My primary persuasion Rule is, All Bad Persuasion Is Sincere.  When you really, really, really mean it, you will probably fail at persuasion because it is about the Other Guy and not your sincere feelings.  Please do not misunderstand this Rule.  Being Sincere is Bad, but that does not mean being inSincere will make it Good.

Matt Armstrong points to a video from the White Canvas Group that asserts how to win the Communication War on Terror or the “war on terror” or whatever you want to call it.  Please take 60 seconds to view it.

Who could pass a true-false test over the claims from this video?  The text Arguments move faster than normal comprehension speeds in addition to moving unexpectedly and unpredictably across the screen.  People cannot process the Arguments.  The video is a deliberately designed Low WATT dimmer switch that overloads cognitive capacity and disrupts that Long Conversation in the Head.  It also marks a decidedly inSincere tactic.

The video thus takes Arguments and intentionally obscures them with speed and movement, leaving it as a pure Cue play.  It says, Trust Me, I’m Good.  The inference is that if you use this tactic and this approach, you will bedazzle the Bad Guys in the communication version of the War on Terror, rock on to victory, and maybe win a Clio award!

Folks.  This won’t work.  It may get funded.  But, it won’t work.  Reality will kill it although if you use inSincere Metrics like, the AssSecDef2.0 LOVES it or the Cool Table guys LOVE it or some such social twiddly-dee, it will look good.  In other words, among people who have no understanding of communication in general or persuasion in particular will find this slick video, slick.  And, slick works, baby . . . at the Cool Table.

Think about this.  Just think about it.  Do a simple Cascade analysis.  Think harder and do a Standard Model analysis on it.  Or use your own Persuasion Model on it.  Sure, this attracts attention.  Slick and inSincere persuasion does that.  But, attention is not processing or responding or behaving.  It is only attention.

While the communication War on Terror should be fought with a wide variety of tactics, it will be won with strong Arguments repeatedly considered by High WATT processors.  You want change that produces persistent, resistant, and motivated action.  That comes from the Central Route, not from these Cue balls.

Sometimes, inSincere Persuasion Is Just Bad.  And . . .

Persuaders Can Be Famous or Effective, but Not Both.

There’s a Difference between Persuasion, and Smoke and Mirrors; With Persuasion the Illusion Lingers.

So, you’re walking along your favorite city street today when your cell phone beeps a text notification, so you look at the screen and Wow! there’s a coupon offer for 15% off any purchase in the next hour at North Face and Wow! you realize that North Face has a shop just a block up and a block over from you and Wow! you’ve been thinking about that new sweater and Wow! before you know it you’re already walking that block up and over and Wow! there you are at the checkout with that sweater and Wow! that 15% discount.  Is North Face cool or what?

Maybe.  Just maybe.  Or maybe not.  It’s complicated.  And it starts with location.

See, marketers are creating what they call geo-fences, electronic rings around businesses that sense GPS signals from opt-in cell phones.  When you cross the fence with your opt-in cell phone, the marketers pick up your signal, then match it to opt-in businesses within the fence that have offers.  The marketers then match your cell phone with your businesses and their offers, then shoot you opt-in text messages.  Think of it as a marketing dog collar and shock fence, but not for dogs; it’s for you.  And, at present there are no shocks.

From the Cascade perspective this is a rapid communication play wherein the fence triggers immediate Reception which torrents through prior Processing and Response to elicit almost instant behavior – Go or Not – as you amble along the road.  It’s a whistle and a shout, “Here, boy!  Come ‘ere, girl!” to a happy dog on a summer day lolling on the lawn now joyously interrupted with an exciting offer of a new play.

You’ll experience precious little High WATT Central Route processing of strong Arguments with this persuasion play.  This will be the hot Low WATT Cue on that text message:

Hey, look at all the North Face logos walking around me, everybody’s doing it, let’s join in!

Hey, North Face is the face of cool, what’s not to like with North Face?

