Blogs, Flogs, Acai Berries, and the Psychology of Influence

I just got back from a wonderful vacation in the Caribbean, where I  managed to read about 3.5 books while enjoying the beautiful beaches of St Martin.  (Saint Marteen if you are Dutch)  One of these books, called Influence, written by Robert B. Cialdini was one of the better business/psychology books I have read recently.  I highly recommend this book to almost anybody, but especially if you are in sales or marketing.  It is a bit dated, but I find the material is still very relevant.

The books starts out by explaining how turkeys use the “chirp” sound of their young to know where they are and when to feed them.  In the first experiment, a researcher inserted a natural predator of the turkey, some sort of stuffed polecat (I think), and the turkey attacked it and recognized it as a predator.  In a follow up experiment, a recording of the “chirp” noise was placed inside the same stuffed predator.  With the added “chirp” noise, the turkey’s reaction was completely different.  It did not attack the stuffed predator like before, but instead gathered the predator underneath her and seemed to think it was its offspring.  What does all this have to do with anything?  Well, as humans we also have automatic reactions much like the turkey does above to the chirp.  We use all sorts of shortcuts like the chirp to help us in life because there is just too much information to take in when making a decision, and these automatic reactions help us save a lot of time.  We use these shortcuts many times without even thinking about them because they are so ingrained in ourselves.

Enter the “flog” (fake blog) and Acai berries/colon cleanse marketing technique.  These a fake blogs that marketers create to push products onto unsuspecting consumers.  These flogs are both brilliant in terms of marketing, but also evil because they take advantage of the shortcuts that Influence talks about.  In case you haven’t seen these ads, here is an example of one:   (image taken from shoemoney blog)

In six chapters of the book, Influence describes our natural shortcuts that we use to make decisions.  These shortcuts and how the marketer is using them above in the blog above to get us to purchase the product are:

Reciprication – Not really used on this page, however the “free trial” when you click through to order the product makes you feel bad about cancelling the subscription.  They have sent you a free trial, and how can you tell after 10 days if it’s working or not?  Reciprocation is when you feel a debt to somebody when that party does something for you.  Think of those free mailing labels you receive from various charities….  You feel like you need to reciprocate their free offer of nice mailing labels by giving them a donation.  This works very well.

Commitment and consistancy – This advertisements became popular during Jan and Feb months, where many folks make a commitment to losing weight.  Presented to them here is the perfect solution, by and independent person, with actual evidence that it works. Never mind that the image is a stock photo, and that the image is then  photo shopped to make the person look slimmer.

Social Proof – You can’t see it on this screenshot, however below in the “comments” section of the blog are many comments left by others who have used the product and “think it’s great” and have lost “all sorts of weight” and are “feeling great”.  I am pretty sure 99% of the comments are fake, but the average person thinks everybody else is using these products, losing weight, and now sharing their weight loss stories on this blog.  The product must be working if regular people are commenting…

Liking – We like this person because she is just like the target market.  She is a busy mother who is “struggling to lose weight”.  Thanks to a special piece of software code, she even happens to live in our city – so we like her even more.  She eats the same foods just like us, gained weight after her pregnancy just like us,  and is now sharing this amazing secret of how she lost weight with these two products.  We like and trust people who are just like us.  Of course the person behind this flog is probably a mid 20′s male buying a new sports car with the money he is making .

Authority – If you look on the right, you will see Dr. Oz and Oprah.  Again, these two celebrities give proof that the product actually works and that they recommend it.  Usually Rachael Ray and some other TV logos are shown as well to give even more proof.  If it’s on Oprah and Dr. Oz recommends it, we really don’t need to investigate the product that much further – they have done all of the work for us and are telling  (Dr. OZ) us to use it.  Of course none of these people have actually recommended this exact product.  I don’t know for sure, but I imagine at some point Acai berries were mentioned on these shows saying they were good for you…. However  I would not be surprised if they were not mentioned in context of eating these berries will actually make you lose weight.

Scarcity – Once you click through the link to actually purchase the product, you are taken to a page with a countdown timer and are told there are only 50 or so free samples left.  This makes the product more valuable because it must be good if other people are ordering them and there is only a limited supply.  Scarcity also creates value because we may lose out on this “one time” offer to get this amazing product that will help us lose weight.  We are scared of losing the opportunity of not ordering this product right now, before either the timer runs out or there are no more shipments available.

What is also interesting is that this is a very basic site – no fancy graphics or coding.  This makes it more believable that it really is “Becky” telling us about her “weight loss” story.  The first person who created this type of advertisement was both brilliant and evil. Of course like anything else, this winning “flog” format has been copied to lots of other products including skin care, “government grants”, and teeth whitening.

The problem the author of Influence has (and I tend to agree) with this type of advertising is that once people realize that the product does not work, (it’s hard for me to imagine eating berries and giving yourself colon cleanses will make you lose weight) they will stop trusting their internal shortcuts and be skeptical of everything.  The author recommends boycotting any products that use these types of tricks to get us to buy something by using fake influences and shortcuts to affect our decisions.  The key is to recognize what is going on before taking the automatic action.

Another note :  Besides the false marketing and unclear benefits to losing weight, the issue with these products I am hearing is that you can’t cancel your free trial.  Usually on the 15th day of the free trial, your credit card is automatically billed for the month and I have heard its pretty much impossible to get through on the 800# to cancel.  The FTC should be cracking down on the company that is not allowing folks to cancel because this is outright fraud.  Also, it should be very clear what the terms and conditions of the free trial is and not have it hidden somewhere in small writing.

Also, I hear the FTC is going to start cracking down on these types of “Flog” advertisements.  On the issue of these fake blogs, I am really not sure how the FTC should handle it.  I would imagine telling people that this is not a real person and results are not typical would kill the power of this selling machine.  Also, the “Flogs” are owned by different people than the companies that actually take the credit card info, so the companies can always say they are not doing anything wrong  - because the flog is an independent contractor.   This presents all sorts of issues which I am not sure how they will be handled.

What do you think?