I had the privilege of serving jury duty last month. In addition to a firsthand lesson in the judicial system, it was a great laboratory for analyzing different communication styles—in particular, styles of persuasion. The work of a prosecutor in a courtroom is to persuade a jury of the guilt of the defendant beyond a reasonable doubt. In the confines of the courtroom, with the jury highly focused on evidence and testimony, the effort to convince (or rather convict) requires comprehensive details.
That’s not the case, however, when it comes to marketing and political persuasion. Consumers and voters are busy and overwhelmed with information. They tend to rely on their own ability to judge the plausibility of a company’s or politician’s promise.
Global warming, for example, is a topic that is redirecting tens of billions of dollars, shaping international relations, and making or breaking the careers of politicians around the globe. Yet only a handful of people have the remotest idea how to access, read and interpret the scientific evidence supporting the concept of man-made climate change. The rest of us are left to determine if the whole thing seems plausible or not.
Thus proponents of preventing global warming don’t have to prove man-made climate change to get a response. They only need to make it seem plausible: like Al Gore’s soothing yet cautionary voice intoning over a film clip of an iceberg disintegrating into the ocean: the plausibility of global warming is achieved. An Inconvenient Truth presented enough facts and figures to create plausibility; but in fact, the viewer has no time to evaluate that data or compare it to other data that contradicts Gore’s conclusions.
While plausibility alone would fail in the courtroom, it is sufficient for most marketers, activists and politicians. That’s because consumers and voters possess a built-in plausibility meter. We hear an idea presented, and we immediately begin processing that information for plausibility. We are one-man/one-woman juries rendering multiple verdicts a day. We don’t have time to listen to vast amounts of testimony and evidence. Instead, we check our internal plausibility meters. We’re quite confident in our ability to judge the plausibility of a marketing or political claim.
Think for a moment about these statements:
- We have only 11 years of oil left in the world.
- Brand name pharmaceuticals are safer than generics.
- Coors beer is brewed from pure Rocky Mountain spring water.
- News media bias favors Barak Obama over John McCain.
You really don’t have the ability or time to validate those statements. Yet your plausibility meter was already working before you finished reading the list.
So what’s the lesson to marketers and communicators?
First of all, you don’t have to expend precious marketing capital proving something is true, if plausibility is sufficient.
Second, plausibility requires communicating to the hearts, not just the minds of your audience. A heart full of emotion usually trumps a head full of facts.
Third, plausibility is aided by visuals, viz Al Gore’s iceberg.
And fourth, plausibility is augmented by testimonials or endorsements, celebrity and otherwise.
Plausibility is a powerful thing. Like dynamite, regardless of who’s handling it, it’s powerful nonetheless. It can be leveraged equally by good organizations and bad ones. Regretfully, it is skillfully utilized by hate groups and dictators. Thankfully it is also used as a communications shortcut to move people to action for good causes.
