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  There is ample research to show that we instinctively look to the behavior of others to inform the decisions we make—everything from which way we should walk, to what music we should listen to, to which kind of car we should drive. It seems, in short, that we instinctively believe that others know more about what we want than we ourselves do.

  Psychologists have a name for this phenomenon. It’s called peer pressure.

  When we hear those two words, we tend to sigh inwardly, as deeply and darkly as we did when we were adolescents. What a loaded and even faintly patronizing expression, conjuring up memories of teenage insecurity, acne, and trying to fit into a small universe where a phantom classmate hisses “C’mon, just one of these won’t hurt you” into your ear. While that kind of old-fashioned peer pressure certainly exists, that’s not exactly the kind I’m talking about here. I’m talking about a more implicit kind that taps into our primitive human desire to be accepted—those evolutionary instincts not to be left out or exiled from the human tribe. As you’re about to read, this implicit peer pressure is a far more insidious kind, and companies and marketers are taking advantage of its persuasive powers in ways you couldn’t even imagine.

  Monkey See, Monkey Spend

  Author and social psychologist Robert Cialdini once demonstrated the persuasive power of our peers in a fascinating experiment. Several hundred volunteers took their seats in a room, purportedly to fill out a survey. But that was only a distraction from the real purpose of Cialdini’s experiment, which had to do with how our behavior is swayed by those around us. A large glass jar of cookies stood prominently on a nearby desk, filled to the brim with deliciousness.

  “Would you like a cookie?” one of the researchers asked the survey takers. Approximately one fifth of the volunteers took him up on his offer. (How very self-disciplined of them.) In the second stage of the experiment, the research team surreptitiously removed most of the cookies from the jar, so that it looked as though others had already taken one. Still, only about one fifth of respondents reached for a cookie.

  In the final stage of the experiment, however, a researcher sat behind a desk beside a large glass cookie jar. But this time, before the researcher could ask volunteers if they wanted a cookie or not, a stranger ambled into the room, removed the glass lid, took a cookie in front of everyone in the room, and walked out again. This time, when the survey takers were asked if anyone wanted a cookie, nearly every single person took one.

  This experiment revealed something that advertisers and marketers have long been instinctively aware of: humans want what other humans want. And the more visible other people’s demand is, the more we want what they are having. In the cookie jar experiment, people didn’t want more cookies when they thought that others might have taken a cookie. But when they actually saw another person take a cookie, their brains said, Gimme!

  Now imagine it’s two weeks before Christmas and you have yet to buy a gift for your young child. Not surprisingly, as was the case with previous Christmases, there appears to be one “it” present that you’ve read and heard about and that every parent on the playground has already bought (or plans to buy) for their little darling. Those of us with durable memories can cast our minds back to recent Christmas toy fads ranging from Furbys to Beanie Babies to Razor scooters to Tamagotchis to Tickle Me Elmo, the “it gift” of 1996, which inspired such mania that desperate mothers around America were “duking it out in store aisles.”10 In each case, the furor and pursuit of these must-have toys reached the scale of a full-fledged social epidemic, meaning a social trend that spreads quickly and widely, like some kind of consumer virus.

  In 2009 the hottest must-have Christmas toy on every child’s wish list was the Zhu Zhu pet hamster. Though the actual price was $10, so extraordinary (and, frankly, bizarre) was the national demand that the toy was being sold on Amazon for three times that, and before long people were bidding up to five times its value on eBay. Clearly, fads like this are extremely contagious, and as we’ve read, when it comes to what we buy for our children, guilt can also play a part. Still, the question remains: what determines which fads catch on and which die, or which brands and products become social epidemics and which don’t? Why the Zhu Zhu pet hamster and not some other toy or gizmo? After all, the toy doesn’t do anything special. It doesn’t sing or dance or grant wishes. It makes a variety of odd sounds, like chirping, beeping, and mooing, but that’s about it. Yet by the end of 2009, Cepia LLC, the St. Louis company that created and distributed the hamsters, had sold tens of millions of dollars’ worth of the furry things. Turns out this wasn’t just a happy accident.

