9.20
How to satiate a shopper’s lust for power while you quietly convert them

There’s this moment in season one of HBO’s Westworld (spoiler alert) in which the Head of the Programming Division for a theme park filled with robots, Bernard, realizes he is a robot and that his boss and collaborator, Arnold, is his creator.

Bernard is convinced he is still in control yet continues to follow Arnold’s commands, including Arnold’s final command for Bernard to point the pistol he’s holding at his own head and pull the trigger.

It’s an existentially-loaded scene.

And I love it.

It's got me thinking about messages that simultaneously influence our thinking and make us feel in control of our own thoughts -- what I'd call the “Arnold” school of marketing.

For instance, consider the following headline that conversion rate specialist Rishi Rawat wrote for a client in the beverage industry.

“There are 122 energy drinks in the market. We’ve tried them all.”

Each time I read it, my mind fills in the blank: “.... And ours is the best.”

Did Rishi persuade me to add this punchline?

No. It simply appears in my mind.

I didn’t decide to think “And ours is the best” any more than I decided to hear the noises coming from the fan next to me.

A "force" is a sleight of hand technique in which you pick a card that's predetermined by the magician. Like Bernard, you think you're choosing freely, but it's an illusion.

Unlike marketers -- Rishi being a rare exception -- magicians look down on persuasion like it's a rusty sword from the medieval era. They know people don't want to have their minds changed, so they stack the deck.

The result is magic. You're left wondering if it was the magician who determined which card you picked, and of course it was. He controlled your decision without asking for permission and without you realizing it.

The outcome was oddly delightful.

And far more enjoyable than Bernard's ugly suicide.

Or was it a murder?