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ADD A LITTLE ART

When we use communication to persuade, our chances of success are better if we add a little art—art of conversation, art of generating inference, and art of engagement. The lizard responds to art.

Art of Conversation

Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson, authors of the linguistics classic Relevance: Communication and Cognition, tell us that every time we send a message, even conversationally, we make a promise to the receiver.¹ We promise that he or she will want to receive the message we are sending. Any time we attempt to communicate with an audience of one or many, we make the tacit guarantee that they will find the message worthy of attention. The lizard automatically understands that promise and is disappointed if the promise is broken.

If a message only dully repeats what the receiver already knows for certain, it is not worthy of the receiver’s attention.

Let’s say our message is “You really should stop smoking.” Our receiver likely already knows he or she should stop smoking and has heard that message a thousand times. The message “You really should stop smoking” violates our tacit guarantee and breaks our mutually understood promise that the message is worthy of the receiver’s attention. The receiver lowers his or her expectation about what to expect from our future messages, and it becomes harder for us to reach and to persuade.

If you hope to persuade, have something interesting to say. By sending a message in whatever form, you are implicitly promising the receiver you have something to say they will want to hear. Don’t break that promise.

Asking for behavior change while having nothing interesting to say is not persuasive.

Provide some new information or a new way of looking at the old information. Say what you have to say in a different, clever, or amusing way. Talk about something your target wants and show them how they can get it by doing what you ask. When you talk about something your target wants, there is a good chance they’ll find what you say interesting.

Promising a receiver that he or she will want to receive our message is a high hurdle. Our normal tendency in persuasion is to create a message based on what we want to say with little regard to what the audience wants to receive.

Crafting a message that the receiver wants to get requires climbing inside the head of the receiver and understanding how the receiver looks at the world.

This is a complete turnaround. Rather than crafting a message by carefully honing what we want to say, we have to craft a message that the receiver will want to hear. If we break our promise, we take a big step backward in persuasion.

When attempting to be persuasive, how much of what parents say, of what spouses say, of what friends say fulfills the tacit guarantee of being a message the receiver will want to receive? Attempts at persuasion that fail to merit the attention of the audience are nagging.

In 2014, the Obama administration produced a Public Service Announcement to encourage people to enlist in the fight against sexual assault and to visit the Website, ItsOnUs.org. The public service announcement consisted largely of a variety of celebrities looking sternly into the camera and saying, “It’s on us.” The video is an example of nagging.

This message isn’t concerned with what receivers want to hear, only with what the sender wants to say.

More than one-third of the people who expressed an opinion on this ad disliked it. It’s clear from the comments that most of those who disliked the ad are in the ad’s primary target, young men.

Why wouldn’t this message work? Why would young men dislike an ad that literally says:

• “Stop sexual assault.”

• “Don’t blame the victim.”

• “Get a friend home safe.”

This message is not worthy of attention because it doesn’t communicate what its target would like to hear. It only communicates what the sender wants to say.

Young men not only disliked this ad, it made them angry. Why?

The negative emotional reaction to the ad comes from its tone and style. What an ad says is less important than how the ad says it. The disapproving looks and somber music of the ad give the impression of parents wagging their fingers at sons who’ve disappointed them. The tone, style, and selection of spokespeople seem to communicate to many that young men are an embarrassment. That’s not what the message literally says, but what an ad literally says and what an ad communicates are two different things.

It is possible to come at the problem in a different way.

One should start by thinking about what young men want that they can get by taking the anti-sexual assault pledge. For example, young men want to feel manly. They buy certain cigarettes to feel manly. They buy certain beers to feel manly. They wear certain clothes to feel manly. Can young men feel manly by taking the anti-sexual assault pledge? Of course they can. But young men won’t feel manly by taking an apologetic, whiny “It’s on us” pledge. If Danny Trejo, Robert De Niro, and Sylvester Stallone (or your favorite manly men) tell young men that “Real men don’t” and encourage them to take the “Real men don’t” pledge, many would take the pledge and few would get angry.

