Be social, not logical

August 24, 2020

There’s a lot of discussion in the charity sector about the importance of impact analysis and reporting as a way to persuade donors and supporters to do more. Annual reports are now often rebranded as impact reports. Does this work? And if it works how does it work? In this blog =mc consulting director Bernard Ross explores the importance of social proof in persuasion and argues that this ‘softer’ approach can be more powerful than facts and figures, even beautifully presented ones.

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Bernard draws on insights from his Change for Good, written with Omar Mahmoud, Head of Insight at Unicef International.

Many agencies use nice infographics to reinforce their message. Here, for example, is a typical example from the Arts Council of England.

Aside from the slightly dodgy Y axis here, my questions are:

Who is this meant to influence?
Does it work anyway?

I’m often, as in the ACE example above, not sure who it’s meant to influence: voters, donors, government officials, politicians? There might even be a negative impact. “If the arts are growing so fast, maybe they don’t need support…”

But I am sure this is not an effective way to influence any individual donor. And Social Proof will. Social Proof demonstrates that “other people, like you or that you respect, support this cause or take this action.” Often this simple connection to what others do is a massive encouragement to do the same.

Let’s demonstrate this with an experiment originally run by Robert Cialdini, respected Professor of Psychology at Arizona State University.

He persuaded a major US hotel chain to trial different messages in hotel rooms to see which would have the most powerful effect in getting hotel users to reuse their towels. This would help save the planet and, coincidently reduce the hotel’s laundry and room cleaning costs.[1]

[1] The experiment covered thousands of users in different combinations over an extended period. You can read the detail here.

Message 1

Focused, as do many of these appeals, on the environmental benefits of reuse. 35% of guests opted to re-use their towels. This was used as a the ‘control’ – or baseline – for the experiment.

Message 2

Focused on social proof. This missed out the environmental message and stated, ‘most people in this hotel re-use their towels.’ In this case 44% of guests reused their towels. That’s almost 10% more people.

Message 3

The researchers tested variations of the social proof message over several weeks. They tried to target it more to people like you. They adapted specific messages by mentioning gender such as women/men, citizens, environmentally concerned individuals, guests in this hotel or finally, people who stayed in this room. Five variants in total.

Which message had the greatest impact in changing behaviour? Most people think the answer is one containing some sense of social identity – either ‘gender’ or ‘citizen.’ In fact, it was the one saying, ‘most people who stay in this room reuse their towels.’ That produced a 49.3% reuse rate – 15% more than the original environmental message they’d normally use.

The implication? Sadly, in my opinion, it’s not about the cause, it’s the social proof context that drives the social proof action.

There’s a host of similar data around, from experiments and real life, that reinforces this principle. And you kind lots of examples in my book Change for Good. See above.

What’s the learning here?

Supporters may not be turned on by the messaging you imagine they will – or only a small number will. Make sure you don’t just listen to the loudest voices among your supporters. And more important don’t listen too much to the voices in yourhead that turn you on. It’s not about YOU!
Let’s be clear too that social proof doesn’t mean everyone has to agree. Notice how cleverly Wikipedia says “We depend on donations from exceptional readers, but fewer than 2% give. If you donate just xxx or whatever you can…Wikipedia could keep thriving. Thank you.” Here they’re trying to create a sense of a special tribe. Make sure you make a tribe that people want to join.
The behaviour of supporters may not always be as predictable as you imagine. It’s logicalthat people should identify mostly strongly with other women or men or citizens, isn’t it? Yep, logical – just not true. Context is often the key to driving behaviour – people ask themselves ‘what do others in this situation do?’ You need to create a context in which people can appear to choose the normal action.
Social proof beats logic and data no matter how powerful. (Think back, sadly, to the ‘evidence’ produced by the pro-Brexit lobby in the recent UK referendum. ) Social proof is usually simple and frankly anecdotal. Create a powerful story to reinforce your message rather than a 200-page report. Or use a story or headline number to summarise your 200 pages.
Make it clear your cause is popular with key people. (See the tribal point above.) We like to identify with these. On crowdfunding websites show how many supporters you have. Think party invites. If you say “Hey, do you want to come to my party?” What’s the question most people will ask: “Who else is going?” You need to be able to mention that X, Y and Z
Establish that those who support your cause are relevant to the target audience – it could be celebrities, religious figures, businesspeople and best of all, fellow donors. Notice how Nike always seeks endorsement from top athletes – winners- not 9/10 athletes. That’s their brand positioning and why it appeals.
Make your case distinctive. When Apple launched the iPod it was had weird white earbuds when almost all other earphones were black. The result was people noticed them even when there weren’t’ actually that many of them… so they seemed popular though salience. (Salience is what attracts our attention and stays with us- hence the reason shark attacks are more salient than accidents crossing the road. When crossing the road is a bigger killer.) Give yourself that appearance of popularity.

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How to find out more

=mc consulting has a programme that uses social proof and a number of other tools to help improve income entitled Making the Ask. Did I mention that all the top 10 UK charities have used this programme, or its predecessor The Influential Fundraiser, to train their staff? And that participants rate it 90% effective and enjoyable. The book the programme is based on was recommended by the New York Times as a top five ‘must read’ for fundraisers.

In Making the Ask training, we introduce you to a powerful five stages of influence model and teach you the 15 tools you need to learn to apply systematically and sensitively for success. These techniques have been used to secure at least six £1M+ gifts in the last five years, as well as countless smaller ones. You can find out more about the model and what you’ll learn on the day here.

The latest version of the programme involves a number of insights from neuroscience and behavioural economics including the importance of social proof. To find out more about the programme or income development generally, get in touch.

Contact Bernard Ross, Director