2

SPEAK THE LANGUAGE OF THE LIZARD: BASIC GRAMMAR

The language of our reflective, conscious mental system, the mind we know well, is information, logic, and reason. That is why most definitions of persuasion speak of convincing by reasoned argument. But reasoned argument is not the way to persuade the lizard—far from it.

The lizard inside, our automatic, nonconscious mental system, has its own language. As the last 25 years of psychological, behavioral economic, and neurological research has demonstrated, the language of the automatic system has a basic grammar:

• Mental availability.

• Association.

It also has its own style:

• Action.

• Feelings.

• Preferences of others.

Because the lizard is in charge of most of our decisions and influential in the rest, fluency in the language of the lizard is essential to persuasion.

Mental Availability

Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky have taught us about the availability heuristic.¹ By that they mean that we nonconsciously use how easily something comes to mind, or mental availability, as a rule of thumb to help us evaluate things and people. Because of the availability heuristic, our automatic system pays the most attention to and assumes the superiority of things and people that spring to mind most easily.

The influence of the ease with which something comes to mind shows up in many aspects of our life and shows up in many areas of the study of human decision-making. Behavioral economists speak of availability and familiarity. Psychologists talk about vividness, salience, anchoring, priming, and mere exposure. Marketers emphasize memorability and repetition. All these concepts are based on this central tendency of our automatic, nonconscious mental system. What springs easily to mind, whether it is people, phrases, ideas, or products, will be more liked, more believed, and more influential in our behavior. Cognitive ease makes us receptive.

When we vote, candidates whose names seem familiar, whether or not they are really familiar, are more likely to get our vote. When making a choice in an unfamiliar category, consumers are more likely to choose the recognized brand even when it is of lesser quality.²

A vividly described outcome seems more likely than a blandly described outcome even if the vivid details have no real effect on probability of occurrence. The lizard, our automatic, nonconscious mental system, thinks in terms of vivid stereotypes and exemplars rather than statistics and percentages. That is why an audience is more easily swayed by a surprising individual story than by a surprising statistic.

We worry a lot more about the possibility of being killed by a shark than the possibility of being killed by a falling airplane part. We think more about death by shark attack because it comes more easily to mind. Shark attacks get the attention of the press. The details are vivid and memorable. But, actually, being killed by a falling airplane part is 30 times more likely.³

Things that are salient, that is, more prominent or conspicuous, seem to us more significant. A person who is more salient than others in a meeting because of the way she is dressed, because she is sitting under a light, or because of her body language is perceived by us as more influential.⁴

A number mentioned to us, even if we know it was selected randomly, anchors and influences our future numerical estimates of a person’s age, the price of an object, or whatever else. Numbers that more easily pop into our mind influence our judgments, even though we know they shouldn’t.

Estimates people give of the population of Milwaukee illustrate the power of anchors.⁵ People from Chicago consistently overestimate the population of Milwaukee. People from Green Bay consistently underestimate the population of Milwaukee. People from Chicago begin with what they know, the population of Chicago, and adjust downward. People from Green Bay begin with the population of Green Bay and adjust upward. Typically, adjustments are inadequate and the initial anchor has a dramatic effect on the ultimate estimates.

Ideas that have been primed, that is, very subtly suggested to us—so subtly that we aren’t even aware they have been suggested—still change our behavior. John Bargh and his colleagues gave us a classic demonstration of the impact of priming. Bargh is a Yale social psychologist who founded Yale’s Automaticity in Cognition, Motivation, and Evaluation (ACME) Laboratory. The ACME Laboratory studies the ways in which our environment unconsciously influences how we think, feel, and behave.

Bargh and his colleagues asked college students to create a grammatically correct four-word sentence from each of 30 sets of five words.⁶ Half the students were given sets that contained words related to the elderly stereotype like careful, gray, and Florida. The other half of the students were given sets in which neutral words replaced words related to the elderly. After doing this task, the students walked down the hallway to the exiting elevator. The time it took the students to walk down the hallway was secretly measured. The students who had created sentences from the sets of words associated with the elderly walked more slowly. The participants were subtly primed to think of old age. That priming, though nonconscious, had a direct, measureable effect on walking speed.

Robert Zajonc demonstrated more than 40 years ago that “mere exposure” to an arbitrary stimulus (an idea, a thing, or a person) generates “mild affection” for the stimulus.⁷ Zajonc spent four decades at the University of Michigan where he was the director of the Institute for Social Research. Zajonc showed that it doesn’t seem to matter what the stimulus is. If we have been exposed to a Chinese pictograph, a face, or an irregularly shaped polygon, we feel a little more positively toward it than if we have not been exposed to it. Our mild affection occurs even if we are not consciously aware that we’ve ever seen the item before.

