The nice thing about a wristband is that it lives on. The bike ride
doesn’t. There’ll be pictures of the bike ride and people will talk about
the bike ride, but unless it goes on every year—even if it does go on
every year, it doesn’t live on as a reminder every day of this sort of
stuff. But the wristband does.
Behavioral residue is the physical traces or remnants that most actions or
behaviors leave in their wake. Mystery lovers have shelves full of mystery
novels. Politicos frame photos of themselves shaking hands with famous
politicians. Runners have trophies, T-shirts, or medals from participating in
5Ks.
As discussed in the chapter on Social Currency, items like the Livestrong
wristband provide insight into who people are and what they like. Even
things that would otherwise be difficult to observe, like whether a person
donates to a particular cause or prefers mysteries to historical fiction.
But when publicly visible, these remnants facilitate imitation and provide
chances for people to talk about related products or ideas.
Take voting. It’s hard to get people to turn out to vote. They have to
figure out where their polling stations are located, take the morning off
from work, and stand in line, sometimes for hours, until they get the chance
to cast their ballots. But these hurdles are compounded by the fact that
voting is a private act. Unless you actually happen to see all the people who
go to the polls, you have no idea how many other people decided voting
was worth the effort. So there is not much social proof.
But in the 1980s election officials came up with a nice way to make
voting more observable: the “I Voted” sticker. Simple enough, but by
creating behavioral residue, the sticker made the private act of voting much
more public, even after people left the polling station. It provided a ready
reminder that today is the day to vote, others are doing it, and you should
too.
—————
Behavioral residue exists for all types of products and ideas. Tiffany,
Victoria’s Secret, and a host of other retailers give customers disposable
shopping bags to carry their purchases home. But because of the Social
Currency associated with some of these retailers, many consumers reuse the
bags rather than tossing them. They use the Victoria’s Secret bags to carry
their gym clothes, toss their lunch into a Tiffany bag, or use Bloomingdale’s
famous medium brown bag to carry papers around town. People even reuse
bags from restaurants, discount stores, and other places that are not status
symbols.
Clothing retailer Lululemon takes this idea one step further. Rather than
make paper bags that are relatively durable, it makes shopping bags that are
hard to throw away. Made of sturdy plastic like reusable grocery bags, these
bags are clearly meant to be reused. So people use them to carry groceries
or do other errands. But along the way this behavioral residue helps provide
social proof for the brand.
Giveaways can also provide behavioral residue. Go to any conference,
job fair, or large meeting where presenters have set up booths and you’ll be
stunned by the amount of swag they give away. Mugs, pens, and T-shirts.
Beverage cozies, stress balls, and ice scrapers. A couple of years ago the
Wharton School even gave me a tie.
But some of these giveaways provide better behavioral residue than
others. Giving away a makeup carrying case is fine, but women usually
apply makeup in the privacy of their bathrooms, so it doesn’t make the
brand that observable. Coffee mugs and gym bags might be used less
frequently, but their use is more publicly visible.
People posting their opinions and behavior online also provide behavioral
residue. Reviews, blogs, posts, or other sorts of content all leave evidence
that others can find later. For this reason, many businesses and
organizations encourage people to Like them—or their content—on
Facebook. By simply clicking the Like button, people not only show their
affinity with a product, idea, or organization, they also help spread the word
that something is good or worth paying attention to. ABC News found that
installing these buttons boosted its Facebook traffic by 250 percent.
Other sites push, or automatically post, what people do to their social
networking pages. Music has always been a somewhat social activity, but
Spotify takes this a step further. The system allows you to listen to whatever
songs you like but also posts what you’re listening to on your Facebook
page, making it easier for your friends to see what you like (and letting
them know about Spotify). Many other websites do the same.
But should we always try to make things public? Are there ever instances
when making something public could be a bad idea?
ANTI-DRUG COMMERCIALS?
A sprightly, dark-haired teenager walks down the stairs of her apartment
building. She’s wearing a pretty silver necklace and carrying a sweater in
her hand. She could be on her way to work or to meet up with a friend for
coffee. Suddenly a neighbor’s door opens and a voice whispers, “I got some
good pot for you.”
“No!” She scowls and hurries down the stairs.
A fresh-faced kid is sitting outside. He is wearing a blue sweatshirt and
sports a bowl haircut that used to be popular among boys. He appears
deeply engrossed in a video game when a voice interrupts him. “Cocaine?”
the voice asks. “No thanks,” the kid replies.
A young man is standing against a wall chewing gum. “Yo, my man,
want some ’ludes?” the voice inquires. “No way!” the man exclaims,
glaring back.
“Just Say No” is one of the most famous anti-drug campaigns of all time.
Created by First Lady Nancy Reagan during her husband’s presidency, the
campaign ran public service announcements as part of a national effort to
discourage teens from recreational drug use in the 1980s and 1990s.
The logic was simple. One way or another, kids are going to be asked if
they want to use drugs. Whether by a friend, a stranger, or somebody else.
And they needed to know how to say no. So the government spent millions
of dollars on anti-drug public service announcements. It hoped that the
messages would teach kids how to react in these situations and, as a result,
decrease drug use.
More recent campaigns have relied on the same idea. Between 1998 and
2004, Congress appropriated almost $1 billion for the National Youth Anti-
Drug Media Campaign. The goal was to educate kids ages twelve to
eighteen to enable them to reject drugs.
Communications professor Bob Hornik wanted to see whether anti-drug
ads were actually effective. So he collected data on the drug use of
thousands of teens over the time the anti-drug ads ran. Whether teens had
seen the ads and whether they had ever smoked marijuana. Then he looked
at whether the public service announcements seemed to decrease marijuana
use.
They didn’t.
In fact, the messages actually seemed to increase drug use. Kids aged
twelve and a half to eighteen who saw the ads were actually more likely to
smoke marijuana. Why?
Because it made drug use more public.
Think about observability and social proof. Before seeing the message,
some kids might never have thought about taking drugs. Others might have
considered it but have been wary about doing the wrong thing.
But anti-drug ads often say two things simultaneously. They say that
drugs are bad, but they also say that other people are doing them. And as
we’ve discussed throughout this chapter, the more others seem to be doing
something, the more likely people are to think that thing is right or normal
and what they should be doing as well.
Imagine you’re a fifteen-year-old who has never considered using drugs.
You’re sitting at home watching cartoons one afternoon when a public
service announcement comes on telling you about the dangers of drug use.
Someone’s going to ask you if you want to try drugs and you need to be
ready to say no. Or even worse, the cool kids are going to be the ones
asking. But you shouldn’t say yes.
You never see public service announcements for avoiding cutting off
your hand with a saw or not getting hit by a bus, so if the government spent
the time and money to tell you about drugs, a lot of your peers must be
doing them, right? Some of them are apparently the coolest kids in school.
And you had no idea!
As Hornik said,
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