Success begins before you say a word

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Dr Robert Cialdini made his name as the godfather of influence when he wrote his seminal book Influence – The Psychology of Persuasion, published in 1984. It brought to the forefront the psychology of why people say yes and the principles behind influence.

He has now returned to this area of behavioural science but, this time, by addressing the moments before delivering a message and how to make people more receptive to communications before they encounter them.

So why has Cialdini decided to write this book now – more than 30 years after Influence? 

“It’s the first sole-authored book I’ve done since Influence and – as a sole author – I didn’t want to plant a series of bushes around the tree that Influence had become; I wanted to plant another tree. And that didn’t happen until the idea for Pre-suasion came along. It was complementary to Influence, but different at the same time,” he says.

With Influence, Cialdini armed citizens with insights into the tactics of advertisers, but Pre-Suasion seems much more geared to business, so I wonder if he’s accepted that it is business people and companies that are most interested in his ideas and if he is happier to share those ideas with that audience now?

“I see the business community as a large component of the people who would be interested in it. But it applies to our personal arenas as well – family, friends, colleagues. A lot of the feedback I got after I wrote Influence was from people saying it allowed them to be more effective communicators, not just in work, but in their social structures.” 

Target chuting

One area Cialdini has explored is what he refers to as ‘target chuting’ – the way questions are asked – which is particularly pertinent to market researchers.

“What traditional market researchers do is spend their time and analysis focused on the content of the message request they’re making; what Pre-suasion is suggesting is an optimiser – also to consider and spend time on what we say and do before we send that message. That’s a stage that seems not to have been adequately explored by traditional market researchers.

“For example, there’s a study where people walked up to people in the street and asked for help with a marketing survey, for no compensation. Under those circumstances, 29% agreed to participate. But if, for another sample, the researchers preceded that request with the question: “Do you consider yourself a helpful person?”, now 77% agreed. Because they paused and reflected back on who they were and they came upon instances of helpfulness and then they said: “Yes I am”. And then to be congruent with the activated perception of themselves as helpful people, when asked for assistance on a marketing survey, they said yes,” he explains.

Cialdini takes this into other situations, such as websites, and looks at tests where the background of a landing page influenced the subsequent searches people made. For example, on a furniture website with clouds as the background image, people deemed comfort as a more important feature in buying sofas and searched the site for comfort-related information. But those that saw coins as the background image searched for price information and purchased less expensive furniture. 

“This is what I mean by target chuting; what is your target? Is it to get people to focus on your cost features – because that’s your strength – or your quality features? You send them down a chute – a psychological chute – that is directed towards the concept you put top of mind at the outset of your contact,” says Cialdini.

Privileged moments

This leads into another concept he shares, that of the ‘privileged moment’ – the moment after which the audience is in a particular frame of mind because their attention is focused on a concept or factor; that concept is privileged over other rival concepts or factors in the decision. 

So, going back to the furniture website example, featuring the clouds backdrop: “Suddenly comfort becomes more important as a feature. It becomes privileged compared with other factors such as colour, durability, price. You’ve created a mindset that is focused on comfort.”

In any form of marketing communication, it’s crucial to determine the precise goal of that message. 

“Is it to produce change, because you’ve got a new product to offer; is it to produce loyalty in people because you have a long history? Then, you work backwards from that goal that you want prominent in the search of your material and activate a representation of that goal in the moment before you deliver – you can do it with words, images, settings,” he says. 

To illustrate this, Cialdini gives the example of a study done by French researchers in a shopping mall. “They had a very attractive young man – movie star looks – walk up to young women, give them a compliment and ask for their phone number so he could call them for a date. Now that’s a risky thing, to give your phone number to a stranger who approaches you unbidden. And, indeed, when the young woman was passing the majority of shops, his success rate was very low – 13.5%. But, when she was passing another kind of shop – a flower shop – his hit rate went to 24%, almost double. Because flowers are associated with romance, just the setting of a flower shop – they didn’t even go in – led to a prioritisation, a privileging of romance over risk.”

highlighting limitations

For marketers introducing a new product onto the market, trust is often a sticking point and here Cialdini turns the conventional wisdom of presenting all a brand’s strengths on its head. 

“If we have an uncertain audience, they are not ready to believe the positive things yet, unless we have demonstrated our trustworthiness. Therefore, shift the sequence so that you mention a weakness in your case – a drawback in what it is you have to offer – before you present your strongest argument. And now you’ve established yourself as a credible source of information before you present your strongest feature and, when it occurs, people process it more deeply and believe it more fully,” he argues.

He says this very technique has been the hallmark of some of the greatest advertising campaigns of all time. Cialdini cites the Avis rental car campaign 25 years ago, when it was a distant second to Hertz. Its campaign used the strapline ‘Avis, we are No.2 but we try harder’. 

“That produced a massive increase in its market share during the time of that campaign. It established itself as honest and then you believe that it tries harder,” says Cialdini. 

Pre-Suasion – A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade is published by Random House Books