048 Triggered On Purpose - How To Use Everyday Items To Induce Change
The Influence Every Day Show with Dr. Ed Tori
influence-048-triggered-on-purpose-how-to-use-everyday-items-to-induce-change-01-audio.mp3
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A few things happened recently that triggered me to record this particular podcast episode. First, many of you know I happen to have an Influence Book Club. You can check it out at InfluenceBookClub.com. Well, I happen to be preparing for one of the months where we're going over
Contagious by Jonah Berger, Contagious is all about why ideas spread. Okay, so you may have read the book or heard of Made to Stick by Chip Heath and Dan Heath on how ideas stick. This is more about why and how ideas spread and in it he has a section on triggers. So that's what we're gonna talk about right now.
I want to illustrate it with a few things that triggered me to record this. First I was recording it for the Influence book club. Second, I happened to be flying out to a speaking event in San Francisco. While I was on the flight, they made the announcement, and this was Southwest where you can choose your own seats, at least at the time.
I think they're changing that, but you could choose your own seats. And so they made an announcement saying, this plane is. Basically full. There are only two empty seats on this entire plane, so just pick the next one and plop down and take that seat. And and they made a joke about making eye contact and all that stuff to try to avoid having the person sit next to you, et cetera, so it was funny. But nonetheless, there were only two empty seats. So what did I do when they made that announcement? I put on a mask and I pulled out the book Contagious by Jonah Berger. If you can imagine, I'm there reading the book Contagious, and I'm wearing a mask now.
Do you think people are likely to sit next to me? No, they're not. And so that's what happened. So I happened to have an empty seat between me and the guy at the edge. And we were joking about how fortunate we were to not have someone in the middle so we could put our stuff there, whatever.
And so then I told him what I did. I told him that I wore a mask and I put on, and I pulled out the book Contagious and I started flipping through it. Incidentally, I took a picture and I sent it to Jonah Berger himself. So just to let him know Hey, I'm using your book for non-conscious influences, what do you associate that with?
What do you associate the word contagious with? Now? The book has nothing to do with infection per se. It has more to do with how ideas spread, thoughts But what is our association? If you see someone with a mask and you see the word contagious, our association is with that of somebody being sick.
So why would you pick that for a six to eight hour flight? no one sat next to me. That's the point. Now what that did, that event, me flying out for a speaking engagement. And me going through the book, or the reason I had the book with me was because even though it was written in 2013, I think it's worthy of a month for the book club because of the principles contained in it.
So I was reviewing it in preparation for that module. So that's what triggered me to talk about this today.
There's a phrase in the book, Contagious, Why Things Catch On. There's a phrase in there top of mind equals tip of tongue. Top of mind equals tip of tongue. Essentially, if somebody is thinking about something, if somebody is triggered to remember something, or if they're actively engaging in something, they're more likely to talk about it.
If it was very recent, if it was very vivid, and this gets to something they call the availability heuristic, which is, you'll often find in cognitive psychology, in human factors engineering and certainly people use this in advertising and sales and all these things, but we can use this in our day to day.
We can use this. Now, the availability here stick without getting into too many details, has more to do with memory. But the, in the book. Contagious why things catch on. This is more about triggering people to take action or triggering people to think about something deliberately. And the idea of top of mind equals tip of tongue is that people are more likely to talk about something when it's top of mind.
And there's a very shocking analogy or statement in there that Jonah Berger alludes to. He says People talk about Cheerios more than they do about Disney and. That makes sense. But if you think about it, most people think, oh, something goes viral because it's remarkable. Something goes viral because it's novel, it's it breaks a pattern.
It's somehow different. Yes, that's true in many instances for the immediate effect, but the longer term, something that sticks, that keeps coming back, that keeps being re-triggered, that keeps being brought up again and again. It has to be something that's available to us. It's accessible. It's in our environment, it's in our context, it's in our habitat.
It's around us. We are reminded of it. We are triggered. And so sometimes these daily, everyday run of the mill triggers that we see in any kind of moment, we see those because they are deliberately inducing the accessibility of an idea. So for example, kit Kat saying, give me a break, break me off a piece of that Kit Kat bar.
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First of all, why do I remember it? Because the, it's pounded into my head since childhood. But why do they keep using that phrase? Because it works. You associate a break, like a break from work, a break from, running a break from, taking care of the kids. You associate it with
breaking the Kit Kat bar. So even though that's a small trigger, what happens is it makes the fact that you're taking a break. The fact that we talk about breaks means that it's accessible to us. Now, there was a time where I brought. Two ad ideas. Now they were at separate times I brought them to the marketing department of the hospital that I worked in.
Okay. So I worked in a hospital that had recently won a con, the contract to be the official medical staff of the Baltimore Ravens. And so that happened to have occurred right around the time that the Baltimore Ravens drafted Joe Flacco. So Joe Flacco was a rookie. Now seeing that Joe Flacco was a rookie and going to likely be the starting quarterback, eventually I went to the marketing department and said, we have a cardiac surgeon.
in our hospital who is stellar in every way. Great character, incredible at the actual act of doing the surgery. Incredible results. His patients love him, they, great outcomes and all that stuff. And and his last name is Fiocco. So the Ravens drafted Flacco and our chief cardiac surgeon.