The “It’s on us” message, as created, encourages people outside the target to pat themselves on the back for being against sexual assault. Unfortunately, it makes its target angry and doesn’t do anything to reduce the problem. Talk about what young men want and show them how to get it. Make the message something young men want to hear, not something you want to say.

A persuasive message that fails to deliver on the promise of being worthy of attention is not just a disappointment, it’s annoying.

Dale Carnegie’s advice fits. “The only way on earth to influence people is to talk about what they want, and show them how to get it.” If we are talking about what receivers want and showing them how to get it, receivers will be interested.

Sperber and Wilson have another piece of advice for us that might lead us to craft very different persuasive messages. Sperber and Wilson tell us that conversations work best when we leave out of the message anything receivers can and will provide on their own.

Being a receiver is an active, participatory job. Our audience will assume our message is one they want to receive. After all, that is our tacit guarantee. So our receivers will try to provide whatever details and context make our message relevant for them.

Herbert Paul Grice was a philosopher of language who revolutionized the study of meaning in communication. Grice spoke of “conversational implicatures.” By that he meant "roughly, things that a hearer can work out from the way something was said rather than what was said."² To have the impact we desire, our communications should leave room for conversational implicatures—those thoughts provoked by the message and completed by the receiver.

In ordinary conversation, we are accustomed to leaving out everything receivers can provide on their own. We do it automatically and effortlessly. If I am at a party and a friend offers me a drink, I might say, “I’m driving.” My response leaves out what my friend can fill in for himself, namely “No, I do not want a drink because I’m driving and I feel drinking might impair my ability to drive safely.” If I had said all that, my friend would wonder why. He would likely feel patronized.

People take offense when we put too much in the message and underestimate their capacity to understand. If we include too much in our message, our audience will feel insulted and we forfeit our ability to persuade. But if we include too little, our message is unintelligible. If we strike the right balance, the audience feels we understand them and is more receptive. What’s left out of a message establishes a degree of complicity, a level of emotional closeness between sender and the receiver.

Don’t communicate explicitly what your receivers can fill in on their own. Encourage audience participation. Let your target complete the thought and draw the conclusion. What your target tells themselves will be far more persuasive than anything you say.

A metaphor can be a wonderful way to engage the audience, but a metaphor doesn’t work if you explain it. If it requires explanation, get a different metaphor. And actor image doesn’t persuade if you spell out the inference you would like the audience to draw. If Danny Trejo tells me to take the anti-sexual assault pledge, I might conclude on my own that I’ll feel manly like Danny Trejo if I do likewise. But tell me that I’ll feel manly like Danny Trejo and I won’t believe it.

As with the previous advice from Sperber and Wilson, leaving everything out that receivers can provide on their own requires clearly understanding how our receivers think. Our message unmistakably communicates how much help we think our audience needs to process it. If we are right, we compliment our audience and suggest an intimacy of connection. If we are wrong, we either insult our audience with too much information or our message is unintelligible because of too little information. The amount of help we offer the audience is critical to our success and understanding how much help to provide requires getting inside the head of the audience.

What we think of our audience is immediately obvious to them. Do we think they are intelligent or unintelligent? Do we think they are well-informed or ill-informed? Do we think they are cool or boring?

Apple’s “Think Different” print ads are a good example of employing the art of conversation in persuasion. Many of the ads featured only a portrait of an independent, innovative historical figure along with a small Apple logo and the words “Think Different.” At the bottom, in small type, was www.apple.com. The historical figures included Alfred Hitchcock, Jim Henson, Maria Callas, Miles Davis, and many others.

The ads deliver on the implicit promise being worth of attention. Each of the figures featured is inherently interesting and we enjoy thinking about how each of them thought differently.

