*by John Forde, whose free weekly e-Letter, “The Copywriter’s Roundtable” is definitely worth subscribing to.
Do this: Write down the word “baby.”
Now, how does that word make you feel?
Try it with another baggage-friendly word like “family” or “war.” Or any other phrase that gets your inner emotional stew simmering.
Done? Good. No, dear reader, you haven’t stumbled into a 1970′s sensitivity training group.
There will be no hugs here. And no massaging your chakras (I mean, really… who does that in public?)
Rather, I’m just trying to warm you up for today’s issue. See, I’m still reading that book I mentioned, “Made to Stick.” (Okay — listening to it as an audio book, during the morning run. But in print or audio, I recommend you get a copy too.)
And this morning, the book gave me a shocker worth sharing.
So now that I’ve got you “primed” to receive (I’ll explain what I mean in just a second, let’s begin…
Which Works Best, Stats or Stories?
Carnegie-Mellon, says the book, did a study. They invited participants in to take a survey. The topic wasn’t important — something about tech products — but what mattered was the small payout.
Each participant got paid with five $1 bills.
They also got an unexpected letter and an empty envelope. The letter asked for donations for an international charity called “Save the Children.” But different groups got different letters.
One letter dripped with grim statistics. In one African country, it said, 3.2 million stand on the brink of starvation. In another, 2.4 million have no easy access to clean water. In a third, almost 4 million need emergency shelter. Each problem was gigantic and serious.
The second letter had only a story. “Rokia,” it said, “is a 7-year-old girl from Mali, Africa. She’s desperately poor and faces a threat of severe hunger or even starvation. Her life will be changed for the better as a result of your financial gift. With your support, and the support of other caring sponsors, Save the Children will work with Rokia’s family and other members of the community to help feed her, provide her with education, as well as basic medical care and hygiene education.”
Which worked better?
Now, dear reader, I know your momma raised no dummies. You’re going to tell me that the Rokia letter cleaned up. And you’d be right.
On average, Rokia’s letter took in $2.38 in donations from the test group. The stat-soaked letter took in only an average of $1.14.
But that’s not the big surprise, is it? No, of course not. (What kind of storyteller do you think I am, after all?)
See, the study didn’t stop there…
How Less Really Can Mean a Lot More
The researchers then called in a third group. You’ll get paid for taking this survey, they said again.
Only this time, instead of giving the participants only one letter with their cash — everybody got both the story AND the stats together.
Great, you might say.
Heart AND head. A real one-two punch. Wouldn’t that net you both the bleeding hearts and the brainiacs, all in one sweep?
As it turns out, no.
Not only did combining both approaches fail to gas up the giving engines… it doused the pitch-power of the story-only approach with ice water.
The combo group, on average, gave almost a dollar LESS than the story-only group alone.
Just $1.43.
Isn’t that amazing?
I thought so.
But even more amazing was the last part of the experiment. This time, just to make sure of their conclusion, the researchers invited in a fourth group.
This time everybody would only get the stronger Rokia letter. But beforehand, they would complete an exercise.
Half the group would finish some simple math problems. The other half would answer a word challenge like the one I gave you at the start of this issue: Give word, write down feelings.
What happened?
Incredibly, the group that got “primed” with the emotional exercise gave an almost equal $2.34… but the analytically “primed” group AGAIN gave less, for an average of just $1.26.
These were unrelated calculations. But somehow just putting on a thinking cap was working like one of those tinfoil hats that crackpots wear to block out alien mind-reading waves (I’ve got to get me one of those).
Nearest the researchers could figure is that, while analytical thinking can shore up beliefs or activate a reader’s capacity for focus, it actually stymies action.
To get someone to act, they need to go beyond beliefs to the feelings they HOLD about those beliefs. Feelings inspire action.
And I don’t just mean that in the “touchy-feely let’s all hug a kitten and light a vanilla candle” kind of way. All persuasion works best when it focuses most on core emotions, not cerebral abstractions.
I know this charity, “Save the Children,” pretty well by the way. My wife and I have a Danish friend who works for them.
She’s a talented photographer.
Whenever there’s a crisis, her boss dips into the funds and puts our friend and her camera on a plane.
Burned out post-war zones, post-tsunami and typhoon disaster areas, dirt poor African villages — she’s been there, capturing a personal, eyewitness view.
Why?
Because in the charities well-tested experience, those individual on-the-scene images raise more money than a boatload of shocking statistics ever could.
I know that I’m going to try to work more of the “story of one” effect into my future promos. Maybe you should too.
