Credibility

In the book we discuss how to combat mistaken perceptions, such as people’s inflated sense of the danger of shark attacks — the attacks are so rare as to be mathematically soothing, and in fact the danger of shark attacks is dwarfed by the danger of deer attacks (aka those little furries who dart mindlessly in front of your car just at the moment when braking would be pointless).

Here’s another approach to the same topic: Turns out SAND ATTACKS are more dangerous than sharks: (Thanks to Hashim for the pointer)

http://www.cnn.com/2007/HEALTH/06/20/sand.deaths.ap/index.html

Update: The link above no longer works but here is a link to CBS article on the same topic.

From a story in the Eugene, OR Register-Guard (thanks to Len H for the link) (Update: here is a link to the same story from CBS):

Kyleray Katherman, 13, thought something was funny about the water coming from the drinking fountains at his school. So, being far more intelligent and resourceful than I was at 13, he conducted an experiment. He used a Q-tip to swab the spigots of four different drinking fountains (and also a toilet for good measure). Then he took the samples back to the lab and tested them for bacteria. (Apparently junior high is a good bit more like CSI than in my day.) Result: The toilet water was Evian compared with the drinking-fountain water.

Then, in a masterstroke of stickiness, Katherman presented his analysis of the 5 sources of water to his classmates, and without telling them where each sample came from, he asked them which source they’d prefer to drink from.

They chose the toilet water, of course. And imagine the looks on their faces when he let them know. (For that matter, imagine the look on *his* face when his punchline worked as intended.)

Think about how much more powerful it was for him to structure the presentation this way, getting people to commit to a preference for toilet water, rather than launching into his presentation with a typical opener: “Based on my analysis of the drinking water in this school, there was a significantly higher level of bacteria in the drinking fountains than in the toilets.”

In the book, we talk about how vivid details can make ideas more credible. Here’s an example from the annals of advertising, plucked from an article on the copywriter Claude Hopkins:

Back in 1919, Schlitz beer approached Claude Hopkins. Their beer sales were in 15th place. They asked Hopkins if he could help them sell more beer. He agreed to meet with Schlitz and toured the brewery. He was fascinated with what he discovered. He then returned two months later with an ad campaign.

His ads told of the “crystal clear water from a special artesian well”. They told of the one “mother” yeast cell that produced all the yeast for fermenting the beer. It was the result of over “1,500 experiments and produced a very distinct fresh, crisp taste”. He told of how the bottles were “sterilized 12 times to ensure purity, so that nothing would interfere with the clean taste of the beer”.

The Schlitz people hated it. They explained to Hopkins that this would never work. They told him, “All beer is made the same way.” Hopkins calmly assured them that people would be fascinated with the “behind the scenes” look and, that no other beer maker had ever told the story.

After much discussion, Schlitz relented and let the ads roll out. Six months later, Schlitz beer was the Number 1 selling beer in the nation.

From 15th place to 1st in half a year – absolutely astonishing…

In actual fact, Schlitz were right. All beers are made pretty much the same way.

But, what Claude Hopkins had done was to turn the features that went into making beer, into the benefits people gained when they cracked one open and drank it – clean, crisp and, distinctive.

The work of a master.

There are two bloggers who have done multi-post series on Made to Stick recently — they are nice introductions to the book and its concepts for people who haven’t read it. I am learning a lot from the insights that they are bringing to the book.

First, there’s Cam Beck at ChaosScenario. Here are the MTS-related posts: Boil it down to just one thing. Get their attention and keep it. Hit your audience with a ton of bricks. Earning the trust of strangers. [Stay tuned to Cam’s blog for posts on Emotion and Stories.]

Then, there’s Katya Andresen from Network for Good, whose blog is a must-read for non-profit marketers. She shows how the principles in MTS can be applied to social enterprise marketing, which is something that Chip and I are passionate about. Here are the posts: Finding your core aka sweet spot. Go for the unexpected. Hang your message on hooks. Emotion and calculation.

It’s a surprising fact, a fact that warns of overpopulation and a world teetering on the edge of exhaustion: The number of people alive today outnumber all those who have ever lived.

And it’s dead wrong. Ciara Curtin in the Scientific American does a nice dismantling of this urban legend.

Why did this falsehood spread? It has the snap of unexpectedness that you find in a lot of scientific-ish urban legends. (You only use 10% of your brain!) It balances that surprise factor by tapping into our sense of concern and anxiety for the world. (Have we pushed the planet too far?)

The surprise value and emotional resonance are garden-variety strengths of urban legends. This legend has another tricky feature, though. It appeals to our intuition about exponential numbers — for instance, if you take a sequence like 3^2, 3^3, 3^4, …, each successive number is greater than the sum of all the numbers before it in the sequence. If we have the (mistaken) sense that the earth’s population works like this sequence, the urban legend would seem quite reasonable. (It might even, perversely, make us feel smarter to believe it than not to believe it, since in tracing the exponential logic in our heads, we might flatter ourselves to believe we had solved the logic puzzle that explained a surprising “finding.”)