Repetition and familiarity breed acceptance. As Kahneman said, “A reliable way to make people believe in falsehoods is frequent repetition, because familiarity is not easily distinguished from truth.”⁸ For the lizard, what comes most easily to mind seems most true. The lizard can’t tell the difference between familiarity and accuracy.

Marketers and politicians make great use of the power of repetition. Marketers repeat the same message again and again knowing that, as the message becomes more familiar, it becomes more believable. Politicians place great emphasis on party discipline, ensuring that party members repeat the same talking points in the same phrases again and again knowing that as those phrases become familiar, they begin to have the ring of truth.

Much of persuasion is an attempt to get certain actions to come more easily to mind.

GEICO has taken advantage of the power of mental availability. GEICO is growing rapidly, recently surpassing Allstate to become the number two provider of automobile insurance behind State Farm. GEICO spends more than a billion dollars a year on distinctive, vivid, unexpected, and fun advertising that makes its brand pop into mind when a young person is thinking about automobile insurance.

GEICO sells direct. The primary job of the advertising is to get young prospects to visit Geico.com when thinking about auto insurance. GEICO’s mental availability generates Website visits and has fueled its growth.

We often underestimate the dramatic impact mental availability can have on behavior. The utilitarian category of drain cleaners illustrates how a small change in availability can make an unexpectedly big change in what we place in the shopping cart.

Drano is made by S.C. Johnson and Liquid Plumr is made by Clorox. If you are looking for something to help with a clog, both products are likely to be on the shelf. They will be priced about the same. Because either product will be quick to copy any innovation made by the other, both products will have versions that are essentially chemically equivalent. The primary factor that determines choice is mental availability.

Our automatic system pays the most attention to and assumes the superiority of the brand that comes most easily to mind. Because the thing that is clogged is a drain, Drano has the advantage. By its name alone, Drano is the most available drain cleaner option and its dominant market share reflected this fact. People bought more Drano than all other drain cleaners combined.

We at DDB had an idea to increase Liquid Plumr’s mental availability and the Clorox company invested in that idea. The idea was simply to get “plumber” to pop into people’s heads when they had a clog and to think of Liquid Plumr as “the plumber to call first.” The ads featured “real” plumbers who said, "It’s not good for us that it [Liquid Plumr] works, but it does work" and “It’s not a big job, but I’ve got to charge you for coming out there.” And, of course, the announcer reminded us that Liquid Plumr is “the plumber to call first.”

More people started thinking about plumbers when they had a clog and Liquid Plumr took over category leadership. When availability changed, market share changed.

S.C. Johnson, the manufacturer of Drano, was not about to let this situation continue. S.C. Johnson hired DDB to handle a number of brands, including Drano and, of course, DDB resigned the Liquid Plumr advertising account. Interestingly, S.C. Johnson asked DDB to correct the problem we had created. S.C. Johnson wanted us to reestablish Drano’s natural advantage in mental availability. We created an advertising campaign for Drano that placed the focus back on the drain and made sure no plumber was in sight. Our Drano spokesman, wearing a tie, was inside the drain pointing out the muck before Drano application and using the drain as a water slide after Drano application. S.C. Johnson liked the idea and spent behind it. Attention went back on the drain, Drano’s mental availability improved, and Drano’s market share went back on top.

Drain cleaner wars are essentially mental availability wars. A small change in mental availability can make a big change in market share.

Think of the option you recommend as a rock in the stream of consciousness or, more correctly, the stream of nonconsciousness. If the option is a large enough rock, sufficiently available, the target’s thoughts are interrupted by that option which, unbidden, pops into mind. The target won’t always choose the option you recommend, but greater availability gives you a much better chance of success.

When you are driving down the road and feeling hungry, McDonald’s pops in your head. You might not choose McDonald’s, but you have to decide not to.

Adjust accessibility. Make your recommended option more accessible and other options less so.

When we want to help someone, even help ourselves, lose weight, changing the mental availability of the options can be a rather painless approach. If the soft drinks, potato chips, and cookies are put away in the cabinet and what’s on the counter, available psychologically and physically, is a bowl of attractive fruit, we influence the outcome. When someone is looking for a snack, fruit won’t always be chosen, but by making fruit more mentally available and junk food less available, we’ve increased the chances that fruit will be picked.

