I think it was his idea of underlying consumer motivations that weren't just about the product, but were about the things that people are looking for, striving for attainment and recognition and affection and so on. Those kinds of factors when aligned into the messaging were very effective, even though they were outside of the particular features of the ad, they were connected to it in terms of those fundamental drivers of human conduct.
Going undercover to find the secrets of persuasion
Andrew Mitrak: So you were really interested in the science and psychology behind persuasion from a very young age. And I'm going to read an excerpt from the introduction of Influence that speaks to a pivotal moment in your career as a researcher. I'm going to quote.
"For nearly three years, I combined my experimental studies with a decidedly more entertaining program. I systematically immersed myself in the world of compliance professionals, sales people, fundraisers, marketers, recruiters, and others."
So, this period of being undercover in this immersion with these compliance professionals, I'm sure you have a lot of stories from this period. It sounds like a lot of fun. Do you recall any of your favorite interactions with marketers or public relations people while you were undercover for a few years?
Dr. Robert Cialdini: Well, you know, I'm going to give you an example that I think is important, not because it took place in a marketing or PR setting, but because of its implications for the way as marketers and marketing professionals, we need to take this lesson into account.
It has to do with the importance of establishing trust in our audience before we launch into trying to convince them to come in our direction. And in modern communication technology, we are separating ourselves in terms of human connection from our audience. We're using technology that allows people to buy or learn about our products and so on with no human connection, where you have experience with people, you've come to like them, you've come to trust them. And so, here was an example.
So I was taking training in a sales program for very expensive heat activated fire alarm systems in the home. And I was undercover. I was incognito. I would just enter their training programs. I would learn what they were telling me was most effective in getting people to say yes. And I did this across a whole range of industries and programs and so on.
In this particular one, there was one salesperson who, after you would get an invitation on the phone, you would recruit people to allow a salesperson to come into their home, and it was usually a couple, and tell them about this new fire alarm system that was superior to all the smoke based systems. And there was one guy who was always at the top of the sales lists. Every month he sold more than anybody else.
In their sales training program, we were allowed to accompany the old pros on sales trips, and sales visits, to learn what they were doing. And I was especially interested in this one guy. Let's call him Jim. It wasn't his name, but let's call him Jim. And to see what he was doing. And it turns out he was only doing one thing different and it was designed to establish trust before he ever said a word about the products.
Because if we, if we have that human connection with someone we trust, our defenses come down and we're more open to that person. There’s less skepticism and so on.
So, what we would do with all the other sales people, there would be a big ringed folder of information about the product and all the benefits. And everybody would bring it in with them, introduce themselves and then start walking through this bit.
This guy, Jim, left that binder in the car and would introduce himself and then everybody was all the sales people were asked to give the customers a little test of their home fire danger knowledge. So, and they would have, it would be a time test. They would only have five minutes. Okay, and so you give that to them and they're taking the test.
And Jim would say, “Oh, wait a minute. I forgot some important information. Do you mind if I let myself out and back into your home while you're taking the test? I don't want to interrupt your test.”
That often involved giving him a key to the front door of their home or to say, sure, let me unlock it for you and go ahead and leave and come back at your discretion. We did three separate calls that night and he did the same thing on all three calls.
“Oh, I forgot the, do you mind if I get it and get access to your home?”
And I asked him about it on the drive back to the office and first of all, he wouldn't ask, he wouldn't answer me. He said, he didn't want to reveal his secret.
Finally, at the third time, he said, "Listen, Bob, what kind of person do you allow into and out of your house on their own with a key that you've given them? Only somebody you trust, right? I wanted to establish myself as a trustworthy individual before I began my pitch."
It's the only thing he did differently. And he was at the top of the sales team. So, the importance of establishing trust before you launch in, right? How do you do that?
Bose case study: Establishing trust with testimonials
Dr. Robert Cialdini: Well, one piece of evidence that I have recognized from a marketing campaign from Bose. Bose Acoustics: you give them testimonials of experts on this topic on, it was the Bose wave music system. So, experts in acoustics and audio technology and so on.
