Ambiguity is persuasion’s best friend.  When you are uncertain, persuasion principles drive your thinking, feeling, and acting.  If you doubt this, consider health and safety, or more properly nowadays, Health and Safety.  I’m going to take one example, use it to kick open a door, then drive a truck through it.

Statins.

Those wonderful little pills that reduce cholesterol, have virtually no side effects, and help everyone to live longer and healthier lives.  Except that’s not true.  Not even close.  The original research demonstrated that among people with existing cardiovascular disease, statins did help, but at a rather small effect.  Now add in fear (of death) and confusion (among patients and doctors), and soon almost anyone was taking a statin.  Instead of acting as a curative agent that reduced disease in sick people, statins became preventative agents that reduced the risk of disease ever starting in healthy people.

But the data never supported that shift from cure to prevention and today even the medical establishment is beginning to say it loudly out loud.  Journal Watch reports a nice summary of recent summary studies on statins.  Let me quote the headlines and the lead paragraph.

Statins and Primary Prevention for Patients at High Risk for Heart Disease.

The benefit, if any, is very small.

Statins – which clearly confer an all-cause mortality benefit in patients with known cardiovascular disease (CVD) – are prescribed extensively for primary prevention in patients at high CVD risk but without CVD.

The article then nicely summarizes results from several recent studies that demonstrates “preventative” statins had not even statistically significant effects on extremely large samples (68,000 cases!) in carefully controlled experiments.  In other words, among people who were not sick with CVD, but at risk (smokers, hypertensives, obese, etc.) the statins had no effect on mortality.  And, doctors prescribe and patients take statins like the pills were breath mints.

And this is not news.  If you doubt me, I’m not going to make the case here because you won’t believe me in a blog post.  Read the research yourself.  And read it.  Look at the numbers.  Think about the numbers.  Find the absolute rates, not those Sophistical Statistics like relative ratios that persuasively inflate outcomes.  And don’t look just at statins.  Look at the persuasion on:  vitamin D, omega-3, hormone replacement therapy, obesity, prostate cancer, screening tests.  For people who are already sick, various interventions do produce helpful, real, if small, effects.  But past that limited application, most of the Health (and Safety) research over the past 20 years operates more like persuasion than science.

Consider again just the instance of statins.

Even many children know that many people die of heart problems so that anything that reduce the chance is a Good Thing.  And, if a little statin pill helps sick people, won’t it help not so sick people?  If you don’t think carefully about it, the answer seems to be yes.  So, when you visit a doctor and she says you might consider this little pill that is covered in your health plan, tastes like nothing, and is easy to swallow with your breakfast juice, why not?

Now, here’s the persuasion analysis.

The pill has no effect.  You don’t know that, but because somebody in a white coat gave it to you, you think you are doing the right thing.  And the right thing here is not thinking for yourself, but doing what someone else suggests.  Thus, you are making external attributions (my doctor) rather than internal attributions (me) for your health.  You don’t have to think.  You can proudly stroll along the Peripheral Route cue-ing along with Credibility (your doc) and Comparison (everyone’s doing it).

Worse still, you are now also cue-ing with Commitment/Consistency meaning the next time your doc recommends something, say a screening test, you are more likely to comply simply because you did it in the past, so you need to stay consistent with that past commitment – taking a statin.  And, maybe that next New New Thing comes in a pill and your kindly doc gives you a free sample which you use without thinking, then thoughtlessly continue with in a Reciprocity cue (your doc gave you something – the free sample – and you need to give something in return – a paid order covered under your health plan).

Small effects, fear, and confusion combine to make health and safety not a science problem, but a persuasion problem.

You might remember an earlier post when you see the lineup.

Yeah, that’s right.  The pretty one is in red.

A little over a year ago Andrew J. Elliot and Daniela Niesta published a series of fun experiments aimed at testing the Romantic Red effect.  Let me quote myself:

In all five studies, men always rated the same woman more positively when her picture appeared against a red background.  (With women, the rating did not vary – a girl is a girl is a girl to other girls in this application.)  What surprised me was the size of the effect.  Expressed as the Windowpane, the effect ranged from a high of 75/25 to a low of 62/38 with an average across all five of 68/32, or a strong medium effect.

But, as noted at the time, these studies only tested the effect of red with women targets, not men.  Well, now Elliot and colleagues have run a similar set of experiments with men as the target and guess what?  Romantic Red still applies.

This new series of experiments from Elliot et al. employed a major interesting wrinkle compared to the first set of studies of female targets.  In the experiments with men, Elliot and colleagues varied the ethnicity of the male in the photo.  Some featured a Chinese male, others a Latino male, and others a Caucasian male – all raters were always of the similar ethnicity.

In general, the Romantic Red effect applied with male targets the same way it did with female targets.  Women rated a man either on a red background or wearing a red shirt as more attractive than the same man on a non-red background or non-red shirt.  The effect sizes were also big coming in from medium to large to jumbo.  And, finally, when men did the rating, color made no difference – a boy is a boy is a boy to other boys just as a girl is a girl is a girl to other girls.

Here are the grains of salt . . .

