Ongoing word of mouth, in contrast, covers the conversations you have in
the weeks and months that follow. The movies you saw last month or a
vacation you took last year.
Both types of word of mouth are valuable, but certain types are more
important for certain products or ideas. Movies depend on immediate word
of mouth. Theaters are looking for success right off the bat, so if a film isn’t
doing well right away, they’ll replace it with something else. New food
products are under similar pressure. Grocery stores have limited shelf space.
If consumers don’t immediately start buying a new anticholesterol spread,
the store may stop stocking it. In such cases, immediate word of mouth is
critical.
For most products or ideas, however, ongoing word of mouth is also
important. Antibullying campaigns not only want to get students talking
right after the campaign is introduced, they want them to keep spreading the
word until bullying is eradicated. New policy initiatives certainly benefit
from huge discussion when they are proposed, but to sway voter opinion,
people need to keep mentioning them all the way up until Election Day.
But what leads someone to talk about something soon after it occurs? And
are these the same things that drive them to keep talking about it for weeks
or months after?
To answer these questions, we divided the data on each BzzCampaign into
two categories: immediate and ongoing word of mouth. Then we looked at
how much of each type of buzz different types of products generated.
As we suspected, interesting products received more immediate word of
mouth than boring products. This reinforces what we talked about in the
Social Currency chapter: interesting things are entertaining and reflect
positively on the person talking about them.
But interesting products did not sustain high levels of word-of-mouth
activity over time. Interesting products didn’t get any more ongoing word of
mouth than boring ones.
Imagine I walked into work one day dressed as a pirate. A bright red satin
bandana, long black waistcoat, gold earrings, and a patch over one eye. It
would be pretty remarkable. People in my office would probably gossip
about it all day. (“What in the world is Jonah doing? Casual Friday is
supposed to be relaxed, but this is taking it too far!”)
But while my pirate getup would get lots of immediate word of mouth,
people probably wouldn’t keep talking about it every week for the next two
months.
So if interest doesn’t drive ongoing word of mouth, what does? What
keeps people talking?
FROM MARS BARS TO VOTING: HOW TRIGGERS AFFECT
BEHAVIOR
At any given moment, some thoughts are more top of mind, or accessible,
than others. Right now, for example, you might be thinking about the
sentence you are reading or the sandwich you had for lunch.
Some things are chronically accessible. Sports fanatics or foodies will
often have those subjects top of mind. They are constantly thinking of their
favorite team’s latest stats, or about ways to combine ingredients in tasty
dishes.
But stimuli in the surrounding environment can also determine which
thoughts and ideas are top of mind. If you see a puppy while jogging in the
park, you might remember that you’ve always wanted to adopt a dog. If you
smell Chinese food while walking past the corner noodle shop, you might
start thinking about what to order for lunch. Or if you hear an advertisement
for Coke, you might remember that you ran out of soda last night. Sights,
smells, and sounds can trigger related thoughts and ideas, making them
more top of mind. A hot day might trigger thoughts about climate change.
Seeing a sandy beach in a travel magazine might trigger thoughts of Corona
beer.
Using a product is a strong trigger. Most people drink milk more often
than grape juice, so milk is top of mind more often. But triggers can also be
indirect. Seeing a jar of peanut butter not only triggers us to think about
peanut butter, it also makes us think about its frequent partner, jelly. Triggers
are like little environmental reminders for related concepts and ideas.
—————
Why does it matter if particular thoughts or ideas are top of mind?
Because accessible thoughts and ideas lead to action.
Back in mid-1997, the candy company Mars noticed an unexpected uptick
in sales of its Mars bar. The company was surprised because it hadn’t
changed its marketing in any way. It wasn’t spending additional money on
advertising, it hadn’t changed its pricing, and it hadn’t run any special
promotions. Yet sales had gone up. What had happened?
NASA had happened. Specifically, NASA’s Pathfinder mission.
The mission was designed to collect samples of atmosphere, climate, and
soil from a nearby planet. The undertaking took years of preparation and
millions of dollars in funding. When the lander finally touched down on the
alien landscape, the entire world was rapt, and all news outlets featured
NASA’s triumph.
Pathfinder’s destination? Mars.
Mars bars are named after the company’s founder, Franklin Mars, not the
planet. But the media attention the planet received acted as a trigger that
reminded people of the candy and increased sales. Perhaps the makers of
Sunny Delight should encourage NASA to explore the sun.
Music researchers Adrian North, David Hargreaves, and Jennifer
McKendrick examined how triggers might affect supermarket buying
behavior more broadly. You know the Muzak you’re used to hearing while
you shop for groceries? Well, North, Hargreaves, and McKendrick subtly
replaced it with music from different countries. Some days they played
French music while other days they played German music—what you’d
expect to hear outside a French café on the banks of the Seine and what you
might expect to hear at Oktoberfest. Then they measured the type of wine
people purchased.
When French music was playing, most customers bought French wine.
When German music was playing most customers bought German wine. By
triggering consumers to think of different countries, the music affected sales.
The music made ideas related to those countries more accessible, and those
accessible ideas spilled over to affect behavior.
Psychologist Gráinne Fitzsimons and I conducted a related study on how
to encourage people to eat more fruits and vegetables. Promoting healthy
eating habits is tough. Most people realize they should eat more fruits and
vegetables. Most people will even say that they mean to eat more fruits and
vegetables. But somehow when the time comes to put fruits and vegetables
into shopping carts or onto dinner plates, people forget. We thought we’d use
triggers to help them remember.
