Advocacy
John Daly
University of Texas
(512) 471-1948
daly@mail.utexas.edu
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Enhancing the Clarity of Your Messages
Organize Your Message for Impact
A. Know your goal and purpose
B. Drop what is unimportant
C. Chunk what remains
D. Structure your information for memorability
- Primacy/recency
Primacy
Effect
- When each works
Sign ethics
statements
at start
Recency
Effect
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Enhancing the Clarity of Your Messages
Be Redundant
A. Redundancy makes you more interesting
B. Redundancy improves memorability
- always offer two examples of a concept
- beware of seductive details
- offer visual and concrete concepts
- follow the tell-show-do-respond method
KickStarter
projects with
videos
succeed far
more than
those without
videos 50% vs.
30%
Images make things “truthier”;
use graphs & images with
uninvolved and people low in
numbers skills, statistics with
involved
3
Enhancing the Clarity of Your Messages
Focus on Your Listener’s Schema
• A schema is a category system people have for
organizing information
• Schemas help people remember information
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21
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46 6
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30
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86
70
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9
33
54
50
37
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82
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24 80 56
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39 43
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15 71
76
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19 84 40
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7 63
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16 52 44
83
11 55
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The Elevator Problem
The manager of a large office building has been receiving an increasing number of
complaints about the building’s elevator service, particularly during rush hours. Several
of the long term tenants in the building have threatened to move out unless the service is
improved. In response, the manager recently inquired into the possibility of adding one or
two elevators to the building. Although it would be feasible, the only elevator company in
the area has a six month backlog of orders. As an assistant to the manager, you were
asked to come up with a plan to get two new elevators installed within three months. You
must present the plan at the next staff meeting.
Please circle one problem statement
1. To get two elevators within three months
2. To improve elevator service in the building
3. To get more people out of the building faster
4. To keep the tenants in the building happy
5. To keep upset tenants from moving
6. To keep the offices fully rented
7. To keep the manager happy with me
8. To keep my job
List several possible solutions for the problem statement you’ve chosen
1.___________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________
2.___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
this exercise was devised by CRA
What causes crime?
_________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________
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Enhancing the Clarity of Your Messages
Schemas aid people in understanding
- The problem statement you choose
shapes the solutions you generate
- always make sure there is agreement
Create decision
about what the problem is
agendas
- when no solution seems to work,
change the statement of the problem
fight to define the problem--whoever wins the
problem, determines the solutions
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Enhancing the Clarity of Your Messages
Use schemas to enhance your effectiveness
1. You can adapt your message to your listener’s
schema
2. You can create a new schema for your listener
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Creating and Maintaining Trust
Reliability
(consistency)
Honesty
(keep promises)
Consistency in
messages & standards
“Character may
almost be called the
most effective means
of persuasion.”
- Aristotle
No Lies or false feedback;
“fess” up early
Faith
(Good will)
Vulnerability
(Open)
Competency
(Knows)
Trust
Engaging in behaviors desired by other
but not by self; no misplaced
benevolence; trusting others; perspectivetaking; “take-care” of others; no blame
Consistent business performance;
Dealing effectively with problems
Trust is about
predictability
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Building Competency Perceptions
 Always cite sources
 Cite your own competence (e.g., knowledge, background,
occupation)…you or introduction.. Record of accomplishment
• extraordinary accomplishments
• esoteric accomplishments
 Appear knowledgeable; be prepared more than others; details matter
 Even turkeys fly in hurricanes…how do you perform in the tough time
 Seek out crises
 Be known for multiple competencies
 Big picture thinking
 Keep competent company
 Effortful-effortless principle
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Engage in perspective taking: Different people may see
the same event or issue differently. People don’t say
things they know to be wrong
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Developing Perspective Taking Skills
Seek out “interests” that underlie “positions”
What?
Position
Why?
Possible Interests
“I want a raise”
“You are absolutely
wrong”
“Why don’t you listen
to me?”
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Building Advocacy Skills
Effective Advocates Forge Partnerships
Building Close Relationships Through Stories
- Our lives revolve around stories
- We think narratively
- We learn many of our values via stories
- We create and share bonds through stories
- Stories are an especially effective way of
communicating your ideas
- People often “get it” through stories
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The grammar of a story
Successful Narrative
interesting and
fun; what do they
look like, what do
they sound like
Event-ActionSuspenseResolution
Lesson that
matches
values
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Keys for effective narrative:
 Has a point; What do you want your listener to feel,
believe, and remember from your story?
