What could this post possibly be about? I ain't tellin'

The communication strategy of today's post is related to the confusing and one might say... MYSTERIOUS title of this post.  An effective way of keeping people's attention is utilizing this communication concept.  One can use it to grab people's attention by accessing their sense of curiosity.  It's actually an ingenious, and I would go as far as to say, a manipulative method of grabbing your audience's attention because it's also utilized in the dating world.  Both sexes use this tactic to grab and hold the attention of the opposite sex.

I won't drag it out any further, the key is to create a MYSTERY for your audience.  People are generally curious about what happens next or what the mystery is about.  "What will happen next? How will it turn out? We want to answer these questions, and that desire keeps us interested."  This might be one of the main reasons why people watch bad movies.  I've found myself watching terrible monster movies because I wanted to see how the filmmakers designed the mysterious creature that they hadn't been revealing the whole movie.  The creature keeps taking victims but the viewer can never get a full glimpse of it. The movie can be awful but the curious person is still watching because he wants to get a good glimpse of the creature before deciding to give up and move on.  For instance, as I was writing this post, I noticed an advertisement for a movie I do not care for on the side bar of my facebook homepage.  The name of the movie is "Chronicle."  The ad reads: "Like the movie page to get access to the brand new trailer."  The movie looks unimpressive and I am most likely not going to watch it.  But, I was very tempted to visit the page and "like" it so I could see what is so special about this new trailer.  The advertiser used my sense of curiosity and withheld information from me in hopes of dragging me into the page.  It almost worked on me and I imagine it probably works on many people that see that ad.

This sense of curiosity is related to a similar concept.  When we encounter mysteries, we create "gaps" in our knowledge.  This is a concept that was first described by the behavioral economist George Loewenstein.  "When we want to know something but don't, it's like having an itch that we need to scratch."  We strive to end the mystery and fill in the gap.  In the process, we have effectively been dragged into the author's message.  We are now aware of our ignorance of a specific piece of knowledge and there is a gap in our understanding.  We realize that someone else is aware of something that we aren't.  We start forming ideas on what the gap might be and as a result, become more invested in the author's message.  We want to find out what the mystery is about so we can confirm if our guess was correct.

Let's apply this theory to an energy conservation example.  You are trying to market an energy-conserving product.  Here is an example of how you can use mystery to gain your audience's attention: "What fits in the palm of your hand, changes colors, and helps you conserve energy?"  You hook your audience in with the mystery then reveal the product.  The product in this case is called the "Ambient Energy Orb."  The energy orb

"changes color to inform  motivated users when their conservation efforts are particularly rewarded.  With the Energy Orb, you can do your part to fully participate in critical demand periods and help reduce the negative effects of electrical supply shortages."

If you had simply presented the product from the beginning without a sense of mystery, you might not have had the same level of interest.  You would not have created any gaps in people's knowledge and utilized their sense of curiosity.

When it doubt, start gettin' mysterious.

Source: http://green.thefuntimesguide.com/files/energy-orb-thumb-485x257-16092.jpg

Quote sources:
http://www.ambientdevices.com/cat/orb/PGE.html
http://www.heathbrothers.com/madetostick/

BOOM!

Source: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_mftKB1Mwc2Q/TDQImI3ui9I/AAAAAAAABeU/eVL_osIPPXE/s400/surprise+face.jpg

Please ignore my pathetic attempt at eliciting SURPRISE with the post title.  But, that failure aside, the element of SURPRISE and unexpectedness is the topic of this entry.  These two reactions (emotions??) have a key role to play in effective communication.

The reasoning behind this effectiveness is relatively simple.  When people are surprised, patterns are broken. "Humans adapt incredibly quickly to consistent patterns.  Consistent sensory stimulation makes us tune out."  There might even be a biological (or evolutionary) basis behind why surprising things and pattern-breakers grab our attention.  When there is something new or unexpected in our environment, we are jolted into action and our attention is focused.  Our goal at this point is to understand why we were surprised and as a result, we start paying attention.  By paying attention and thinking about what surprised us, we are much more likely to commit ideas into our long-term memories.  We are now more invested in the problem than before and are actively seeking to solve it instead of being passive participants.

