What if you could wave a magic wand and get people to do what you want them to do?
Just let that sink in for a minute.
If you had that magic wand, would you use it?
Well, here it is: Crowd power.
Crowd power is the magic wand that enables us to get other people to do what we want.
People do what other people do. It’s why we pick a crowded restaurant, where we have to wait for a table, over the empty restaurant next door.
Robert Cialdini of Arizona State University, author of the best-seller Influence, did an experiment that demonstrates the power of the crowd.
In a San Diego suburb, Cialdini’s crew visited households with signs urging residents to save energy, for one of four reasons: save money, save the planet, save your grandchildren, and “because your neighbors are doing it.”
Then the team monitored energy usage in those households. They saw a decrease in usage only in the households that got the message “because your neighbors are doing it.” (Read about it in the New York Times.)
I know what you’re thinking, because I thought it too. “Yes, other people, the vast herd of humanity, just follow the crowd. I don’t. I make my own decisions. So do the discerning clients, patrons, and donors I’m trying to reach. Crowd power works on the unwashed masses, but not on us.”
Cialdini figured that’s what we would think, so he investigated. After observing which of the four messages actually influenced their behavior, researchers asked those very households which of the four messages they thought would influence their behavior. (The Times story doesn’t report this part. Try the Freakonomics podcast.)
“Because your neighbors are doing it” came in dead last. People didn’t believe that message would influence their behavior – even though, in the case of one out of four of them, it already had. Meanwhile, the other three messages – save money, save the planet, save the children – had no effect, even though respondents said that those messages would influence them more than crowd power would.
Crowd power is a huge influence on our actions. Cialdini points out that it’s an adaptive behavior. We save brain power by using the decisions other people have already made to guide our actions.
What does this mean for your communications?
Honestly, I’m still working out the answer to that question. Crowd power is a new concept for me – or, rather, one I thought I’d left behind when I graduated from high school. I’m still trying to convince myself that I, like the rest of the human beings on the planet, am profoundly influenced by what the people around me do.
However, I don’t have a lot of trouble believing that you are a herd animal.
The people with whom you and I need to communicate? Them, too. Herd animals, easily swayed to go along with the crowd.
(If you don’t mind my waxing philosophical for a minute: I don’t think our susceptibility to crowd power is necessarily a bad thing. The uniquely American notion of stubborn individuality gets us into all kinds of trouble, personally and collectively. When it comes down to it, I think that choices made on the basis of what other people think are at least as healthy – for me, for you, for the planet, and for the children – as choices made on the basis of what I think.)
As I wrap my head around the concept, I’m thinking of ways in which we can harness crowd power to do some real good in the world. We could:
- Build annual fundraising letters around crowd appeal. A big part of the message would be how many people have donated already and how much they’ve given.
- Create a sense of urgency for event registrations and any action that has a specific date attached: We’ve been overwhelmed by the response! Only a few seats left! (Actually, for-profit marketers have been using this tactic forever, and wise nonprofits have adopted it as well.)
- Pick different photos. Maybe close-ups of happy clients or patrons aren’t the only option. Maybe we should have a wide-angle shot of a lot of happy clients or of all the volunteers who have been helping them, all in one big crowd.
- Try web counters. Your site could display a running tab of how many people have donated, volunteered, purchased, registered, signed up for your e-letter, or anything else you might want to influence people to do.
- Your response here. Let’s put some crowd power to work on the question: How will you use crowd power to help you do more good work?