 Told quickly
 People need to sense you care about it
 Authentic: Stories need to match who you are
 Inclusive—others need to grasp idea and feelings
 Suspense—something unexpected happens
 Vivid details matter
 Validate basic values
 Is personal
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Questions to asks to discover a story
 What are some principles that matter to you? Why?
Where did you learn them and their importance?
 What really bothers you—people, events, ideas.
 Think, “…for example….” ---ground them in specifics
 What are some scenes from your past that were
important pivotal events for you? Describe them in detail,
including circumstances and characters.
 How have your views of those scenes changed? How do
the scenes still affect your life?
 What has surprised you? Caught your attention? Why?
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If you cannot tell stories, collect interesting “factoids”
_______________________________________________
_______________________________________________
_______________________________________________
_______________________________________________
_______________________________________________
_______________________________________________
_______________________________________________
_______________________________________________
_______________________________________________
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Why Now?
Strengths: What are our strengths that make it possible to pitch this idea? What
makes this idea especially good?
Weaknesses: What weaknesses exist in our environment that mandate this idea?
Opportunities: What opportunities exist, right now, that make this the right time to
pitch this idea?
Threats: What is wrong with the status quo? What external threats mandate we
adopt this idea? What are our vulnerabilities? Why now?
What are the advantages
of the idea? What does
this idea do well?
Internal
What could be improved?
What is done poorly?
Strengths
Opportunities
What are the positive changes
facing us? What are the
favorable trends?
match
convert
convert
Weaknesses
Threats
(constraints)
(vulnerability)
Minimize/avoid
Minimize/avoid
External
What factors are
threatening us? What
could “kill” us?
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Opportunities
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Rapid market growth
Rival firms are complacent
Changing customer
needs/tastes
Opening of foreign markets
Mishap of rival firm
New product uses
Economic boom
Deregulation
New technology
Demographic shifts
Other firms seeking alliances
High brand switching
Sales decline for a substitute
New distribution methods
Threats
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Entry of foreign competition
Introduction of new substitutes
Resource shortage
New regulations
Product life cycle in decline
Changing customer needs/tastes
Rival firms adopt new strategies
Increased regulation
Recession
New technology
Demographics shifts
Foreign trade barriers
Poor performance of ally firm
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Create A Need
Have A Plan
Show Benefits
What Happens
If We Don’t Adopt
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Building Advocacy Skills
Effective Advocates Seek a Competitive Advantage
Know the answer to WIIFT
Person
“What’s in it for them?”
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Match Your Proposal to Decision-Makers’ Needs and Wants
 Organizational Reputation
 Financial
 Efficiency
 Individual Status
 Relationship Enhancement
 Productivity
 Safety/Security
 Appearing Effective or Creative
 Pleasing Customers



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Preparing to Persuade
What Are The Likely Objections?
Objection
Response
Objection
Response
“We lack the
resources”
“I have a better
idea”
“It will be too
hard to do”
“I don’t like
you”
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Preparing to Persuade
Handling Objections & Questions
 Over-prepare
 Be the master of the follow-up response
 Listen carefully (are you listening or just waiting to talk?)
 Use every concern as an opportunity to further your case
 Turn negatives into positive
 Why no? What would it take for you to say yes?
 What don’t you want to be asked? Write out the answers to those
 Stay on message
 Treat each as a valid concern
 Clarify rather than argue
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Features are different from benefits
Because of _______ you can _________ which means ________
(feature)
Feature
(function)
Function
(benefit)
Benefit
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And What Would This Mean?
Bring Home the Point!!!!
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Building Advocacy Skills
People make decisions in biased ways.

Understanding those biases will aid in you in
advocating your ideas
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Building Advocacy Skills
Effective Advocates Understand Biases
The availability heuristic
- People emphasize vivid, most available
information
The anchoring bias
- People reference anchors they have
for information
Judges were asked to roll dice between
reading the documents in a case and
making their sentencing judgments.
Those who rolled a one gave lower
sentences than those who rolled a six.
Restaurants will add some overpriced wines
lower down on the menu to the ones at the top of
the menu seem reasonable
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Building Advocacy Skills
Effective Advocates Understand Biases
Nudging
- Create settings, events that “make” people engage in
different behaviors without feeling forced
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Opt-in Versus Opt-out for Organ Donation
Countries with opt-out systems have
25-30% higher donation rates than
countries with opt-in systems. Among
17 European countries there is a
16.3% increase in donation when
donation is the default.
