Mass Persuasion (part 5): themes and their power

Speak of sacredness.
Turn your business into a religion.

Then watch as they raise their
arms and wallets in belief.

Today, we’re going to look at the themes Kate Smith used to sell today’s equivalent of $480 million dollars in 18 hours.

Before we do, I need to make sure you fully understand how deep and powerful Mass Persuasion operates in what I’ve been sharing with you . . .

Three posts ago, I showed you these two important high-level findings:

• Importance of trust through credibility, and
• Emotional contexts within which the audience responded

Now, if you have any experience in business, or just have a generous dollop of solid common sense, you’re probably saying:

“Well, bleeping duh, Bill. Everyone and their grandmother knows your customers need to trust you enough to hand over their hard-earned money. And lots of people know that if you appeal to your customers’ emotions, you’re going to have boatloads more sales than if you just robotically show what the product is and does. How is this significant?”

But if you look at the post carefully, you’ll discover something much more powerful:

• Importance of Trust through Credibility: the audience put enormous importance on her integrity. Why? It was based on their experience and magnified by the anxiety that followed, that they were often the object of exploitation, manipulation, and control by others who have their own private interests at heart. Kate Smith didn’t let her audience down; in fact, the scriptwriters made sure she reminded them — using repeated themes – of how credible and trustworthy she was. And they believed her.
• Emotional Contexts Within Which the Audience Responded: Their emotional tension flowed over into tears. They felt humiliated as they realized their own inadequate contributions to the war effort when measured by the sacrifices reported by Smith. They experienced guilt, pity, sympathy, fear, and anxiety. And all of this was produced by precise calculation, like moving chess pieces across a board. Kate Smith merely moved the pieces. Her scriptwriters performed the calculations.

Sure you know that people need to trust you. But when you know why they generally don’t trust anyone, you get the advantage over everyone else who does not know that general truth or why it’s so. You work at the higher strategic why level, rather than the lower task and doing-things how level.

And you gain wonderful benefits for being strategic:

• You don’t need to create complex terms and conditions of sale to protect yourself from your buyers anymore
• You don’t need to always depends on testimonials, case studies, and other proof elements because your buyers would remain skeptical otherwise
• Nor do you have to live in constant fear of some influential David-like blogger picking up on what you’re doing and not liking it, aiming his slingshot at you, and taking you down like the mighty corporate Goliaths who have already fallen to the army of cape crusader citizen journalist advocates scouring physical space and cyberspace to right the wrongs of the world

Sure you need to tap into their emotions. But you can do it in the same precise way you use every time you cook food: combine ingredients in a certain order with heat over a certain period of time.

Can you now start to see how this goes far beyond mechanically and robotically putting together a marketing strategy or presentation with all the tried-and-true traditional pieces?

Can you see that when you know why you need to build trust and tap into their emotions — because people are generally scared of being taken for a ride and yet want to do the right thing — you can find other simpler, more powerful ways to conduct your marketing and sales?

All you need to do is the right thing, like following the Golden Rule. If you treat them as a friend, they’ll treat you the same. And, that my friend, is golden wisdom.

Now that I hopefully helped you fully understand how deep and powerful Mass Persuasion operates in what I’ve been sharing with you . . .

. . . let’s turn to new and exciting stuff:

In the last two posts, we looked at a real-world, big-business example of mass persuasion being used in all the wrong ways – turning it into mass propaganda – with Ally Bank and how they use an overall theme to lure you into a betraying false friendship, even when the American Bankers Association is accusing them of being a dirty, rotten, lying, cheating scoundrel.

Today, we return to themes to answer the question in detail:

How did Kate Smith, who raised today’s equivalent of $480 million dollars in 18 hours, accomplish these two things of building trust and raking her audiences over a smouldering hot bed of emotions? By repeating certain themes, while not mentioning their opposites . . .

She did the “sales and marketing things” wrong – on purpose:

Although she stated the product she was selling, a bond, look at what she didn’t do:

• She didn’t mention the features: the interest rate, the time over which you get your money back
• She didn’t mention the competitive advantages: how the interest rate was a good investment return and how their investment was safely backed by the power and creditworthiness of the United States government
• She didn’t mention the benefits: how a sound investment helps you as a buyer stabilize your income with a new dependable source

Of course, she did use the “sales and marketing” call to action: 65 times.