Dr. Brian Wansink is a professor and director of Cornell’s Food and Brand Lab. He and his colleagues just completed their Syracuse Study.⁹ In the study, they photographed everything in the kitchens of 240 households and weighed the household members. He found that the typical woman who had soft drinks visible anywhere in her kitchen weighed 25 pounds more than her neighbor who didn’t have soft drinks visible. He also found that the typical woman who had fruit visible anywhere in her kitchen weighed 13 pounds less than the neighbor who didn’t. We can help control our weight by controlling the visibility of the options.

We can change behavior by changing circumstances instead of changing minds. If we make our preferred option more mentally available and make the other options less mentally available, our persuasion will be both more successful and easier to take.

When angling for a raise at work, we can do a few things to increase our mental availability and help our case. The boss will think more highly of and have more confidence in people who come to mind more easily. What can we do to come to mind more easily? We can increase our salience. We can dress a little more conspicuously or arrange our work area a little more distinctively. The expected fades into the background. In meetings we can pick a seat where the light is better, or pick a seat at the end of the table rather than at the side. We can stand when others are sitting or sit when others are standing. Even if we have nothing more to say at the meetings than we normally would, our contribution will feel greater. As a side benefit, everybody at the meeting will pay just a little bit more attention to what we do say.

Set the “anchor” near the desired option.

The boss trying to match us with an appropriate salary is a lot like a person trying to estimate the population of Milwaukee. It’s not easy to figure out the right answer. We would like the boss to be thinking about salaries anchored at the higher range analogous to the population of Chicago, rather than the lower range, analogous to the population of Green Bay. Let’s say we are working in a moderately sized city and we find information on the salaries of people working at similar positions in New York. The salaries in New York will almost certainly be higher. It wouldn’t hurt to pass that information on to the boss even if, when the time comes, we say we realize the cost of living in New York is higher. In any case, we want the boss adjusting down rather than adjusting up, because such adjustments are usually inadequate and we’re likely to end up in a better spot.

If we seek donations to a charitable cause, show prospective donors high levels first and let them adjust down. They’ll end up in a better place than if we start low.

When offering consumers a product range, we can focus on the high-end version of the brand even though few people may buy that version. Consumers will adjust downward, but they are more likely to end up where we would like.

Let’s say you have a new idea, one you’d like your colleagues to get behind. Don’t introduce your new idea in complete detail even if you have already worked out the details. Be patient. Name your new idea. Give people a chance to hear the name of the new idea for a few days before you spring the idea on them fully fleshed out. Take advantage of “mere exposure.” Hearing the name in advance, even if your colleagues aren’t really paying attention, will make them a little more receptive.

Aim for ubiquity. Never miss a chance to get your recommended option in front of your target. People favor the familiar.

If you are trying to help your spouse quit smoking, help him or her keep that quest front and center. Something as simple as small notes that say “Thanks for quitting” stuck in many unexpected places, like dashboards, mirrors, or underwear drawers, can keep the idea top-of-mind and increase chances for success. Better yet, Websites feature long lists of anti-smoking jokes. The jokes may not all be hilarious, but, if found in many, unexpected places, they can keep the idea of quitting close to mind and make success a little more likely.

Yes, the lizard is influenced by mental availability. But sometimes the all-out pursuit of availability causes bizarre and counterproductive attempts at persuasion. In 2004, Quiznos serenaded the brand and its sandwiches in its advertising with a tune from two singing, furry creatures that appeared, for all the world, to be rats or, at least, rat-like. Surely, the ad made the brand come more easily to mind. People were indeed talking about Quiznos’s advertising, but they were asking each other, “What were those things?” There are many other ways of being witty, clever, irreverent, and memorable. If the price of mental availability is associating the restaurant and its food with rodents, that price may be too high.

Association

An idea in our mind activates other associated ideas and each of these ideas activates still more ideas, just as words like “gray” and “Florida” activated the idea of elderly people moving slowly in the Bargh experiment. Associations occur even if we don’t want them to. We can’t stop association. Words call to mind other words, which call to mind memories and emotions and even cause bodily reactions like a smile or a grimace. The bodily reactions in turn reinforce the emotions, making the set of associations mutually reinforcing. This process takes place immediately, effortlessly, and largely outside of our awareness. Most of the ideas activated in our mind never make it to consciousness. The bulk of the work of associative thinking is hidden and nonconscious. We know much less about ourselves than we think we do.¹⁰

We weave a coherent story about our situation out of the ideas and feelings that association has activated. Ideas that haven’t been activated consciously or nonconsciously don’t enter into the story and, as a result, don’t influence the impressions and impulses that our automatic mental system generates.

