Healthy Influence Blog

You know my prime persuasion rule:  All Bad Persuasion Is Sincere.  When persuasion sources make authentic, deeply felt, self-revealing persuasion plays, in other words when they are sincere, the persuasion is usually ineffective.  Since persuasion is about “the other guy” no one does or should care what you really think, feel, or do as the persuasion source.  Thus, whenever you see a sincere persuasion source, you see the mark of the Beast and can take comfort in our superior knowledge, sit back, relax, and enjoy the failure.

So, how do we understand today’s example of Sincere Persuasion?

USA Today writes a great news story (unusual enough in this day and age – a good straight news story) about a coming Hollywood public service campaign aimed at generating higher rates of volunteerism in America.  Here’s how USA Today describes it.

Their bipartisan call to action morphed into “I Participate,” a Hollywood-fueled initiative that’s shaping up as one of TV’s biggest, most innovative public service efforts ever. From next Monday to Oct. 25, ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox and several cable channels will devote chunks of more than 90 shows to mobilize viewers off their couches.

Audiences will be peppered with celebrity public service announcements (PSAs), end-of-episode pleas from casts and volunteerism segments on reality shows, talk and news programs from The View to Today. But most I Participate messages will be more subtle, weaving motivational themes and dialogue into dozens of scripted sitcoms and dramas as plot points or character-driven story lines.

“Embedding something into entertainment plants a seed that has value in ways a (PSA) doesn’t. You’re not beating someone over the head with it,” says CSI: NY’s Hill Harper, whose character, medical examiner Sheldon Hawkes, has volunteered as a first-responder physician.

Please read the article to discover specific examples of these tactics for your favorite TV shows.  They are really groovy, gear, and fab.  Heart-warming.  Even sincere, you might say.

The great USA Today writer also provides something typically missing from stories like this.  Reasonable measures of effect.  Consider:

According to Bureau of Labor Statistics surveys, one in four Americans volunteer, a rate static for 40 years. (The Corporation for National and Community Service, the federal agency that oversees service programs, says volunteering rose 1.5% in 2008.)

Chew on that BLS rate of 25% and the observation that the rate is “static.”  For example, in 2008, a Presidential election year, the rate increased 1.5% or from roughly 25% to 26.5%.  In Windowpane terms a small effect would be a change from 25% to 35%(!!!).  Thus, while 1.5% on a base of 300 million people generates numerically many more people (4.5 million more volunteers than usual), it is a statistical drop in the bucket, a “static” rate, just normal and random variation.

Even with all the skill Hollywood can muster, we realize that even a small effect here is a daunting outcome and unlikely to occur.  Realize, too, that Hollywood has done these kinds of “public service” campaigns in the past – think about reading, education, disease awareness, and, of course, forest fires – and somehow problems associated with those campaigns appear to operate at pretty much the same rate they did before Hollywood hollered, Lights, Camera, Action!

But, they are sincere about this.  They really mean it. Really.

Or do they?

Consider this quote in the story:

Still, Leslie Lenkowsky, former head of the Corporation for National and Community Service and now professor for the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University, notes past political and Hollywood efforts to promote volunteerism have fallen flat.

“I don’t want to pour cold water over what the entertainment industry is trying to do, but we shouldn’t set our sights too high,” he says. “This may lead to episodic volunteering — coming out for a day of service. But the real question is, how long will it last? It’s a matter of individual motivation and (non-profits) making good use of their time.”

The professor is not pouring cold water on Hollywood.  Hollywood cannot NOT know this.  These guys live and die by public response to their work.  They know who’s watching their shows and buying their advertisers goods and services down to the decimal point.

What is going on here?  We’ve got smart people showing a surprising burst of sincerity that never worked in the past, but maybe this time, just maybe, baby, this time, if we try, if we really try, and you put your little hand in mine and we turn our shining faces to the rising sun at the dawn of a bright new day . . . maybe this time!

Or maybe this time Bad, Sincere Persuasion Hides Good Persuasion.

I note with interest, buried deep in the USA Today story, unusual partners in this campaign:  AARP and Major League Baseball.  From my experience as a scientific health and safety administrator in the Fed, I can testify that AARP is perhaps the greatest persuasion machine going today.  Sure, seniors have a lot of free time, but they are already volunteering at a high rate and are unlikely to do more (blood from a stone or a turnip depending upon your cultural past).  And MLB brought itself back from the near dead following deeply destructive strikes and lockouts with a diligent and smart persuasion campaign.  Both AARP and MLB are not in the volunteer business, but they see powerful benefits to this deal.

So, we have Smart Persuasion Guys like AARP and MLB partnering with Smart Persuasion Guys in Hollywood to conduct a campaign that is certain to fail to produce even small effects.

Why?

Well, I think, and I could be wrong so you might want to do your own research on this, but all of the Hollywood efforts are being run through the Entertainment Information Foundation, a prime Hollywood charitable foundation.  My thought is that all of these do-gooder Hollywood actions will get written off as very large charitable contributions which have obvious tax implications.  And to get the charitable contribution all they have to do is show up for work and follow a script.  No one has to actually volunteer for something and show up in a soup kitchen.  Just do the job, then some minion will cut and paste it into the Campaign.

And, past the tax break, this campaign will generate a ton of feel-good coverage in the media, plus generate a ton of feel-good in viewers who see the campaign in action.  Aww, look at that sweet Neil Patrick Harris doing a sweet PSA for volunteering.  Isn’t he a swell guy?  Doncha just love him?  Who wouldn’t want to bask in the glow of other people’s affection?  Especially when you’re just doing your job, getting paid for it, and getting a tax break?

And, the partners like AARP and MLB will also bask in the glow of viewer affection.  Their brands will shine brighter and distract from annoying things like steroids, monopolistic protections, and stadium deal boondoogles or from the disconnect between a nonprofit profiting from gap insurance.

While my general rule of All Bad Persuasion Is Sincere still holds consider this corollary:  Sincere-Appearing Persuasion Can Be Good.  Notice that Sincere-Appearing is NOT sincere, it is just an acting job that convinces the viewer of the sincerity, so my basic rule still holds.  But see how Hollywood seizes upon it as a wolf in sheep’s clothing or in this case a capitalist with a beggar’s cup or a mercenary in the Salvation Army.

You still think that persuasion is obvious?