One of the cornerstones of economics is the theory of rational choice – the idea that people decide how to act by carefully weighing costs against benefits.

In the aftermath of the financial crisis, largely unforeseen by economists, rational choice theory is looking a bit tattered.  The rationality of the big players in finance, as well as the supposedly corrective hand of ‘the market’, has been shown to be an utter fallacy. Investors systematically ignored huge long-term risks, with catastrophic consequences.

Maybe the economists should hang out more with their colleagues over at psychology and organisational behaviour, where researchers have been investigating and documenting flawed decision-making for decades.

For the psychologist or sociologist, a human decision-maker still acts to minimise costs and maximise benefits (or to avoid pain and seek pleasure). But their assessment of those costs and benefits is likely to be hopelessly inaccurate, biased or incomplete.

All this is good news for the copywriter, because these decision-making biases can be exploited in order to nudge a reader towards a buying decision – even though the purchase may not benefit them in any rational or quantifiable way. This post outlines a few of the most common biases that affect our decisions, and how they can be exploited.

Bigness bias

Bigness bias is the tendency to discount relatively small amounts that are measured against much larger amounts. For example, you might regard £1000 as a lot of money to pay for a suit. But to secure a house you really wanted, you wouldn’t hesitate to increase your offer by £1000 – or even £10,000. Context is everything. For example:

For just 1% of what you take home each month, you can protect every penny you earn from the threat of serious illness or redundancy.

Distinction bias

Viewing options in conjunction makes them seem more different than when they are viewed in isolation. Exploit this by juxtaposing the promoted offering with an alternative option and emphasising some distinction between them. For example:

The EconoHeat offers four different ways to programme your heating – most controllers have just three.

The money illusion

We tend to focus on the face value of money rather than its actual purchasing power. That’s why a £10 cashback offer is so appealing – it’s free money! – whereas a voucher worth £10 is less powerful, and a free saucepan worth £10 even less so (even if we need one). Exploit this bias by quoting as many cash amounts as you possibly can when savings or reductions are concerned (i.e. talk in pounds or dollars, not percentages or fractions).

Reactance

Reactance is the urge to do the opposite of what you’re told. (As the parent of a three-year-old, I can confirm this from extensive field research.)

Right-wingers in the US often harness reactance by suggesting that a ‘liberal mafia’ is destroying America; by doing so, they position voting for the profoundly conservative Republicans as some sort of rebellion.

Apple did something similar with its 1984 and Think Different campaigns, encouraging computer buyers to resist the domination of IBM. Reactance favours new market entrants, minority choices and fringe players, who can turn their underdog status into a virtue in their marketing by inciting customers to rebel against the established order.

Neglect of probability

Human beings are awful at estimating and comparing probabilities. That’s why millions play the Lottery, even though the chance of winning (the ‘positive expected value’, in risk terminology) is infinitesimal. (Premium Bonds are a much better bet.)

This is great news if you’re selling the chance to be, do or acquire something – simply emphasise a desirable upside and people will wildly overestimate their chances of success.

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Déformation professionnelle

Déformation professionnelle is the tendency to view things through the lens of one’s own professional skills or culture. You can exploit it when writing for trade magazines or niche websites – since no-one else is reading, go ahead and trot out the jargon, prejudices and petty concerns that your audience love, and generate instant rapport. (Obviously, you need to be able to do this convincingly, and sound like an ‘insider’, or it will backfire badly.)

Bandwagon theory

This is the tendency to jump on the bandwagon and do what others are doing. I’ve already covered it in my piece on social proof.

Illusion of control

We believe that we can control, or at least influence, outcomes that we clearly cannot. Most superstitions are rooted in this belief, but more ‘sophisticated’ systems of thought such as technical analysis (using charts to predict share price movements) are arguably manifestations of the same thing.

Many distress purchases appeal to the illusion of control. Insurance, for example, is often predicated on the idea that the dark, chaotic world out there can be kept at bay for an affordable monthly payment. Some cosmetic treatments also encourage us to change things that, deep down, we know we can’t.

The principle of consistency states that people align their actions with their clear commitments. Once they’ve made a public or explicit commitment, they tend to stick to it, since they want to appear consistent and honest.

Consistency is a very useful ploy in face-to-face negotiation. In my last post on persuasive copywriting, I mentioned an RSPCA canvasser who deftly used social proof to guide me towards a decision to donate. But at the start of the conversation, she’d also asked me whether I was an animal lover. I answered ‘yes’. (Would anyone say ‘no’?) The appeal for donations followed on from this, with the implication that refusing to give would be inconsistent with my stated position. Similarly, TV appeals count on people’s consciences making them follow through on their telephone ‘pledges’.

Copywriters, of course, aren’t in a dialogue with those they wish to persuade. But they can still ask questions that encourage the reader to commit to a position, albeit mentally, and use that commitment as the basis for a persuasive message.

Ben Affleck explains the principle of consistency to Giovanni Ribisi in Boiler Room

In the film Boiler Room, there’s a great scene where Ben Affleck’s character exhorts his trainee stockbrokers to sharpen up their phone selling. He implores them to ask any question, however rhetorical or ridiculous, just to get a ‘yes’ from the prospect. ‘If you were drowning and I threw you a lifejacket, would you grab it? Yes! Do you want 30–40% returns? What’s he going to say?’ (Click here to watch the clip, which contains strong language.) By saying yes to something – anything – the potential customer implicitly aligns himself with the seller.

