The secret language of persuasion
“If you would persuade, you must appeal to interest rather than intellect.”
— Benjamin Franklin
Jill came home from a busy day of work.
Placing her bags down, she began clearing her mind to prepare for dinner, while reminding herself of tomorrow’s tasks, but before getting too committed, she decided to treat herself to a nice cup of tea, which would help alleviate the day of mental dredges and overbearing co-workers. She opened the cupboard, placed her favourite mug on the counter and then clicked on the kettle.
Just before reaching for a tea bag to plop in her cup, she opened the fridge.
Dammit, she thought.
There was maybe enough left for a bowl of cereal, which wouldn’t do if both her kids unluckily decided to dive into the Lucky Charms come morning. Not only that, she meant to pick up bread yesterday along with a new jug of milk. A distracted and overburdened mind has a way of changing plans. Not to worry, because Jill lived 5 minutes from a grocery store, where she could grab milk and bread, and be home in no time to start dinner. So she grabbed her purse and returned to the car.
Upon entering the store, Jill was greeted by a large display of roses and chocolate.
Valentine’s Day already, she smirked to herself, but her eyes widened at the price of the bouquet: $27.99. They were nice, but not that nice. She walked past the display and produce aisle, and found her jug of milk. As she picked up the jug, she realized how nice it would be to have a morning banana, they did look fresh. Returning to the produce she realized a basket would make her trip easier, and walked past the Valentine’s display again to pick one up.
After travelling across the store to pickup bread, fifteen minutes vanished and her basket had become heavy. Jill realized her timely mistake and decided to purchase a hot meal at the deli for dinner, cooked chicken and wedges, because the meal planned for today could always be used for tomorrow.
At the checkout she emptied her basket, but realized what she forgot.
“Sorry” Jill said to the clerk “I forgot bags.” The clerk smiled and pointed just beyond the checkout to a rack of reusable bags. She picked a few, but also decided to grab some freshly baked cookies on a rack just in between. “My kids would love these, and I could also use a snack myself” she joked with the clerk. Of course, she didn’t bring enough cash for all these groceries, but fortunately had a credit card in her wallet.
Now with two heavy grocery bags, Jill returned home.
Sound familiar?
Who’s the benefactor in this situation, Jill or the store?
If Jill had gone through with her original plan she may have spent $10 - $15, but more than likely ended up with a bill closer to $80 after various detours. Why? Is this a random coincidence? While the store can’t affect what goes on in her personal life, nor can it directly control her decisions, it can design her shopping experience to influence certain purchases, which is a form of persuasion marketing.
Why were certain items spaced out?
Intentionally placing product categories across the store forces customers to walk through other featured products to possibly their capture attention, which was the case with the cookies placed in between the bags and the register.
First impressions are also critical. When Jill entered the store, she was greeted by a beautiful Valentine’s display, and while she didn’t purchase the expensive flowers or chocolate, that first impression was carried throughout her shopping experience, which may have influenced other purchases, like the cookies.
Of course, Jill made the mistake of shopping hungry and convenience foods at the deli likely had influence. And if Jill had gone to the store with cash, it would have limited her ability to purchase extra items, because easy access to funds with debit or credit makes overspending possible when immersed in an influential environment.
This is all done on purpose, below the thresholds of awareness.
“Compelling reason will never convince blinding emotion.”
— Richard Bach
We are not logical.
Arguably, logic is backwards from the way we normally perceive the world. Logic reduces a statement by pulling it back to terminal values, like assumptions, claims or definitions, through deduction or induction, but our perception works in the opposite direction. We start from initial values, like a belief, feeling or experience, and see the world through a coloured lens that creates subjective associations between objects. I suspect this is one explanation why logic and mathematics are so awkward to communicate through, because formal operations are sequentially bound by reference, whereas storytelling is almost exclusively inference, and thus a more natural form of communication than say a technical specification.
This isn’t a bad thing, because inference generates theories and hypotheses by imagining potential relations between objects, which could then be rigorously tested to develop an objective statement, but often the two get confused. One is like an inhale and the other like an exhale, and if someone truly wants to understand the world, then holding your breath in either direction won’t do.
Storefronts, their products and signage are designed to take advantage of inference.
If the store looks dirty, then customers will continue to look for more signs of uncleanliness, creating an overall negative impression that may limit the range of products purchased, if any. If the shelves looks empty, then it feels like you’re picking through leftovers, especially during a sale. A large basket of fruit looks less appealing than a small overflowing basket, even if there’s the same amount. Objective quantities don’t matter, unlike subjective inference, which is one of the secrets to persuasion.
How does a retailer use inference?
The easiest way to understand is through the general principle of information transmission, signal modulation. A modulated signal is a message encoded over a carrier, sent to a receiver and demodulated. This is how radios work, where a low frequency carrier wave is modulated with a higher frequency message through superposition. The same principle applies to digital transmission, where information is encoded into packets and formats like HTML, XML, JSON or YAML.