The ads also provide a good example of leaving everything out of the message that receivers can and will provide on their own. The audience fills in the blanks, making the association of Apple products with independent, innovative people who made a difference even though those people may have never used anything by Apple. The ads reveal, undeniably, what Apple thinks of its audience. Apple compliments its audience because it clearly believes its audience will recognize, admire, and seek to emulate these fascinating people. What’s left out establishes a degree of complicity between the audience and the brand.

Sometimes, the most powerful part of a persuasive message isn’t what we put in, but what we leave out.

Art of Generating Inference

What’s left out of a message not only establishes a rapport, it invites participation; it invites inference. In inference, our audience goes beyond the message to draw their own conclusions. When we tell the audience something, the source is automatically suspect. When the audience tells themselves, the source is unimpeachable. People ultimately persuade themselves. The role of our message is to make that possible.

Our persuasive message suggests that the audience behave in a certain way. We may encourage stopping smoking, not experimenting with drugs, making healthier choices in the grocery store, voting for candidate X, or buying brand A. In effect, we are suggesting that the audience join the group of people who have stopped smoking, don’t experiment with drugs, make healthier choices in the grocery store, vote for candidate X, or buy brand A.

What evidence does our audience have to evaluate the action we encourage or the group of people we suggest they join?

One critical piece of evidence is the message itself. The audience doesn’t just decode the literal meaning of the words used in the message. The audience uses everything about the message—its words, visuals, sound, style, spirit, and the surrounding context—to draw inferences about the action we suggest, the people who act that way, and the sender of the message. Though drawing these inferences may sound like work, it’s effortless. It’s not only effortless, it’s automatic. Just as we automatically form a coherent 3D picture from millions of visual stimuli, the audience members draw these inferences from the message whether they want to or not. The message often has far greater meaning for receivers than the sender intended.

We should think of our persuasive message the way the audience does—as a behavior of the sender that allows the audience to draw inferences. As Fritz Heider, one of the founders of social psychology observed in 1958, “Behavior engulfs the field.”³ What we say is less important than the behavior of our message—that is, how we say it.

Even if we have a logical proposition to communicate, how we attempt to get that point across may say more about who we are than we wish.

In the Super Bowl, Holiday Inn had a logical proposition to get across—if a few thousands of dollars of remodeling can make a person look good, a billion dollars of remodeling should make Holiday Inns look great.

The ad Holiday Inn created to get their point across featured a protagonist at his high school reunion. He meets a former classmate who is a fabulous-looking woman and he attempts to remember the name. While the camera and, apparently, the protagonist leers, the announcer tells us viewers what the enhanced nose, lips, and chest cost in thousands of dollars. At that point, the protagonist comes up with the name. “Bob? Bob Johnson?” he says, dumbstruck. To tie things together, the announcer says that if thousands can make these amazing changes, imagine what a billion can do for Holiday Inn.

But the lizard doesn’t stop at the logical proposition. The lizard doesn’t even focus on the logical proposition because the message as a whole, not the logical proposition, is the main source of information. The message as a whole tells the audience a lot about what it feels like to stay at a Holiday Inn, about people who stay at Holiday Inn, and about Holiday Inn itself. It seems that experiencing the lovely attractions of a remodeled Holiday Inn is a little like experiencing the lovely attractions of a woman who used to be a male friend. Or, more simply, the message is that a Holiday Inn may be good looking, but may also make you feel a little awkward. Holiday Inn was probably hoping for a different inference.

Albert Mehrabian found that the literal words we use in a message carry only a small portion of the meaning the message communicates. Professor Mehrabian of UCLA explored what makes communications successful in getting across likes and dislikes.^4,5 He found that the words accounted for 7 percent of a message’s ability to communicate likes and dislikes, intonation accounted for 38 percent, and facial expressions and body language accounted for 55 percent. The lizard is much more attuned than the conscious mind to the subtleties of the message.