However, the only goal isn't to simply go for surprise.  The surprise or unexpectedness must be followed by the insight that you are trying to get at.  I know that this is getting redundant but I enjoy examples using environmental behavior so I am going to continue with that theme.  For instance, if your goal is to urge people to conserve water, you could first surprise them with an unexpected statistic and then once you have their attention, you can continue on with your insight on why they should be saving water.  You could craft a message such as: "Each additional minute of showering could provide enough drinking water for 10 people for a whole day. Think twice about how long your showers need to be."  In this example, the surprising statistic is supposed to be how much water is used up every minute and the insight is to urge people to conserve.

A personal favorite example of mine deals with grass lawns.  Apparently, lawns were used by royalty in 17th Century England to display wealth. "Only the rich could afford to hire the many hands needed to scythe and weed the grass, so a lawn was a mark of wealth and status."  Additionally, a lawn was used to show that the individual (or family) was rich enough to essentially waste agricultural land for non-agricultural purposes.  After I heard about this surprising origin of lawns, the information stuck in my head and it made me even more likely to support native vegetation and gardens instead of grass lawns.


A little bit'o surprise can go a loooooooooooong way in making your ideas memorable...

Quote sources:
http://www.heathbrothers.com/madetostick/
http://www.organiclawncare101.com/history.html

Analogies galore

In keeping with the effective communication strategies theme, today's post is going to be about analogies and why they can be essential for getting your ideas across.

The underlying concept is very simple.  To introduce your audience to a new idea, you approach them with a preexisting idea that they are already well familiar with.  Psychologists call these preexisting and known concepts as "schemas."  Tapping into these schemas allows you to build towards a complicated and foreign concept by using familiar and simpler ideas.  For instance, you might not be familiar with how a microphone works but if an engineer broke down all the individual parts and compared them to objects you were familiar with, you could slowly connect all the smaller and less complex pieces together and start understanding how everything comes together in the end to build a functioning microphone.

This is where analogies come into play.  "Analogies derive their power from schemas and make it possible to understand a complex message because they invoke concepts that you already know."  Something easy to think about is substituted for something difficult and foreign.  When you think about it, this is a "no duh!" approach for explaining something new and potentially complicated.  But, if conscious effort and attention isn't paid to how messages are tailored, the final message can come out very convoluted, technical, academic, complicated, confusing, and foreign.  Analogies are essential for avoiding this disappointing result.

The best way to drive the point home is through breaking down an example that I believe properly uses schemas and metaphors.  I came upon this picture on a friend's profile on Facebook.

(Please note that this picture does not represent my political views on this matter. I am simply using it as an illustrative example!)

Let's consider what this graphic is doing.  Issues related to the US federal budget deal with hundreds of millions, billions, and even trillions of dollars.  The vast majority of individuals will NEVER personally deal with such amounts of money or work in positions that will give them direct experience with handling such vast levels of resources.  We simply do not understand the scope of such numbers and we really have no idea where to even start.

This example attacks this problem by comparing the federal budget to concepts that we are much more likely to be familiar with.  For instance, most of us can understand numbers that aren't in the millions, billions, and trillions.  Most of us are also probably familiar with balancing a budget, paying off debt, and using credit cards.  By tapping into these preexisting schemas, the picture makes a poignant analogy by comparing the national budget, borrowing, and debt, to a household budget, personal credit cards, and personal debt.  With the help of this analogy, the audience is hopefully less confused about the scale of the problem and the relative importance of the solutions being outlined.

However, we have to be careful when using analogies because we can "dumb down" an issue and make false comparisons.  There are NUMEROUS differences between a national budget and a personal budget.  The issue is obviously much more complicated than this simple graphic depicts.  But, by starting with simpler terms and concepts we are familiar with, we can hopefully trek towards greater complexity.  Analogies are essential for starting this journey towards deeper understanding.  When utilizing analogies, the ultimate goal is steadily increasing the level of complexity, not dumbing concepts down and leaving them in such a state.