Dr. Fiocco. And so I went to the marketing department and I said, I have this idea, and we can probably pounce on it right now because Joe Flacco is a rookie and we just earned the contract with the Baltimore Ravens. So this might be a great idea. And so the first part of the idea, use the concept of pattern interrupts, which I don't need to go into right now, but imagine you see Joe Flacco and Dr.
Fiocco in a laundromat, okay? A laundromat. Now, first of all, they would never be in a laundromat. Like it's highly unlikely, Given their salaries. They probably have washing machines or someone else to do their laundry, et cetera. Is it given that one is a quarterback in the NFL and the other is a cardiac surgeon?
So that right there is what we call a pattern interrupt. It just doesn't make sense.in this ad idea, I said imagine they're at a laundromat. That grabs people's attention. Flacco, Fiocco, they get their stuff out of the laundry, and it turns out that as they pull it out of the dryer, the names have switched.
The name Fiocco is on the jersey and the name Flacco is on the white coat. And somebody comes up and thanks Dr. Flacco for saving his life. the point here was to associate the name Flacco with Fiocco.
Why? Because they will hear the name Flacco every single week, especially the Baltimore fan base. The Baltimore fan base is where in the very catchment area of the cardiac surgeon. Dr. Fiocco. So if you can imagine they're receiving the trigger, it's available every single weekend, not only every single weekend.
I don't know if you know about Baltimore fans, they're probably tier two below my favorite team, Philadelphia Eagles. But as a fan base, they're rabid about their team, and so they really care. So it's on their tongue daily. It's not just weekends. they would be talking about flacco regularly.
Now, here's the other thing. Who's the target market? For a cardiac surgeon, it's probably people who are eating bratwurst and drinking beer and sitting on the couch watching football. That's the market because they have a higher incidence of cardiac disease and they're more likely to have all the other things that go with it.
so I brought that to the marketing department. They said something like, we don't have the budget. They probably also thought okay, that's ridiculous. But it was based on real science within the domains of cognitive psychology, social psychology, and multiple other domains where they actually practice influence.
It's these concepts of triggers. Another time I went to the same marketing department and said, Hey look, our hospital, it specializes in hand surgery, it specializes in orthopedics, and it specializes in cardiac surgery. Like these are the things we're known for. So what if we ran ads that had the H sign, the blue H sign for hospitals, that's that blue H sign is every single place that there's a hospital in the United States.
So what if we use that? Because it would be a real world trigger. Somebody's going to a hospital, they're going to a visit. And if we had in our ads the H sign, and it said, hands, hips, and hearts, right hand surgery, orthopedics, cardiac surgery, hands, hips, and hearts, think of our hospital.
And have some sort of ad related to that. Why was I doing, why was I suggesting that? Because of this concept? Of triggers. There are crazy examples of how triggers have worked in the past. for example, when NASA had its Pathfinder mission and it was trying to launch something to Mars, guess what went up in sales?
Mars bars, even though it has nothing to do with the planet, it was named after its founder Franklin Mars. but Mars bars went up in sales. So these daily, everyday triggers that we see in our environment, in our context, if you. Attach your influence your coaching, your your good advice to something that occurs in their every day.
They'll be reminded of it every day. They'll be reminded of it every day. So look for something in their world that is, already there, and try to connect it so that it becomes the trigger to make the idea, the concept, the behavior, the habit to make that more accessible. To bring it to bear, to bring it to the front of mind.
Because when it's top of mind, it's tip of tongue. And when it's accessible, they're more likely to take action on it. So this is something that's vital to think about when it comes to influence.I have two ways where you can learn more about this and in ways that will. Potentially completely transform your relationships. So first is that of the Influence Book Club, which I already mentioned. Go to *InfluenceBookClub.com* and check it out. But the other is I'm about to release a book now. I'm going to ask.
My followers, friends colleagues, students customers, clients. I'm gonna ask them all to help weigh in on the exact title, the exact subtitle and the cover of the book. But the book itself will be based on conversational hypnotherapy and Conversational hypnosis. And in it, it's how you use conversations to change someone's life, to change their behavior, to change their actions, to for them to actually have a major pivot.
In life. And I personally use many of the concepts that I just talked about, triggers and pattern interrupts in everyday conversation so that it leads to deep change in their life. right now, the working title of the book is *Hypnotic Gifts: How to Change Someone's Life in a Single Conversation.*
Hypnotic gifts, how to change someone's life in a single conversation. That's the current working title of the book. You can go to *HypnoticGiftsBook.com* to get on the early bird list where I'll have bonuses, et cetera. again, another shameless plug that's two shameless plugs in the same podcast episode.
But I hope you get what's so vital about this is that if you want to induce change, if you want to make sure an idea is front and center. That it's on the top of mind and you want people to to make the change in their own lives or to talk about it more, then it's vital that we understand the concepts behind triggers and how to make them effective and how to use every day items, everyday moments, everyday interactions everyday experiences as triggers because these are the keys to behavior change.
These are the keys to great relationships.
I'll see you in the next episode.
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