  How Cepia made its bizarre product the “it” Christmas toy is a fascinating example of the art and craft of viral marketing—in other words, peer pressure. First, the company staged “hamster giveaways” at hospitals, zoos, and Major League Baseball games. Next, it sponsored roughly three hundred invitation-only “hamster parties” where “influential mommy bloggers” were the fortunate recipients of the toys (as well as Habitrails and a recipe for “hamster crunch,” whatever that is). It also hosted a live, nine-thousand-tweet “interconnected Twitter” party (complete with party prizes) on the popular Mom Talk Radio channel, where host Maria Bailey oversaw an interactive discussion in which “fans across the Zhu-niverse share[d] what [made] Zhu Zhu pets so special to them.”11 The result was that soon mothers around the country were hearing and reading about the toy everywhere they went, creating a phenomenon so contagious and a heat so intense that Zhu Zhu hamsters sold out all across the United States.

  Then Cepia did something ingenious—and extremely commonplace. It started manufacturing fewer Zhu Zhu pets. That’s right, fewer. Why? Because deliberately limiting inventory makes us think that a product is even more in demand; if “everyone” wants one, in our minds, it becomes more valuable.12 Creating a sense of scarcity stimulates our pack mentality, our fear of missing out.13 It’s human nature to covet what others have.

  This fear of missing out on something being gobbled up by our peers is what drives rabid crowds of shoppers to line up at 4:00 a.m. to get their hands on the newly launched iPad 2 or a pair of Uggs in a hard-to-come-by color,14 and it’s why a few years back a bargain hunter was trampled to death outside a Long Island Walmart on Black Friday. If you’ve ever bid for an item on eBay, you’ve probably unwittingly fallen prey to this same trap. With a supply of only one (there can be only one penguin tea set in the world), the panic that some other person might walk away with the matching set of orange-beaked mugs is what can drive people to raise their bid exponentially—and pay far more than what the product is worth.15

  Once social contagion sets in, it can take on a life of its own. Take another rather bizarre example, a fad called “icing” that caught on a few years ago among college students and males in their midtwenties. No, I’m not talking about the sugary stuff on top of birthday cakes. I’m talking about a phenomenon that the New York Times dubbed “the world’s biggest viral drinking game.” Never played? Lucky you. Here’s how it works. First, you give a friend a can of Smirnoff Ice malt beverage. Said friend then has to balance the can on his knee and drink the whole thing at once. The only way to avoid becoming a victim of this uncertain fate is to carry a bottle yourself, in which case you have to drink both bottles—before, of course, going out and “icing” someone else. Sounds absolutely awful, yet somehow this game quickly infected college campuses around the country, spawned several Web sites, and, according to the New York Times, “explode[d] from obscurity . . . into a bizarre pastime for college kids, Wall Streeters and minor celebrities.”16

  Smirnoff has emphatically denied that it bears any responsibility for “icing” (and I believe it’s telling the truth), but regardless, it’s been quite lucrative for the company. As the Times reports, the phenomenon has not only raised awareness of the brand but also extended it to young men who formerly saw Ice as “girly” and feminine. And sales of Ice products almost immediately took off in some
Southern college towns, where the game took early root. The point is, whether it emerges organically or is deliberately orchestrated by marketers, peer pressure delivers a windfall for brands and companies.

  This is exactly why companies of all stripes have become so skilled at planting the seeds of social epidemics and then sitting back to watch them grow (as Smirnoff was accused of doing in this case). As we’ll read more about in the last chapter, the most persuasive marketing messages aren’t magazine ads or TV commercials or billboards; they’re the ones that come from—or at least seem to come from—our peers. In fact, one of the most effective—and sneakiest—viral marketing strategies is for a company to create a blog or YouTube video that is so extreme, funny, outrageous, provocative, or frightening (or a combination of the above) that it raises the question, Is this a joke, or is it real? Among the most successful and talked-about viral marketing campaigns of all time were ones created by John West Salmon (in which a man and a bear grapple over a fish), Trojan condoms (which in 2003 launched the Trojan Games, a sequence of Olympics-like championships based on sexual performance), Levi’s (in which men athletically sprang and backflipped themselves into their blue jeans), and surfing apparel manufacturer Quiksilver (which released a memorably phony Internet video showing a group of kids hurling dynamite into a river, then surfing the giant wave it created).

