year-round.
Similarly, Michelob ran a successful campaign in the 1970s that linked weekends with the beer brand (“Weekends are made for Michelob”). However, that wasn’t the slogan when the campaign started out. Originally the slogan was “Holidays are made for Michelob.” But this proved ineffective because the chosen stimuli—holidays—don’t happen that often. SoAnheuser-Busch revised the slogan to “Weekends are made for Michelob,” which was much more successful.
Frequency, however, must also be balanced with the strength of the link. The more things a given cue is associated with, the weaker any given association. It’s like poking a hole in the bottom of a paper cup filled with water. If you poke just one hole, a strong stream of water will gush out. But poke more holes, and the pressure of the stream from each opening lessens.Poke too many holes and you’ll get barely a trickle from each.
Triggers work the same way. The color red, for example, is associated with many things: roses, love, Coca-Cola, and fast cars, to name just a few. As a result of being ubiquitous, it’s not a particularly strong trigger for any of these ideas. Ask different people to say the word that first comes to their mind when they think of red and you’ll see what I mean.
Compare that with how many people think “jelly” when you say “peanut butter” and it will be clear why stronger, more unusual links are better. Linking a product or idea with a stimulus that is already associated with many things isn’t as effective as forging a fresher, more original link.
It is also important to pick triggers that happen near where the desired behavior is taking place. Consider a clever but ultimately ineffective public service ad from New Zealand. A handsome,muscular man is taking a shower. In the background you hear a catchy jingle about HeatFlow, a new temperature-control system that ensures you’ll always have sufficient hot water for long, luxurious showers. The man turns off the water. When he opens the shower door, an attractive woman tosses him a towel. He smiles. She smiles. He begins to step out of the shower stall.
Suddenly, he slips. Falling, he cracks his head on the tile floor. As he lies there, motionless, his arm twitches slightly. A voice-over somberly intones: “Preventing slips around your home can be as easy as using a bath mat.”
Wow. Definitely surprising. Extremely memorable. So memorable, I think about it every time I take a shower in a bathroom that doesn’t have a mat on the floor.
But there’s only one problem.
I can’t buy a bath mat in a bathroom. The message is physically removed from the desired behavior. Unless I leave the bathroom, turn on my laptop, and buy a mat online, I have to remember the message until I get to a store.
Contrast that with a New York City Department of Health (DOH) antisoda campaign. While soda might seem like a relatively low-calorie item compared to all the food we eat during the course of a day, drinking sugary beverages actually has a big impact on weight gain. But the DOH didn’t just want to tell people how much sugar was in soda, it wanted to make sure people would remember to change their behavior and spread the message to others.
So the DOH made a video showing someone opening what seems like a normal soda can. But when he starts to pour it into a glass,out spills fat. Blob after blob of white, chunky fat. The guy picks the glass up and knocks the fat back just as one would a regular soda—chunks and all.
The “Man Drinks Fat” clip closes with a huge congealed chunk of fat being dropped on a dinner plate. It oozes over the table as a message flashes up on the screen: “Drinking one can of soda a day can make you 10 pounds fatter a year. So don’t drink yourself fat.”
The video is clever. But by showing fat pouring out of a can, the DOH also nicely leveraged triggers. Unlike the bath mat ad, its video triggered the message (don’t consume
Similarly, Michelob ran a successful campaign in the 1970s that linked weekends with the beer brand (“Weekends are made for Michelob”). However, that wasn’t the slogan when the campaign started out. Originally the slogan was “Holidays are made for Michelob.” But this proved ineffective because the chosen stimuli—holidays—don’t happen that often. SoAnheuser-Busch revised the slogan to “Weekends are made for Michelob,” which was much more successful.
Frequency, however, must also be balanced with the strength of the link. The more things a given cue is associated with, the weaker any given association. It’s like poking a hole in the bottom of a paper cup filled with water. If you poke just one hole, a strong stream of water will gush out. But poke more holes, and the pressure of the stream from each opening lessens.Poke too many holes and you’ll get barely a trickle from each.
Triggers work the same way. The color red, for example, is associated with many things: roses, love, Coca-Cola, and fast cars, to name just a few. As a result of being ubiquitous, it’s not a particularly strong trigger for any of these ideas. Ask different people to say the word that first comes to their mind when they think of red and you’ll see what I mean.
Compare that with how many people think “jelly” when you say “peanut butter” and it will be clear why stronger, more unusual links are better. Linking a product or idea with a stimulus that is already associated with many things isn’t as effective as forging a fresher, more original link.
It is also important to pick triggers that happen near where the desired behavior is taking place. Consider a clever but ultimately ineffective public service ad from New Zealand. A handsome,muscular man is taking a shower. In the background you hear a catchy jingle about HeatFlow, a new temperature-control system that ensures you’ll always have sufficient hot water for long, luxurious showers. The man turns off the water. When he opens the shower door, an attractive woman tosses him a towel. He smiles. She smiles. He begins to step out of the shower stall.
Suddenly, he slips. Falling, he cracks his head on the tile floor. As he lies there, motionless, his arm twitches slightly. A voice-over somberly intones: “Preventing slips around your home can be as easy as using a bath mat.”
Wow. Definitely surprising. Extremely memorable. So memorable, I think about it every time I take a shower in a bathroom that doesn’t have a mat on the floor.
But there’s only one problem.
I can’t buy a bath mat in a bathroom. The message is physically removed from the desired behavior. Unless I leave the bathroom, turn on my laptop, and buy a mat online, I have to remember the message until I get to a store.
Contrast that with a New York City Department of Health (DOH) antisoda campaign. While soda might seem like a relatively low-calorie item compared to all the food we eat during the course of a day, drinking sugary beverages actually has a big impact on weight gain. But the DOH didn’t just want to tell people how much sugar was in soda, it wanted to make sure people would remember to change their behavior and spread the message to others.
So the DOH made a video showing someone opening what seems like a normal soda can. But when he starts to pour it into a glass,out spills fat. Blob after blob of white, chunky fat. The guy picks the glass up and knocks the fat back just as one would a regular soda—chunks and all.
The “Man Drinks Fat” clip closes with a huge congealed chunk of fat being dropped on a dinner plate. It oozes over the table as a message flashes up on the screen: “Drinking one can of soda a day can make you 10 pounds fatter a year. So don’t drink yourself fat.”
The video is clever. But by showing fat pouring out of a can, the DOH also nicely leveraged triggers. Unlike the bath mat ad, its video triggered the message (don’t consume
Similar Books
