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- [00:01]
Phil Agnew
In the early 1990s, South Africa was on the brink of transformation. The apartheid regime, an oppressive system of racial segregation, was collapsing. But the transition to democracy was far from guaranteed. Violence, political instability and the threat of civil war loomed large. One of the most serious threats came from General Konstant Foullon, a retired chief of the South African Defence Force and a revered figure among right wing Afrikaners. He led the Afrikaner Vault front, a hardline movement with its own militia of about 30,000 armed men. Folion had been called the ultimate enforcer of apartheid, and if that wasn't enough, also the ultimate racist. Many feared Folion would lead a violent uprising to prevent the end of white minority rule. Amid this tension, Nelson Mandela, then the leader of the African National Congress, took a bold and strategic step. In October 1993, Mandela secretly met with Foullon to defuse the threat. The general considered Mandela a criminal and a terrorist, expecting the meeting to be tense and formal. The general was stunned when Mandela greeted him warmly and spoke in his own language of Afrikaans. Mandela didn't highlight their differences. Instead, he greeted his foe like a friend. And crucially, he spoke to him in Afrikaans, the language of the oppressor. This act wasn't just symbolic, it was a masterstroke. The civil war didn't happen and foul John would one day describe his former enemy as the greatest of men. Mandela retired in 1998, and when Fullyon paid tribute to him in parliament, he did so in Mandela's native language of Xhosa. Perhaps unknowingly, Mandela used one of the most reliable persuasion tools there is to defuse the tension. He used mimicry. He acted like the general. He greeted him in his own language. He mimicked his warm demeanour. It worked for Mandela, and it has been proven to work in hundreds of psychological studies since then. Today on Nudge, best selling author and storytelling expert Will Storr shares how mimicry can be used to persuade all of that. Coming up.
- [02:14]
Louise Anfonsi
The world famous blogging site Tumblr had a problem. To succeed in marketing, they needed to move quickly. They needed to create content that was trending. But their marketing team was stuck waiting for engineers to build out every email campaign. That was until they switched to HubSpot's customer platform to send send trending content to millions instantly. Rather than waiting for the engineers, they could use HubSpot to send all their email comms as efficiently and as effectively as possible. And the result? Well, they have tripled their engagement while doubling the output they produce. If you want to move Faster, like Tumblr. Then head to HubSpot.com today on nudge.
- [02:58]
Phil Agnew
I'm talking to an award winning and best selling writer who has spent nearly two decades exploring the importance of stories and their power over us.
- [03:05]
Will Storr
My name is Will Storm. I'm a former journalist and author who has a specialist interest in the science of storytelling.
- [03:12]
Phil Agnew
In his latest book, A Story is a Deal, Will talks about the power of mimicry. He explains why it works and how great persuaders like Mandela use it to lead others. I asked Will how mimicry works.
- [03:23]
Will Storr
Human beings are constantly on what I call this detect and connect mode because we're cooperators and we need cooperators to survive. We're constantly looking for other people to cooperate with. So friends, lovers, colleagues, whoever it might be, know a friendship is a cooperative arrangement. You know, the point is that you bond, you care about each other, and then you're there to help each other over life's problems. And marriage is a cooperative relationship evolutionarily, the purpose of it being to be close enough and strong enough to sustain the, you know, the raising of children. You know, a tribe is a cooperative relationship that helps overcome the basic problems of survival. You know, that's how it works. But we don't just seek to cooperate with anybody. It only makes sense for us to cooperate with people who see the world a bit like we do. You know, human beings can be very different and so we're constantly looking out for similarity with, you know, we're looking out for people like us. That's what we do, you know, for good and for ill.
- [04:23]
Phil Agnew
In one study cited on page 80 of Will's book, research assistants were instructed to have long conversations with participants. The assistants were told to rub their faces and shake their feet during the conversations. This was kind of abnormal behavior. People wouldn't usually rub their faces this much or shake their feet this much. But when the research assistants did this, the participants unknowingly started to mimic their gestures. They rubbed their faces, they shook their feet, usually right after the assistant had done so. We mimic the actions of others, often unknowingly. In a lab based follow up study, participants who watched a video of someone eating a particular snack. In this case it was animal crackers or goldfish crackers. Well, they were more likely to eat the same snack and rate it more positively than those who hadn't watched others eating it. Importantly, they believed their choices were their own. They believed that they weren't influenced by the video. And this shows how mimicry can shape our preferences without our awareness. This is Our unconscious tendency to mimic others behaviors in social interactions. It builds rapport, increases liking and increases social cohesion.
