Influence and the Beholder
If you ask the pundits about generating market frenzy (read madness) in your favor, they’ll give you various lists of things you need. One item is common on most of these lists: a great product or service. Of course, “great” here means anything that the crowd will love madly. So that item is not much help. The more interesting tip lists offer a number of psychological items.
Robert Cialdini
Robert Cialdini wrote a deservedly popular book called “Influence” that expounds on a list of crowd-influencing items:
- Reciprocation
- Commitment and Consistency
- Social Proof
- Liking
- Authority
- Scarcity
The most interesting aspect of this list is its pure subjectivity. There is no direct mention of the object (product, service, etc.) that one is trying to make popular. The only indirect reference is in “Scarcity,” but Cialdini makes it clear that he understands the scarcity doesn’t need to be real.
At this point, one may be skeptical. After all don’t popular people or companies create products and services that are great in some objective way? Aren’t Toyota’s cars better built? Aren’t Apple’s machines more elegant? Well, ask yourself this question: have the crowds always preferred cars that are better-built; have they always preferred machines that are more elegant?