We’re talking pictures, folks, and not even talking pictures.  The raters never interacted face-to-face with the experimental targets in this research.  Would the Romantic Red effect apply even when that boy or girl started talking?  Would it apply when it was live and not mediated?  This research suggests you might want to wear a red sweater on your first date, but who knows?  If you’ve been around the block a couple of times, you know even the most gorgeous red-wrapped face and body you’ve ever seen can become repulsive when he or she starts talking.  Furthermore, you don’t need to read the experimental research to know that Red sells more stuff than just girls or boys.  Red is a hot marketing color for all manner of nonsexual goods and services.  So, does Red make people sexy or is Red a hot color.  Finally, realize that Red may get attention, but . . .

. . . you probably could take it too far.

Sure, this is all science, no persuasion, right?

TAMANA, Japan — Two pedals, inches apart, one for gas and the other for brakes. For years, a Japanese inventor has argued that this most basic of car designs is dangerously flawed.   The side-by-side pedal arrangement, the inventor says, can cause drivers mistakenly to floor the accelerator instead of the brakes, especially under stress. The solution? A single pedal that accelerates the car when pressed with the side of the foot. More to the point, when the pedal is pushed down, it always activates the brakes.

Hey, this must be true science because the story is the most emailed and viewed at the NYT!

Hey, just install this new pedal and no more human error in driving!  It’s just a falling apple and remember:

You Cannot Persuade a Falling Apple.

Supporters of the persuasion possibilities of Web 2.0 (twitter, Facebook, marketing as relationship, etc.) insist that there is something strong and supernatural to their New New Thing.  Consider this story from Google Fast Flip (more about that later).

Has your company spent seemingly countless hours tweeting on Twitter, networking on Facebook and writing the company blog? Have you found yourself wondering if it’s all a waste of time? Maybe that last Facebook fan page contest saw fewer entries than you’d hoped for, or that last Twitter-only coupon had fewer redemptions than you’d expected, but perhaps that’s not all that matters.

According to the the latest report by analyst firm Forrester, many people are looking at the face-value dollars and cents of social media marketing and, put simply, they’re doing it wrong. Beyond clicks and coupon redemptions there lies a case for social media marketing that shows its value is well beyond what we see on the surface.

Yeah, It Works, But You Can’t Count It (with Money).  And, if you do Count It and It Doesn’t Count, You’re Wrong!

Where to begin.

Persuasion is an obvious and countable thing.  It changes people.  And change can be as simple as “Yes or No.”  Realize the Rules.

If You Can’t Count It, You Can’t Change It.

Any persuasion agent who claims otherwise is deluded, untrustworthy, or perhaps both.  You cannot sell Change to clients if they don’t get any Change from what you sell.  And, if your client’s counting shows no Change, then what you are selling as persuasion did not work.

Think about it.  You cannot sell Change without getting Change.  Yet, some 2.0 folks will assert:

Many marketers can draw a straight line between investments in social media marketing and financial results, but many more cannot.  This doesn’t mean social media marketing is ineffective; it just means that marketers have to recognize benefits beyond dollars and cents.  Facebook fans, retweets, site visits, video views, positive ratings and vibrant communities are not financial assets — they aren’t reflected on the balance sheet and can’t be counted on an income statement — but that doesn’t mean they are valueless.  Instead, these are leading indicators that the brand is doing something to create value that can lead to financial results in the future.

And, then to tell them that they did it Wrong after you promised Change, is at best a short term tactic that holds clients at the front door as you make a hasty exit out the back door.  Claims of client error destroy your credibility.  You showed them how to do Persuasion SureShot Tactic Twenty Two.  They did it.  And It didn’t Count.  Blaming the accounting department or the guys in research is older than Exodus, but not Genesis.

Consider, too, . . .

Great Persuaders Don’t Need Rich Uncles, Kindness from Strangers, or Third Party Vote Splitters.

Hey, if Web 2.0 is the New New Persuasion Thing, then what It is, is what It does without any help.  It will not need a new system of accounting, ROI, or mathematics.  It will not need a Maven 2.0 in a corner office.  It will work.  Yet, articles like this always seem to end with something like, “Yeah, it’s 2.0 plus Fill In The Blank While I Cash Your Check.”

Look, if Web 2.0 is persuasive, it changes people in a direct, reproducible, and countable way.  Otherwise, it is a short term way for a few people to make a little money.

Web 2.0 reminds me of Web 1.0 when Pets.com was going to have a greater market capitalization than Microsoft one day.  Sure, there were a few big winners (Amazon, baby), but most were losers.  The Web changes neither the Laws of Thermodynamics or the Rules of Persuasion.  The web is just a technological device that transmits messages.  Yes, it is groovier than the town crier, but it still just carries messages.

P.S.  Is Google Fast Flip going to make Google relevant again?  Yeah, add a cut and paste of the news page and that groovy rotator interface.  Folks, I’m calling it.  We’re into the middle of the beginning of Web 3.0 – the age of information irrelevance.  Where’s the exchange of meaning?  Of value?  Of substance?  I know there’s a lot of glitter and glitz with persuasion, but Sweet Clara Peller, where’s the beef?

The New New Thing asserts:

You think your car radio is broken because it doesn’t display the name of the song and the artist. You tap a word on a paperback and wonder why the definition doesn’t automatically pop up. You swipe a digit across the screen of your cell phone and all you get are fingerprint smudges . . . Our touchscreen existence has literally rewired our brains . . .

Yes!

What shall we name this New New Thing that literally reWires our brains?

iPavlov.

Hey, kids, it’s not the technology that makes you; it’s the thoughtfulness.

reWired is only Low WATT zombies ambling along the Peripheral Route, Cue-ing along, Ding-Donging a song.

Again, Whitehead says it nicely.

Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them.