  Still, few companies were as downright crafty—or as downright double-talking—in their use of viral videos as Viacom, the media conglomerate. In a 2010 suit against Google (which owns YouTube), Viacom, which has long railed against TV and movie piracy, claimed that YouTube had knowingly allowed its users to post clips they’d illegally downloaded (i.e., stolen) from Viacom’s copyrighted movies and TV shows in order to boost traffic and sales. Google countersued, alleging that Viacom had surreptitiously uploaded many of the clips itself—and also manufactured phony YouTube comments—in an attempt to create phony “grassroots” viral marketing campaigns for its TV shows and movies. In fact, Google had evidence that Viacom mandated that its clips “should definitely not be associated with the studio—should appear as if a fan created and posted it.”17 How did the studio manage this? According to unsealed courtroom documents, by hiring at least eighteen third-party marketing agents, who used untraceable YouTube accounts with no connection to Viacom, and by deliberately altering the clips to make them look pirated or stolen. Then marketing agents uploaded the videos from untraceable computers and locations, such as the local Kinko’s.18

  Though YouTube (and Google) won the case when a federal judge ruled the site was protected under U.S. copyright law,19 one thing is certain: these video clips wouldn’t have become the viral sensation they did if YouTube viewers had known they were uploaded by marketers rather than by their own peers.

  We’ve Gotta Have It

  Many of us spend our days—at least parts of them—quietly cursing our fellow human beings. The guy in the Hummer who cuts us off at the intersection. The old woman in the supermarket line counting out pennies one by one. The teenagers in blue hoodies perched in front of the convenience store, blocking our path to our cars. They may be annoying, but when all is said and done, we actually rely on these people, and others like them, to help dictate our purchasing choices—with more than a little help from companies and marketers, of course.

  When it comes to the things we buy, what other people think matters. A lot. Even when these people are complete strangers. A recent survey by Opinion Research shows that “61 percent of respondents said they had checked online reviews, blogs and other online customer feedback before buying a new product or service,”20 and a similar February 2008 study commissioned by PowerReviews showed that “nearly half of U.S. consumers who shopped online four or more times per year and spent at least $500 said they needed four to seven customer reviews before making a purchase decision.”21 So persuasive are the opinions of others that though most of us are well aware that at least 25 percent of these reviews are fakes written by friends, company staffers, marketers, and so forth, we purposely overlook this. As the Times of London points out, we are born to believe, in part because a collective belief helps us to bond with others. In short, we want to trust in these messages, even when we may also be deeply skeptical.

  To see just how powerfully complete strangers’ preferences and purchases can sway our decisions, consider the phenomenon of best-seller lists. Imagine that you’re entering a big chain bookstore, where you’re confronted by square footage that rivals a football field. Given the sheer number of choices, the risk of shelling out $27.99 for a novel or a memoir that you will later deem unreadable is considerable. But wait, what’s on that stand-alone shelf directly to your right? This week’s “New York Times Bestsellers,” both fiction and nonfiction, perhaps two dozen books in all. Subconsciously you think, If so many people are buying this book, then it must be good. Followed shortly by If so many people are reading this book, won’t I be left out if I don’t read it, too? Now not only are you spared the ordeal of wading through the four floors of books and the anxiety of confronting all that choice, but you have a solid endorsement from your book-buying peers.

  This is no happy accident for the publishing industry. In fact, despite what publishers might like you to believe, the main reason best-seller lists exist in the first place isn’t just to track sales but also to make us think these titles have been “preapproved”—in other words, to imply that if we don’t read what everyone else is reading, we’ll be uncultured, irrelevant, and excluded from the national conversation.

