Radio advertising that delivers
measurable results and profitable new customers

« Previous | Main | Next »

September 13, 2006

Radio Advertising, Influence, and Psychology

Radio advertising is all about influence. Of course, all advertising is about influence, but particularly in direct response advertising, you're trying to influence people to call and buy your product, or go to your seminar, or visit your web site, or go to a store and buy your product there.

That requires skillful wielding of influence.

We just returned from the Electronic Retailer's Association annual conference in Las Vegas where there were many seminars given by industry veterans about how to be successful in direct response marketing. They were all packed full of people hoping to hear the secrets of how to make lots of money very fast - from the people who had done it.

But one talk caught my eye. It was a 2 hour talk given by Dr. Robert Cialdini. Dr. Cialdini holds a PhD in Social Psychology and his area of research is ... influence. He has also authored a book on the topic, "Influence - Science and Practice".

I have long been confused about why there isn't more interaction between the fields of advertising and psychology. I have my suspicions about why this is so, but nonetheless I was excited that Dr. Cialdini had been invited to this industry conference and decided to attend it.

His talk lived up to my expectations. He spoke of the "practice of influence" and focused on a particular kind of influence he calls "compliance". Within that arena, he presented the "six universal principles of influence that significantly increase the percentage of time you'll receive a "yes". I'll go into those in another post because I actually found them of secondary interest.

The most interesting thing about his talk was that, in contrast to the other seminars that were packed with people hoping to learn the secrets to making millions through direct response success, Dr. Cialdini's talk was only about 25% full. This, in spite of the fact that the information he presented was relevant to every business at that conference, likely in multiple ways. The irony here is that Dr. Cialdini actually revealed more true and actionable "secrets" about how to make money in direct response than the "gurus" in the other seminars. Gurus don't reveal their secrets - they tell you "what you have to do is X". But they don't tell you "and how you do that is y".

Posted by Brett Astor at 11:18 AM | Permalink