The Power of Logic 2

If you haven’t read my earlier post called ‘The Power of Logic’, I strongly suggest that you do exactly that before proceeding further.

Ok, what is this logic after all? Logic is the set of rules by which one can formulate convincing arguments. It is the science of argument. When presenting an argument, one takes a set of premises that are proven to be true, and uses logic to show how they prove a certain foregone conclusion. It is helpful to know that this type of argument is not just a presentation of facts, but is, rather, an effort to prove a conclusion that was previously reached. (If you are not convinced, please read Blink! This Gladwell guy better pay me for this free publicity ;-)

So what’s the point? Well, the point is this - The human mind is wired(or rather educated) in such a way that it believes in logic so much so that even extremely irrational stuff when presented in a logical manner will be accepted as true. Marketers should begin to exploit this basic weakness of the human mind.

Not convinced? Let me give you some basically irrational stuff that sounds logical.

1. More people die in hospitals than anywhere else. Therefore, hospitals are dangerous.
2. 97% percent of the polled people like this brand. (Yeah, the old trick. I never tell them that I polled only 3 people. Don’t ask me what 97% of 3 is ‘coz 93.5% of all statistics are cooked up on the spot including this one :) Gotcha.)
3. Or the classical Indian consumer logic, “Don’t buy that car, my friend has one and it continuously gives him trouble”

So far so good. The problem comes in implementing this new found knowledge in real life marketing communication. How can I tell my audience what I want to say and convince them to act as I tell them to?

Before answering that let me compare two types of communications presently bombarding the consumers. One is what I call the emotional trap promotion wherein the marketer says “Buy 5 of my products and get a chance to win a date with Aishwarya Rai”. With all due respects to Aish and the marketer, what do they take us customers to be? Nincompoops? Of course there will be some nincompoops who fall for this trap dreaming about the date and what will happen after that ;) The car ads we talked about in my earlier post belong to this category.

The other type of communication is the logical trap. Here the marketer says “If you buy 5 of my products, you save Rs.50”. The question the consumer has is whether he really requires 5 of your products in the first place? But invariably many consumers do fall for this trap(Don’t ask me for the statistics. You know that I’ll provide them ;) Most sales promotions fall in this category.

Although the second model is close to what I call logic marketing, it is too simplistic. In the logical marketing framework, marketers need to develop a sequence of logical steps in the communication like the proof of a mathematical theorem. There should be clarity in the message and continuity in the communication right from the first ad the customer sees to the point of purchase(sales pitch) and beyond. More on this frame work in my future posts.

I believe that in the future, advertisements will be so effective that if a rational person who has the resources to buy the product sees them, he will go buy the product. This I believe will be achieved through a communication frame work which has emotion as its core and logic and persuasion as the outer layers which will convince him about the product.

This of course does not mean lying. I leave you with two great statements from two people I adore.

David Ogilvy said: “Never write an advertisement which you wouldn’t want your family to read. You wouldn’t tell lies to your own wife. Don’t tell them to mine.”

And Scott Adams says - “For companies to survive, they will have to become experts at confusing the public into thinking their generic products are better than their competitors’ generic products.”