They used to have those expert testimonials buried in the message down below or you have to press a button to get to the to the testimonials to another page and so on. And we asked them to put the testimonials first. So they had the power, the trust that came from expertise of not, not the, not the marketer, but people outside of Bose who were recommending it. They now were able to get that trust in what was being said before they said a word, right? And it increased purchases by 16%.
Now, the other thing about it is to optimize that trust from expertise, we didn't just put one testimonial. There will be a lot of advertising agencies that will tell you, no, no, just put your best testimonial first because the only, put that in there first. The others will just dilute its impact. That's not what the research shows.
The research shows that subsequent testimonials, as long as the best one is in there, don't dilute it. They reinforce it. They reinforce what the best one said. They validate it. So that you can be you can trust that this wasn't just a cherry picked testimonial. They say that it's the only one that really raves about. No, there are several. So they put three up there, right? First thing. And that's what got them 16%. And the thing is it was the same material. It's where it went. It went in a place that established trust first, then led to compliance.
Andrew Mitrak: There's so much to unpack with that. That example of Bose and the one best rating versus the multiple testimonials. I think today also of Google reviews and Yelp reviews where, which one do you trust? Do you trust the restaurant that has one single five-star review or do you trust the one that has 200 reviews that are 4.9?
Dr. Robert Cialdini: Well, you're exactly right. Well, that 4.9 actually seems more authentic and it's better. And there's research to show it. The best conversion is not all five stars. It's a range between 4.3 and 4.7. Because you don't trust that person who's giving you just blanket positivity.
Andrew Mitrak: You don't trust it, exactly.
Dr. Robert Cialdini: No. Oh, and by the way, one of the things I'm going to recommend, because I think it's so important to build human connection back into our marketing even though technology is separating us. When you say there are “200 reviews,” right? Say “200 reviewers.”
Those are people. We want people, not words on a page. We want people these days because we're, again, we're we're being drained of human connection through technology where we are just interacting with people separately from them, just pressing buttons.
Influence: unpacking the seven principles of persuasion
Andrew Mitrak: Let's, let's jump into your book Influence to ground some of this conversation, these ideas in the principles you lay out in the book. And when I first read Influence, there were six principles of persuasion you outlined. But this interview spurred me to purchase the new and expanded edition, which is not just a light, you know, rewrite with a new chapter here or there. It is a beefy, 400, 500 page book with a lot of material.
Dr. Robert Cialdini: No, we added 215 pages. Yeah.
Andrew Mitrak: Oh my gosh. Yeah. Well, knowing I was going to interview led me to purchase and read this new copy, which is just a delight in itself. And so, highly recommended to listeners. And so there were six principles initially. In this new book, you added a seventh principle, unity. Can, can you briefly walk through what the six principles are and why you added unity as a seventh principle?
Dr. Robert Cialdini: Sure. Let's do that briefly.
The first is reciprocation. People say yes to those people who have first given to them when they get a request from that person. We say yes to those we owe. So, we ought to be giving first, information. We should be giving various kinds of benefits, advantages and so on before people sign or or buy. Because they then feel appreciative. They feel grateful. And one of the things is to just, for example, there's research to show if you, if you just show people the amount of effort that you went through to provide this information to them, they're more receptive to it. They give effort back for having received that effort. That's the essence of the rule of reciprocity. What you give first, so you give benefits, advantages, information, evidence of your efforts and goodwill and so on. So that's one.