Let’s look deeper now at what she said and how buyers responded . . .

She wove her overall theme into everything:
“Buying a bond is a sacred act”

In the last two posts, you saw how Ally Bank weaves their overall theme of being the champion, advocate, and protector for the everyday consumer banking customer.

Kate Smith’s overall theme was sacredness. Think of the higher purpose your contributions make when you donate money to a church. That’s sacredness. And you have a moral duty to contribute – otherwise, how do you feel when that contribution plate comes down the pew, it’s your turn to put something in it, and you merely pass it on? That’s the same uncomfortable guilt and shame her audience felt.

Here are some of the exact words Kate Smith used into appealing to restoring peace to the world and reuniting loving families:

• “Buy a bond and bring the boys back.”
• “You can shorten this war you know. Each of you in your heart knows that you can.”

She used variations of these throughout her 18 hours. In a later post, we talk about how important it is to use variations of your theme … and the devastating consequences for you if you violate this rule – even accidentally.

Importance of This Overall Sacredness Theme for You

1. She segmented the market, taking the high ground, while giving up sales in other segments (such as buyers interested in “bonds as a good investment”)
2. She consistently used the sacred theme in all messages
3. She didn’t need to give bonuses, discounts, specials, or premiums, which lowered her selling expenses
4. Buyers never considered the price of the product. Buying became the fulfillment of a moral obligation
5. She greased the sales slide with an emotional outlet. For Americans with guilt, pity, sympathy, fear, and anxiety about the war, the future, and their participation compared to others (such as neighbors or coworkers with sons overseas), they were able to reduce or eliminate these emotions by “doing the right thing,” whatever that was to them. One product fulfilled all emotional needs

Yet, Kate Smith would not have been as effective if all she did was hit on the overall theme of sacredness. The theme did help get wary buyers to climb up the ladder so they could shoot down the playground slide, but she needed to grease the sale slide to coax them to actually take the plunge . . .

Greasing the sales slide:
She used specific themes

To see how she greased the sales slide, let’s look at each theme, the percentage of time she spent on each one during her 18 hours, and peek deep below to find out why it works. She used these themes:

• sacrifice
• participation
• competition
• ease in buying
• family, and
• her own personal reasons

First one up: the Big One:

• 61%: Sacrifice:
  • 26%: Servicemen: “Could you say to Mrs. Viola Buckley, who son was seriously injured, that you are doing everything you can to shorten the war?”
  • 20%: Civilians: “This mother has given one son . . . What are you doing compared with what this mother has done?”
  • 5%: Kate Smith herself: “This is Kate Smith again . . . Let me tell you it has been a long grind . . . sitting here since 8 o’clock yesterday morning urging each and every American to . . . buy at least one bond today and tonight.”

Note: Servicemen, civilians, and Kate Smith were tied together in a triple sacrifice – this developed a strong sense of unworthiness and guilt in many listeners. They felt compelled to do something more to keep their self-esteem. Relief was spelled, Buy A Bond.

Next biggest one, measured by time spent on a theme:

• 16%: Participation: the 18-hour marathon is a massive community effort, with Kate Smith directing it. Psychologically, it recognizes and preys upon isolation and weakness. Her appeal: “We can do it together. We can put this greatest of all war bond drives across.” And buyers said: “Dad, we did something. I was part of the show.” (Think how disasters bring people together.) And: “We felt others had been impressed and bought a bond. The fact that so many people felt the same way made me feel right.” (This is the idea of a testimonial or other proof element.)

This next theme taps into a core fundamental aspect common to all people:

• 12%: Competition: Patterns of competition are firmly established in our culture. Kate Smith used this in asking listeners to help her beat her bond sales records set on prior marathons. Updates for sales overall (stimulating interest in beating old records) and from different states and cities (Los Angeles is beating New York) helped foster regional rivalries and increased buying, creating a subtheme to the event (like various events and the medal count during an Olympic games broadcast), which kept the audience listening even after they bought. “I went back and bought again. I couldn’t let New York down.”