Persuasive messages follow a similar principle.
A transmission medium is anything perceivable, but commonly includes words, geometries and colours. There’s also more flexibility. For example, the Valentine’s display doesn’t necessarily have to encode the message “buy this product,” but can transitively encode other messages like “buy candy,” “think of your loved ones” or even simply “red.” The colour red is generally used in sale signs and associated with hunger. Incrementally sowing these messages through multiple mediums increases the signal while a customer is considering a purchase. Jill bought cookies, chicken and wedges, which could have been influenced by previous displays in the store.
The store itself is designed to optimize awareness through specific words, physical layout and colour schemes. Products themselves are designed to hold that attention through phrases, arrangement and specific colours. Lastly, labels use highly specific statements, layout, font and colour coding to influence the customer’s decision.
Consider the following.
Which is more likely to generate a sale and why?
Displaying plump visibly red strawberries on a counter, with an attractive logo on the container, is more likely to sell than berries in a cardboard box.
Which presentation would hold a customer’s attention for consideration of a sale?
What about raising awareness?
Consider a store’s signage, layout and colours.
What entrance sign is more likely to sell strawberries and why?
Notice the sign on the right explicitly mentions strawberries twice, asserts great quality and leverages the values of local shopping. It also causes the sale label to be recognizable, whereas the sign on the left provides none of these functions.
Would you “treat yourself” to strawberries?
This is a typical scheme used in many grocery stores.
Notice how there are three separate functions respectively used to get attention, hold attention and make the conversion, which follows a general structure known as the marketing funnel from Bond Salesmanship (1924) by William W. Townsend.
The sale begins by raising the customer’s awareness using a broad vocabulary to illicit a possibility, but must be careful to avoid perceptual opposition. This is commonly referred to as traffic in the physical sense or views in the digital sense, because customers can’t buy what they can’t see. After catching the customer’s attention, it’s held for consideration “to keep up, maintain, to keep (someone) in a certain frame of mind,” which is what the word entertain literally means, and sets the customer up for conversion. At this stage the message must resonate with a conflict, like satisfying hunger or ailment, where conversion transitions possibility to necessity.
For example: “I could buy” → “I should buy” or “I might buy” → “I have to buy.”
Once the customer converts and accepts the sale, loyalty and advocacy are developed for continued patronage and to encourage others by word of mouth.
In the grocery store example, store layout, signage and colour schemes are designed to bring awareness to products, consideration is held through attractive designs leveraging wording, geometry and colours, and conversion is usually made through the sale label that also uses specific statements, geometry and colour.
Additionally, the store likely has systems to encourage loyalty, such as a rewards program or coupons, and advocacy is developed through branding and personal image.
Good writing also uses this system.
Like wording, geometry and colour schemes in the grocery store, literary devices structure text to raise awareness of a theme, entertain the reader’s attention, and deliver convincing arguments through conflict and resolution. Why are there so many loyal advocates for classic titles? Consider how bad spelling and grammar baerks the hold on attention, and exposition and foreshadowing develops awareness. This system explains why writing must “show” and not “tell,” because telling fails to lead readers down the funnel through appropriate and satisfying inferences.
Understanding this system isn’t important because we overspend at the grocery store, buy extra cookies, get a chicken for dinner or fill our cars with reusable bags. Understanding this system is necessary, because these techniques are used by governments and militaries to propagandize civilian populations. An individual propagating an idea is at the advocacy stage of the marketing funnel, whom I call an ideological advocate, and has been previously brought through each subsequent stage. Awareness and entertainment are the initial culprits for an advocate’s bad idea. Just like Jill clumsily making extra purchases, many values and silly behaviours have been implanted into our populations, which are now trivialized as common place.
Persuasion is a powerful tool and its knowledge can be used for both good an evil. Fortunately, persuasion is not omnipotent and people like us can choose to make better informed decisions once we become aware of its methods.
“I would like to see anyone, prophet, king or God, convince a thousand cats to do the same thing at the same time.”
― Neil Gaiman
If you want to stop spending so much at the grocery store, beeline and use cash. Simple, but it takes discipline and an awareness of the store’s manipulative environment. Our exposure to media, including our favourite forms of entertainment, are no different, and likewise should be treated with an even higher level of discipline.
Never forget that all forms of media are trying to persuade you of something, wink.
But what else could this secret language of persuasion be used for?
Let me know in the comments below!
IDK, I've never been keen on manipulation. I can barely persuade my children unless it's a direct order and I use those sparingly. I studied advertising in votech and studied art in college but could never reconcile the two. I'd like to persuade people that government funded healthcare is not the way, especially considering what we've been through.
Subliminal messenging loses it's power once you're aware of it. Being a visual person I've always intuitively sensed that things are either more than or not at all as they seem. Narratives are harder for me to navigate let alone construct. I'm a reader not a writer so I either like what I see or I don't. Words and ideas are useful, inspiring, dangerous sometimes, and complicated.