Mass Persuasion (part 2): trust and emotion

Build up their trust.
Rake them over hot coals.

Then watch as they come back for more.

In the last post, I began introducing you to Mass Persuasion with a woman who sold $39 million dollars of stuff in 18 hours in 1943. That’s $480 million in today’s money.

And it gets better: over four years, she sold $600 million — $7.2 billion dollars worth today.

And here’s the most astonishing part:

• Product: No uniqueness or exclusivity, massive competition: The same product had already sold $32 billion worth in the past three years, everyone knew about it, many already owned it, and it was available on every block.
• General approach: not unique: her approach had been used before. Nothing new here.
• General message: Blasted so many times, many people didn’t even notice the message anymore, or were even hostile to receiving them. Sound like a familiar problem in today’s marketing?
• Specific approach: Unique: Although people handed over money for a product, they were paying to experience or get rid of an emotion. People bought $7.2 billion dollars worth of purely emotional experience.

Obviously, she was a very good salesperson, right? Not at all. She was a singer, not a salesperson.

But she knew what to do, right? No — she read a prepared script like a stage actress.

And as if that weren’t enough, they just had to make the challenge even harder for her. How? This woman had to deeply touch every emotional nerve hiding in her vast nationwide audience, and make each and every one of the tens of millions feel that she was talking with them, one to one.

If you had any doubts before, do you still think you can’t learn something from this? Read on:

So where does this significant information come from? From a rare first edition book in my private library, Mass Persuasion: the social psychology of a war bond drive, written in 1946 by sociologist Robert K. Merton. Who was Merton and why is whatever he said about some event 66 years ago even remotely connected to today? And why is what a sociologist said then significant for marketing today, especially when we live in a streaming video online world and he wrote when few households even had televisions? Merton was the “father of the focus group.” Have you ever been in one (and earn $50 or $100 for your hour or two of time)? Do you use or participate in online surveys, blog comments, or forum/discussion threads? Thank Merton.

And he coined a number of widely used phrases. Ever heard of these: Self-fulfilling prophecy? Role model? Unintended consequences? Merton coined those.

He wrote about sociology and, for the most part, he is forgotten for his contributions to marketing.

So what’s sociology? It’s the study of human social structure and activity, or how people gather into societies and interact as a society.

What’s marketing? Influenced by many of the social sciences, particularly psychology, economics, and sociology, marketing is the activities, organizations, and ways to create, communicate about, and deliver stuff that humans in society want.

In short, using sociology helps marketers navigate society, making it easier for you to hit your human targets with your best shot.

Enough of the good stuff about Merton. Let’s talk about the pain and suffering I went through to get you this information. (I’m using Merton’s own findings (revealed later) and will gently remind you throughout these Mass Persuasion posts of my personal pain and suffering.)

Although Merton’s fascinating information is a gold mine, mining the data is drier than digging in the oven-baked Sahara Desert. Here’s a sample of this book’s 210 bone-dry pages:

“For purposes of a sociopsychological case study, this diversity of response is a decided asset inasmuch as it precludes overready generalizations which might be adequate to summarize more uniform responses. In short, this material approximates the desideratum laid down for such studies by the Murphys and Newcomb, inasmuch as it has ‘to do with realistic behavior of run-of-the-mine adults in a complex social situation.’ ” (page 9)

Yet, there is so much in his 1946 analysis that is right on the mark for marketing and for you. Just take a look:

• the importance of the message and how its repetition affects whether people believe it or simply tune it out
• the importance of the messenger: who says it determines whether it’s taken at face value or heavily discounted (or even distrusted)
• the importance of recognizing the audience themselves and their sense of credibility of the messages and their messengers
• and the product launch itself

In many ways, to understand the findings of this book is to understand the core of marketing.

In short, this woman, who I’ll introduce to you in a moment, got people to buy half a billion dollars of product when they were sick and fed up to here about hearing about the product and could walk down the street and buy it in any bank or post office.

Again, let me remind you this information comes to you at no small price — from investing my hard-earned dollars in the rare first edition copy of Merton’s book to sifting through mountains of bone dry sociological studies, including digging deep into the Appendix’s arcane Statistical Tables and going cross-eyed while poring over the fine print in the countless academic footnotes — and I will continue delivering it to you throughout this post, because I feel it’s that important. Make sure you continue reading.

The entire staff here at Ripper Marketing has set aside all of its other important duties and has dedicated itself — for as long as it takes you to read and understand these posts — to the sole purpose of delivering this message to you. Make sure you continue reading:

The woman who raised the money was a radio star with a huge national following. In 1943, the US had a population of 137 million; 23 million listened to her during the day, and 21 million during the evening. She had a pristine reputation, and was considered by many to be sincerity, integrity, goodfellowship, and altruism in living flesh.

Her name: Kate Smith. Today’s equivalent for this rare combination of rock star presence and virtue? Perhaps Oprah. In a later post, we’ll learn how she was selected, beating out Frank Sinatra and other mega rock stars of the day.

Today, let’s look at the findings from the very high level: building trust and tapping into buyers’ emotions. Keep a sharp eye out for anything that sounds familiar to you:

• 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. Doesn’t sound much different than today, does it? 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.

How did she 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.

And the key to her success was in segmenting the market based on choosing the emotional high ground: sacredness. She used sacredness as a theme of themes – it sat on top of all the other themes.

Next time, I’ll show you exactly how she used all these themes to build trust and tap into her audiences’ emotions, while she herself remained firmly planted on the high ground of sacredness:

• You’ll learn how she never even mentioned the product’s greatest feature – and thereby moved herself to the high ground, with her army of buyers scaling the mountain to join her at the top!
• You’ll see the exact quotes from buyers and see how these themes affected them, proving beyond the shadow of a doubt how powerful and effective this is!
• You’ll discover the exact words she used to disarm her audience against tuning her out — like stealing candy from a baby!
• Finally, you’ll find the weakest link in this incredibly powerful chain – and the confusion it caused with buyers, potentially disrupting Kate Smith’s tremendous success!

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 – while that exact same stuff was available on every block.

In a later post, you’ll see how her magical incantations turned them into zombies: they literally could not turn off the radio or leave the room!

So forget about marketing. This is Mass Persuasion.

Keep a careful eye for your next email from Ripper Marketing – you don’t want to miss this signficant series on Mass Persuasion for the world!

Related posts:

1. Mass Persuasion (part 19): Sincerity: Build up trust and they’ll believe
2. Mass Persuasion (part 10): building the Big Momentum
3. Mass Persuasion (part 7): once in a lifetime
4. Mass Persuasion (part 22): Grave and important warning
5. Mass Persuasion (part 3): propaganda

Tagged as: advertising, marketing, mass persuasion, public relations, sales