Hello! Here I am again after a long time of a huge creative block. Today, I am ready to get back behind my laptop and write about my favourite PR-topics, but this time in english.
A while ago, I had the oppertunity to attend an expert class given by Koen Thewissen, strategic communications consult at We Are Daniel. One of my favourite agency's in Belgium. Why? Because they are specialised in cognitive psychology, choice architecture, framing, nudging and behavioural design. My favourite 'tricks' when it comes to creating succesful PR-campaigns.
Biases?
These "tricks" I'm talking about are biases. But what are biases? They are systematic errors taking place in the brain when making a decision and/or judgement. These errors take place in system 1 of our brain and handles 95% of our decision making.
Want to know more about how our brain works while making decision? I really suggest reading Daniel Kahneman's "Thinking fast and slow"
Koen talked about the famous "ingroup - outgroup" bias and how we can "pr the climate". In this blogpost I'm going to talk about this topic and other biases I learned from his expert class.
1. Ingroup - outgroup bias
In our class, Koen discussed the ingroup - outgroup bias used in campaigns by famous people like Donald Trump. This bias makes our brain divide the world in good and bad. Think about your first day at school: your brain immediately divides your classmates in people you like and have the same characteristics as you and people that don't match your personality and mark them as "bad".
How to use it
I'm not a fan of Donald Trump but he does know how to use cognitive biases in his campaigns. By ensuring that a large proportion of Americans identify with him and reinforcing this with the caps of Make America Great Again, you create an enormous "us and them" feeling. By using his language and often mentioning that what he does is good and labelling the others as "bad", people are more likely to want to associate with the "good" group.
2. Framing
When it comes to framing, you need to make sure not to use negative words in your campaigns. Sentences like "zero sugar", "zero waste" , "no poverty" all use negative frames and people's brain doesn't pick up those words.
Try using more positive words while communicating towards your target audience. Use langauge that makes people enthousiast, rather than pessimistic. Try to do research about what certain words triggers in peoples brains. For example: when talking about "sustainability" people often think about "expensive" and that's a negative thought we don't want to create in our potential customers brain.
3. Social proof
Social proof is a bias where you do certain things that everyone else marks marks as "good". Here, you focus on what goes right, rather than what goes wrong. In other words, people tend to only listen to positive stated "rules" or what they should do instead of negative or what they shouldn't do.
Think about campaigns about drinking and driving. Sentences like "Be an example and drive sober" have a much more impact than sentences like "don't drink and drive" because it's formulated with a positive note.
4. Loss aversion
People are not willing to give something if they don't receive double the amount back.
Koen talked about how he worked for a campaign that told people in Belgium not to drive Diesel cars in the city anymore. People were furious about this at first but when they told them this law will improve their air quality, they immediately reacted much more positive.
5. The paradox of choice
"The more choice we have, the less choice we make, so make sure the first choice is the easiest."
According to thedecisionlab, the definition goes as follows: The paradox of choice stipulates that while we might believe that being presented with multiple options actually makes it easier to choose one that we are happy with, and thus increases consumer satisfaction, having an abundance of options actually requires more effort to make a decision and can leave us feeling unsatisfied with our choice.
Learning to choose is hard. Learning to choose well is harder. And learning to choose well in a world of unlimited possibilities is harder still, perhaps too hard.
– Barry Schwartz in his book The Paradox of Choice 1
These were only 5 biases from all the 180 (!!!) cognitive biases you can use for a succesful PR-campaign. Do you want me to write about other biases in the future? Let me know in the comments!
See you soon!
xoxo
Celeste