Spellbound

Consultant Kare Anderson, writing for the Harvard Business Review, thinks comparisons, not cold facts, are the secret to holding customers' attention.

"We are wired to draw connections between things, even where there aren't any," she writes. If you want to hold your audience spellbound, put that wiring into service.

When you compare your product to something your customers already know, you do yourself a huge favor.  Once you've drawn a comparison between your product and something familiar to your audience, Anderson says, "you have set the context in which people will view it and decide upon it, just as a general chooses terrain favorable to winning a battle."

Anderson offers these tips:

• Swipe someone else's slogan. A California hospital increased blood donations by asking the public, "Got blood?"
• Use numbers. Outdoor gear-maker REI's TV commercial depicts two women atop a mountain at night. The voiceover says, "Even the finest 4-star restaurant is no match for one with 4 million stars."
• Try humor. A Cuban who couldn't serve decent food to his guests blamed Castro's revolution: "The three successes were education, healthcare and sports. The three failures were breakfast, lunch and dinner."

What's that Smell?

It's true: America is exceptional. America is the only nation in the world where people's trust in every kind of institution declined in 2011, according to the latest Edelman Trust Barometer.

But you already knew that (particularly if you've read my free report, Path of Persuasion).

What are most marketers doing about it? They're cultivating "trustiness," writes Seth Godin in his blog this week.

Trustiness stinks.

It's shabby.

And hollow.

And it stinks.

It's easier than ever to build a facade of trust," Godin says. Real trust, on the other hand, "is built when no one is looking."

In other words, trust is earned; trustiness is just clever BS. "Trustiness is what happens when you use trust as a PR tool," Godin writes.

The difference between the two is obvious, once you experience trust. "Trust experienced is remarkable; trustiness once discovered leaves a bad taste for even your most valued customers."

Or at least a bad smell.

2013 Update. Not long ago, the slogan of CBS News was Experience You Can Trust. Now we learn CBS puts profit above free speech, as reported by Forbes. How's that for abusing trust?

Why Trust Matters

In The Customer Blog, consultant Maz Iqbal asks: Why does trust matter so much to customers?

"We human beings do not like to be faced with uncertainty, vulnerability or risk," he says. "These three factors take an emotional toll on us. We prefer to work on 'autopilot,' which is simply another way of saying that we prefer to trust."

Trust functions in business relationships as the customer's "safety net," Iqbal says.

“In situations of perceived risk or vulnerability, trust has the role of a safety net, helping the customer to make a decision by minimizing uncertainty and risk."

Trust depends on three qualities: competence, integrity and benevolence.

"Customer trust is based on the expectations that the service provider can be relied on to deliver its promises, care for customer needs and demonstrate competence,” Iqbal says.

But those qualities are only part of the picture.

Trust also rests on an organization's reputation for good citizenship.

"Customers look for indicators like responsiveness, flexibility, willingness to compromise and act beyond the profit motive. This is where being known as a company that values both social good and profit matters."

How about your organization? Do customers trust you?

I'll bet they don't. To learn why, read my special report, Path of Persuasion.

Won't Get Fooled Again

Writing for Branding Strategy Insider, J. Walker Smith says the recession has taught consumers a harsh lesson.

"Consumers have concluded that the real trouble came not from those they didn’t trust to begin with, but from the very ones they were relying on to watch their backs," he writes.

Discovering they've been hornswaggled by bankers and brokers has them left them angry.

"As this crisis has unfolded, consumers believe that every new revelation has added yet more proof that the game wasn’t fair."

"Fairness" is the consumer's new mantra, Smith believes. 

"Consumers want to be treated equitably. They don’t want their interests betrayed by the furtive self-interests of the companies and brands with which they do business.  They want an exchange that is true to what it professes to be, and they want companies and brands willing to bear their share of the responsibility and sacrifice."

Quilt Quotes

 

Journalists call semi-fabricated quotes "quilt quotes." 

As the name suggests, quilt quotes comprise sayings that have been assembled from separately spoken or written texts. I prefer the even more colorful term used by video producers: "Frankenbites." 

Quilt quotes, unless intended to distort a speaker's message, aren't the worst of writers' sins. But often the original statements are far more interesting than the fabrication. 

Here's a case in point. 

Last week, I visited one of the Occupy DC camps. (Side note: Critics of the Occupy movement should consider doing the same. You won't find a more patriotic gathering outside an American Legion picnic.) 

DC, of course, has a thing for memorials, particularly inscribed ones, and the Occupants have turned their camp into a memorial of sorts. The sidewalks are—literally—covered with placards. While a few feature anonymous sayings, most are like the one above. 

I was so taken with Thomas Jefferson's words, I had to look them up. I quickly discovered that Jefferson never quite said them. 

The first two sentences come from a section of his Notes on Virginia, written in 1781. In the passage where they appear, Jefferson argues for securing freedom of worship in a bill of rights before the Revolutionary War ends and America's leaders turn "corrupt" and its followers "careless." 

The third sentence comes from an 1816 letter Jefferson wrote to his farming buddy George Logan). Jefferson actually wrote: "I hope we shall take warning from the example and crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country." 

The "example" Jefferson meant was Great Britain. 

Spending by the British government on foreign wars was so out of control at the time, Jefferson felt certain it would bring "the ruin of its people," especially the "hereditary aristocracy" responsible for those wars. He didn't want to see Americans make the same mistake.