Start With Why

the rebate, or who never cash the rebate check they receive. That’s called slippage.
    For businesses, the short-term benefits of rebates and other manipulations are clear: a rebate lures customers to pay full price for a product that they may have considered buying only because of the prospect of a partial refund. But nearly 40 percent of those customers never get the lower price they thought they were paying. Call it a tax on the disorganized, but retailers rely on it.
    Regulators have stepped up their scrutiny of the rebate industry, but with only limited success. The rebate process remains cumbersome and that means free money for the seller. Manipulation at its best. But at what cost?

Fear
    If someone were to hold up a bank with a banana in his pocket, he would be charged with armed robbery. Clearly, no victim was in any danger of being shot, but it is the belief that the robber has a real gun that is considered by the law. And for good reason. Knowing full well that fear will motivate them to comply with his demands, the robber took steps to make his victims afraid. Fear, real or perceived, is arguably the most powerful manipulation of the lot.
    “No one ever got fired for hiring IBM,” goes the old adage, describing a behavior completely borne out of fear. An employee in a procurement department, tasked with finding the best suppliers for a company, turns down a better product at a better price simply because it is from a smaller company or lesser-known brand. Fear, real or perceived, that his job would be on the line if something went wrong was enough to make him ignore the express purpose of his job, even do something that was not in the company’s best interest.
    When fear is employed, facts are incidental. Deeply seated in our biological drive to survive, that emotion cannot be quickly wiped away with facts and figures. This is how terrorism works. It’s not the statistical probability that one could get hurt by a terrorist, but it’s the fear that it might happen that cripples a population.
    A powerful manipulator, fear is often used with far less nefarious motivations. We use fear to raise our kids. We use fear to motivate people to obey a code of ethics. Fear is regularly used in public service ads, say to promote child safety or AIDS awareness, or the need to wear seat belts. Anyone who was watching television in the 1980s got a heavy dose of antidrug advertising, including one often-mimicked public service ad from a federal program to combat drug abuse among teenagers: “This is your brain,” the man’s voice said as he held up a pristine white egg. Then he cracked the egg into a frying pan of spattering hot oil. “This is your brain on drugs.... Any questions?”
    And another ad intended to scare the hell out of any brash teenager: “Cocaine doesn’t make you sexy . . . it makes you dead.”
    Likewise, when politicians say that their opponent will raise taxes or cut spending on law enforcement, or the evening news alerts you that your health or security are at risk unless you tune in at eleven, both are attempting to seed fear among voters and viewers, respectively. Businesses also use fear to agitate the insecurity we all have in order to sell products. The idea is that if you don’t buy the product or service, something bad could happen to you.
    “Every thirty-six seconds, someone dies of a heart attack,” states an ad for a local cardiac specialist. “Do you have radon? Your neighbor does!” reads the ad on the side of a truck for some company selling a home-pollution-inspection service. And, of course, the insurance industry would like to sell you term life insurance “before it’s too late.”
    If anyone has ever sold you anything with a warning to fear the consequences if you don’t buy it, they are using a proverbial gun to your head to help you see the “value” of choosing them over their competitor. Or perhaps it’s just a banana. But it works.

Aspirations
    “Quitting smoking is the easiest thing I’ve ever done,” said Mark Twain. “I’ve done it hundreds of times.”
    If fear motivates us to move away from something horrible, aspirational messages tempt us toward something desirable. Marketers often talk about the importance of being aspirational, offering someone something they desire to achieve and the ability to get there more easily with a particular product or service. “Six steps to a happier life.” “Work those abs to your dream dress size!” “In