- Inconvenience the audience by creating an impression of product scarcity.
It’s the famous change from “Call now, the operators are standing by”
to “If the line is busy, call again”, that greatly improved the call
volume by creating the impression that everybody else is trying to buy
the same product.
- Introduce herd effect in highly personalized form.
The hotel sign in the bathroom informed the guests that many prior
guests chose to be environmentally friendly by recycling their towels.
However, when the message mentioned that majority of the guests who
stayed in this specific room chose to be more environmentally conscious
and reused their towels, towel recycling jumped 33%, even though the
message was largely the same.
- Ads quoting negative behavior en masse reinforces negative behavior.
Petrified Forest National Park A/B tested two versions of a sign
imploring people not to steal pieces of petrified forest from the park.
One mentioned large amounts of petrified forest taken away on an annual
basis, the other one simply asked the visitors not to remove petrified
wood. The first one actually tripled the theft ratio as it showed
stealing petrified wood as something commonplace. Same effect was
observed after airing an ad that implored women to vote, but mentioned
that 22 million single women did not vote last year. That kind of
information actually portrays not voting as more socially acceptable.
'scientifically proven' is usually a synonym for 'lying' but it looks like a fun book...
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