- [05:33]
Will Storr
So that's why people are so get so concerned about their appearance, for example. You know, it's because subconsciously we're very interested in attracting similar people to us and repelling people who aren't similar to us. It's kind of what we do with like a magnet for, for like minded people, you know, that's why we humans care so much about their hair and their car and their house and their, and and that's also why things like accent matter and choice of words matter and you know, the school tie. Humans are obsessed with this stu for a sound evolutionary reason. It's because we are just because we're always in the business of trying to attract like minded people and repel people who aren't like minded.
- [06:11]
Phil Agnew
In a massive study of 421 million potential romantic matches from an online dating site, the factor that best predicted the favorability towards a partner was similarity. The researchers Levy, Markle and Cerf stated for nearly all characteristics, the more similar the individuals were, the higher the likelihood that they would find each other desirable and opt to meet in person. Similarity could predict the likelihood of a match with 60% accuracy. A different field experiment examined how a petitioner's clothing affected how willing a peace demonstrator would be to sign an anti war petition. Two female experimenters, one dressed in what they called hippie clothing and the other dressed in what they called straight clothing, solicited signatures at a 1971 anti war demonstration. The study found that the demonstrators were more likely to sign the petition when they were approached with someone whose attire matched their own. This indicated that similarity in clothing does influence persuasion.
- [07:12]
Will Storr
So that's why, you know, one of the kind of basic rules of marketing is that you've got to speak in the language of your audience because your audience has got to subconsciously see you as, that's people like me, as people like us. So a lot of advertising, that's what it's excellent at doing in basically showing a mirror to the audience and saying this is who you are, this is who we are too.
- [07:34]
Phil Agnew
The world's best known ad man, David Ogilvy, knew this all too well. He wrote, if you're trying to persuade people to do something or buy something, it seems to me you should use their language, the language they use every day, the language in which they think. And Apple used this principle to advertise their products.
- [07:52]
Will Storr
That's what the Think different campaign was. You know, just like 1984 had no information whatsoever about the product. Zero. Not even a picture of the bloody product. Nothing. It was just a picture of a bunch of creative icons.
- [08:06]
Phil Agnew
Here's to the crazy ones.
- [08:09]
Will Storr
John Lennon, Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Teresa, all these kinds of people. Martin Luther King, people who changed the world, basically. And as what it's saying, it's like our computers aren't for these kind of boring office drones like the PCs and the IBMs. Our computers for the people who want to change the world. And of course, change the world became such a cliche after that in Silicon.
- [08:30]
Phil Agnew
Valley, because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.
- [08:39]
Will Storr
But that's what it's doing. And it works so that if you see your identity in that ad campaign, then you sort of, by this kind of magic power, become automatically compelled to kind of want to use that product because it's part of your cloud of social information that's showing other people who you think you are.
- [08:59]
Phil Agnew
One 1994 study from Cialdini's book Influence shows how mimicry can be used to sell. In the study, research assistants were sent out across a college campus. They were told to interrupt students and solicit a donation for a charitable cause. Some were told to make a sort of straightforward request for a donation without any additional commentary. This was the control group. However, the others were asked to use mimicry specifically. They were told to emphasize a shared identity. They were told to start their request by saying, hi, nice to meet you. By the way, I'm a student here too. I'm a student here too. They were told to say that before making the donation request. And the results are really quite astonishing. Only 9.8% of the students in the control group donated, while 41.7% donated. When the assistant said, I'm a student here too. That is a three times increase in donations. By just adding five words to the request. This effect is proven to make people spend more.
- [09:59]
Will Storr
I mean, there's a less well known example, but just as effective. In Canada, Molson Beer had a really excellent campaign where they were number one and they slipped to number two. And so they kept. So their ad agency came up with this idea of doing an ad about how annoying it was because Americans always. People always think Canadians are Americans and it obviously annoys Canadians when people think they're American. So they come up with this ad, which is called. It became known as the Rant. But all it is is just an ordinary guy in a plaid shirt and jeans on a Stage listing things that are Canadian.
- [10:35]
Phil Agnew
Hey, I'm not a lumberjack or fur trader and I don't live in an.