Next is liking, the liking principle. Nobody would be surprised that we prefer to say yes to those people we like. Well, how do you get liking online, for example? How can you possibly do that? You don't know those people. They don't know you. They have no familiarity, no history with you. Well, there's a study of 6,700 online commercial sites, right? And they looked at AB tests to see which were the things that cause people to be more likely to go from visitor to purchaser, right? They convert. And the, the, fortunately, the principles of influence that we talk about are at the top of the list, but how do you get “liking” in there, right? Turns out that if you include on your landing page a welcoming statement, you get more conversion. You just establish, like, you approve of those people. You welcome them the way you would welcome somebody into your home. So on my, you know, we have a startup called the Cialdini Institute, where we teach ethical influence, and we have on the landing page, a welcoming statement, where it's said, well, welcome to our site. We're so glad that you're there. And then to make sure that it's personalized, I don't just have my name typed out in machine font, I sign it with my, I want a, I want them to see a person there. And there's a photograph of me. So, again, a person. So, those are the kind of things that bring, again, human connection in, increase liking and lend themselves to yes.
Andrew Mitrak: It's not the “Institute of Influence” or “Institute of Compliance.” It is “The Cialdini Institute” and it's you–and you're a likable guy! So it's personalized.
Dr. Robert Cialdini: And there's a, there's a photograph there, and. And you know how in, well, I'll give you an example, in marketing, two of the things that have shown the greatest increase over the last decade, influencer marketing. There's a person there. Somebody you know, somebody you were com- you're comfortable with, somebody you're familiar with, right? Big increase. And the other is handmade products. 37% increase. Why? Because there's a person there at a time when we're being separated from human connection, right? So, that kind of thing, anything you can do like that is gold. Yeah, so that's the liking principle.
And how about social proof. The idea that if a lot of people are doing this, it must be the right thing to do. In our information overloaded world there are so many choices, so many options, so many challenges that we're dealing with, we're uncertain of what we should do. And people are looking for ways to reduce their uncertainty.
We've already talked about one of them: authority. You give them evidence before you give them anything else, that of testimonials from genuine experts or, and here's the principle of social proof, which says people want to follow the lead of multiple comparable others. If a lot of other people like me are doing this thing or have done this thing, then it's probably the right thing for me too. Again testimonials or star ratings or quotes of one sort or another from others, a lot of others, multiple others will lend themselves to success. And we've already covered authority.
Another is commitment and consistency. People want to be consistent with what they have already said or done. Okay? So, commitment and consistency.
We've talked about scarcity. That people want more of those things they can have less of. So, the more we can give them evidence that what we have is unique, uncommon, rare, that Yeah. you can't get this from anybody else, not in combination. A lot of times it's not one thing that distinguishes us from all our rivals. It's a suite of things that together nobody else can match. That would be the thing to make very clear to people at the outset.
Then finally, there is the new principle of unity, which says that people want to say yes, not just to those who are similar to them, but to those who are one of them, who share an identity or share a set of values or goals or or or category memberships. So I'm one of them. And how do you do that? Well, you, you can let people know if you know what their identities are, and you happen to share them, let them know that. But the way that works for me, we remember we were talking about getting people to feel connected. One of the great marketing advances of the last couple of decades, I think, is co-creation, where you ask your existing customer base to create with you the next generation of products or services. And the research shows that that not only increases favorability toward your brand, it increases loyalty. They're more likely to stay with you, even after there's been a stumble of some sort or another, right? If they've co-created something with you, they feel of you, part of you, of your brand.
Now here's the latest research: One of the things we are doing with the Cialdini Institute is focusing on what we call small bigs. What are the smallest changes we can make to an appeal, an influence appeal, that will have the biggest impact on its persuasive success. Like, can you change one word and have that. Here's an example:
Suppose you want to get your, you want to get co-creation and you're going to ask your customer base or your most important clients or customers to help you in this regard, and you will ask them for their opinion, can you give us your opinion on what we can do? Or you'll give them an outline or a summary or a blueprint of a new thing, can you give us your opinion on this? It's exactly the right thing to ask for that unity there.
Right? Be, be one of us in this. Join us with this. Be our partner. It's a mistake to ask for their opinion. Because when you ask for an opinion, you get a critic. You get someone who does the opposite of unifying with you. They step back from you and they go inside themselves to provide a critique of your idea or your new initiative, let's say. Instead, if you substitute the word advice for opinion, you get significantly more favorable responses to your idea, right? Yeah. Because they're part of it. And here's the evidence that really sells the case for me. They give you better input into how to improve it, to change it or to emphasize features within your idea, right? Because they're one of you now. Yeah. The word advice asks for collaboration, partnership, unity, right?