Hey, North Face would protect me from the elements on Mount Everest, so they’ll keep me warm on this cold city day!

Hey, North Face is giving me this 15% discount, I need to give them something in return!

Hey, North Face is my brand and here’s my chance to prove my loyalty; onward a block up and over!

Hey, I’m the only guy on this busy street getting this rare offer of a discount from North Face that is only good for the next hour!

At least this is the theory and the dream behind the persuasion play.  Man, to quote the immortal Young Frankenstein, “It . . . Could . . . Work!”

But there are problems, problems, problems.

Initially, realize: It is a dog collar for people.  You don’t see it right now, but you will.  One day you’ll be waiting for an important message through your cell phone and your heart will jump when it buzzes with word of life, death, love, loss, victory, or defeat, except, it’s that damn North Face with a damn coupon dammit, leave me alone.  Then you’ll see the invisible dog fence you just crossed and you’ll realize every time you hit North Michigan and Ontario, your cell phone starts chirping.  And, you’ll go Commando, circling your favorite business areas trying to find the perimeter.

Now, consider:  How will marketers restrain themselves?  Sure, this whole play can be just fun like a dog playing fetch with the kids and sometimes we won’t mind being the dog as long as we’re having fun on a spring day with that blue sky and those puffy Simpson clouds.  But, what happens when greed and competition break all the shackles on business prudence and your cell phone is a constant shock box of offers, discounts, Get It Now! text messages?

Finally, ask:  How you gonna like it when the Queen of Tomorrow finally invents that iEye visor and you get subliminal messages when you cross her lines?  There’s an interesting future ahead of us, ladies and gents.  1984 and Brave New World are so quaint aren’t they?  Those high school chestnuts, remnants of the old modern neuroses clinging like cobwebs to our PostModern snark.  Except maybe Orwell and Huxley weren’t Moderns, but Prophets for All the Ages.

Consider, Mr. Orwell . . .

“It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away.  A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself –anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide.  In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face . . . was itself a punishable offense. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime…”

Now, Brave New World . . .

“I only said it was lovely here because . . . well, because progress is lovely, isn’t it?”

Persuasion, persuasion, persuasion.

Evgeny Morozov offers an excellent and insightful essay on the consequences of communication technology for changing people and societies.  Many people see a new communication device – radio, film, TV to computer, smartphone, iWhatever – and believe it contains a persuasion revolution.  Morozov looks at the love affair some smart people have with social media and their rosy expectations for political and social change.  He is not optimistic.

As a persuasion guy, I’m not either.

Realize that a communication device only carries messages.  To convey is not to convince.  Reach is not persuasion.  Speaking is not changing.  Interactivity is not change.  The device always carries the message and that is the message, Marshall McLuhan nonwithstanding.

And, this extends to how devices vary in their deployment.  Take the term Network.  Remember it as a collection of allied transmitters that create a TV broadcast Network.  Now see it as the PostModern collection of wired and wireless computers that creates a Network.  Neither Networks are inherently persuasive or inherently persuasive in a New Way.  They just combine different elements of human nature into new packages.

Consider the Rules.

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

If you know what you are doing you don’t need the New New Thing whether in the form of Ross Perot or Steve Jobs.  You just do it with your skill and make the change happen.  Hitler and Mussolini used, Zounds my Good Sir, radio and newspapers, posters and pamphlets, public speaking and cinema to conquer societies and rational restraints.  Imagine what more they could have done with an iPhone and twitter?  Not much.  They knew what they were doing as evil persuasion geniuses.  Sure, the devices helped, but only as a means of carrying their message.

It’s about the Other Guy, Stupid.

Persuasion is not about devices; it is about changing the other guy.  Devices may help you segment your TACTs (gee, are iAcolytes different from the rest of us?) but that’s not persuasion.  You change the Other Guy with messages, not devices.

May he rest in peace, but Marshall McLuhan is dead and so is the Medium is the Message.