- [10:40]
Will Storr
Igloo or eat blubber or own a dog sled.
- [10:43]
Phil Agnew
And I don't know Jimmy, Sally or Susie from Canada, although I'm certain they're really, really nice.
- [10:48]
Will Storr
You know, all the things that people get wrong about Canada, all the things that are particular about Canada versus America. And it was just immediately hugely successful. They did a genius thing and broadcast it for the first time in the ad break in the Oscars just after south park had before blame Canada. Then on came this thing and again, you know, with the rant. It has no information about Molson beer. There's no advert. There's no part of that which is saying it's delicious, crisp, low calorie, whatever it might be, you know, whatever. The benefits of this beer are nothing whatsoever. It was just the expression of an identity and enormously, successfully put tens of millions of dollars onto the value of the company within a matter of weeks.
- [11:31]
Phil Agnew
Joe and I am Canadian.
- [11:36]
Will Storr
Thank you. So. So that's the power of this stuff. It's much more powerful to appeal to people's identity than it is to list the benefits of your product, usually.
- [11:46]
Phil Agnew
But mimicry can backfire, especially if it's not authentic.
- [11:50]
Will Storr
I think people are very alert to authenticity. That's the, it's the one thing about this storytelling, it has to feel authentic. Politicians like, the worst example of this is where politicians try to appeal to the kids by doing TikTok videos. And so when this stuff, when they try and do this stuff is inauthentic. It's beyond cringe, it's unbelievably. Oh, it just makes you just want to shrivel up and die. On the one level, it feels like a simple trick, but it isn't simple. You've got to really, really know how your audience sees the world. You've got to understand their identity, their perception of the story world, who their heroes are, who their villains are, how they talk, how they think. And if you get it even slightly wrong, it's the whole thing is wrong. So it's actually not that easy, I would argue.
- [12:31]
Phil Agnew
And yet if you get it right, it can be incredibly effective.
- [12:34]
Will Storr
When they've done psychological experiments trying to figure out what are the most persuasive behavior change kind of models, what they find is just simply expressing this is the thing that most people are doing. Most people are recycling. Most people are saving energy by using energy saving bells, light bulbs. They tend to be the most successful because you kind of want to fit in and you don't want to be the kind of outlier noticed around where I live on the. On the side of the trucks, it says, I don't think there's even a number. It says, most people are recycling. So, yeah, that works really well.
- [13:08]
Phil Agnew
We want to follow the actions of others. We want to follow people like us. This is why mimicry can work. Jonah berger, in his 2013 book Contagious, shares a real world campaign to cut binge drinking amongst students. Instead of publicizing the health implications of alcohol use or pointing out the horrifically dangerous trouble that being blackout drunk can cause, the University of Arizona's Korean Johansson ran ads in a student paper that countered the widespread belief that binge drinking was the norm. Instead, the researcher simply shared in the ads that most students only consume a couple of drinks when they're out, and 69% of them have four drinks or less. This message, more than any other, any other message about the health benefits or anything like that. This message cut binge drinking by nearly 30%. You shouldn't tell students that drinking is bad. You should tell them that 69% of other students only have four drinks or less. It'll be far more persuasive, especially if you're specific.
- [14:09]
Will Storr
If you're using that specific detail, it just feels real. So I think that's one of these sort of basic storytelling things where specificity is really important. And, you know, vagueness is always the enemy of storytelling, whether it's a marketing campaign or if it's a novel or a screen screenplay. You know, the specificities is crucial.
- [14:26]
Phil Agnew
We follow others, especially people like us. That's why mimicry works so well at persuading. But this idea doesn't just influence what we buy or how much we drink. It can determine who we pick as a leader.
- [14:37]
Will Storr
Yeah, so there's a kind of a historic idea of what a leader is, which is this distant, powerful figure on the mountaintop issuing demands and rewards depending on how good a player you've been or not. And those leaders aren't so successful. You know, the most successful leaders are what they call prototypical. So they are, you know, walking, talking emblems of the ideal of the group. And they're very much at the center of the group rather than at the mountaintop distance from the group. And so these are the most successful CEOs and politicians, the ones that think in, you know, we rather than I. And indeed, when academics look at politicians speeches and CEO speeches, they find the most successful Leaders are the ones that use we rather than I more when they're talking about the group and the group's future.
