One of Robert Cialdini’s six “weapons of influence” is social proof — the idea that it is easier to persuade people to do something if they believe other people are doing the same thing.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Cialdini and his colleagues at Arizona State University recently conducted an experiment at a Phoenix hotel. They posted a variety of signs in hotel rooms encouraging guests to re-use towels.
If the message merely encouraged guests to help the hotel save energy, only 16% of them reused the towels.
Asking them to “partner with us to help the environment” increased compliance to 31%
Claiming that almost 75% of guests reuse towels pushed the rate to 44%
Claiming that 75% of guests “who stayed in this room” reused towels increased reuse to 49%
“To the extent you can convince that, not just a lot of people are doing this, but a lot of people like [them] are doing this,” you’ll get greater buy-in, Prof. Cialdini says.
This principle has potential applications in your marketing, from media advertising to in-store signage. If you can legitimately claim that a particular product or service is popular with folks just like your prospects — that “all the cool kids are buying it”, you’ve greatly increased your chances of making a sale.
By all accounts, Country Financial is a good company, offering products that benefit consumers nationwide. In an effort to be a good corporate citizen, the firm is sponsoring an historical touring exhibition called “Titanic, Treasures From the Deep”.
The web site promoting the exhibition has a section called Lifeboat Challenge, where folks can take a short quiz on how prepared their family’s “financial lifeboat” is for “rough waters”. It’s an impressive way to tie the exhibit in with Country’s core marketing message.
However, a radio ad for the show gave me pause this evening — it invited listeners to find out more by going to www.countrytitanic.com.
That’s Country Titanic dot com.
In this economic environment, when you hear the words “Country” and “Titanic” right next to each other, what picture forms in your mind?
It’s hard to imagine a promotion as poorly planned and executed as KFC’s Grilled Chicken fiasco.
Photo by Tony Campbell
If you’ve been living in a cave for the past week or so, here’s a quick review of the clusterpluck:
To promote their new Kentucky Grilled Chicken, KFC offered a downloadable coupon for a free meal. And had Oprah Winfrey announce it on her show. KFC was completely unprepared for the response — their computer servers couldn’t handle the crush of downloads, and their restaurant servers either couldn’t or wouldn’t honor all the coupons.
A day later, KFC announced that it would no longer honor the coupons. Instead, they instituted a truly cumbersome raincheck procedure. Customers were instructed to bring their coupons to a KFC store, where they would be required to fill out a form requesting a rain check — and wait for KFC to mail them their rain check. At which time they would have to make a second trip to KFC.
It might seem impossible for KFC to make the situation any worse, but they were up to the challenge. Here is KFC President Roger Eaton’s astonishing “apology” video:
[UPDATE: alas, after being buried in negative comments, KFC has taken the video down]
KFC was already in a hole before they released the video. From his unfortunate foreign accent to his smirky grin to his bizarre non sequitur (“Everyone wants to get the great taste of our new product, so we can’t redeem your free coupon at this time.”), Eaton just kept digging it deeper.
What has he learned from all this?
“Clearly, America loves the great taste of Kentucky Grilled Chicken!“
The take-away message: it’s not KFC’s fault — it’s America’s fault!
This one will be studied in marketing classes for decades to come.
KFC is promoting their new Kentucky Grilled Chicken by giving it away, via a downloadable coupon. You’ve got to print the coupon before midnight Central Time tonight, May 6. It’s good through the 19th, although not on Mother’s Day (a shame, as I was planning to fly to St. Louis and take Mom out for some tasty grilled chicken.
Anectodal evidence that this is spreading faster than swine flu: Dan O’Day posted it on his Facebook page. Ten minutes later, I’d posted it on my page (I’m at home sick today — don’t judge), and now it’s going on my blog, which will automatically go out on Twitter
I’d love to find out where it goes from here. If you post it anywhere, leave a comment and let me know where you posted it.