This next theme is familiar to you, but read carefully to discover its deep power:

• 7%: Ease in Buying: eliminating obstacles to direct action, making it easy to order and getting buyers to order at the time they’re most emotionally engaged and motivated, and helping buyers commit to the action they themselves want but might put off (such as a health-related product such as dieting during the New Year). The marathon repeated how easy it is to phone in a bond pledge compared to writing a check and mailing it or walking down to the bank and buying one. The risk is that you don’t collect 100% of the pledges made. With Kate Smith’s connection with buyers, they felt it was a personal promise to her that they would honor their pledge. (See Personal, below.) The general disadvantage of taking action now with a pledge is summed beautifully up by one buyer:

“People call in and when the time comes, they are not in a position to buy it. They are moved to buying it, but then they can’t afterwards. I always felt that the way is to buy the bonds right on the spot, and then taking no chance of changing your mind.”

Fortunately, today we can get buyers to slap it onto their credit cards, which shifts the collection burden onto the credit card company.

This next one taps into actual family, then extends the definition by creating community as one big Family, and finally pulls you into the Family whether you asked to be in or not. And like the Mafia, once you’re in the Family, it’s hard to get out:

• 6%: Family getting the boys back home: “They are our sons . . . and our neighbor’s sons. They are the boys from down the road … the grocery boy, the office boy, the garage mechanic. Those boys are our own boys and they have the greatest right in the world to our support.” And she quoted buyers, such as: “I said to my daughter – ‘buy it off Kate Smith. Maybe that’ll be the bond that will bring your brother home” and “Maybe my son will be over there soon. She said if we help them, they’ll come home quicker, many will be saved.”

Important: She created or activated the belief in magic: that a buyer’s particular purchase would specifically help in bringing back home their loved one. When you use sacredness or another high-level theme, your specific themes will tend to be interpreted in spiritual or other non-worldly ways. Again, think of contributing to your church.

Many of you may know that when you personalize your message, you increase the attention of your buyers. You may do this in your emails, and certainly do it with your family and friends. Even if you can’t mention their names (like Kate Smith, who was broadcating to tens of millions), you still can create the powerful effect you want:

• 6%: Personal: Let’s spend a bit of time on this theme. It’s extremely important and focuses on using those most powerful words: you, your, yours. She asked, “You can help me send this way over the top.” Her listeners responded: “It seems that she’s sitting in your kitchen and talking with you. The way it would be with a friend” and “She was speaking straight to me” and “You’d think she was a personal friend. It feels she’s talking to me.”

Note: This intimacy penetrates deep to the interior, central layers of the personality. Kate Smith focused on love, hate, sacrifice, and conscience. She prepared them for intimacy (and intrusion into their depths) by first offering them the view of her own dreams (her inner depths):

“Will you help me to make a dream come true? It’s an amazing dream … a stupendous dream… a dream that may be out of reach … but it’s a dream I know can be true today if we all – everyone of us … do our part.”

Dirty trick, isn’t it? It works because it creates an emotional resonance: empathy. We all have a cherished dream within us, and want others to help us make it come true.

Can you now see the power of sharing a deep cherished dream and vision – as you’ll find in great leaders (Martin Luther King Jr’s I Have A Dream) or in awesome movie characters (William Wallace’s magnetizing dream of freedom for his countrymen in Braveheart)?

Then pouring gasoline onto the raging fire, she added more intimacy:

“I wish I could ask you to telephone me, so that I could talk to each one of you personally and thank you for buying a war bond for America. But I can’t …”

Once she could speak to their hearts, she made sure to squash sales objections before they came up, which only increased the intimacy, like an ancient bald Kung Fu master calmly catching flies with chopsticks:

“I’m pestering you, I know, but let’s put this aside for now.”
“You may be tired of me, but I’ve got to keep going.”

And buyers bought because she had created intimacy, which let her recognize the possible annoyed or hostile feelings her listeners had by bringing the sales objection into the open (your price is too high, it doesn’t come in pink):

“The thing that really made me pick up the phone to order was when she said, ‘You’re probably sick of listening to me, and I’m sick of talking about it, too, but I can’t stop.’ ”

You may be wondering, “Why didn’t they just tune her out? That’s what happens with advertising messages, right? And it’s the problem in communicating with your market, isn’t it?”

Discover next the exact words she used to disarm her audience against tuning her out — like stealing candy from a baby!

