But…shoes? You’re scrolling through your news feed. Pictures of friends, family and gifs of cats jumping off couches fly by, but you don’t stop, still you swipe, waiting for something to reach out and grab your attention. Then, boom! . You recognise them from your 2am I-almost-bought-them-but-then-didn’t-because-omg-I-have-to-pay-rent-next-week-shopping-spree. Shoes They’re . beautiful Clean, high definition photos of the product light up your screen. Along the carousel a candid paparazzi shot of your favourite celebrity wearing them while shopping on Rodeo Drive draws you another inch closer. Two lines of text above the image languidly spell out just why you need them so badly. Don’t miss out. Limited Edition [insert label here] available for 2 weeks only. Loved by [insert celebrity here]. Soon to be loved by you. Get yours now. You scan the ad. The price is nowhere to be seen. But damn she/he looks good in those. could look like that. And you would be loved. You’d get all the respect you ever deserved. And you’d regret it if you passed up this opportunity to get them, I mean, they’re only available for 2 weeks! YOU And then what? Will they be sold out? Never to be available again? You shudder at the thought. It’s just a click — right? No harm done. Just have a little peek, see if the price has come down at all; what was the price again anyway? Ok, definitely better check this out…. *click* The Psychology of the click This article is inspired by Robert Cialdini’s book . Influence: the Psychology of Persuasion was recommended to me by a friend who sees it as a seminal text on Influence how to convince people to do things. It’s a book that delves deep into the reasons , and the tactics that ‘compliance professionals’, as Cialdini calls them, employ to ensure that we listen and act (click!). why we do what others tell us to do Cialdini tries to help us understand how our animal instincts are manipulated every minute of the day by the content we consume, the people we interact with, and the advertising we’re exposed to. Teaching us how to convince others to do what we want, however, was not his primary goal. is about teaching ourselves to so that we can maintain a semblance of control in the face of constant, persuasive stimulation. Influence check our instincts and defend against compliance tactics, What is compliance? A lot has changed since was published in 1984 (yes, Nineteen-Eighty-Four). Influence The world has become a much more connected place. Big Brother, as envisioned by Orwell, has turned out not to be a single, all-powerful entity that watches over us and controls our every move. Instead, Big Brother has adopted a collective identity. It tracks our location, it on the subway, it knows what we subway, it reads our e-mails, our Whatsapp messages, and it (though it’s not likely). sees us order at may even listen to our conversations And we give it all this information freely and willingly. In return, we get powerful, life changing products and services. And these products what we need, and at providing it, the more information we feed into them. get better at predicting Right now, I’m sitting in a café in Vancouver that I found on Google Maps. Google has a datastore of all of the cafés going back seven years (at least), so by searching on Google Maps, 95% of the time I end up in a warehouse-conversion coffee roastery in an industrial suburb that pours high-altitude single origin Kenyan coffee (while the roasters play table tennis out back). I’ve been to in the world cafes near me Converted Warehouse Coffee Roastery. See — I wasn’t joking. Google knows me . It knows what I like because it knows where I’ve been. And by my using it, . Now, as I’ve more recently started to notice, Google is defining the attributes (or data points) of my likes, and dislikes, for me. it continually reinforces the things that I like This is one example of compliance. I comply with the terms of my agreement with , , Whatsapp and others because they make my life easier (if not necessarily better). Google Facebook The data that I create for the provider of the service as consideration for this type of agreement is fed into this Big Brother-esque Compliance Machine, so that marketers, retailers, musicians, artists are better able to target those most likely to use their product or service. Casey Affleck (Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times) — Soon to the be the star of the film adaptation of by American novelist John Williams. A stark, depressingly real “ Stoner ” depiction of total compliance. This is the vast swath of tools and products that use the information we give up so freely to convince us that we need another , or . Compliance Machine device service thing This machine has more information than it’s ever had. It’s the age of Big Data after all — we generate approximately, than in the last 5,000 years of human existence). The Compliance Machine grows more and more powerful the more we interact with it. 2.5 quintillion bytes per day with more data being created in 2017 The question of whether or not this mass data generation and collection is good or bad for us is one of the big questions of our time, and often the subject of philosophical debate. Regardless of