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partner in the chemical industry. He had to provide Rohner Textil
with a source for clean chemicals that would fit the company’s pro-
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duction needs. So he and Braungart started approaching executives
in the chemical industry. They said, “We’d like to see all products in
the future be as safe as pediatric pharmaceuticals. We’d like our ba-
bies to be able to suck on them and get health and not sickness.”
They asked chemical factories to open their books and talk about
how the chemicals were manufactured. McDonough told the com-
panies, “Don’t tell us ‘it’s proprietary and legal.’ If we don’t know
what it is, we’re not using it.” Sixty chemical companies turned them
down. Finally, the chairman of one firm, Ciba-Geigy, said okay.
McDonough and Braungart studied 8,000 chemicals commonly
used in the textile industry. They measured each chemical against a
set of safety criteria. Of the chemicals they tested, 7,962 failed. They
were left with 38 chemicals—but those 38 were “safe enough to eat,”
according to McDonough. (Note the concrete detail—“safe enough
to eat”—plus a statistic that establishes a relationship—a tiny number
of good chemicals out of a larger number of toxic chemicals.)
Amazingly, using just those 38 chemicals, they were able to create
a complete line of fabrics, containing every color but black. The fab-
ric they chose was made from natural materials—wool and a plant
fiber called ramie. When the production process went online, in-
spectors from the Swiss government came to check the water flowing
out of the plant to make sure chemical emissions were within legal
limits. “At first, the inspectors thought their equipment had broken,”
McDonough says. The instruments were detecting nothing in the
water. Then the inspectors tested the water flowing into the factory,
which was Swiss drinking water, and found that the equipment was
fine. McDonough says, “The fabrics during the production process
were further filtering the water.”
McDonough’s new process wasn’t just safer, it was cheaper. Man-
ufacturing costs shrank 20 percent. The savings came, in part, from
the reduced hassle and expense of dealing with toxic chemicals.
Workers no longer had to wear protective clothing. And the scraps—
instead of being shipped off to Spain for burial—were converted into
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felt, which was sold to Swiss farmers and gardeners for crop insula-
tion.
This story is remarkable. Think about all the memorable ele-
ments: The impossible mission. The elimination of all but 38 of
8,000 chemicals. The factory’s water turned so clean that Swiss in-
spectors thought their instruments were broken. The scraps were
transformed from hazardous waste into crop insulation. The idea that
this fabric was “safe enough to eat.” And the happy business result—
workers made safer and costs down 20 percent.
If McDonough approaches any business, in any industry, with a
suggestion for a more environment-friendly process, this story will give
him enormous credibility. It easily clears the bar set by the Sinatra Test.
So far we’ve talked about creating credibility by drawing on exter-
nal sources—authorities and antiauthorities. And we’ve talked about
creating credibility by drawing on sources inside the message itself—
by using details and statistics and examples that pass the Sinatra Test.
But there’s one remaining source of credibility that we haven’t dis-
cussed. And it may be the most powerful source of all.
W h e r e ’ s t h e B e e f ?
One of the most brilliant television ad campaigns of all time was
launched by Wendy’s in 1984. The first commercial opens on three
elderly women standing together at a counter. On the counter there’s
a hamburger on a plate, and they’re gawking at it, because it’s huge—
about a foot in diameter.
“It certainly is a big bun,” says the woman on the left.
“A very big bun,” echoes the one in the center.
“A big, fluffy bun,” says the first.
“A very big fluffy . . .”
There’s a pause as the woman in the middle lifts the top half of the
bun and reveals a meager, overcooked beef patty and a single pickle.
The patty is dwarfed by the bun.
C R E D I B L E
155
For the first time, we hear from the woman on the right, played by
eighty-year-old Clara Peller. She squints through her glasses and says,
cantankerously, “Where’s the beef?”
The announcer says, “Some hamburger places give you a lot less
beef on a fluffy bun. . . .”
Peller: “Where’s the beef?”
Announcer: “The Wendy’s Single has more beef than the Whop-
per or the Big Mac. At Wendy’s you get more beef and less bun.”
Peller: “Hey! Where’s the beef?” She peers over the counter. “I
don’t think there’s anybody back there.”
There’s a lot to love about these commercials. They’re funny and
well produced. Clara Peller became a minor celebrity. More remark-
ably, the ads highlighted a true advantage of Wendy’s hamburgers:
They really did have more beef. The ads were a refreshing departure
from the standard advertiser tool kit that attempts to paint powerful
but irrelevant emotions on consumer goods—for instance, associating
a mother’s love of her children with a particular brand of fabric sof-
tener. Wendy’s did something more admirable: It highlighted a gen-
uine advantage of its product and presented it in an enjoyable way.
The ads had a big impact. According to polls taken by Wendy’s,
the number of customers who believed that Wendy’s Single was
larger than the Whopper or the Big Mac increased by 47 percent in
the two months after the commercial aired. During the first full year
after the ads ran, Wendy’s revenues rose 31 percent.
The claim Wendy’s had made was that its burgers had more beef.
This information was probably not something most people would
have given much thought to before. Certainly it was not common
sense at the time. So how did Wendy’s make this claim credible?
Notice that something different is going on here. This message
doesn’t draw on external credibility—Wendy’s didn’t invite Larry Bird
to weigh in on burger sizes. (Nor did it use an antiauthority, like an
obese burger-eating giant.) It doesn’t draw on internal credibility,
either, quoting a statistic like “11 percent more beef!” Instead, the
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commercials developed a brand-new source of credibility: the audi-
ence. Wendy’s outsourced its credibility to its customers.
The spots implicitly challenged customers to verify Wendy’s
claims: See for yourself—look at our burgers versus McDonald’s burg-
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