Persuasive Advertising - J. Scott Armstrong [48]
As the next principle shows, however, when dealing with high-involvement products, a reason per se is not sufficient; the reason must be a good one.
2.1.2. For high-involvement products, the reasons should be strong
If there are strong reasons, use them in any case. But this is especially important for high-involvement products. This principle is common practice in advertising. For example, of the 321 high-involvement print ads that contained reasons in our WAPB analysis, we rated 71 percent of them as strong.
Evidence about strong reasons
The previous principle described an experiment involving a request to jump ahead in a Xerox line with a small request—“only five pages.” Now let’s look at what happens when the request is larger—the experimenter asked, “Excuse me, I have 20 pages. May I use the Xerox machine?” In this case, the people being asked thought about the request. Therefore, the silly reason (“because I have to make copies”) was no more persuasive than providing “no reason,” for which only 24 percent complied with the request. In contrast, when given the good reason (“I’m in a rush”), 42 percent complied (Langer et al. 1998).
In a lab experiment, 145 students listened to audiotapes of arguments on whether students should be required to take a comprehensive exam to graduate. Some heard strong arguments, while others heard weak arguments. Some were in a high-involvement situation because the change would affect them; others were in a low-involvement situation. Strong arguments were much more effective than weak arguments for changing attitudes for the high-involvement situation, but not for low-involvement (Petty, Cacioppo, and Goldman 1981).
Our analysis of quasi-experimental data supported this principle:
Print ads with stronger reasons had better recall. Our WAPB analysis found 25 pairs of high-involvement print ads in which one ad had stronger reasons than the other. For example, an ad for Isuzu cars that stated, “the new Isuzu comes in many attractive colors … a powerful new 24-valve, V6 engine and a price tag you can actually afford,” was compared with another Isuzu ad that was coded as having weaker reasons. Recall for ads with stronger reasons was 1.48 times better. In combination with the WAPB results for the preceding principle, this implies that an ad with strong reasons is about twice as effective in generating recall as an ad that does not include any reasons.
2.2. Social proof
Men nearly always follow the tracks made by others, and proceed in their own affairs by imitation.
Machiavelli, 1514
Social proof can be used in an ad by showing someone who is similar to the person viewing the ad on some key dimension (such as educational background, age, clothing, or political viewpoint). If a similar person likes the product, perhaps you will also.
In the 1800s, Yankee peddlers successfully used this technique: they would sell to Mrs. Smith by telling her that her neighbor, Mrs. Jones, had bought their product. Walter Dill Scott popularized this advertising approach in the early 1900s. He used the term “suggestion” to represent that when people see people they perceive as similar to them behaving in a certain way, they tend to mimic that behavior with little conscious thought.
Social proof also affects animals. For example, the mating process of the sage grouse is a competitive affair in which the males puff their chests and strut. Over 90 percent of the mating is done by 10 percent of the males. How do the females choose? Experiments showed that females chose the male who was surrounded by the most females. In these experiments, males who were surrounded by fake females (decoys) were more likely to mate (Levine 2003, p. 62).
Social proof affects our decision-making. In Asch’s (1956) study, subjects seated in a group were asked to identify the longest of three lines that were presented to them. The other “subjects” were confederates