Receivers will pay a lot of attention to everything we do or say and, as we know from the Fundamental Attribution Error, they won’t even wonder why we acted or spoke that way. From everything they take in, our audience will draw inferences about the nature of the action we recommend and about the type of people who take that action.

Take advantage of the fact that action implies essence regardless of motivation. Have your candidate publicly act and speak like he or she is the sort of person that voters want and that’s how voters will perceive him or her. Voters won’t suspect your candidate’s motivation. Have your brand act sexy in its advertising and in its packaging, and people will think it’s sexy even if it used to be drab. Act as if you are a fashion expert when you are selling shoes and your customers will see you as a fashion expert even if, in reality, you don’t care about fashion. You can use action to generate inferences and people are unlikely to suspect what’s behind the curtain.

If we explicitly claim that the action we recommend is fun or exciting, or will make you feel masculine or sexy, we are in danger of communicating the opposite. We cannot successfully claim an action is fun. Our message has to be fun. If we wish to associate our brand with fun, we have to juxtapose it with real fun, not just a claim of fun. We have to demonstrate the association. We have to demonstrate the desired quality of the action we recommend in a compelling, memorable way. Only then will the audience believe it and associate that reward with the action.

The audience assumes the timing of the message, the place of the message, the tone of the message, the style of the message, the seriousness of the message, the fun of the message are a reflection of the action we suggest, of the people who act that way, and of the sender. Everything about the message implies what the receiver can expect if they follow our advice.

Budweiser wanted to attract young beer drinkers. Young beer drinkers like to think of themselves as fun and not taking themselves too seriously, and they choose brands that make them look and feel that way. So Budweiser created a commercial that was itself fun and didn’t take itself too seriously. The commercial featured frogs who, instead of croaking “ribit,” croaked “Bud,” “weis,” “er.” It was a very simple commercial that made no overt claims about Budweiser. But viewers inferred a great deal about Budweiser and its drinkers. Viewers assumed the commercial was a reflection of the brand and the people who drink it.

Even one of the most primitive forms of communication, hand-painted signs, can lead to an inference about a suggested behavior and the people who act that way.

Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert organized a rally on the Capital Mall in Washington, D.C. They called the event the Rally to Restore Sanity. It was a protest against extremism in any form. The rally suggested calming down, avoiding extremism, and acting reasonably. Hand-painted signs, a staple at any political rally, were much in evidence. A sign can, of course, claim reasonableness and decry extremism, but the sign, “Somewhat irritated about extreme outrage,” demonstrated reasonableness in a much more effective way, implying the desirable qualities of the behavior and the people who act that way.

Art of Engagement

An important function of any persuasive message is to gain some attention from the audience. We are subjected daily to roughly 700 ads in traditional media, probably close to that in new media, and many more personal persuasive messages from family, coworkers, bosses, friends, acquaintances, and strangers. We can’t give equal time and attention to all those messages. A persuasive message often doesn’t need our full attention, but it does benefit from eye movement in its direction as we page through a magazine or newspaper, or standing out a bit from background noise when we participate in a conversation, or momentary hesitation while we surf channels or the Web.

Because our automatic, nonconscious mental system directs us to do what we enjoy, we pay a little more attention to messages we enjoy.

Daniel Berlyne, professor of psychology, University of Toronto, conducted research in experimental aesthetics.⁶ He studied how the pleasure of a stimulus varied with its complexity. He found that the pleasure we derive from a stimulus is at its highest when the complexity of the stimulus is at a moderate level. Some complexity enhances pleasure, but if a stimulus is too complex or too simple it gives us less pleasure.