  Best-seller lists work so well in persuading us that they’ve migrated well beyond book publishing to other products and industries—from Sephora’s list of best-selling cosmetics to Entertainment Weekly’s Ten Most Popular TV shows to Variety’s list of the ten highest-grossing movies of the week to the Apple iTunes music store’s list of best-selling or recommended (which, as we’ll see in a minute, eventually become one and the same) singles, albums, movies, and music videos. Let’s talk for a moment about the latter. Not unlike a Barnes & Noble superstore, the iTunes start page is a cluttered, chaotic place teeming with choices. Luckily for the overwhelmed shopper, however, these endless offerings are organized into tidy recommended categories like “What We’re Watching,” “What’s Hot,” “What We’re Listening To,” “New and Noteworthy,” and, of course, “Top Songs” and “Top Albums.”

  Two things of interest are going on here. First, I am convinced Apple did this not to make life easier for the casual browser but rather to imply that its team of music experts have spent the past month parsing through thousands of albums and that the dozen or so highlighted on the start page represent their carefully considered picks—the cream of this month’s crop. Nothing could be further from the truth. Chances are good that in fact a good deal of money changed hands; in a twenty-first-century version of the old, reviled practice of “payola,” record companies pay Apple hefty sums to get these songs and albums featured on the home page (just as publishers, incidentally, pay bookstores to feature their new books on those tables you see when you enter the bookstore). Regardless, the lists on these start pages lead us to believe that an expert, or a team of experts, has waded through the seemingly infinite number of choices and made a discriminating decision on our behalf.

  The second thing that’s going on here is the classic blockbuster effect. Essentially, a two-tier system is being created, one that puts a small number of brands (in this case, brands being musical artists) on the path to success, while setting up the majority of others for failure. Think about it. Due to the sheer exposure, and the fact the customers believe these are the songs that have been preapproved as the “best,” don’t many (if not all) of the albums and artists featured on the start page end up making the top-songs list? They do—I’ve seen it happen time and again. And once a song or album makes the best-selling list, that’s yet another stamp of approval, and our impressionable minds kick into high gear again: What do other people know that I don’t
know? I’m missing out!

  These kinds of stamps of approval can even influence our choice of alcoholic beverage. When the Beverage Testing Institute dubbed Grey Goose the “best-tasting vodka in the world,” Sidney Frank, the marketing genius behind the brand, not only promptly created giant ads boasting this new best-tasting-in-the-world status, he “indoctrinated” both hundreds of distributors and somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty thousand bartenders with that very information so that anytime a customer came into a bar or liquor store and asked what the best-tasting vodka was, they would be told it was Grey Goose.22 The result? By 2004 the company had sold 1.5 million cases and Sidney Frank had sold the company to Bacardi for a cool $2 billion.

  Whether it’s the world’s best-tasting vodka, the best-selling novel of the week, or the highest-grossing movie of the year, you better believe that companies are very deliberately using best-seller lists to persuade us to buy what “everyone else likes.” Amazon, the online bookseller (and increasingly, the online seller of just about everything), takes this an ingenious step further by actually e‑mailing customers to let them know that their fellow purchasers of a certain item have also purchased some new item—and thus that they might like that item, too. This is a case not only of baldly manufacturing peer pressure but also of data mining, a topic we’ll be looking at in a later chapter.

  An intriguing study published in the journal Science shows just how well this can work. The researchers invited twenty-seven teenagers to visit a Web site where they could sample and download songs for free. Some of the teens were told what songs previous visitors had downloaded, whereas others weren’t. Indeed, those told what songs their peers had chosen tended to download those very songs. But part two of the study was even more telling. This time, the teens were divided into eight groups and told only what had been downloaded by people from their own group. The researchers found that not only did the teens tend to choose the songs that had been previously downloaded by members of their groups, but the songs that became “hits” varied across all the groups. The implications were clear: whether or not a song became a “hit” was determined solely by whether it was perceived as already being popular.23 This is what I mean about the two-tier system: whatever gains an early advantage in popularity will win. This may not seem so bad at first, but look at it this way: if we’re duped into buying something just because it’s popular (even if it isn’t), think about all the great books or songs or CDs we might be missing simply because they weren’t on that “top ten” list.