Students were paid twenty dollars to report what they ate every day for
breakfast, lunch, and dinner at their nearby dining hall. Monday: a bowl of
Frosted Flakes cereal, two helpings of turkey lasagna with a side salad, and a
pulled pork sandwich with spinach and fries. Tuesday: yogurt with fruit and
walnuts, pepperoni pizza with Sprite, and shrimp pad thai.
Halfway through the two weeks we’d designated for the study, the
students were asked to participate in what seemed like an unrelated
experiment from a different researcher. They were asked to provide feedback
on a public-health slogan targeting college students. Just to be sure they
remembered the slogan, they were shown it more than twenty times, printed
in different colors and fonts.
One group of students saw the slogan “Live the healthy way, eat five fruits
and veggies a day.” Another group saw “Each and every dining-hall tray
needs five fruits and veggies a day.” Both slogans encouraged people to eat
fruits and vegetables, but the tray slogan did so using a trigger. The students
lived on campus, and many of them ate in dining halls that used trays. So we
wanted to see if we could trigger healthy eating behavior by using the dining
room tray to remind students of the slogan.
Our students didn’t care for the tray slogan. They called it “corny” and
rated it as less than half as attractive as the more generic “live healthy”
slogan. Further, when asked whether the slogan would influence their own
fruit and vegetable consumption, the students who had been shown the
“tray” slogan were significantly more likely to say no.
But when it came to actual behavior, the effects were striking. Students
who had been shown the more generic “live healthy” slogan didn’t change
their eating habits. But students who had seen the “tray” slogan and used
trays in their cafeterias markedly changed their behavior. The trays reminded
them of the slogan and they ate 25 percent more fruits and vegetables as a
result. The trigger worked.
We were pretty excited by the results. Getting college students to do
anything—let alone eat more fruits and vegetables—is an impressive feat.
But when a colleague of ours heard about the study he wondered whether
triggers would impact an even more consequential behavior: voting.
—————
Where did you cast your ballot in the last election?
Most people will answer this question with the name of their city or state.
Evanston. Birmingham. Florida. Nevada. If asked to clarify, they might add
“near my office” or “across from the supermarket.” Few will be more
specific. And why should they be? Although geography clearly matters in
voting—the East Coast leans Democratic while the South skews Republican
—few people would think that the exact venue in which they vote matters.
But it does.
Political scientists usually assume that voting is based on rational and
stable preferences: people possess core beliefs and weigh costs and benefits
when deciding how to vote. If we care about the environment, we vote for
candidates who promise to protect natural resources. If we’re concerned
about health care, we support initiatives to make it more affordable and
available to greater numbers of people. In this calculating, cognitive model
of voting behavior, the particular kind of building people happen to cast their
ballot in shouldn’t affect behavior.
But in light of what we were learning about triggers, we weren’t so sure.
Most people in the United States are assigned to vote at a particular polling
location. They are typically public buildings—firehouses, courthouses, or
schools—but can also be churches, private office buildings, or other venues.
Different locations contain different triggers. Churches are filled with
religious imagery, which might remind people of church doctrine. Schools
are filled with lockers, desks, and chalkboards, which might remind people
of children or early educational experiences. And once these thoughts are
triggered, they might change behavior.
Could voting in a church lead people to think more negatively about
abortion or gay marriage? Could voting in a school lead people to support
education funding?
To test this idea, Marc Meredith, Christian Wheeler, and I acquired data
from each polling place in Arizona’s 2000 general election. We used the
name and address of each polling location to determine whether it was a
church, a school, or some other type of building. Forty percent of people
were assigned to vote in churches, 26 percent in schools, 10 percent in
community centers, and the rest in a mix of apartment buildings, golf
courses, and even RV parks.
Then we examined whether people voted differently at different types of
polling places. In particular, we focused on a ballot initiative that proposed
raising the sales tax from 5.0 percent to 5.6 percent to support public
schools. This initiative had been hotly debated, with good arguments on both
sides. Most people support education but few people enjoy paying more
taxes. It was a tough decision.
If where people voted didn’t matter, then the percent supporting the
initiative should be the same at schools and other polling locations.
But it wasn’t. More than ten thousand more people voted in favor of the
school funding initiative when the polling place was a school. Polling
location had a dramatic impact on voting behavior.
And the initiative passed.
This difference persisted even after we controlled for things like regional
differences in political preferences and demographics. We even compared
two similar groups of voters to double-check our findings. People who lived
near schools and were assigned to vote at one versus people who lived near
schools but were assigned to vote at a different type of polling place (such as
a firehouse). A significantly higher percentage of the people who voted in
schools were in favor of increasing funding for schools. The fact that they
were in a school when they voted triggered more school-friendly behavior.
A ten-thousand-vote difference in a statewide election might not seem like
much. But it was more than enough to shift a close election. In the 2000
presidential election the difference between George Bush and Al Gore came
down to less than 1,000 votes. If 1,000 votes is enough to shift an election,
10,000 certainly could. Triggers matter.
So how do triggers help determine whether products and ideas catch on?
SEARCHING FOR “FRIDAY” ON . . . FRIDAY
In 2011, Rebecca Black accomplished a momentous achievement. The
thirteen-year-old released what many music critics dubbed the worst song
ever.
Born in 1997, Rebecca was just a kid when she released her first full-
length song. But this was far from her first foray into music. She had
auditioned for shows, had attended music summer camp, and had sung
publicly for a number of years. After hearing from a classmate who had
turned to outside help for her music career, Rebecca’s parents paid four
thousand dollars to ARK Music Factory, a Los Angeles label, to write a song
for their daughter to sing.
The result was decidedly, well, awful. Entitled “Friday,” the tune was a
whiny, overproduced number about teenage life and the joys of the weekend.
The song starts with her getting up in the morning and getting ready to go to
school:
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