12%
99%
Building Advocacy Skills
Effective Advocates Understand Biases
Escalation & Entrapment
- People can get trapped into positions they don’t want
to take
Overcoming: Separate proposer from decision-maker
The norming bias
- People don’t want to appear deviant, especially in
uncertain situations
The likelihood that teenagers will
become addicted to cigarettes
increases with every smoking
scene they see in movies
If you tell people what percentage of their
neighbors has already paid their taxes,
you are more likely to get late filers to pay
than if you nag them in another way
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Building Advocacy Skills
Effective Advocates Influence Opinions
Balance Theory
- People prefer consistency among their beliefs
- When people believe there are inconsistencies among
their beliefs they will try to restore consistency by
making a change
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Building Advocacy Skills
Effective Advocates Influence Opinions
“Lite” Beer
?
John
+
+
Famous Athletes
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In 2010, sales of Lego's Taj Mahal
kit rose 663% after soccer
superstar David Beckham told
fans in an internet chat that he
had recently built the model, one
of Lego's most challenging and
expensive ($300), in a hotel room
in Italy. Lego makes figurines
representing Beckham and his
wife, Victoria
Celebrities appear in 20%-25% of TV
ads in the U.S., 57% in South Korea,
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and 85% in Japan.
Building Advocacy Skills
Effective Advocates Influence Opinions
“God” Term
+
+
Your Listener
?
Your Idea
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Building
Advocacy
Skills
Building Advocacy Skills
Effective Advocates Influence Opinions
Elaboration Likelihood Theory
Two Routes to Persuasion
A. Central route: Attitude change that results from a person's careful
consideration of information that reflects what that person feels are true
merits of a particular attitudinal issue. Issue relevant thinking based on
cognitive response [Positive thoughts-negative thoughts=degree of
attitude change]
-
supportive cognitive responses yield attitude change
antagonistic cognitive responses preclude attitude change
balanced cognitive responding which leads to no alteration of attitude
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The Place of Involvement—Central Route
When people are involved, what persuades them?
 high quality evidence
 logical arguments
 compelling statistics
 comprehensibility of message
 distractions
How do you increase involvement?
 create personal relevancy
 create a sense of responsibility
 create suspicion about motives and/or credibility of advocate
 use rhetorical questions to prompt thinking
 make a counter-attitudinal request
42
The Place of Involvement-Peripheral Route
When people are not involved, what persuades them?








liking for advocate
credibility
attraction bias (what is good looking must be good)
numerous arguments (sheer quantity)
length means strength
perceived consensus
labels
Images and graphs (vs. statistics with involved)
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Moods Affect Persuasion
People in happy mood decrease their attention to argument strength
Positive
mood
Heuristic and global processing of information;
reliance of general knowledge; less working memory
available
Negative
mood
Effortful processing, careful, analytical, systemic, and
detail-oriented
Affect as Information Model: Moods provide
people with conscious feedback about on-going
non-conscious appraisals; positive moods
signal things are safe and benign and thus
careful processing is not important; negative
moods signal a problem leading to a need to
engage in careful and systematic processing
Fighting the mood effect:
Highlight the transient causes
of the mood--Make the
mood irrelevant to the task
44
Well Fed Judges Are Nicer
Source: Danziger et al. Proc of Nat Acad of Sci, Mar-Apr, 2011
Perceived Confidence
Perceived Competence
“What convinces is
conviction”
Lyndon Johnson
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Language intensity: The degree to which your
language choices vary from neutrality.
Perceptions of confidence are associated with
greater language intensity.
My idea is:
Okay
Issue
Good
Low
The new project has
__________ potential
His skills are _______
Great
Moderate
High
Lots of
Adequate
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Range of
opportunity
Too much
Where
most of
us are
Judgment
Confidence
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Strong qualifiers: Qualifiers can weaken or strengthen
your statements
A marker of confidence is the use of strong qualifiers
“I think this idea might be one we maybe should consider.”
The new plan is one I think we might explore. It has some
features that could possibly make it somewhat successful.
Apparently, there are a few features that could, under
some circumstances, be helpful. But, it will depend upon
how much it costs. It isn’t really that expensive so we
should probably adopt it.
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Lexical diversity: The amount of variation in your word
choice
Perceptions of confidence are associated with greater
lexical diversity
Firm -- Organization -- Company -- Business
Plan -- Proposal -- Idea -- Concept
Problem
Talkative
Clear
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Vivid details: How vividly and detailed your statements are
when describing an event, idea, person, or product
Confidence is associated with more vivid details
The car drove past the stop sign.
The red car drove past the stop sign.
The red sports car drove past the stop sign.
 The car drove past the stop sign.
 The red sports car sped past the
stop sign.
