Even when they know it has been rigged, people assign a lot of credibility to experiments. When they see the experiment produce favorable results, for example, potential customers might be more inclined to buy. Experiments can also influence decision-makers in your company — again, even if they assume you put your thumb on the scale. The phenomenon is similar to wrestling, with audiences knowing the match is staged by enjoying it all the same. Neville and Shel review some research on the subject and discuss ways communicators can apply experimentation to their work in this short midweek episode.

Links from this episode:

Socializing an Idea? Experiments Can Help Convince Your Audience | Working Knowledge

The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, December 23.

We host a Communicators Zoom Chat most Thursdays at 1 p.m. ET. To obtain the credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly, request them in our Facebook group, or email fircomments@gmail.com.

Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music.

You can find the stories from which Shel’s FIR content is selected at Shel’s Link Blog. Shel has started a metaverse-focused Flipboard magazine. You can catch up with both co-hosts on Neville’s blog and Shel’s blog.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this podcast are Shel’s and Neville’s and do not reflect the views of their employers and/or clients.

Raw transcript:

Hi everyone, and welcome to four immediate release episode four 40. I’m Neville Hobson. And I’m Shel Holtz, and Marketing. Is hard. Seriously it’s getting more and more difficult to influence people. Some businesses are finding that experimentation can be a powerful tool, not just for making decisions about the marketing approach that you’re gonna take, but as an actual instrument of influence.

A recent study by Harvard Business School’s, Rebecca Karp and her colleagues, reveals that business experiments can serve. Two purposes, gathering data and persuading stakeholders. We’ll dive into how this plays out in two distinct complimentary approaches right after this. First, let’s examine how experiments influence I internal decision makers.

Carps research shows that business experiments frequently become what she calls staged performances with scripted endings. Now, before you shrug this off as [00:01:00] just petty manipulation, consider an interesting parallel. She draws from of all things professional wrestling. Just as wrestling fans they’re known as smarts.

I didn’t know that. That’s a mashup of the word smart and mark. Smarts understand that they’re watching a performance, but they still appreciate the show. Now, shift that concept to business and you get sophisticated business audiences that are able to recognize that experiments also. Come with an agenda most of the time.

Think about a startup founder presenting experimental results to venture capitalists. The VCs know the startup team likely designed the experiment to favor a particular outcome, but they don’t view this as deceptive. As one VC told carp. It’s a feature, not a bug. The ability to structure compelling experiments demonstrates a founder’s strategic thinking and persuasive capabilities.

These are qualities that investors actually value now. So how does all of [00:02:00] this translate into the practice of PR and marketing? Keep in mind, transparency about experimental limitations doesn’t diminish the their persuasive power. In fact, acknowledging potential biases while still delivering valuable insights can enhance your credibility.

The goal isn’t to present. Perfect unbiased data, which let’s face it rarely exists in business context anyway, but to generate useful information that helps decision makers make their decisions while advancing strategic objectives. Now let’s pivot to the second approach, using experiments themselves as content to influence consumers and external stakeholders.

We’ve seen a lot of really great examples of this strategy in action considered Dove’s real beauty sketches experiment. They had an FBI trained forensic artist drawing women based on how they described themselves and then drawing the same women based on somebody else’s description. What they found was [00:03:00] that the women described themselves as being much less attractive than objective.

Third parties who didn’t know them, who described them. This generated massive engagement and reinforced Dove’s brand positioning around authentic beauty. Another example, remember Blend text? Will it Blend series? This started as a simple product demonstration and it became a viral sensation. They blended everything from iPhones to golf balls.

The experiments weren’t just tests. They were compelling contents that showcased product benefits and entertained audiences. There was re’s opt-out side campaign, which offered another masterclass in experimental marketing by closing stores on Black Friday and tracking outdoor activity, REI turned their businesses business experiment into a movement.

The campaign not only generated immediate buzz, it created a lasting impact on the perception of people have of the brand. Now for PR professionals, these examples [00:04:00] highlight an important evolution in how we think about experiments. They’re not just tools for gathering data or making decisions.

They’re opportunities to create compelling narratives and build deeper connections with audiences. The trick is to design experiments, serve multiple purposes. You definitely wanna generate those useful insights, but you also want to create that shareable content. Now this approach requires careful consideration.

For experiments to work as content, they need three key elements. They need authenticity, transparency, and relevance. It has to feel genuine, even if it’s designed with persuasion in mind. The methodology and limitations should be openly acknowledged. That’s transparency and most important, the experiment has to resonate with your audience’s interests and concerns.

This trend is likely to continue growing as consumers become more sophisticated and demanding of evidence-based claims experiments. Give us a powerful way to demonstrate value while engaging the audience. The [00:05:00] challenge is to find creative ways to turn research and testing into stories that drive both understanding and action.

So don’t limit your experiments to the ones that you conduct behind closed doors. The AB tests that of course we’re gonna continue to do, but you should consider how your testing and learning process become. Part of your story, could your product development experiments become content? Could your market research be turned into shareable insights?

The answer to these questions might just lead to your next breakthrough campaign. Yeah. A lot to think about there. Shel, the first thing that struck me, listening to what you were saying and indeed, I think Rebecca Kapa has done a super job with this in her studies that she mentions in that Harvard Business Review article, how experiments can play different roles in business.

But what struck me was, isn’t this something that. Businesses have been doing for years. Would it not be called thinking out loud, perhaps? Literally doing your experimentation in the open. Maybe they don’t [00:06:00] call it experimentation, because this strikes me as something that isn’t this what businesses have been doing for quite a while.

I think to some extent businesses have been doing this, but I don’t think that they’ve been doing it as a strategy. I think somebody in the marketing or the advertising department has an idea, Ooh, what if we had a sketch artist do this? As opposed to saying what experiments were conducted as part of our product research or our market research.

We can turn into content. So I think the difference is, yeah, there, there are great examples that Dove example is several years old. BlendTech you remember Will it blend? That’s what, 10, 15 years ago? So you it’s not new to see this employed. I just think it’s new to think about it in the context of experiments as.

A marketing asset to say what experiments have been conducted as part of the research for this product or service or brand identity, or whatever it is that the [00:07:00] campaign is focused on. Or what experiments could we conduct that would provide compelling evidence that would convince a skeptical aud...

FIR #440: Experimenting for Influence