A small big for how you generate unity is not to ask for an opinion. And the newest research shows that's exactly the same thing for asking for feedback, which is the other thing we typically say. No, ask for advice and you get a better outcome.
Andrew Mitrak: That's super interesting. There's this concept of the net promoter score and it's a question that's always asked by either product managers or marketers always using the same, the same text. It's it's, it's something to the effect of, “How likely are you to recommend this service to a friend?”
And it's always that way. I think they always want to be consistent. In fact, I don't think they want to change it too much because they want to track it over time.
Does that speak to unity in that you're bringing in friendship or do you the net promoter score could be improved upon?
Dr. Robert Cialdini: Yeah, I think I would change it a little bit and say, what would be the single most positive feature of our product or service? Yeah. That you would tell a friend about. Now, they imagine themselves advising a friend, right? About this positive feature, that would be, I think, the most streamlined way.
Andrew Mitrak: Yeah.
Dr. Robert Cialdini: To get to the unity that we want. But I think that your point is very well taken that that general kind of questioning does that. It's an attempt at that.
Andrew Mitrak: Right. Yeah. Well, you're inspiring my next listener survey for this podcast. So, just to recap, we've talked about:
Reciprocation
Liking
Social proof
Authority
Commitment and consistency
Scarcity
Unity
Influence through the ages
Andrew Mitrak: This podcast is called A History of Marketing and so I'm very curious about how concepts and tactics and strategies have evolved over time.
When you think about these principles, do you see them all as something that's innately human that's existed as long as humans have communicated and had something to sell to each other or or do you think of them as something that have culturally developed over time and that and that they've that they've changed over the years?
Dr. Robert Cialdini: I think the majority of them have evolved over eons of human development. These are the things that if we, if they're truly in the situation, authority, social proof, we should want to move toward them, right? They will have evolved.
There are a couple that have a very strong socialization component. Commitment and consistency, for example, the idea that you want to be consistent with what you have already said or done. Well, that's really about a reputation that you're spreading to people. That's the sort of thing you learn how to do. You don't get commitment and consistency effects in small children until they're maybe in fifth or sixth grade that they recognize that. So it's probably not innate. It has to be socialized into them. The other is reciprocity.
All of these other principles, like scarcity and liking and what other similar others are doing, social proof and what, you'll see those even in non-human animals, that but reciprocity, especially a particular kind of reciprocity where the receipt of a gift or favor or service, piece of information, beneficial information, lends itself to future compliance with that gift giver. Animals don't have that. They don't have the ability to hold that sense of gratitude in their minds or obligation in their minds. I think this is something that is socialized into us.
It's true in every human society. There's not a single human culture that fails to train its members in the rule for reciprocity. You must not take without giving in return. Because if you do, you're isolated, you're shunted off to the side. You're not somebody who will do well in that culture. The society benefits from people who receive to give back, which increases the likelihood that somebody will want to give in the first place, which increases human interaction and cooperation. I think those two, commitment and consistency and reciprocity are heavily socialized. The others are there already.
Persuasion in marketing vs. sales
Andrew Mitrak: You highlighted earlier the examples of the salesperson selling fire detection systems and then Bose, the audio system. And I think you were highlighting the differences between how salespeople can apply these and marketers and brands can apply these. And I think of marketers as they're influencing usually through the voice of a company or they're a voice of a product or a brand. They're kind of representing an entity that's like a non-human entity.
This is different from a salesperson who's usually being more direct and personable and one-to-one with the person they're trying to persuade.
How do you see these principles as being different? Or do you see them as being different for someone who's a marketer speaking on behalf of a brand or a sales person who's more taking an individual one-to-one approach?
Dr. Robert Cialdini: Yeah, I think you're exactly right that they're different in that respect, but marketers would be well advised to bring those principles like liking, unity, reciprocity, that that produce a favorable connection, bring that into their marketing efforts, right? Let people know what you've already done for them or the effort that you've gone to present this information and so on.