- [15:28]
Phil Agnew
12020 analysis of election speeches in Australia found that the winning candidates were far more likely to use the pronouns we and us. In this analysis, they found that the winners say we or us every 79 words on average, and the losers said we or us every 136 words on average. And this was measured before the elections from the complete run up. So they were just using these words far more, and they also got elected. Correlation or causation, we're not sure, but it seems like really good leaders just aren't too different from us. They are one of us. And Will's got a great example of a leader who's just like this.
- [16:06]
Will Storr
Yeah, yeah. I mean, he's obviously just passed away recently, old Pope Francis. But he was a great. That was a really good example, I thought, because his predecessor wasn't prototypical, you know, Benedict. He was very divisive figure. And then Pope Francis came along. He named himself after Francis Versisi, whose sort of. Sort of big thing was about poverty and humility. And so it's quite funny that what, you know, after he got made the pope, one of the first things he did was shock, horror. He was staying in a hotel and he actually went downstairs by himself and paid the hotel bill by, you know, himself. And. And this was such an unusual thing that it made sort of headlines around the world, especially in the Catholic press. Barely pope for a day, Pope Francis is already setting his papacy apart from the pomp his predecessors. Before delivering his first mass at the Sistine Chapel on Thursday, he stopped by a Vatican hotel and paid his own bill. He also picked up his luggage and personally thanked each member of the staff. People were praising him for this thing, this amazing act of humility that he would do this. And so that's, you know, that's being prototypical. And then he enacted a lot of reforms. There was one particular guy in Germany whose nickname was the Bishop of Bling, who kind of, you know, kind of had an extraordinary. He spent hundreds of thousands of dollars doing up his. Doing up his digs. Like, I can't remember the numbers, but like a. Like a ridiculously expensive toilet and ridiculous expensive fish tank and art collection. And he fired him. He fired the Bishop of Bling. You know, he got rid of him. So. So that's what I mean by being prototypical. And. And as a result, Pope Francis was far more popular than Benedict ever was. You know, he was packing out his masses at the in the Vatican far more than Benedict ever was. So that's what I mean. That is a successful leader. You are a walking, talking, ideal hero that represents the group. That's what you need to try to be.
- [18:05]
Phil Agnew
For Pope Benedict, 2.3 million Catholics attended his papal events on average. The first year of Francis's tenure saw this number surge to 6.6 million. We like leaders when they appear to be just like us. We will copy the actions of those we admire, but we won't mimic people who we perceive to have low status. Will has personal experience of this.
- [18:28]
Will Storr
When I was doing my promotion for my previous book, the Status Game, because in America they say status, you know, and so, so I'd find often in podcasts, I would be saying status, they would be saying status. And then they were. They would start saying status as well. Sometimes, but. But other times, if it was a really high status podcast, like a Sam Harris or something like this, they wouldn't change, you know, so, so you can see, you know, people are constantly wanting to adjust and it tends to be who's perceived as to be the high person in the conversation, you know, will adjust. So that kind of stuff is constantly going on. I mean, there was one study which says that we was flashing images of people in kind of rich and poor clothing, and it was something like 129 milliseconds was enough for a person to see that thing. So you're barely consciously seeing it, but you are instantly making judgments about the status of that person, not only how wealthy they are, but also how competent they are, which is, you know, which is a much deeper kind of judgment to make about somebody based on just their clothing.
- [19:33]
Phil Agnew
Will has an example of just how motivating status can be right after this break.
- [19:40]
Louise Anfonsi
Content is Profit, hosted by Louise Anfonsi, is part of the HubSpot Podcast network, the home of business shows that don't ramble on and give you insights as quickly as possible. Content Is Profit is one of those real practices. Listens, you'll get tips on selling things that actually work. You'll hear frameworks, tactics, and you'll learn from guests who have done it all before. I would suggest, if you want to get started, listen to the how to get your first 500 email subscribers as a great example of how wonderful this show is. A good mix of insights and ideas. So go and listen to Content is Profit wherever you get your podcasts.
- [20:19]
Phil Agnew
Hello, you are listening to Nudge with me, Phil Agnew. Now. Now here's a question for you say you were tasked with motivating doctors at a hospital to wash their hands. How would you motivate them? When I think about this question, I'm inclined to think of things like financial incentives or perhaps penalties if you don't wash their hands. That's probably what I'd go for just fine. The doctors, if they don't wash their hands. But Will says that kind of thinking is a bit antiquated.