Feedback, information on the difference between your current situation and a desired outcome, is a powerful tool for change.  People are naturally equipped with the ability to make these comparisons and then make adjustments to thinking, feeling, or acting to move the current state toward the goal.  Here’s a great story in the Wall Street Journal that describes how power companies are using feedback through usage meters and pricing strategies to alter consumer efficiency.

Usage meters are more sophisticated meters that not only measure energy use, but also provide easy to access, real time, and understandable feedback to the consumer.  Smarter meters are also hooked into a control system where consumers can program energy devices in ways that make them more efficient RIGHT NOW.

Now, none of this is rocket science either to consumers or power companies.  The interesting wrinkle, however, is how much more complicated the system has become with the addition of feedback.  In persuasion terms, the TACT has gone from a fairly generic definition of the Who (any customer) to a much more segmented definition (customers who have health problems that require a constant energy usage; customers who have people at home all the time versus customers who don’t; and on and on).  With feedback meters, the great variety of individual difference comes into play.

In essence, the meters have created a massive persuasion system of interacting people all with individual needs and desires, responding on the basis of not only the meter usage (and price implications) but also thoughts and feelings about control, justice, the Good Life, community demands, and on and on.  We have a complex social system of interacting people with diverse needs and desires.  We’ve got Persuasion, baby!

Now, you need to keep your head on straight and all the concepts orderly.  Feedback is not a form of Reinforcement Theory.  Feedback does not provide Consequences, only Information that compares two States.  The Consequences come from the power company in the form of Price.  The power folks are testing combinations of Carrots (rebates) and Sticks (higher prices at peak times) to see what works because no simple Consequence pattern works with all these diverse TACTs.  So far, they appear to find that people are more sensitive to Loss (higher prices) than Gain (rebates) which is common, so expect pain from the power guys – it tends to work better.

Note, too, the Attribution plays in here.  Customers can only make internal attributions (I did it) for their energy consumption (assuming fair meters).  Thus, the feedback tends to keep people on an internal motivation track rather than an external motivation track.  This difference is important.  Internal motivated people will control themselves and find methods that they like while externally motivated people wait around for The Man to push the buttons and complain all the while about it.

Additionally, all this action will probably generate High WATT, Central Route processors who look for the Arguments (like Price, Convenience, and Comfort).  People really think about this so you’ll get all the positive outcomes of Central Route activity:  More persistence, resistance to counter arguments, and prediction of future behavior.

The really Good News here is that the average effect of meters across all TACTs is positive and appears to produce a small Windowpane effect size (about a 10% reduction in usage).  Larger effects in usage arise with combinations of TACTs and price (people who turned on everything all the time and left them running react quickly to use and price).  Furthermore, this effect occurs immediately, typically within the first billing cycle.  Thus, everyone starts recovering the investment cost of the meters almost from the starting gun as opposed to other Green tactics that can take years of use to break even (as in this foolish, but faddish application – scroll to near end of the post).

The most interesting news reported in the story is anecdotal evidence offered by the power companies:  They claim consumers have positive attitudes and affect toward the meters.  This positivity is not universal (why would you expect that?).  In one case, meters were installed in a large community just before an unusual heat wave hit.  When consumers got their bills which were unusually higher for the time of year because of that heat wave, they attributed the increase to the presence of the meters (”The damn things are miscalibrated to favor the power company!”).  Thus, barring unfortunate coincidences like this, people respond favorably to feedback.

To close the persuasion lesson here, please note that feedback is a special combination of information.  Everyone has to agree on the Goal State, what it means, what it looks like.  Everyone has to agree on the Current State.  When you provide fair information that accurately compares Where You Are to Where You Want To Be, you’ve got Feedback.  You could also add some fabulous persuasion plays to amplify effects, but that’s another post.  I also suspect that the Power boys and girls aren’t thinking Persuasion since they’ve got Price, but they could earn more Profit if they combined Persuasion with Price in this Feedback Play.