Association is a simple and powerful force.

Semioticians (people who study systems of communication) and anthropologists discuss the difference between signs and symbols. The difference is association. A sign has an explicit and specific meaning.

We are all familiar with the sign telling us that smoking is prohibited. The sign carries with it few other associations.

The Statue of Liberty, on the other hand, is a symbol. Ask anyone in the United States what the Statue of Liberty means and they can go on and on. Ask 10 people and you are unlikely to get the same answer twice. The Statue of Liberty calls forth many emotional associations and each associated idea triggers other ideas. A symbol is a concept or figure that has little direct, explicit meaning, but is dense with associated meaning.

Symbols, through the power of association, inspire soldiers to risk their lives, incite religious conflict, and build commercial empires. We are all familiar with the logos of Apple, Nike, and Mercedes. We can see each in our mind’s eye and we automatically think of the qualities associated with each.

None of these symbols is powerful because of rational arguments made to the reflective mental system. These symbols derive their power from associations. And associations don’t require factual accuracy, just repeated pairings and apparent affiliation. The lizard, the nonconscious mental system, doesn’t analyze data. It experiences connections.

I’ve often wondered why political combatants don’t invest more in symbols to help further their policy aims. The set of laws, regulations, and rulings necessary to achieve those policy aims is often complex. But symbols that might represent those policy aims and motivate support could be simple, associational, and emotional. Symbols don’t require information or facts. Politicians can spare people that. Symbols require only the shared cultural meaning that is built from repeated poignant connections. Politicians should be better at that.

Let’s take Obamacare, Right to Life, and Freedom of Choice as three examples. Each idea is a bundle of rather complex policies. But each idea could be represented by a simple symbol that shortcuts communication, stimulates associations, and stirs emotions. Imagine a shield represents Obamacare (maybe standing for protection against ruinous medical costs). Imagine a seed beginning to sprout represents Right to Life. Imagine an open padlock represents Freedom of Choice. The specific figure that forms the symbol is not crucial. But the work a persuader does to attach associations to the symbol and give that symbol meaning is critical. The meaning won’t be the same for everyone. In fact, the meaning will probably be slightly different for everyone. Each person, at least each fan, can see in the symbol something that is important and motivating to him or her.

All concepts fall along a spectrum of meaning. Symbols, which have vague explicit meaning, but dense associational meaning, are at one end of the spectrum. Signs, which have precise explicit meaning and little associational meaning, are at the other end. Most concepts fall somewhere in between.

Ideas call to mind other ideas. Associations are inevitable. Fortunately, we can influence association. We can direct and enrich the associational meaning of a concept.

In persuasion, we enhance the associations of the behavior we are trying to encourage in a way that makes that behavior more attractive to our target.

Voting can become more appealing through association with other valued concepts like patriotism, power, independence, or fairness. Recycling can become more strongly associated with saving the earth or it can become more strongly associated with government efficiency. These associations can be built at the societal level or at a more personal level within the neighborhood or the family.

A friend once used simple association to persuade his son not to get an earring. He didn’t say he objected to the earring, but he cautioned his son about which ear he chose. My friend said he believed that the left ear indicated that the person was straight and the right ear signaled that the person was gay. Or was it the other way around? My friend said he couldn’t remember. That was enough. The association of a male earring with an easily misunderstood statement of sexual preference made the thought of an earring a lot less attractive. His son still has no earring.

Marketers and politicians know the power of association doesn’t depend on facts, just repeated parings. People infer association from observed juxtapositions.

Indecision is the most common mistake. Whether you are promoting a brand, soliciting donations for a cause, or just trying to get your kids to act differently, explicitly choose the qualities or the sort of people you would like to link to your recommended option. Associations will inevitably occur. You might as well pick the ones you want. Once chosen, repeatedly pair the option with those qualities or with that sort of people. Current factual accuracy is not the issue. You are creating a link, not documenting a link.

NRG Energy is a giant power company. And, according to Forbes, “NRG Energy is one of the nation’s biggest operators of carbon-belching power plants.”¹¹ But NRG is developing renewable energy resources and has committed to a 90-percent reduction in its carbon footprint by 2050.

NRG Energy would like to be associated not with the massive amounts of fossil fuels it currently burns, but with the green energy projects it has begun. Rather than wait until green energy becomes a bigger part of their business, NRG Energy would like to be thought of as a green energy company now. To accomplish its goal, NRG uses association in their online video. The video pairs NRG with people choosing a source of power for charging their cell phones—fossil fuel, solar, or wind. The video shows people preferring power sourced from solar and wind and the video goes on to say that NRG is changing its source of power in the same way.