Berlyne’s point of view fits with what the intuitive masters of persuasion have been telling us. Some complexity enhances pleasure and improves chances of successful persuasion. Bill Bernbach said that creativity, far from being a self-indulgent art form is “the most practical thing a businessman can employ.”⁷

Ancient Greek rhetoricians have studied the most effective way to express an idea and classified the structure of many linguistic techniques as rhetorical figures. McQuarrie and Mick are two marketing professors who analyzed the use of rhetorical figures in advertising and published their results in the Journal of Consumer Research. Edward McQuarrie is at the University of California, Santa Clara, and David Glen Mick is at the University of Virginia. According to McQuarrie and Mick, “[W]hen persuasion is the overriding goal, the rhetorical perspective suggests that the manner in which a statement is expressed may be more important than its propositional content.”⁸ Rhetorical figures are different ways of effectively expressing an idea. A rhetorical figure, also commonly known as a figure of speech, is an artful deviation from what we expect.

A figure of speech adds effectiveness because its deviation from expectation adds a moderate level of complexity. If our message is too simple, it is uninteresting. If our figurative language is too complex, our message is unintelligible. If it is an artful deviation, our figurative language provides what Roland Barthes⁹ called “The Pleasure of the Text.” Our audience feels “the reward that comes from processing a clever arrangement of signs.”¹⁰

Understandably, figures of speech are pervasive in professional attempts to persuade—that is, in advertising. But any persuasion attempt can benefit from an artful deviation from expectation.

Though there are many different figures of speech, McQuarrie and Mick describe two basic categories: unexpected regularity and unexpected irregularity.

Ordinary speech has a natural variety of sounds. When that natural variety is absent and sounds regularly repeat, we notice. As McQuarrie and Mick point out, examples of this type of unexpected regularity would be chime (“A tradition of trust”) and rhyme (“KitchenAid. For the way it’s made”). Receivers don’t expect words in sequence to begin with the same sound or to rhyme. When they do, it’s a slight deviation that draws attention and is a little more enjoyable. The regularity is unexpected.

A second type of unexpected regularity is the reversal of words, phrases, or meanings: “Stops static before static stops you,” “Hot prices on cool stuff,” and “Easy on eyes. Tough on Tangles.”

A message can also be surprisingly irregular. Ordinary speech has logic, grammar, and a syntax that receivers expect. They notice the unexpected irregularity when those rules are violated. Of course, the violation of the rules may render our message unintelligible. That’s a risk we take. But our audience believes that our message is one they want to receive, that our message has relevance for them. That is our tacit guarantee. So receivers will try to provide whatever details and context make our message understandable and relevant.

In a message of unexpected irregularity, the receiver looks for and expects to find an underlying meaning. McQuarrie and Mick describe two different classes of unexpected irregularity. The first is substitution.

In substitution, the message is obviously incorrect and the receiver easily provides the correct message.

Hyperbole—that is, exaggeration for the sake of emphasis—is a type of substitution. When iPhone tells us we can browse, download, and stream content at “blazing fast speed,” we believe it will be fast, but not really blazing fast. When Sherwin Williams paint tells us that “We Cover the World,” we don’t take that to be literally true, but we do instantly understand that Sherwin Williams paint can cover just about anything.

Understatement is another form of substitution. In understatement, a message describes something in a way that seems less important, less serious, and less good than it really is. The receiver substitutes the correct message. Volkswagen has long been a master of understatement. In one ad from its recent “Power of German Engineering” campaign, we see two young men talking by the side of the road next to a Volkswagen that has obviously been in a serious accident. Both young men are clearly unhurt. We hear the driver telling his passenger that his dad is going to kill him. As receivers, we quickly supply the correct message: Volkswagen kept them alive.

Destabilization is the second form of unexpected irregularity. Examples of destabilization are pun—“Make fun of the road” (for an automobile), and metaphor—“Say hello to your child’s new bodyguard” (for a bandage). Destabilizing statements are statements that may not make literal sense, but do make surprising sense when we think about possible multiple meanings. Sperber and Wilson tell us that people will assume the message makes sense and will work to understand it. The trick is in setting up a puzzle that people enjoy solving. In solving the puzzle of the message, people grasp the deeper meaning.