The next time you are having difficulties communicating a novel idea or concept, try searching for schemas your audience will already be familiar with.

Getting to the Core

During the next few weeks, I will primarily be discussing effective communication strategies.  Many of these ideas will be referencing a book called "Made To Stick" by Chip and Dan Heath.  Effective, memorable, and powerful ideas often have similar characteristics.  However, there is no all-encompassing "formula" that fits all situations.  Having said that, there are still lessons to be learned and "ideal" characteristics to strive for when crafting a message.  One such characteristic is SIMPLICITY.

Striving for simplicity in an idea does NOT mean "dumbing it down." Simplicity in this case means getting to the "core" of an idea and relentlessly cutting down and prioritizing information.  If you had to pick the most important 1-2  points in your idea, which would they be?  That is the path that this strategy takes.  You are aiming to keep the most important insight in what you are trying to communicate.

To put another way, imagine you are the head of an organization with hundreds of employees working under you.  There are many departments and you need a central message that you want your employees to refer to when they are making decisions.  You want their behavior and actions to be shaped by a compact yet powerful idea that is able to provide guidance.  THIS is the kind of thought process you should be going through even if you're NOT the head of an organization.

Forced prioritization like this is especially difficult for experts and intelligent people because they "recognize the value of all the material.  They see nuance, multiple perspectives-- and because they fully appreciate the complexities of a situation, they're often tempted to linger there."  Under most circumstances, this urge must be fought back because the more complex and dense an idea is, the less likely it is to affect people.  You aren't trying to create a technical reference manual for experts and academics, you are trying to create a powerful and easily graspable idea that can guide people's decisions in an "environment of uncertainty.  They will suffer anxiety from the need to choose--even when the choice is between two good options.  Core messages help people avoid bad choices by reminding them of what's important."

The simplicity concept can be applied in countless settings.  For instance, imagine yourself as a supervisor or as a colleague giving instructions for a project to others in your organization.  You need everyone to be on the same page so the final product and everyone's individual pieces of the project are as consistent as possible.  How do you do it?  One clearly effective option would be to get to the core of the project.  For example, if the task is to create a marketing strategy for a new product that your client wants to sell then you can emphasize the most important goal of your client.  You can gravitate towards ideas such as "Even a child should understand what this product is for" or "If your're listing a bunch of statistics, you're doing it wrong."  These ideas instruct your group to focus on simplicity and to avoid confusing people with math and stats.  Whenever they make a decision, they have these simple core ideas to constantly reference and not to veer off track.

Another setting that the simplicity concept can be applied in is in sustainable behavior.  For example, you are trying to communicate the importance of water conservation to your audience (in California).  Do you list rows of stats and long-winded water-shortage scenarios or do you communicate a simple idea such as "Water, you WILL in fact die without it" or "Remember, you live in a desert"?  Shorter and prioritized phrases are memorable, easy to grasp, and as a result, effective.

So, the next time you are trying to communicate an idea and make it stick, PRIORITIZE, PRIORITIZE, and PRIORITIZE some more.

LinkedIn post about communication and persuasion

I am going to start making posts on proper communication strategies because I am going to re-read a book called "Made to Stick."  This book discusses effective communication methods that can be used by someone seeking to become much more persuasive and a better communicator whose ideas are memorable.  In the near future, I will be sharing the ideas discussed in the book through several entries.  In the meantime, I wanted to share a post I made in a LinkedIn discussion thread.

The author of the discussion asked:

"If you were in charge of a media campaign to encourage the public to save water/change their attitude, how would you go about getting message over?"

To which I replied:

"I would first consult the communication literature to see which kinds of ideas are the most effective and "sticky." The book "Made to Stick" by Chip Heath and Dan Heath outlines numerous ideas on how to make your ideas convincing and memorable. For instance, one way of making an impression on your audience is eliciting an emotional response through the use of humor, shock, sadness, or any other kind of emotion you can utilize. By tapping into people's emotions, you will be able to connect to them on a deeper and more visceral level. This will allow your message to be that much more convincing and effective. 

