TRIANGULATION…Three Powers of Persuasion…Three ways to insure your message motivates your audience
Working in advertising for thirty years gave me plenty of opportunities to think about and read about the art of persuasion. Now that I’m a retired old man I’ve come to believe that just about everything you need is in Plato and Aristotle.
I’m not sure Plato would approve of my unsolicited endorsement. Plato was always wary of persuasion. He believed that the Sophists, the personal persuasion coaches of his day, claimed to show young people how to win in political and legal debate, no matter what the truth of the matter. Plato’s Socrates compares persuasion to cookery, serving up delicious but often unhealthy food. He believed Sophists were teaching people how to use flattery and high sounding phrases to distract people from the right things to think, feel, or do. For Plato, Sophists are scoundrels who pretend to know what they are talking about. They are like actors or magicians, expert in the arts of illusion. I suspect many people think the same of advertising folks like me.
POWER ONE: A GOOD REASON
Anytime there is an issue of choice, Plato believed that we should tell people the truth and recommend the best choice we can. We should not be tempting people to act against their own best interest. Indeed, Plato went so far as to ban not just the sophists but even the poets from his Republic. People who speak or write too well can mislead us. You can’t even trust Homer to tell you the truth about the gods. I guess Plato would ban most of us from Facebook.
However, even Plato was forced to recognize that it’s not always enough to present the logic, science or rationale. Even if we are experts in the choice or issue at hand, that expertise alone is sometimes insufficient to the task. The rhetorician Gorgias offered Socrates a compelling example. Georgias had a good friend who was very ill. A medical doctor knew exactly what was wrong with the friend and prescribed a medicine. The friend, however, was afraid of the medicine and refused to take it, putting his life at risk. The doctor asked Gorgias to talk to the friend. Gorgias succeeded, and the friend took the medicine and thrived. Gorgias asks Socrates, “Who cured my friend, the doctor or me?”
POWER TWO: TRUST
Well the answer is clearly both. The philosopher and the scientists may well be the closest things we have to rational or scientific experts in ethics and medicine. The doctor asked Gorgias to talk to the friend because he knew that Gorgias would know better how the friend thinks and makes decisions and how to help steer him in the right direction. The doctor understood the power of friendship.
Aristotle argues that beyond the rationale or logos of our arguments, our audience needs to trust us…as they would a friend. We need to have an ethos or character that the audience finds credible. They need a reason beyond our words to believe us.
Aristotle would agree that a con man can thrive by manipulating the truth, by the magic tricks of the illusion of language. We’ve all encountered a fast talker. While such con men may well succeed in putting one over on us once, we are unlikely to trust them ever again. They have to keep moving on.
If you do not keep your promise to pay me back a loan, I’m unlikely to offer you money again. Indeed, I’m more likely to warn others about you.
So, you have to work at developing an ethos or reputation for trust and expertise if you expect people to believe you. That’s why ad guys like me understand why KFC finds it easier to sell chicken than hamburgers. We call it “branding.” You may object that McDonald’s sells chicken…but only as long as it is in a hamburger bun. Forget the wings, ’til you get to Wingstop.
Now, if you have a good argument, or logos, and have projected a good character, or ethos, you are well on your way to persuasion. However, you’re still not done. But wait…there’s more.
You not only have to be an expert in what you are talking about and an expert projecting a trustworthy character, you also have to be an expert in understanding your audience…the people you want to persuade.
It’s not just a matter of choosing truth over lying. We need yet another truth: a truth about our audience that will connect directly with the truth we are selling. Finding the intersection between the two will be what Lisa Fortini Campbell famously called The Sweet Spot.
Assuming we know the truth of the choice we are advocating, we still have to find a way to make a motivating connection between that truth and the people we are trying to persuade.
Here’s where a little humility comes into play. Not everybody is persuasible. Once someone has already made a choice, they are less open to change because they have already invested time and effort into that choice. If they have not only made the choice but also experienced a positive result of some kind, they will be even less likely to change. In addition, if they have received such a positive result that they have become advocates for that choice, you’ll have even less of a chance of changing their mind. The chances get even lower when the stakes of the choice are high…life, death, love, success. When Aristotle talks about courage, he centers it between cowardice on one side and recklessness on the other. Wise commanders do not throw their armies against overwhelming forces. So too, if we want to change people’s minds, we have to start with the “easy to gets” the people looking to satisfy some desire. We do not waste time or money on the people with other or prilr commitments.
No doubt big data about behavior and attitudes can help us do that. Still, even that only takes us half way there. When we finally figure out how to identify and to connect with the people most likely to find our offers desirable, what are we going to do or say that will get them to do the right thing?
Aristotle tells us that we think, feel, and do things which we believe will make us happy by helping us lead a good life…a life not only of material pleasures, comforts and good fortune. For Aristotle, a flourishing and full life would also include intellectual, social, and spiritual satisfactions, further complemented by great friends and divine contemplation. Aristotle also reminds us that when we do anything in excess or extreme, we tend to get ourselves in trouble…personally and socially. If this sounds a bit like Maslow’s hierarchy, now you know where he filched it.
Aristotle provides insight into how to interpret all that big data. He observes that as we go through the different stages of life, our priorities change as well. We move from toys and games to school and peer competition, then to sex, drugs, and rock and roll, then to making a living, then to finding a partner, then to raising families, then to negotiating mid life crises driven by our success or failure, and then to the relief of retirement, and finally to aging and health issues…all the while trying to manage relationships..family, romance, work, and politics and even God. Life for everybody is complicated and hard.
POWER THREE: EMOTIONAL LEVERAGE
This takes us to Aristotle’s third factor Pathos: the emotional leverage that derives from the wishes and fears of our audience. We experience positive emotions and feelings like joy, confidence,and pride when our desires are satisfied. We endure negative emotions like sadness, anxiety, and anger when our desires are frustrated.
Hence, when we connect with people we must somehow show them how the thought, feeling or action that we are recommending will help satisfy their desires, fulfill their wishes, and allay their fears.
Many people believe that one of the greatest tv commercials ever made was I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing… which showed a group of young people in a beautiful natural setting, all singing together about how Coca Cola could bring harmony to the world. Absurd? A Lie! Plato was right. Arrest the copyriter. Well wait a minute. The key line in the song is: I’d like to buy the world a Coke and keep it company. Offering to buy someone a Coke is an act of sharing, an act of enjoying a little time together, the beginning of a conversation… If everybody could have this ideal attitude, well who knows… a challenge to the tribalism that continues to divide our worlds. And who wrote the book on Idealism if it wasn’t Plato? Coke is the essence of wishful thinking. What could be more real than that!?
Aristotle loved threes…I suspect because it takes at least three legs for just about anything to stand up firmly. The three persuasive powers of triangulation: the truth about the speaker, the truth about the choice, and the truth about the audience. When they all three truths triangulate …you’ve got a three-fer.
Why didn’t we learn this in school? Hey, can I buy you a Coke?
