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The Influence of Others
Whom do you trust more, someone you know or someone you don’t know?
What do you trust more, a claim made in a piece of advertising or a
recommendation from a friend? Whom do you trust more, the waiter who tells
you, “Everything on the menu is great,” or the waiter who tells you to avoid the
chicken casserole? Are these questions too easy? Then how about this one: why
should anyone trust you?
Personal recommendations go a long way. We trust the judgment of others.
It’s part of the fabric of strong cultures. But we don’t trust the judgment of just
anyone. We are more likely to trust those who share our values and beliefs.
When we believe someone has our best interest in mind because it is in their
benefit to do so, the whole group benefits. The advancements of societies were
based a great deal on the trust between those with a common set of values and
beliefs.
The feeling of trust is lodged squarely in the same place as the WHY—the
limbic brain—and it’s often powerful enough to trump empirical research, or at
least seed doubt. This is the reason why so many manipulations are effective; we
believe that, for better or worse, others know more than we do. Clearly, four out
of five dentists know more than us when choosing chewing gum (but what about
the one holdout . . . what did he know that the others didn’t?). Of course we trust
the celebrity endorsement. Those celebs are rich and can use any product they
want. It must be good if they are putting their reputation on the line to promote
it, right?
You probably answered that question in your head already. Clearly they are
endorsing the product because they are getting paid to. But if celebrity
endorsements didn’t work, companies wouldn’t use them. Or perhaps it’s the
fear that they “might” work that fuels the million-dollar wink and a smile that
encourages us to choose one car over another or one lipstick over another. The
fact is, none of us is immune to the effect of someone we know or
feel
like we
trust influencing our decisions.
Celebrity endorsements are used with this concept in mind. By using a
recognizable face or name, so the assumption goes, people will more likely trust
the claims being made. The flaw in this assumption is that celebrity status alone
may work to influence behavior, but at this level it’s just peer pressure. For it to
work, the celebrity needs to represent some clear cause or belief. An athlete
known for her work ethic may have some value to a company with the same
belief, for example. Or an actor known for his charitable work would be good fit
for a company known for doing good. In these cases, it is clear that both the
company and the celebrity are working together to advance the same cause. I
recently saw an ad for TD Ameritrade that featured morning show hosts Regis
Philbin and Kelly Ripa. I’m still trying to figure out the cause that two talk show
hosts represent and how that matters when it comes to choosing one bank over
another. When a company says that a celebrity represents “the kind of qualities
we want our customers to associate with us,” they miss the point. The celebrity
is another WHAT to the company’s WHY. The celebrity must embody the
qualities that already exist at the company. Without clarity of WHY first, any
benefit will amount to simply increasing recognition.
So many decisions (and indeed contract negotiations) are based on an
advertising industry measurement called a Q-score—a quotient of how well
recognized a celebrity is, how famous they are, so to speak. The higher the score,
the better the unaided awareness of the celebrity. This information alone is not
enough. The clearer the spokesperson’s own WHY is understood, the better
ambassador they can be for a like-minded brand or company. But there is no
measurement of a celebrity’s WHY currently available, so the result is obvious.
The value of too many celebrity endorsements is the celebrity appeal alone.
Unless the audience to which you are trying to appeal gets a sense of what that
spokesperson believes, unless that spokesperson is “one of us,” the enforcement
may drive recognition, it may even drive sales for the short term, but it will fail
to build trust.
A trusted recommendation is powerful enough to trump facts and figures and
even multimillion-dollar marketing budgets. Think of the young father who
wants to do everything right for his newborn child. He decides he’s going to get
a new car—something safe, something to protect his child. He spends a week
reading all the magazines and reports, he’s seen all the advertising and decides
that on Saturday he’s buying a Volvo. The facts are in and his mind is made up.
Friday night he and his wife head to a dinner party. Standing by the punch bowl
is their friend the local car enthusiast. Our intrepid new father walks up to his
friend and proudly announces that, as a new father, he’s decided to buy a Volvo.
Without a thought his friend replies, “Why would you do that? Mercedes is the
safest car on the road. If you care about your kid, you’ll get a Mercedes.”
Playing on his desires to be a good father, but also trusting his friend’s
opinion, one of three things will happen. Our young father will either change his
mind and buy a Mercedes; he will go forward with his original decision, but not
without some doubt about whether he’s indeed doing the right thing; or he will
go back to the drawing board to redo all his research in order to reassure himself
of his decision. No matter how much rational information he has at his
fingertips, unless that decision also feels right, stress will go up and confidence
will go down. However you slice it, the opinions of others matter. And the
opinions of those we trust matter most.
The question isn’t how should car companies talk to the father who bought the
car. The question isn’t even how they court the highly influential opinion of his
friend, the car guy. The concept of buyer and influencers isn’t a new one. The
question is, how do you get enough of the influencers to talk about you so that
you can make the system tip?
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