- [20:44]
Will Storr
You know, we still have this very industrial revolution era mindset that the way you motivate people is by by throwing money at them. And of course, you know, money's essential and people need to be paid a fair wage. Of course, that. That hopefully goes without saying, but actually, money doesn't motivate us fundamentally. I mean, most of us listening to this podcast would have had a pay rise at some point in our lives. And, you know, my experience is getting pay rises. You're delighted for about three days, and you just sort of forget about it and you think, yeah, well, fair enough, I deserved it. And then, you know, and then that's it, you know, so money motivates us in the short term, but it's not a good motivator in the long term.
- [21:21]
Phil Agnew
So how can you convince doctors to wash their hands? Well, you can motivate them with status.
- [21:27]
Will Storr
Yeah. So hospitals awfully struggle getting their medical staff to wash their hands properly. And this is particularly important in ICUs in intensive care units that then there's a particular rule that you've got to wash your hands after you enter and after you leave, I don't know, within 30 seconds or something like this. But they had really stunningly low percentage of compliance with this. And they tried all kinds of things to motivate people. But what motivated people was a very explicit status game. So they put cameras up and then they had people watching the behavior of people. And then the results were put on a big kind of LED scoreboard that showed this shift has achieved this much this level of compliance, and this team has achieved this level of compliance. And that's what solved the problem. Rates of compliance shot up because people became competitive about it and didn't want to let the team down and wanted, oh, yeah, we've beaten the morning shift. Yeah. So that's how it worked. And nothing else worked, but making it a status game, you know, worked.
- [22:29]
Phil Agnew
Each time someone washed their hands, their score would go up and they would receive an encouraging message, such as, great shift or keep it up. Immediately following this implementation, the compliance rose by more than 80% over the course of the next 75 weeks. This is a long study. Compliance averaged 87.9%, which was up from the just 6% it was averaging originally.
- [22:52]
Will Storr
You can see the power of these kinds of dynamics in social media, of course, all the time. That's the story of social media. It kind of became huge when they found a way of turning Twitter and Facebook into status games. Facebook really took off after 2007 when they put the like button on there and gave people a way of awarding and experiencing basic status rewards. I mean, that's how Twitter works. I mean, Twitter's enormously successful because Twitter was really the master of the status games because it wasn't just the like button. It was also the blue tick they invented, you know, retweets, follower counts. Twitter's just this kind of machine for manufacturing status and gambling with status. And that's why Twitter became so incredibly successful.
- [23:36]
Phil Agnew
We're driven to gain more and more status and yet all too often we dislike people who have status.
- [23:43]
Will Storr
When somebody comes swaggering into the room, the big I am sucking in all the attention gets our backs up. It's annoying, you know, and there's a, you know, a very common cultural, you know, rule in hunter gatherer groups, forager groups in which people who do that are punished by the group.
- [24:01]
Phil Agnew
Will and I kept chatting. He went on to explain why we dislike those with high status and how there are still some quite obvious exceptions. He explained how some politicians and influencers who, who really flaunt their status are still able to garner such large followings. He also shared a study where charity fundraisers dramatically increase their donations simply by telling donors, this is the last time we'll contact you. I think that's a really interesting experiment because I think it's got great applications for wider marketing. So if you want to learn about that study and learn more about status, just go and listen to the bonus episode that Will and I recorded. To get access, all you have to do is click the link in today's show Notes, enter your email, and you'll be taken straight to today's bonus episode. It's hosted on YouTube and there's a lovely video of both of us chatting on there as well. If you're already on my email newsletter list, thank you. All you have to do is click the link in today's email and you'll find the bonus episode there. Otherwise, if you can't find that link, just click that link in the show Notes, drop in your email, and you'll be taken straight to the bonus episode where Will explains why telling someone that they can refuse might make them more likely to act. That is all for today, folks. Big, big thank you to Will for coming back on Nudge. He is a really fantastic guest. Thank you. His book A Story is a Deal is one of my favourite books of the year. I highly recommend you read it. I've left the link to it in the show notes if you'd like a copy. Thank you so much for listening today's show. I hope you don't spend the next week mimicking everyone you see just to try and persuade them. But I also hope that when an estate agent or a used car salesman starts mimicking you, well, you'll know why.