Many rhetorical figures apply to visual images as well as language. A photo of a baby snuggled up to a bulldog is a powerful visual metaphor for tough but safe.

At a San Francisco Tea Party rally, one saw rhetorical speech, specifically unexpected regularity, put to good use. “Don’t share my wealth. Share my work ethic.” Here we see repeated structure and repeated words; simple, noticeable, and memorable.

Again from the Rally to Restore Sanity comes the sign “People who use hyperbole should be shot.” Here we see unexpected irregularity—using hyperbole to criticize hyperbole. It gives the audience credit for its ability to understand and it also provides the audience “the pleasure of the text.” It creates the impression that reasonable people are witty not because the message claimed wit, but because the message demonstrated wit.

A little art can help any message be more persuasive. The Ad Council put together a video for LoveHasNoLabels.com. In the video, a large screen in a public space projects the skeletons of couples, families, or friends who are behind the screen. After a minute, each group that had been behind the screen steps out to reveal who they are to the surprise of the crowd. The video promotes tolerance by helping viewers see that, at their essence, people are indistinguishable.

The video leaves out everything that viewers can provide on their own. Viewers’ anticipation of and then realization of who is behind the screen is itself the meaning of the video. Viewers tell themselves the message. An announcer never has to belabor the point.

People love to participate in a message. They want to be able to complete a thought or to figure out a simple puzzle. Each couple or group, whose skeletons are projected on the screen, is a simple puzzle for the viewer. Can viewers anticipate the gender, race, age, ability, or disability of the bodies those skeletons inhabit? The video rewards viewers with puzzle after puzzle. The video got 40 million views in its first week on YouTube.

“Don’t Mess With Texas”

“Don’t mess with Texas” is another illustration of adding a little art to a public service persuasive message. The goal was to reduce littering in Texas. The target members, the people who do most of the littering, are young men. Young Texas men want to feel proud of Texas and, like young men everywhere, they want to appear and to feel tough.

“Don’t mess with Texas” shows young men how to get what they want. It’s a message they want to receive. “Don’t mess with Texas” leaves everything out of the message that young men can provide on their own, creating a bond between the message and the audience. “Don’t mess with Texas” acts the way young men want to feel: tough. It doesn’t claim toughness; it demonstrates toughness and, in doing so, effectively associates the act of not littering with the feeling of toughness. The message also reveals that the sender thinks the audience appreciates toughness. Finally, “Don’t mess with Texas” uses figurative language with unexpected irregularity, specifically a pun on “mess,” to make the message a little more interesting and memorable.

Of course, the campaign included many other elements, like tough members of the Dallas Cowboys as spokespersons. But with or without the Dallas Cowboys, “Don’t mess with Texas” is powerfully persuasive communication.

Whatever you say to persuade, say it a little unexpectedly. We have learned the value of engaging the automatic mind in persuasion attempts. The automatic mind enjoys finding the meaning within a clever message. We have learned that the ancient rhetoricians were right—what you say is less important than how you say it. People will infer qualities of the option you recommend and infer qualities of the people who take that option from how you say what you say. A boring message leads receivers to infer an uninteresting option and uninteresting people who take it. A fun message leads receivers to infer a fun option and fun people who take it.

Rhetoricians have shown us how to be a little more interesting, surprising, and engaging in what we say—figures of speech, minor deviations from expected expression that trigger the receiver’s attention, and participation in a message. Linguists have classified figures of speech in lists that distinguish from 45 to 250 different types. You might check them out for inspiration.

Your clever message compliments your target. They automatically understand that you believe they will get it and enjoy it. A complimented audience is more likely to comply.

Even if you are just talking to your kids, a slightly unexpected request is more likely to be followed and remembered.

Crafting a persuasive message may seem a difficult assignment. Whole industries with legions of professionals struggle with the task. However, all persuasion can apply a little of the art of conversation, a little of the art of generating inference, and a little of the art of engagement. When it does, it stands a better chance of changing the way its target acts.