There was a study done in England where they were trying to get people to attend a particular meeting. And a lot of people just, it wasn't in their best interest. But if they were told how much trouble had been undertaken to set the meeting, find the location and get the schedules of everybody. They got a significant increase. Since, simply using reciprocity in terms of what we've already done might be something to do.
The other thing about reciprocity, I think that's new over the years is not just material gifts, favors or services, but information, valuable information that's not designed to sell them your product because then it's a sales device. It's not really seen as a gift. Information in general about how to best proceed in this general area that you're working in, or just information about safety or whatever it is, that's the sort of thing that we can provide first and in a marketing context, we don't have to have a face-to-face interaction with people that can develop and has developed over the years. It's not just, you know, free samples.
Coca-Cola: Comparing case studies of “Hilltop” and “New Coke”
Andrew Mitrak: I want to ask about examples of companies and brands that have where their principles of influence have gone right and they've done it really successfully, then an example about where it's gone wrong or where maybe the lessons of influence weren't successful. And I think Coca-Cola could be a fun example to kind of compare and contrast.
You mentioned Coca-Cola as one of the advertisements that made a big impression when you were a young person and of course, when I think of the concept of unity, I think of commercials like “I'd like to buy the world a Coke” and people holding holding hands. What did Coca-Cola do well with with these advertisements?
Dr. Robert Cialdini: Yeah, they did exactly that. They made their product part of your upbringing, part of your youth, part of your history, part of your family experience. Even notice their ads for Christmas. There's a Christmas ad and Santa is drinking. I mean, just making it part of something that you've experienced that's a positive aspect of who you are. And that brand gets blended into that, right? They did a terrific job. Now, they also did a mistaken job on one thing, New Coke.
Andrew Mitrak: Yeah.
Dr. Robert Cialdini: Remember New Coke?
Andrew Mitrak: Yeah, I wanted to ask you about this because I actually just last week I interviewed a man named Sergio Zyman for this podcast. He's the former Chief Marketing Officer of Coca-Cola and he's the marketer who's most associated with the New Coke launch. He did a lot of great things in his career, like involving the launch of Diet Coke, but we talked a lot about New Coke. So I want to hear you have a few pages on New Coke in Influence. What are your impressions of it?
Dr. Robert Cialdini: So what they failed to recognize is the consequence of taking the old Coke away. So people couldn't have it anymore. And they produced what's called reactants where people reacted against the loss of this valued thing. It wasn't just that they introduced New Coke as another brand version or flavor with a little sweeter. No, they took it away. It produced a fire storm of protest. I mean, there were marches in the street. There were communities that developed with people raging against it. There were suits filed in court to bring back the old Coke because of loss aversion. That's part of scarcity. We want more of those things we can't have.
Coke did this great job of establishing itself in the sense of self of their customers. And then they took that thing away that had been associated, that flavor, that taste, you can't have it anymore. And it produced this massive counter reaction to it. And actually Coca-Cola had the evidence in their testing data that this would happen, but they interpreted it wrong.
New Coke: A lesson in loss aversion
Dr. Robert Cialdini: For three years they did taste tests, blind taste tests, the New Coke versus the old Coke. And the New Coke was rated more favorably by about 55% to 45%. They like the sweeter taste. Okay. And they thought, okay, well then people are and then they took away the thing they had established for decades and decades and decades and people and produced this fire storing. Okay, what was in their data that could have told them that this was going to happen? Some of the taste tests were not blind. They said, this is your usual Coke and this is the New Coke that's not yet on the market, right? And preference for the New Coke went up by 6%. And Coca-Cola said, this is great. This means that when we bring them something new, they will choose it. What it really said is when you give them the choice between something they can have, the classic Coke, the regular Coke, and something they can't have because it's not on the market yet, they liked it even more.