The Communication Cascade describes how a message has to move receivers through a series of linked Stages from Reception to Processing to Response, before you achieve the ultimate downstream success of Behavior Change.  Failure at one Stage kills the Cascade which also mean it kills Behavior Change.  Typically, you must move through all three Stages, but sometimes, as this NYT story demonstrates, you only need Reception.

Morning routines have been like this since the fall, when school officials mounted a mobile Internet router to bus No. 92’s sheet-metal frame, enabling students to surf the Web. The students call it the Internet Bus, and what began as a high-tech experiment has had an old-fashioned — and unexpected — result. Wi-Fi access has transformed what was often a boisterous bus ride into a rolling study hall, and behavioral problems have virtually disappeared.

It’s amazing how useful large transportation vehicles can be past the most obvious use.  Not only do they subdue teen-agers, they catch criminals, too!

Dry Vodka Martini

• 1 shot, journalism
• 1 dash, persuasion
  
• 1 ice filled shaker
• stir in shaker, pour, then enjoy!

Lady Gaga’s Great and Insincere Persuasion

I lost my manufactured pop culture street cred when I stopped teaching my large lecture Mass Media course in 1998.  Til then I had a relentless focus on the hipster world because it connected my students to the course and functioned as a hook to grab their Reception, then as a WATTage switch to get them to Process communication theory and research.  Just as a man will do anything if he thinks it’s foreplay, students will listen to anything if they think it’s groovy, gear, and fab.

Now, as an aging FauxHipster, even I can see the pop success of Lady Gaga when the Wall Street Journal (!!!) gives her the star treatment.  If you want a great demonstration of the truth behind All Bad Persuasion Is Sincere, now hear this:  At the Simon Cowell standard of cruel honesty, Lady Gaga cannot sing, cannot dance, and cannot pose, but she can persuade the world to think her a Icon which means there’s nothing sincere about her.

She’s great!

But, will she last as long as the last one with Blonde Ambition who showed such Great Insincerity?

Mojo Times?

The Sunday New York Times today is one of the best editions of that paper since Pinch Sulzburger took over and nearly destroyed it.  The paper is readable from <p> to </p> for every page.  Perhaps they’ve recovered from their Bush Derangement?  Once nothing but Biased Processing and Sincere Persuasion, the Grey Lady is gorgeous.

Today.

Auteurism at Apple:  Sincerity?

Great feature on Steve Jobs at Apple and the Auteur of Innovation.  Here’s the key persuasion point:

Apple represents the “auteur model of innovation,” observes John Kao, a consultant to corporations and governments on innovation. In the auteur model, he said, there is a tight connection between the personality of the project leader and what is created. Movies created by powerful directors, he says, are clear examples, from Alfred Hitchcock’s “Vertigo” to James Cameron’s “Avatar.”

I’m uncertain how to understand Apple.  Apple and Jobs attracts admiration from the Cool Table, but the Cool Table is rarely persuasive.  Magnetic, yes.  It attracts those who are attracted to it which is not nearly the same thing as persuasive which means you change the Other Guy rather than draw Other Guys who are Just Like You.

You see this in Apple’s market share.  They get the Sophisticate Slice, but nothing like the Microsoft Masses.  For example, if I wanted to win an election or a war, I wouldn’t ask Steve Jobs for advice (unless, of course, the election or the war only involved the Cool Table).  I would ask Bill Gates.  Look at Mr. Gates work with vaccine production and distribution.  This is a guy who really thinks big and important.

Apple and Jobs reek with Sincerity.  Granted they are cool, hip, beautiful, sleek, graceful, innovative, and on and on.  But sincere.

Obama’s Persuasion Crisis

The Chinese ideograph for Crisis contains both Danger and Opportunity and the NYT offers a great perspective piece that embraces the dynamic tension Obama faces here.

Mr. Obama rode into office on one of the most elegant narratives in recent campaign history: that he was the embodiment of hope and change. It caught the national mood, yet remained vague enough to mean pretty much whatever a voter wanted it to mean.