This is why utterly clichéd headlines like ‘Do you want to save money on your home insurance?’ achieve useful aims: they elicit a positive response from the reader. They also provoke thought, generate active involvement and encourage personal identification with the product. From that platform, the copywriter can go on to build a case for the product or service they’re promoting, using the audience’s (tacit) commitment to their position as the foundation for their persuasive argument.

It’s also easy to see how consistency could be used to promote an upselling proposition, such as continuing with a magazine subscription. You subscribed, you enjoyed the magazine or found it useful, so why not continue? (Silent implication: because cancelling, having read and enjoyed the magazine, would be inconsistent.)

The principle of social proof states that people follow the lead of others who are similar to them. They look to those around them for cues on how to behave, with peers giving the most powerful cues.

The most famous examples of social proof in copywriting are headlines along the lines of ‘Ten million housewives can’t be wrong’, which position a product as the preferred choice of the majority – and therefore of the reader too. It is, of course, a non sequitur – the argumentum ad populum (‘appeal to the people’) that suggests that if lots of people believe something, it must be so.

The King deploys the argumentum ad populum on the cover of his 1959 hits compilation

A classic and much-used example is selling a product on the basis of its being the number-one seller, or promoting a company on the basis of its being the leader. The saying ‘nobody got fired for buying IBM’ encapsulates the appeal of going with the majority.

Social proof can have quite a powerful emotional sting. Recently, a door-to-door canvasser for the RSPCA told me that ‘lots of people’ in my ‘animal-loving neighbourhood’ had signed up for regular donations. The inference being that if I didn’t, I’d be some kind of animal-hating outcast. 

In the examples above, the copywriter is actually imparting the information to support their position. But in the age of Web 2.0, the consumer is much more likely to go out and find such information for themselves. If customers want to know the views of their peers, they don’t have to look much further than Twitter, Facebook, Amazon, the iTunes store or any of the myriad other channels where consumers share views and information. As a result, marketing messages have less authority and may simply be disregarded. 

However, there’s still room for copywriting based on social proof. Think about where your customers look for advice or guidance, and how you can emulate the tone or nature of that content. Testimonials and case studies are enduringly powerful, particularly in B2B marketing, and they allow the copywriter to shape, edit or subtly direct what is said so that it highlights the benefits of a product or service. In B2C marketing, there’s a clear trend towards using real or mock-real figures in TV advertising and elsewhere, or documentary styles, to give a sense that the reader or viewer is directly accessing the views of their peers.

As long as the information feels trustworthy, the audience will still respond – remember, many people actively desire the reassurance of running with the majority, so as long as your message is consistent and clear, it’s got a good chance of succeeding.

I am a hetero male. I like attractive women. Therefore I will buy this technology magazine

Persuasive copywriting is a matter of exploiting a number of proven, well-established principles. Those who persuade well know how to appeal to particular human desires and needs. By understanding these needs and appealing to them, we can become more persuasive copywriters. The principles are taken from the work of management researcher and writer Robert B. Cialdini, who spent decades identifying what makes some people better at persuading than others.

The first principle I’d like to focus on, liking, states that people like those who like them, and are more likely to follow the suggestions of people they like. Similarities between people in terms of views, preferences and perceptions make them like each other, and people also like those who praise them, whether or not the praise is merited.

The principle of liking is clearly seen in adverts that deploy an attractive face to promote a product. Research shows that we generally like good-looking people more, and are more likely to respect their opinions.

Cialdini himself cites the example of Tupperware to illustrate the principle of liking in action: the product being sold in the home, face to face, via a warm, friendly relationship between vendor and customer. But copywriters, by definition, don’t get to meet their audience and strike up a friendship with them. How can we apply the principle of liking in copywriting?

One way would be to write a headline or introduction that sets up a friendly rapport with the reader. Instead of beginning with the benefits of the product or service (as we would normally do by default), we can subtly align ourselves with the reader by suggesting that we have things in common, or giving them a compliment. For example:

If you’re a parent, you already know how to manage your time, deal with difficult people and juggle priorities. Now here’s a way to get rid of at least one of your worries…

By demonstrating knowledge of the reader’s situation, we indicate that we are like them; that we understand them. And because we’re implicitly praising them too, we hope they’ll warm to us as a friend. Copy like this marks out common ground between the copywriter and the reader, using the reader’s recognition of details from their own life as the key. This sets the scene for a marketing message that, because it comes from someone who is both ‘like’ and ‘liked by’ the reader, is more likely to be acted upon.

Of course, it’s easy to get wrong. The setup needs to be convincing – which means writing it from first-hand knowledge or rock-solid research rather than a five-minute scan of a Wikipedia page. It also needs to be sincere, insofar as a mass-communicated message can be sincere. (See my earlier post on sincerity, tone and attitude in copywriting.) The whole message needs to be congruent, with content, tone of voice and presentation all working in harmony.

There’s no need to do too much; often, a lighter touch works better. People will warm to those they have just met, as long as they feel there is some kind of link or common ground. Very small similarities or shared interests are enough to generate rapport. We know this from real life, where even the most distant common acquaintance will make us warm to someone we otherwise know nothing about.

Finally, note that while we like those who praise us, we dislike those who convey negative information. This ‘shoot the messenger’ tendency has important implications if you’re going to use scare tactics in your copywriting: by bringing bad news to the reader’s door, you associate yourself with it – even if it establishes your knowledge of their situation and you then go on to offer friendly advice.