the moral and philosophical implications, the practical result is that companies and marketers have become very good at to sell us things. manipulating our likes, desires and behaviours But if we don’t want to engage? The solution would be to just switch off all your devices, your refrigerator, washing machine, GPS on your phone, and throw away your credit card — right? Well, no. Don’t be silly. To really fight back against these forces of persuasion, we need to understand how they work. Let’s take a look at probably the most prevalent and ever-present compliance mechanism used by companies today, to reach hyper-targeted, highly engaged audiences. The Facebook Ad The Facebook Ad, put simply, is yet another iteration of the billions of ads that have been served since the beginning of time to convince us that we need some . The Egyptians were doing it back in the time of King Tut, (yes, ancient Egyptians were badasses). thing carving their advertisements in steel , I couldn’t find any pictures of the ads carved in Steel — but trust Western culture to appropriate another to sell dishwashing detergent! Jokes The actual process of and to encourage the viewer to purchase something is more recent. using persuasive language psychology The example below is an (no persuasion needed my friends) on May 26th, 1657 in the : advertisement for coffee Publick Advisor In Bartholomew Lane, on the back side of the Old Exchange the drink called coffee, which is a very wholesome and physical drink, have many excellent vertues, closes the orifices of the stomach, fortifies the heat within, helpeth digestion, quickeneth the spirits, maketh the heart lightsum, is good against eye-sores, coughs, or colds, rhumes, consumptions, head ache, dropsie, gout, scurvy, King’s evil, and many others; is to be sold both in the morning and at three of the clock in the afternoon. _[_Wood, J. P. (1958). . New York: Ronald Press Co.] The story of advertising As one of the writers of the many ads we run for my nutrition company, this kind of ad is pretty familiar to me — minus the many embedded clauses . typical of 17th and 18th Century writing In fact, this 1657 coffee ad looks very similar to some of the content I’ve seen for a that, purports to: certain butter-dunking coffee company with the power of coffee and Brain Octane Oil - Keep you full for hours - Curb hunger - Promote mental clarity - Increase fat burning - Support your hormones - Taste awesome Yes, the claims have gotten less specific, and the language much simpler. The writers of this content may well have been reigned in by the regulatory authorities when it comes to promoting specific health benefits. These efforts to induce compliance — to click the ad, to buy the product — ut more about how any action taken have become less about telling the recipient what action to take, b will provide a benefit that cannot be found elsewhere. Instead of trying to sell you a miracle cure in a magazine or , or with reputable sounding name like , intelligent marketers appeal to your animal psychology. TV show under the credible disguise of a doctor Publick Advisor Ads are no longer about just selling products, they’re about changing our behaviour to fit a mould that will increase the likelihood that we’ll purchase again. Marketers are in it for the long game. Another example: Example sourced from https://klientboost.com/ppc/facebook-ad-examples/ What does this ad ? How about — an e-commerce growth hacker, running a small digital marketing team, working remotely. tell you about its recipient In , Cialdini details a number of tactics compliance professionals use to get us to act. For the sake of brevity, I’ve summarised four of the six key tactics in the book below: Influence This is when a writer establishes that there’s a limited quantity of an offer available, or that there are multiple potential buyers clamouring for the same thing. Think “ ” on Amazon or the for an Hermés Birkin Bag. By making the product appear scarce, we attribute it a higher value. Scarcity. Only 7 left in stock apparent waitlist **Urgency. “**Be quick! Discount ends on 11.25.2017!”. This is a classic tactic employed by even the most amateur compliance professionals. By setting a time constraint on an offer, we’re led to believe that the time we have to take advantage of it is limited; when in reality it’s likely that the company would extend the offer to us at any time, if we just asked for it. How many times have you bought something just because someone else, who looked, sounded or felt a bit like you bought it too? And then wrote a glowing review online? And appeared to address all of the same issues that you have in the course of said review? That’s social proof: when you see evidence that a product or service is working for someone that fits your demographic, and that makes you want it too. Social Proof. or . Though it’s only acquired its own acronym in the last few years, FOMO has been one of the most effective compliance tools that marketers have. It combines scarcity, urgency, and into a neat little package that plays on the idea that on some benefit that people in your peer group are receiving. Creating real FOMO is hard, but some of the most successful companies in the world have