If it follows through with its plans, someday, NRG will be a green energy company. Right now, NRG is not a green energy company. Through association, NRG can become today, in the minds of consumers, the company it hopes to be in the future.

August Busch III, head of Anheuser-Busch, brewer of Budweiser, Bud Light, and Michelob, intuitively understood and feared the power of association.

His competitor, Coors, had been available only west of the Mississippi. For eastern beer drinkers, Coors had the mystique of the inaccessible. When young men drove out West, they would often return with cases of the legendary and impossible-to-find Coors for their friends.

August Busch learned that Coors was planning to roll east of the Mississippi in a couple of years and he was worried about the impact Coors might have on his largest brand, Budweiser. Coors, brewed in Golden, Colorado, was associated with mountains and cowboys. Mountains in turn are associated with attractive ideas like cold, refreshment, nature, and purity. Cowboys call to mind masculinity and independence. Everyone had seen what the connection with cowboys had done for Marlboro. Mountains and cowboys were powerful associations that August Busch did not want to cede to Coors.

His response was to act before Coors rolled eastward and reposition Busch Bavarian Beer to blunt the Coors expansion. Even though Busch Bavarian Beer had no actual connection with the West, August Busch decided to associate Busch with Western mountains and cowboys so Coors would not have those associations all to itself.

Busch Bavarian had been a relatively little used brand in the Anheuser-Busch stable, with limited distribution. In its original incarnation, Busch Bavarian allowed Anheuser-Busch to sell off excess capacity at a discount.

August Busch dropped “Bavarian,” changing the name of the beer from “Busch Bavarian” to simply “Busch.” He had the can and label redesigned. Busch Bavarian graphics had featured the Alps. August Busch wanted the mountains on the label and can to look more like the Rockies.

When he met with the Busch brand team and us, the agency, August Busch insisted that all ads for Busch Beer contain three elements: cowboys, mountains, and the line “Head for the Mountains.”

August Busch broadened distribution of Busch Beer to cover the entire area of the Coors intended expansion.

In advance of the Coors expansion, Busch held “Mountain Man” promotions and hired Hoyt Axton to sing “Head for the mountains, the mountains of Busch.”

Coors still rolled eastward with some success, but its success was mitigated. As intended, Busch Beer muddied the Coors association with mountains and cowboys.

One of my first assignments in advertising was to answer a question about association. It came from the brand manager of Busch Beer. At that time, every ad featured a bit of a set up followed by the opening of a can of Busch. The sound made when the can was opened, with the help of the sound track, was an exaggeration of the brand name, “Busssssch.” At that sound, the advertising cut to an animal in the snow turning its head as if reacting to the can opening. The idea being that the opening of a can of Busch marked the transition from whatever you were doing to cold, mountain refreshment. The brand manager wanted to know which animals to use for the “head turn.” He felt the animal used should be associated with masculinity, because everything about the ad had to reflect the masculine image of the brand he was trying to create.

After some investigation in the literature and with consumers, I remember reporting that the gender of the animal was not what was most important in communicating masculinity. All an animal needs to communicate masculinity is size and aggressiveness. Large, aggressive animals are seen as masculine. Smaller, less-aggressive animals are seen as feminine. From that time on, the response to the can opening featured a horse rearing up in the snow. The horse had three things going for it. It was large. In rearing, it was aggressive. And, of course, a horse fits with cowboys.

Spirit Airline provides an example of an advertiser failing to take into account the associations that can sink its message. A big chunk of Spirit Airline’s business is flying people back and forth between where they normally live and sunny Florida. The massive BP oil spill in the Gulf in 2010 made many people rethink their Florida vacation. Spirit had a big idea: remind people that everything they like about Florida is still true of the Atlantic coast. Their ads promoted travel to Ft. Lauderdale with a photo of a beautiful woman in a bikini, slathered with sun tan lotion lying on the beach under the headline, “Check out the oil on our beaches.” In attracting people to Florida, did Spirit Airlines really want to reinforce an association between Florida beaches and oil? With a little work, the viewer understands the oil referred to is sun tan oil, not spilled crude. Encouraging people to dig a little deeper to understand an ad can be effective when the first meaning that comes to mind doesn’t make sense. But when the first meaning that comes to mind does make sense, spilled oil on beaches, people will look no further. The ads were clever, yes, but too clever.

Brand associations are powerful for good or for ill.