Action influencer 6: they see a social norm or standard that they are following
The Muppet Show was an anarchic, absurdist, surrealist masterpiece of television. Broadcast from the mid-1970s to the early 1980s it went on to spawn multiple films, children’s toys and cultural icons that persist to this day. But the TV show of the 70s and 80s is where much of the groundwork that we recognise today was established. The characters, the humour, the wit and the style all come from then.
The show was produced at the ATV Elstree Studio in England and was a technically complex production. Coordinating the multitude of puppets with voices, narratives and music over the duration of the show took effort and great production, but the end result appeared effortless and funny. One of the conceits that the show allowed itself was that it was filmed in front of a live studio audience. The show included clips of a studio audience – appearing to enhance the vaudeville style of the content – and television viewers could hear an audience laughing. So believable was this, that many people applied to be in the live studio audience for filming, but had to be turned down as this was not the case. The Muppet Show instead used the technique of an applied laughter track. This allowed them to film and get the right takes with the appropriate changes of staging between each shot, without leaving a studio audience bored out of their minds for hours on end. Jim Henson, creator and voice star of The Muppet Show admitted feeling apprehensive about adding a laugh track. On the decision to include one he remarked, "I did one special dry – without any laugh track – looked at it, and then tried it adding a laugh track to it, and it's unfortunate, but it makes the show funnier."
Laugh tracks have been used consistently by television producers since the 1960s when network research suggested that comedy shows with a laugh track performed better than those without. An experiment in 1965 tested this approach when US network CBS showed two versions of its sitcom Hogan's Heroes to test audiences. One version included a laugh track, the other did not. The version without the laugh track failed to perform while the version with laughter succeeded and CBS would go on to use a laugh track for all comedies afterwards. TV show laugh tracks are one example of how social proof influences decisions. Shows are perceived to be funnier when there is a laugh track even though audiences also rate canned laughter as annoying.
One of the biggest (and there are many) criticisms of social media is that it has a tendency to create echo chambers. Echo chambers are ecosystems where apparently like-minded people repeat, amplify and reinforce their pre-existing beliefs by sharing and repeating them in an environment devoid of disagreement. A consequence of this is that echo chambers can have a tendency to increase extremist views by creating a kind of confirmation bias – since no one disagrees with me, I must be right. Echo chambers have always existed in society, though they may be given different names in other contexts. To some extent they are the basis of society – a set of shared beliefs and values that create unity and uniformity. There is a natural human tendency to group with people that we feel a bond with. But echo chambers take this to another level by creating a reinforced belief that viewpoints are shared more broadly than they actually are.
What connects laugher tracks and echo chambers is the concept of social proof and following a crowd. Comedy is funnier because other people are laughing; my extreme view is appropriate because others agree and no-one challenges me – these are just two examples. The ubiquitous example from the technology world “nobody gets fired for buying IBM” is another. The subtext is the fear, uncertainty and doubt of making a costly, risky purchase, but if you follow the crowd and buy what everyone else did, your job will be safe. Why are iPhones the most popular phones in the US? Partly because everyone buys iPhones. If you don’t know anything about phones, you just buy what everyone else does because it must be good. It is much easier to be fired for attempting to improve upon the perceived logic than it is just following the crowd. Even if a product is technically inferior, when it is a known quantity from a commonly purchased brand it is still perceived to be better than it is. Going against the crowd can be risky.
Mindshare and social proof
Most buyers are not in the market at the time you are marketing to them. Basic facts like product or contract lifecycles mean that on three to five year purchase lifecycles, customers are unlikely to be able to – let alone need or want – to buy from you. But people change roles and change organisations, and today’s decision maker that isn’t in the market is tomorrow’s prospect that is. When they do decide they’re in the market, customers will typically make a list of potential vendors that they believe can meet their need and that they need to research. Nine out of ten times, the final decision is to go with one of those vendors. What this means is that by the time customer’s identify a need, they have already narrowed down their decision significantly. Put another way, nine out of ten customers aren’t in the market to buy and nine out of ten customers that are in the market to buy have already narrowed down their shortlist. If you aren’t top of mind and on their initial shortlist, your chances of winning a deal have decreased significantly. If you ever wondered why organisations put so much effort into building long-term demand, this should explain that.
Brand value and owning mindshare within target audiences is strategically important. If you are known as the de-facto choice for a particular product or for solving a particular business need you own a huge advantage. You are perceived better, even though you may not be, you are valued more highly, even though your quality maybe lower and the value you deliver will be seen as greater, even if it isn’t. Mindshare is not the same as social proof, but social proof can lead to greater mindshare. Social proof and making customers follow the crowd is about leveraging a perception of social strength: surely everyone can’t be wrong?
Following the crowd is about creating the idea of a movement. A consensus that it’s just common sense to follow. Building crowd consensus is why organisations give samples and trials of their new products away for free in exchange for reviews. When you’re holidaying in a new city and looking for a place to eat, do you go to the restaurant with no one in it or the one next door with people sat at tables? Crowd consensus suggest the restaurant with a few people in is more popular. This is why servers always sit people in full view of the windows at the start of the night.
The foundation of getting people to follow the crowd is tapping into their uncertainty on a decision. Uncertainty encourages people to seek reassurance or proof on the right direction to take. Customer stories, case studies and references are commonly used tactics to build a perception of relevance, but not necessarily social proof. People uncertain of their decisions may more likely be persuaded by seeing competitors or peers making similar decisions at scale than one or two stories from a few customers in a particular industry. Consider these two types of social proof:
Show of strength numbers such as ‘80% of the Fortune 500 use our services’ – these reflect that a volume of an audience that has made a similar decision. The goal is to reinforce that this is a good, safe, informed decision.
Specific examples with high-relevance such as ‘ABC and XYZ in your industry both saw 20% ROI’ – these numbers may have no statistical significance against other customers that didn’t see such good returns, but they feel highly relevant. The goal is to reinforce specialisms and that others also made this choice.
Customer reviews benefit from a perception of impartial objectivity. When customers are willing to share their positive feedback it is a sign that they believe they made the right decision. Customer reviews are powerful tools when shared at scale – they are the voice of people who would dissent if they were dissatisfied but instead chose to advocate. Cultivating positive reviews, rather than a full spectrum of accurate reviews, is why people mainly ask for feedback when something has gone well.