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The Persuaders
By Derrick | April 11, 2008
I was thinking about persuasion, in the context of “How do I persuade more people to take advantage of my free membership at SqueezePageDossier.com?”
Then I remembered the cheezy 1970’s TV series, “The Persuaders”. I spent many happy hours watching Roger Moore and Tony Curtis beating up bad guys. Of course, this was before 1976, when television first reared its ugly head in South Africa. The Persuaders came to us on 16mm film, or “fillum”. As one of the resident Audio Visual Geeks at my high school, I had the pleasure of screening a random episode of The Persuaders before the feature movie at the monthly movie evenings.
I spent many a happy hour in that school hall, pottering around with ways to improve the overall cinema-going experience. We were blessed and cursed with a pair of recalcitrant 16mm projectors – an ancient Bolex, and a more recent Bell and Howell. Both machines seemed to enjoy nothing more than taking giant bites out of whatever was being fed through them.
Getting back to the Persuaders – presumably so-named because the two stars were so good at persuading people to see things their way.
I’m sure most marketers have read Robert Cialdini’s excellent book, “Influence – The Psychology of Persuasion”. Cialdini identifies six ‘Weapons of Persuasion’ –
- Authority
- Social Proof
- Commitment and Consistency
- Scarcity
- Liking
- Reciprocation
I’ll be looking at each of these in more detail in the next couple of blog posts.
It’s interesting to compare Cialdini’s six ‘Weapons of Persuasion’ with Joe Sugarman’s thirty ‘Psychological Triggers’ – identified in Sugarman’s book ‘Triggers’. Each of Cialdini’s ‘weapons’ appears in Sugarman’s list, and the other 24 triggers mostly stand alone (one or two could be regarded as falling into Cialdini’s broad categories). Cialdini approaches persuasion from the perspective of someone trying to protect himself from the underhanded psychological techniques used by devious salesmen. Sugarman, on the other hand, examines his triggers as a marketer. Maybe that’s why his list includes tactics like ‘honesty’ and ‘integrity’.
Topics: Online Business, Research | 2 Comments »
June 21st, 2009 at 6:44 pm
They say if you have the power of persuasion, it would be easier to convince people to do things your way. I guess it’s the same with online marketing, only you can’t use facial expression, which is a very good way of persuading people in real life. That’s why I find it harder to persuade people online to avail of my services and goods.
July 9th, 2009 at 10:46 pm
Its nice to see a marketing blogger look at the nice theory and not just gimmicky stuff. I enjoy learning about the theory of marketing.
.-= Simon@Leadership´s last blog ..Leadership Development Programme =-.