That is just one tactic for effective communication. There are many more out there. But, the underlying principle still stands. To be an effective communicator, you must first consult the vast effective communication literature. This will allow you to be well versed in being as persuasive as possible.

From my own personal research on communication aimed at changing environmental behavior and attitudes, I have found that fear and a sense of danger are effective emotions, AFTER you have localized the problem for your target audience. For instance, you can't simply say "global warming is causing havoc all over the world." You have to localize it to your audience and say something like "here is what we think are the local effects of global warming in the area YOU live in." This makes it much easier for your audience to identify and connect with the issue. The problem is no longer a vague global issue that they feel they can do nothing about. The problem's effects are now local and your audience hopefully realizes that their local actions will have an effect, even if in reality the effect of local measures might be minuscule on a global scale. But that's kind of the point when it comes to environmental behaviors, you can't view your actions in an individual setting, you have to view them as part of a bigger whole. 

I live in California, so I will use the water issues there as an example. To get people to conserve more water, I would focus on the dangers of droughts and how extreme the situation can get if there is a prolonged doubt. To survive through such periods, conservation measure must be top notch and additional programs must be in place to conserve and have water stored for emergencies. I would emphasize how individual water-wasting has negative effects in the audience's own State and how such behavior, if common among the population in general, can have disastrous effects on water supplies as a whole."

What I have attempted to do here is start applying some of ideas covered in the book "Made to Stick."  I will discuss the authors' ideas in further detail and more directly in future posts.

Who or what are you citing? Where is your data? Where is your evidence?

I have noticed that I often rant at individuals that form arguments devoid of quantitative data, qualitative evidence, or both.  When asked for example, I fail to think of any individuals that perpetrate this type of thinking or situations where this kind of reasoning arises in. Therefore, I have decided to make a post every time I see this topic come up.

The latest example of this stupidity was recently covered by an NPR article titled

"GOP Objects To 'Millionaires Surtax'; Millionaires We Found? Not So Much."

The article can be found here: http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2011/12/09/143398685/gop-objects-to-millionaires-surtax-millionaires-we-found-not-so-much?sc=fb&cc=fp

The article covers Congressional Republicans' rejection of a surtax on millionaires.  Before I say anything, please realize that I am neither fully against increasing taxes nor decreasing them.  I can't look at situations in such a manner and make ideological, political, or policy blanket statements.  I consider each case individually and try to see if there is legitimate data to back up any particular stance that I decide to take.

The authors of the article went to find ACTUAL small business owners who gross more than a million dollars a year through their business.  They asked the business owners about their views on the potential tax and whether it would affect their hiring decisions.  After reaching out to Congressional and Senate Republican offices to get in touch with such folks, the authors were met with constant failure since all of them failed to produce individuals that could be interviewed, even anonymously.  Finally, NPR resorted to facebook and found several business owners that were willing to comment about such a tax.  Here is a snapshot of their comments:

""It's not in the top 20 things that we think about when we're making a business hire,"


"He says his ultimate marginal tax rate "didn't even make it on the agenda."


"Yankwitt [the business owner] says deciding to bring on another employee is all about return on investment. Will adding another person to the payroll make his company more successful?"


"If my taxes go up, I have slightly less disposable income, yes,"  "But that has nothing to do with what my business does. What my business does is based on the contracts that it wins and the demand for its services."


The republican response to such commentary DIRECTLY from business owners?
"Those I would say were exceptions to the rule," responds Thune. "I think most small-business owners who are out there right now would argue that raising their taxes has the opposite effect that we would want to have in a down economy."


Yes, I am singling out republicans in this case. But, the political ideology of the person making the argument doesn't matter.  It's the strength of your argument that matters.  In this case, Republican politicians are speaking for a constituency from whom they can't even muster up ONE individual, ONE, to honestly speak for them and make the case that this tax increase will stop them from hiring and as a result, stop them from promoting economic growth.  