In both cases, it was loss aversion. The thing that you couldn't have was the one that was elevated in preference. And then Coke went ahead and said you can't have our product anymore. The one that's, you know, embedded in yourself, we're going to give you this and that produced the reaction.
So, in both cases, I think we can find evidence of a good marketing strategy and a poor marketing strategy in the history of Coca-Cola.
Andrew Mitrak: That's right. The word you brought up a couple times is loss aversion. I think it's this idea that if I was to take something away from you and give something to you, the pain you would feel about your loss is actually greater than any positive feeling you'd have about what you gained.
And people really felt that pain with Coca-Cola Classic that was now gone. What's more scarce than, “You can't have it”?
Dr. Robert Cialdini: You're exactly right. Loss is the ultimate form of scarcity. You can't have it anymore.
Andrew Mitrak: Yeah. To Coca-Cola's credit, when they brought back the classic Coca-Cola, they made sure that everything was exactly the same, that there were no changes to it. This is the same packaging, the same color, the same brand, everything that was there before. It's just the way it was.
Dr. Robert Cialdini: So what's the implication for marketers, right? Here's one. Don't just tell people what they will gain, what they will receive from choosing your product. Tell them what they don't want to lose. Loss aversion is stronger than desire for the very same thing.
Daniel Kahneman (and Amos Tversky) won the Nobel Prize in economics for his prospect theory that showed that the prospects of gaining something are significantly less motivating than the prospects of losing that very same thing. So, in that Bose ad I was telling you about where we added multiple testimonials of it, so that was the authority principle. We also had the scarcity principle when we changed the title of the ad from "New," the new Bose wave music system to "Hear what you've been missing in the new Bose wave music system." That produced a significant increase in sales. So tell people not just what they will gain, but what they will forgo. It's more powerful.
Andrew Mitrak: That's a great line: “Hear what you've been missing.”
Pre-Suasion: Setting the Stage for "Yes"
Andrew Mitrak: Another book of yours that's a favorite of mine is Pre-Suasion. And speaking of great lines, I love this word, "Pre-Suasion." And did you coin this word yourself? and do you remember the moment you came up with it?
Dr. Robert Cialdini: Yes, I did coin it, “Pre-Suasion.” The initial title of the book was “Moments of Power.” I was looking for moments when people were especially susceptible to a marketing or influence-based appeal. And they were always first. Almost always first.
It's what you did first that changed the mindset of people to be more receptive to the message they haven't yet received. So, it was possible to increase people's agreement with a message that hadn't been sent to them yet. How could that be? Well, it's because if you put people in mind of a concept that is central inside your message, they have been readied for it when they do encounter it. Here's a great example, the Norwegian Cruise Line, one holiday season, had a marketing campaign where they were sending emails to all of their former customers that there was a great bargain for cruises during the holiday season of that year, right? But it was a limited time offer. So inside the email, there was a ticking down digital clock of how many hours and minutes you had to do it. Everybody got that. But half of them got that message with two ticking clock emojis in the subject line. So they were primed for scarcity. They were primed for potential loss, dwindling opportunity, before they encountered dwindling opportunity, which, according to the Norwegian Cruise Line, significantly increased purchases of cruises as a result. Yeah. So what do you do first? And how do you find those opportunities for mentioning something? We already provided one. Put, for example, a welcoming statement on your landing page before they get any information. You've established liking for them.
Andrew Mitrak: That's exactly right. Recalling our conversation, almost everything you've mentioned is all about Pre-Suasion or or that's that initial moment, whether it's the welcome message on your your website, the salesperson who's selling the fire safety system, you know, he doesn't ask to leave at the end as he's signing the paperwork. He does it right at the beginning to build trust.
Bose elevating those testimonials right to the top. It's both taking all of these principles of influence and persuasion and recognizing that, hey, often these happen right at, right at the beginning of an interaction and enter Pre-Suasion.
Dr. Robert Cialdini: You're well advised to structure them for the beginning.
