Facts Don't Change Minds. Here's What Does.

The JCPenney disaster: When facts meet worldviews

Why changing minds is almost impossible

Confirmation bias and reactance in action

Step 1: Identify what they already believe

Step 2: Attract believers, not skeptics

Step 3: Convert the ambivalent with choice

The Korean War micro-commitment case study

Reaching detractors through distraction

Louis: What happens if you take three struggling freelance marketers, lock them in a 17th century cottage and don’t let them leave until we fix their businesses? In August, I rented an old cottage in rural Ireland and invited copywriter Rob E. Commerce, designer Laura and book coach Vicky. Three freelancers desperate to stand the fuck out. And over two days I ripped everything apart. Their offers, their messaging, their branding, their legion to find what was really holding them back. This is the concept of a new YouTube channel that I’m launching. You can watch the first episode for free right now. It’s half an hour long. It’s supposed to be entertaining as well as practical. I hope you’ll enjoy watching it. So please set half an hour aside to watch it around your morning coffee, breakfast, lunch break, or on the bus or at the gym. Whatever. The link to Access this new YouTube channel is in the episode Show Notes. I really, really appreciate you taking the time to watch it and then, you know, the usual to like it, comment to share, talk about it around you. If you like it. Thank you so much. And welcome to another episode of everyone hates marketers.com the no fl actionable marketing podcasts for people Sick of Marketing Bullshit. I’m your host, Louis Vonier. After four years, 175 episodes recorded, 9,625 minutes of no bullshit content published, and 1 million plus downloads reached, I felt it was time to shake things up a bit. You see, I want to help you radically stand out because I firmly believe it’s the only way for you to succeed without being marketing bullshit. So moving forward, each episode is going to be around 20 minutes long. Each episode is going to be super practical where I’m going to teach you one way to radically stand out that you can apply to your business today. I’m going to use snippets of past interviews, lessons I’ve learned from my own experience, and plenty of concrete examples. Oh, and one last thing. I’m also turning each of those episodes into the only newsletter focusing on differentiation and positioning so you can read at your own pace and remember the concept I’m teaching. If it’s of interest, I hope you’ll sign up today on everyone hatesmarketers.com I’ll also notify you when I launch new stuff and products and you can win rewards for referring other mavericks to the newsletter like branded cups and T shirts and posters and private group coaching and plenty of other nice little surprises. All right, onto the podcast. I interviewed Seth Godin twice on this podcast, once at the very start of my podcast journey Should I say in 2017 and the second time in early 2020 after the release of his book, this Is Marketing. Before I jump into the topic of this episode, have a listen to this moment between Seth Gunning and I. So in your book, this Is Marketing, you’re telling an interesting story of Ron Johnson, who was hired as the CEO of JCPenney, right? Which for people who are not living in the U.S. it’s an American department store chain. And one of his first actions was to stop the constant stream of discounts and discounting and crazy sales that the store was pitching to customers. Can you tell me, once he did that, what happened next?

Sean D’Souza: Well, before I tell you that, let me tell you what J.C. penney was like. J.C. penney was one of the original discounters. The guy who started it, his name was actually Penny, his middle name was Cash. And their whole model was. You could get pretty decent stuff for much less money. That was their. What they stood for. And over the years, they were always in the mall near Sears. They differentiated themselves and people like Sears by constantly having coupons and percentage sales and savings sales and clearance sales, meaning that shopping at JCPenney was more like a sport. Okay, so with that background, Ron Johnson, who invented the Apple Store, right. Think about the Apple Store, shows up at JC Penney as the most successful retailer of his generation and instantly gets rid of all the sales, all the discounts. He says, this is disrespectful. We’re going to give you the dignity of knowing that when you shop at Penny’s, the price is the price, and you don’t have to worry that someone else is getting a better deal. You don’t have to worry the price is going to be cheaper tomorrow. I’m treating you with respect. And within a year, he had destroyed the entire chain, and it will never recover. People stopped shopping at JCPenney.

Louis: So we’re talking about a drop of 50% of sales. Like drastic changes, right?

Sean D’Souza: Yeah. I mean, their stock went to almost as low as it can go. And in the middle of the retail apocalypse, to lose that much momentum all at once, it’s over.

Louis: So you mentioned, when you talk about the history of JCPenney a bit, you mentioned something interesting, and you basically gave the answer to the question, which is going to. JCPenney was like a sport, right? And like any sport, only a certain number of people would be interested in it or even play it. And what was the sport you’re talking about here?

Sean D’Souza: Well, so I believe the worldview of the typical JCPenney shopper and we know their demographics. Their demographics are household income of $20,000 to $50,000 at the bottom end of the American household income scale. We know that these are not people who are showing up at the Met Museum Gala. They are scraping by. And they’re not what a New Yorker would say is stylish, right? That what you’re able to buy there are clothes that aren’t particularly edgy. But. And it’s a big but. Shopping at JCPenney represented a chance to beat the system. To put in the thing you have time to get, the thing you don’t have, which is status. That what you were able to do is if you were good at shopping at pennies, you could win. And if you won, you would get something that was in short supply in your life. Was that feeling of superiority over the system?