The Times writer then notes various challenges to this Image. Reverse Bush, but Surge Afghanistan; help the people, but bailout the banks; and so on.  The writer then unhelpfully quotes a White House perspective.

The White House largely dismisses the warnings. “The president has had a consistent political narrative since the day he stepped on the national stage in 2004,” said Dan Pfeiffer, the White House communications director. “The interpretation of it is cyclical.”

I noted that Mr. Obama lost his way on the Persuasion Path last summer and think he remains lost.

Forever Green, Forget the Price

You can recharge your cell phone with a solar panel device that uses Ms. Sunshine instead of Mr. Coal.  It only costs $99, but it comes with a bag so you can tote and charge on sunny days.  Pouty lipped model not included, although this technology may be a Chick Magnet.  Solar is sooo hot with Pouty Lipped women, isn’t it?

It costs about a penny to recharge the bad way (look it up).  That’s 9900 solar charges which equals over 27 years of coal charges.  Purple faced advocates:  Yes, this is too simple.  Yes, you are complex.  You are smart.  Yes, you are right.  But, of course, It’s about the Other Guy, so who cares about you?

Go long on Green when you can put it in a box and make profit for yourself.

Money, Politics, and Attitudes

Fun report on an interesting money study.  Researchers looked at how people handled their investments depending upon whether their political party was in or out of power.  You invest differently if Your Team is running things compared to when the Other Team is running things.

One of the primary findings concerned the relationship between investors’ political optimism and their propensity to hold domestic stocks. When their preferred political party came to power, investors tended to become much more upbeat about the economy and the domestic stock market.

Now, of course, there’s no good economic reason to do this.  It’s a matter of your political power perception making you feel differently about the stock market.

For Patrick

My nephew, Patrick, is a talented musician who plays the sax and wants to pursue a career in music.  We often discuss the paucity of sax pieces in the classical music repertoire.  Well, Patrick, here’s a nice Times story about Prism and how they’ve handled the problem.

Keep on moving, folks.  No persuasion here.  Just sax, but no violins.

Race and Persuasion

“I KNOW there is nothing a white person can say to a black person about race which is not both incorrect and offensive,” James Spader’s hard-driving lawyer says in the new David Mamet play, “Race.” “I know that. Race is the most incendiary topic in our history. And the moment it comes out, you cannot close the lid on that box. That may change. But not for a long long while.”

Makes it tough to write a review which, of course, is an exercise in applied persuasion.

Osama ‘Bama Wanna-be

Omar Hammami had every right to flash his magnetic smile. He had just been elected president of his sophomore class. He was dating a luminous blonde, one of the most sought-after girls in school. He was a star in the gifted-student program, with visions of becoming a surgeon. For a 15-year-old, he had remarkable charisma.

Great personality profile on an American boy, Alabama boy to boot, who’s now in Somalia leading Al Qaeda boys in jihad.

632,500

Read all about it.

All is fair in love and advertising and those who pursue either by the Rules command my respect, if not my wariness.  Recall with me a simpler time when you could be romantic and smoke your brains out.

Exhale with me now.

Did you notice those warning labels?

Probably not.  But they’re there.  And for awhile they worked . . . meaning people were romantic and smoking their brains out even with the label.  The best warning label is the one hiding in plain sight.  Then the Tobacco Police wised up and realized the Rules of love and advertising and . . . you know.

Consider, now, this icon.  You’ll be seeing it on your romantic Internet adventures as advertisers warn you that they are following you on your surfin’ safari over the waves of the dubby-dub-dub.  Every click you take, every page you make, they’ll be watching you.

And you’ll know it with that EuroHipster Tourist Icon.

Baby, hand me that pack of Lucky’s and my Zippo.  I’ll watch you through the smoke . . .

Remember.

All Bad Persuasion Is Sincere.

There’s a Difference between Persuasion, and Smoke and Mirrors; with Persuasion, the Illusion Lingers.