Warren Buffett's Masterclass in Pre-Suasion
Dr. Robert Cialdini: You know who's the best at this is Warren Buffett. Okay. Maybe the greatest financial investor of our time. I get his annual letter to shareholders every year. Here's what he does on the first or second page of that letter. He mentions a weakness, something that went wrong that year and says, you know, we're human. We make mistakes, but this won't happen again because we've learned. We've made changes now.
Every time he leads with a mistake, I say to myself, “Wow, this guy's being straight with us. What's the next thing he's going to say?” I'm especially interested. I'm focused now. I'm primed for trust. Then he mentions the strengths of Berkshire Hathaway. And why you should hold your shares and buy new shares because, and I am diving into that new. But it's not, he's waited until he's established his trust before he presents the strengths. Wow. What a brilliant guy.
Andrew Mitrak: Very brilliant guy. And if I was to go down the principles of influence, the principles of persuasion and think of Warren Buffett, commitment and consistency. Is there anybody more consistent than him and the late Charlie Munger? Scarcity, they still have the class A stock and there's it class B? So there's like two stocks. There's one that I could probably afford and there's one that's like several hundreds of thousands of dollars and there's -
Dr. Robert Cialdini: It's between six and $700,000 a share.
Charlie Munger and the rewards of reciprocity
Dr. Robert Cialdini: Now, I'm going to tell you a story.
I got one of those A shares 25 years ago in an envelope that had Charlie Munger's name on it. Charlie was Warren's long standing partner. It was worth $75,000.
And he said, "Your book has made us so much money by understanding human behavior because we know that the markets are not made up of econometric models, they're made up of people. By the principle of reciprocity, you are entitled to this share."
And I was sitting in a chair that had rollers on the back and I read this and it knocked me back and the chair hit the wall behind me. I was so shocked by this.
Okay, so I've kept that share and it's recently, it reached $700,000 for that single share. That's how good these guys were not just at financial investing, but telling people about financial investing and how they did it and how and by establishing trust first. I mean, it's just brilliant.
Andrew Mitrak: That's amazing.
Will marketing internalize the lessons of Influence?
Andrew Mitrak: So, your books have had so many answers to how marketers should position products and persuade audiences, and why do you think there's still so many marketing campaigns that fall flat and aren't persuasive? Is it just that more people need to read your books and sign up for the Cialdini Institute? Or why is it not fully known? Because the answers are there.
Dr. Robert Cialdini: Yeah, I think it is that they think that my book is, well, “That was developed before the internet. Well so why would I pay attention to it?”
And so actually, the book has been called the Bible of online marketing. It was written before there was online marketing and people have asked me, “How did you see ahead? How did you look ahead to see that it would be so successful in this new platform?”
I said, "I never looked ahead. I looked in us.”
I looked in us. What are the drivers of yes that have always existed across platforms, across populations, across situations. Those are the ones we need to.
You have to think about not just the latest technology or approach. Look to the factors that have always driven. There's a Chinese saying, "The years tell what the days can't say.”
Look to what has always worked. Don't get swept away by what happens to be the most novel or the newest. Go to the most primal features. Those are the ones that are going to drive behavior.
Andrew Mitrak: I, of course, couldn't agree more. That's part of this whole podcast. I feel like everybody is is looking to the future of marketing or the latest tips and tricks today and I think a lot of the lessons are in history and they're they're from experts like you, like Dr. Kotler, like so many others who have gone through all this before and I couldn't recommend enough for listeners if they're in marketing to, you know, pick up a copy of Influence.
It made Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett a lot of money, so definitely recommended. And Pre-Suasion as well, which is also just a delightful read. So, Dr. Cialdini, thanks so much for your, for your stories, your time, your wisdom. I've really enjoyed it.
Where can listeners find you and learn more about you beyond purchasing these books to learn more about your work and to and to support you?
Dr. Robert Cialdini: I think the easiest way would be to go to cialdini.com and then there's an array of possible options that they might want to partake of.
Andrew Mitrak: Yeah. Well, Bob, thanks again for being on the show. It's been a lot of fun.
Dr. Robert Cialdini: I've enjoyed it.
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