Louis: Interesting, isn’t it? So if you don’t understand the game your customers are playing, if you don’t understand their worldview, their belief, what they believe, what they want, it’s almost impossible to radically stand out. Unless, of course, you get quite lucky. It’s impossible to radically stand out because you need to understand their worldview in order to be able to sell stuff to them that matches their worldview. And so you’ve probably faced that problem before. You may have a product or service and you want to sell to them, but you’re facing a lot of objections. You’re facing folks telling you that they don’t really believe it’s going to help them. You might be selling like a PR service, and people might say that PR doesn’t work anymore. It’s only about digital marketing now and nonsense like that. Or you might want to try to sell, like, customer interview services and people telling you that they don’t believe that customers will tell you the truth. There’s no point interviewing them that you know better anyway. And so when you’re faced with that type of problem, it’s very difficult to wrap your head around. We want to change people’s minds desperately because. Because if only they understood what you were selling, if they only they understood the goal that you can help them reach and the problem you can help them solve. If they only understood that PR services are actually super useful for that type of industry. If only they understood that. Actually interviewing customers is extremely powerful. But it seems like it’s very difficult to convince them, if not almost impossible. They’re stuck in their way. So we desperately try to convince people to buy, try to change their mind. You might try to use, like, slide decks and Very clever sales pitches and spreadsheets and marketing campaigns telling them, look, you’re wrong to think this way, like there is another way. Like PR is not gone. And you’re trying to face those objections heads on. It might become so frustrating, in fact, that you might also say, hey, you’re actually wrong. You’re actually wrong to think this way. You need to think this way instead. You might actually lose a lot of money if you use this particular strategy and whatnot. You might spend a lot of money and energy on that particular aspect, trying to convince folks to listen to you, to believe what you already believe, to buy your stuff, if only they understood this, the power that it had. So what you’re facing right now, the fact that it’s so difficult to change people’s mind, is something that is known as confirmation bias. And Richard shorten, behavioral psychologist, explained what that is. It’s the idea that people are very good at maintaining their existing point of view. For example, if you dislike a brand and you hear a message to them, your brain can generate counter argument after counter argument which maintains its existing point of view. It just doesn’t agree with the new information. This bias leads to what’s called reactance, which is the inverse behavior you really want in the first place. In psychology, reactance is known as when a person feels that someone or something is taking away their choices or limiting the range of alternatives. So when you desperately try to change people’s mind and tell them to do something in particular, to say, you must use our product, you must understand, it’s so helpful. Not only are they generating counter arguments after counter arguments in their head, because that’s what the brain is made for. But they will also feel like you’re threatening their choice and their freedom of decisions and choices, which is not something you want either. Even though you feel like they are stuck in their habits and status quo, they are quite happy to be there. I have bad news for you. It’s almost impossible to change people’s mind. The only thing we can seek to try to do is let them self persuade themselves. Meaning that the persuader, the person who’s gonna persuade them, is themselves, not you. You are the catalyst for self persuasion. And that’s a very strong concept, isn’t it? First, identify what they believe. Identify what the customers you seek to serve actually believe. Fear. What is their worldview? What is the game they are trying to play? And remember this example early on from JCPenney. Step two is then to attract people who already believe what you believe, who have a self story that matches yours. And that’s something that so many of us tend to forget. We are so afraid that the market we seek to attract is too small, that we desperately want to attract more people and to grow it. And so we try desperately to reach everyone who. Who might have the money to buy from us, who might fit the demographic that we are thinking they fit. And by doing so, we try to attract people who don’t believe what we believe already. Instead of trying to change people’s mind and trying to desperately convince people who don’t believe what you believe, find people who already believe what you believe. Everyone hates marketers. The podcast and the brand is kind of an example of that. I’m not trying to convince people who are practicing marketing bullshit day in, day out to sign up and to change their way. I’m here to talk to you because you already believe that. That’s already your worldview. You might have been overly exposed to marketing bullshit. You might be a copywriter working with clients who telling you to do stuff you don’t agree with. You’ve been in business for a long time, or maybe just part of your culture or your family upbringing or your belief system from a young age that you don’t want to sell unethically. And so this is the people I’m seeking to serve. And I’m not trying desperately to change other people’s mind. Step three is to try to attract folks who are ambivalent. They don’t necessarily believe what you believe, but they also don’t necessarily disagree with it. A nice way to start with that is to find a common ground. Find out what they want, find out their core objective in life, their goal, their pain. Go back to that. Instead of thinking of your solution first so that you have a common understanding of saying, okay, you want to grow your business. And I know that PR might not be the thing that you think of first, but let me tell you why it might be interesting for you. So that’s a nice way to start, right? You start with a common ground, but that starts with empathy. That starts with understanding customers very well, like I described at the start. Then, for the ones who don’t care, you can give them a choice. And I think this is why content marketing and the Internet in general is so powerful for folks, because they have the choice finally to inform themselves, to learn, to educate themselves before taking a decision. And that gives them the choice to say, hey, we want to go