Beyond Connecting the Persuasive Dots:
Creating a Powerful World of Persuasion Out of Them

Spot announcements throughout the day, like TV commercials, are usually experienced as separate events, even when viewers watch several of them in a short period, such as a single advertiser sponsoring an entire hour-long program. The Kate Smith bond drive was experienced as a single event, running from morning to night. How did the scriptwriters do this? The marathon had a fixed start and ending time and duration. Early reports foreshadowed later reports. Later reports updated earlier reports and included audience reactions. The length of time Smith was on air — even though there were breaks for music, news, and other programs — gave the focus of a single person. One result of this overall structure is that people felt compelled to continue listening! Of her 65 different appeals:

• 50% heard more than 10 appeals
• 32% heard more between 11 to 40
• 16% heard more than 40

When you read this listener’s comment, you’d think they were keeping vigil over their gravely ill relative:

“We never left her that day. We stood by her side. I didn’t go out all day, except to go shopping. Even then, I was anxious to get back and listen. Of course, my sister was holding down the post in the meantime and could tell me what had happened.”

Some people reported wanting to escape Smith’s continued demands, but were unable to do so:

“I was glad at the end of the day and her job was over and I didn’t have to listen to her anymore.”

And for some, the control over their attention was so powerful — they were so fixed on the continuance of an event — that they couldn’t see avenues for escape from a painful experience. They didn’t think of turning off the radio, tuning to another station, just stop paying attention, or physically leave the area:

“It was actually hounding you to get a bond. Possibly if the radio wasn’t on all day I would have let it go.”

“Usually I get tired of listening and I turn it off. It’s funny, whenever there is any commercial on, you turn it off, but then I had it on all afternoon. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I had to keep listening.”

Why couldn’t they turn the radio off? Walk away? Or find some other escape? Why did they hand over control of their lives to this marathon sales event? Why did they turn into zombies?

I will share that all-important finding with you next time. And I promise: it will blow your mind!

Truly masterful, isn’t it? That’s the deep reason why I’m sharing this with you. Because with a little understanding, you can easily elevate yourself above the day-to-day task levels of figuring out how to do things and work instead at the rarefied strategic level of why you do things. That’s where my motivation comes from: I’m working hard to do my part to share with you — by putting into simple-to-understand words what I truly believe to be significantly important findings — because I deeply feel these can truly help us all reach that level.

The weakest link in this powerful chain:
order-taking

One note for improvement: the transition from hearing a warm Kate Smith to placing a pledge with an impersonal, matter-of-fact telephone operator had many wondering if they misdialed or if the event was a scam. Maintaining continuity of an emotion or a theme from one place to another is crucial ( whether radio to the telephone, or TV commercial to website). (For example, what if you saw the Geico gecko, then went to the website but couldn’t find the gecko? You’d be confused, right?)

How is Mass Persuasion different than features-and-benefits selling?

You saw above that Kate Smith segmented her market by completely avoiding the features and benefits approach in selling bonds: dependable income-producing investments that are safely backed by the U.S. government.

By avoiding this approach, you can also avoid direct comparisons with other products from other companies. You no longer compete with them. And that removes price comparisons and your need to justify your value compared to the low-price products.

I’m not saying those products are not alternatives. But they no longer compete.

A chauffeuered limousine is a form of transportation. So is the graffiti-decorated filthy public bus. They are alternatives but there is little in common between the two experiences.

Remember, Kate Smith sold $39 million in experiences, not product.

Mass Persuasion helps you sell experiences so you don’t have to sell product.

Remember: this woman, Kate Smith, was not a salesperson. She was a singer. Like a one-trick pony, she simply read prepared scripts that were handed to her. Yet she sold $7.2 billion dollars of product over four years – while that exact same stuff was available on every block and people were sick and tired of hearing about buying a bleeping bond.

So forget about marketing. This is Mass Persuasion.

Related posts:

1. Mass Persuasion (part 20): Themes: how to tap into emotions
2. Mass Persuasion (part 7): once in a lifetime
3. Mass Persuasion (part 10): building the Big Momentum
4. Mass Persuasion (part 9): customers or cannon fodder?
5. Mass Persuasion (part 22): Grave and important warning

Tagged as: mass persuasion, public relations, strategy