been built on it (think: the first iPhone, designer Nike kicks, Lin Manual Miranda’s “Hamilton”, Lululemon’s Limited Edition workout gear). FOMO Fear Of Missing Out social proof fear you might be missing out So what about the ad above? What tactics are being used to get someone like me to start using CoSchedule’s content calendar? When the Ads know you better than yourself If you said then yes, that’s a good start. CoSchedule are using the fact that they have more than 20k users to suggest that they’ve got a quality product, simply because of their sheer volume of customers. Social Proof, But there’s something else going on here. There’s actually an inherent suggestion that I, as recipient of the ad am when it comes to their content calendar. not actually already organized There’s an implication that I’m and in fact by not having CoSchedule. not planning ahead, wasting time And this scares me. I become afraid that I might not be doing my best work all the time. There’s clearly another way out there that aligns with who I am as a person, I’ve just only been lucky enough to be exposed to it on this rainy afternoon. Fear + Social Proof = FOMO. Lucky me. No, this isn’t an Apple Store queue, it’s for Limited Edition Lululemon Gear in Vancouver. Source: https://www.straight.com/blogra/754126/lululemons-seawheeze-pop-draws-record-lineup-over-8000-shoppers-first-day The recipient starts to question if they are in fact organized enough, if there isn’t a better way to do things, and then CoSchedule reminds them, in the image content of the ad that their solution is actually “ The Best Way…”. And all of a sudden, you’re finding yourself itching, distracted, thinking that maybe you should click through, just so that you on a potential opportunity to do your work better, or have a perceived advantage over your peers. don’t miss out That’s the beauty and power of Facebook Ads. You see them every day in amongst pictures of your friends, family and things you like. The social proof is built-in. And the of clicking the ad is relatively minuscule (a second of your time?) compared to the potential value to the advertiser (a new customer, a new lead to retarget with more ads). cost to the you So online marketers have gotten really good at figuring out what makes us ‘click’. Stop clicking, start paying attention. So becoming just another input in the Compliance Machine? how can you avoid The key, as Cialdini puts it, is to stop the “ ” of your animal instincts when you’re exposed to the kind of content or situation meant to force your complicity. Click, whirr In other words, you need to engage your effortful mind (your System 2 thinking) to counteract the automatic response (System 1 thinking) that your body has evolved to supply in the face of the compliance tactics above. This kind of thoughtful, careful response isn’t always possible, or desirable of course. We’ve evolved this way for a reason — our instincts are built to protect us against dangers and threats, and help us to make rapid decisions with a wide array of inputs effectively. A lot, or even most of the time these instincts help us make the right decisions. But with a growing number of media aimed at convincing us to take specific actions or purchase certain products or services, we’ve got to be more vigilant. We’ve got to start processing information differently. We’ve got to stop the automatic ‘click’ from happening and take the time to process what we see before we react to it. Like many Victorians , or clock, so the Digital era model seems to be the computer. imagined the brain as a machine Clock on, clock off. I think this is maybe how saw the brain. Mr. Frederick Winslow Taylor Computers don’t have instincts. Neither do clocks. (Yes, it was kind of fun to write that sentence) But we’re not machines. We can’t process all the information we receive according to a set of rules and functions that has predefined, just as we don’t react with mechanical predictability to all inputs. someone else We should assess when it is we allow ourselves to trust our instincts, and when it is that we stop to examine the evidence and content laid out before us before making a decision. It’s not a perfect science, decision making. There must be errors in judgement for us to learn when to act, and when to think. We do have the power to be more consciously aware of what’s out there trying to convince to us buy or believe. Fun times! And a couple of head-scratchers Thanks for reading. We jumped to and from a few pretty heavy, dense topics above without delving too deep into anything in particular. My idea with this article was to try to give an overview of some of the many things that go into the process of influencing us into making decisions in our everyday life. I’d love to hear what you think! Any comments, questions, complaints are welcome. And if you’re up for it, I’ve got a few questions for you of my own: What steps do you take to avoid being influenced by ads on social media? What’s your favourite ad ever? Why do you think it had such a big impact on you? What do you think will be the next metaphor for the brain? Hope you enjoyed this! If you did, clap for me and I’ll feel super inspired to keep posting more pieces like this in future.