We learn to form proper arguments while learning to write essays in HIGH SCHOOL.  When you make a statement, you back it up DATA, FACTS, or any other kind of legitimate EVIDENCE.  I am just amazed at how these Republicans can be *SO* adamant about an issue without providing any real evidence to support their views.   For instance, is there historical data showing that when taxes were increased on rich individuals or small business owners, there was a a clear drop in employment?  Is there data from other countries showing a drop in unemployment as soon as a new tax on businesses was initiated?  Is there ANY kind of evidence to support the view that Republicans hold in this situation?  I understand that it's problematic to make causal statements like this since there could be a variety of alternative explanations for sagging employment numbers but in this case, SOME evidence is better than no evidence at all.


As I originally stated, I have NOTHING against someone being against raising taxes. What I DO have a problem with is someone making a claim about the economy-killing side-effects of raising taxes and failing to provide any real data or qualitative evidence to back up their claims.

in love with our stuff

I am always perplexed by how much people LOVE their possessions and how they seem to have an almost "unhealthy" attachment to them.  I put the word unhealthy in quotes because I am making a judgement call here and some might view such behavior as normal or even beneficial.

I would like to share a recent journal article that I read about this topic.  The ideas discussed by the authors were really interesting and they made me reconsider my own ignorant views on the matter. The article is from the Journal of Consumer Research:

"Truly, Madly, Deeply: Consumers in the Throes of Material Possession Love."
Author(s): John L. Lastovicka and Nancy J. Sirianni
Source: Journal of Consumer Research, Vol. 38, No. 2 (August 2011), pp. 323-342

The authors study the relationships individuals have with their possessions and provide hypotheses on why certain individuals get so deeply attached to their belongings.  The possessions considered are automobiles, computers, bicycles, and firearms.  By using interviews and quantitative analysis, the authors arrive at several conclusions for answering the all important WHY question.  Individuals get attached to items to make up for what the authors call "social deficits."  Lonely individuals that lack true friendships or a romantic relationships compensate and cope with their loneliness by getting attached to their possessions and forming "relationships" with the items.  They nurture and take care of their products by spending time, energy, and money on them.  The relationship with the items brings them happiness and a more favorable alternative to loneliness.

The authors believe that we have an innate "need" to value and to find things or people that we can care for.  When we attempt to fulfill this need through people, either through friendships or relationships, we have the chance to be rejected. This rejection can lead to loneliness, pain, disappointment, and social isolation.  Perhaps one way of dealing with this is channeling that energy towards inanimate objects instead.  After all, objects are "safe" and they can't reject us. This can provide comfort and ease.  Additionally, objects can become anchors for a person's identity and as a way of projecting that identity for others to see.  Possessions can also provide a sense of control since they can never talk back or reject you

I used to have a negative view of such "obsessed" people but the authors touched upon ideas that made me reconsider.  Consider the alternative to dealing with rejection and isolation.  Individuals can turn to drugs, alcohol, even further isolation, and anti-depressant medications with unknown and risky side-effects.  Additionally, is being attached to objects really that bad?  From an environmental standpoint, such behavior can actually be beneficial and promote sustainability.  We might actually throw away less stuff and promote a culture of constant reuse.  Also, what about meeting OTHER people that have similar passions and love for prized possessions like you do?  This can directly fight against isolation and allow an individual to meet and connect with others like him.

Personally, I get attached to objects because they bring back memories or they are associated with people that I care about.  There is nothing inherently special about the object itself, it's the kinds of memories that the object triggers. These memories can bring me joy, pride, sadness, and numerous other emotions.  For me, losing the object is almost like losing those memories or losing the person that object is associated with. It's irrational and emotional but it allows me somehow stay connected with people that I care about but rarely get to see.

Ultimately, this issue isn't as black and white as I originally thought. I guess that's the common theme with a lot of topics before we actually do some research and consider new perspectives.

(image url: http://apollokidz.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/loneliness.jpeg)