with you and not with them. And yes, you are not in control of that process that much because People want to feel like they are in control of their own life and their own decisions. Like I mentioned before, develop a way for people to inform themselves and have a choice between different options, have a choice to contact you if they want to, but have a choice to say no if they don’t want to. Let people create their own options once you find the common ground, once you give them choices, you can also let them come up with their own conclusion by building tools and processes that help them do that. This is why quizzes are very interesting, or questionnaires or audits where you basically let them understand the problems they have and also self diagnose and self create their own options. It works really well in team teams or with customers where you lay the problem and the diagnosis, but then let them come up with the solutions themselves. Chances are they would be way more willing to develop that and go for that because they came with it themselves and they didn’t feel like their freedom of decisions and choices have been compromised. Another advice there is to use social proof, showing other people’s story, showing other people’s successes, using the solution and the method you want to sell. That works really well when you are trying to cross the chasm, moving beyond early adopters who are seeking the new and the shiny to the early majority who are seeking a bit more trust and proof. And then finally, for people ambivalent, something that works quite well as well is the foot in the door principle, which is basically this idea of doing micro commitments, letting people commit to something tiny like signing up to the newsletter, and then slowly building up a commitment to buying a product if that’s helpful to them. In the book the Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini, there is a passage that I found extremely interesting. It’s a bit gruesome because it’s about war, but I think it illustrates perfectly the micro commitment side of things. So it was during the Korean War where many American soldiers found themselves captured by the Chinese. And a lot of American prisoners after the war came back to the US and what they were super surprised about is to see so many of those American prisoners who had turned against America in some way, shape or form. The Chinese camps were not using necessarily torture to get compliance from people. Instead they were asking them to make elementary, very tiny, but frequent statements that were mildly anti American or pro communist. For example, the United States is not perfect in a communist country, unemployment is not a problem. And then once those minor requests were complied with, the men found themselves pushed to submit to related yet more substantive requests. So for Example, a man who had just agreed with his Chinese interrogator that the United States is not perfect might then be asked to indicate some of the ways in which he thought this was the case. So then he will build up on that and then more and more commitment all the way to talking about this on the radio so that other prisoners would will hear that. And that turns into this kind of social proof aspect of when you say something out loud, the projected image of you in the public and your self story must match. And therefore they started to update the self story believing that yeah, actually the US is not perfect. And then finally, step three for detractors and how to convince those people actually don’t believe what you believe and in fact are in disagreement with you is to reach them in moments of distraction. I’ve already told you that going against what they believe and say that they are wrong is probably the wrong way to go about it. So to win over rejecters, Richard Chowton in the book the Choice Factory talks about a specific example of the British Airways ads that use subtle cues instead of blatant trying to convince you type of message. So ever since 1989 they’ve been using classical music in order to portray their luxurious, very modern experience. So instead of telling them straight up, you should believe that we are luxurious, don’t believe that we are not, and letting people basically come up with counter agreements against that they used classical music in order to insinuate luxury by association. I found that quite, quite interesting. So to summarize, yeah, facts don’t change people’s mind, let them self pursue it. Don’t try to be the persuader, just try to be the catalyst. There’s no point fighting against existing belief, it will grow even stronger. Find people already believe there’s plenty out there. Find a common ground, understand where they’re coming from, give them the choice, use social proof. And for the detractors, if you have time, probably years, do reach them in moments of distraction. That’s it for another episode of everyone hates marketers.com I’m pouring my heart and soul into this. It will mean a lot to me if you check out the newsletter that goes with this [email protected] I send this newsletter every Tuesday. It’s packed with very practical, step by step actionable ways for you to radically stand out. And when you sign up, you also get access to free eight lesson course on the same topic. All right, see you on the other side. And that’s it for another episode of everyone hates marketers.com thank you so much for listening. I’m super, super grateful. I’d love for you to consider subscribing to my daily newsletter Monday to Friday called Stand the Out. Daily. I send very short, hopefully interesting, surprising, shocking, entertaining content to help you Stand the Out. It’s ateveryonehates marketers.com we can subscribe subscribe for free and obviously unsubscribe whenever you want. I’m just gonna read a couple of emails that I got recently. As a reply. Juma said, your content attacks the mind primarily, which is such a good thing because most of us are skilled at what we do, but we don’t have the courage to do it our way. Mark, who just subscribed a couple days before, said, this is my first issue of your newsletter. Love it. Glad I subscribed. Brianna Said, I just realized this morning that my email email habit is now to 1. Skim through the list. 2. Select all unread industry email except yours. 3. Delete and don’t think twice. 4. Quickly scheme yours. Amy said, Also loving the new content that’s coming from you. It feels really lovely. Kendall said, I like your writing a lot. It really resonates. There’s so much bullshit out there. It’s good to touch the authentic. And Chloe said, where is the I love this email button? Brilliant. I hope you subscribe. You’ll be joining more than 14,000 subscribers at this stage, which is crazy. It’s the size of a small stadium. Anyway, thank you so much. See you on the other side.