Restore balance

Make even the worst of enemies shake hands.

I'm a Canadian, so I don't usually like to give my opinion on US elections but what keeps playing over and over in my mind was the hand shake at the end of the second debate seen here in the final minute.

The debate started without a handshake; almost as though the two candidates saw the other as absolute enemies (or worse).

Unlike older debates such as this one, where the two candidates seem to be enjoying the back and forth.

However, the final brilliant question asked of each candidate to think good thoughts and tell the audience the best attribute of their opponent. This lead Donald, who earlier called for Hillary to be jailed, to lean over and shake her hand.

There is some great marketing advice here.
 
When the candidates were forced to say something admirable about each other, they experienced the pressure of cognitive dissonance (a feeling of conflicting attitudes) and modified their behavior to fit their words. Cognitive dissonance is the feeling of uncomfortable tension which comes from holding two conflicting thoughts in the mind at the same time. It is central to many forms of persuasion to change beliefs, values, attitudes and behaviors. This produces a feeling of discomfort leading to an alteration in one of the attitudes, beliefs or behaviors to reduce the discomfort and restore balance, etc.
 
In a psychological study, participants were asked to do a truly boring task for 30 minutes. Then those participants were split up into groups. One group was asked to talk some “prospective participants” into doing the experiment by lying to them and telling them that the actually quite boring experiment was fun and interesting. The other group was not asked to talk to or lie to anyone. 
 
After that, all the participants were asked to describe and rate the experiment — was it fun, interesting, worthwhile, etc.  The ones who lied about it, knowing it was a lie, ended up either believing their lies or changing their memories to fit their lies, because they actually continued to describe the experiment as fun and interesting. The ones who never lied about it described it exactly as it was: very boring.  Cognitive Dissonance caused the liars to shift their perspective to fit their actions.
 
When people repeatedly “go somewhere” in their minds, they’ll eventually “go there” with their bodies as well. If your ads get people to imagine doing business with the company, repeatedly, they’ll eventually do business with the company when they need whatever that business sells.

How can you get your customers talking positively about you?

Morty Silber, CEO

Mad Strategies Inc.
a Wizard of Ads Partner