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Vivid Language Affects People’s Judgments
Estimated Speed
45
40
35
30
25
20
smashed
collided
bumped
hit
contacted
Loftus & Palmer, 1974
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Irrelevant Details Increase Perceptions of Quality
Source: K. Eriksson (2012). “The nonsense
math effect” Judgment and DecisionMaking, Vol. 7, 746–749
Make Declarations: The degree to which your language
Is direct, clear, unambiguous; no jargon
Martin Luther King: “I have a dream” vs. “I have a strategic plan
that will enhance our competitive opportunities” Thomas Jefferson
wrote the “Declaration of Independence” not a Colonial “white
paper”
“We need to modify our logistical supply chain to bolster
the velocity of our delivery systems to our markets”
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
“His performance on the team project far exceeded the parameters
of expected quality”
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
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Use powerful metaphors, analogies: People often
“get it” with a strong metaphor or analogy
-"We have gone from boom to bust faster than anytime since the oil
shock," said Stephen S. Roach, the chief economist of Morgan Stanley, a
New York investment bank. "When you screech to a halt like that, it feels
like getting thrown through the windshield.“
-The experience of going through an in-depth audit by the IRS is “an
autopsy without the benefit of death.”
We’re spending too much money
________________________________________________
There is a great deal of demand for our product
________________________________________________
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Sound organized: When you sound organized, people
believe you are more confident and competent
- use orienting and summarizing statements
- naming points (but beware of announcing the
count ahead of time)
- highlight organization on visuals
We need to talk about the shift changes, the recent hires, the
benefits plan, and the consultant’s report.
_____________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________
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Prime people unconsciously: When you use words that
imply what you are seeking people will be more open to
the influence
- is kind agree she very
- dinner Jack ate comply his
- drove oblige home he fast
- off television turn the conform
- watched movie he the is
- to Michelle bed influenced went
- the off computer convinced was
- she car accept cleaned the
- Marcus sick very was red
- plane the off took concurred
- persuaded Jeff yesterday Paula red
- she tired was brought very
Source: Epley & Gilovich, JESP, 1999
57
Priming Matters
70
Percentage of
people who
interrupted after
being primed to be
polite or rude
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
Polite
Neutral
Rude
Source: Bargh, JPSP, 1996, 71, 235
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Priming Voting: Voting in a School Makes People More
Likely to Support Educational Initiative
- Placing decals
indicating stores
accept MasterCard
or Visa makes them
consumers more
likely to make a
purchase
Support for Tax
Increases to
Fund Schools
64%
56%
Source: Berger, et al. Contextual priming: Where people vote
affects how they vote. PNAS, July 1, 2008 vol. 105 no. 26 88468849
Precision counts: More precise numbers communicate
greater confidence and more believability
- When choosing between two dishwashers, a long warranty receives more weight
when a fine-grained unit results in a large numerical difference between the two
warranties (e.g., 84 months vs. 108 months) than when a coarse unit results in a
smaller numerical difference (e.g., 7 years vs. 9 years)
- The more fine grained the numbers, the more precise people perceived the
speaker to be (1 year vs. 365 days)
- People felt that a battery touted to last up to "two hours" would function for just
89 minutes, but they believed, on average, that a battery with life up to "120
minutes" would last 106 minutes
- People predict a more timely launch when told a new product would appear in
“104 weeks” than if they are told it will appear in “2 years”
But only when
communicated by
humans; not with
“machines”
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Source Pandelaere etal. 2011; Zhang & Schwartz, 2012
Simple is better: The simpler your language, the more
confident you sound
“Forgetting the business logic and the price, there will be options
down the road there, I would answer your question about capable
and that we weren’t really quite capable yet because our army was
doing all the other stuff we had to do, particularly the systems
conversions…The army will be capable to do other stuff sometime
next year, which is reasonable. Doesn’t mean we will.”
or
Jaime Dimon, CEO, J.P. Morgan
We’re not ready to do a deal yet
"We can do no great things. Only small things
with great love." Mother Theresa
"Words easy to be
understood do often hit
the mark; when high and
learned ones do only
pierce the air."
John Bunyan
NYTimes, 11/9/05
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Simple is better: The simpler your language, the more
confident you sound
Perform an analysis of
Analyze
Take action on
Act
Reach a conclusion about
Conclude
Exhibits a tendency to
Tend
Make a recommendation that
Make an examination of
Give consideration to
Due to the fact
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Don’t show off
Annually
Every year
Comprehend
Understand
Spatial
Space
Temporal
Time
Assistance
Help
Primary
First
Disseminate
Utilize
Attenuate
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Don’t show off
Equities
Stocks
Fixed Income
Bonds
Asset Allocation
Diversification
Dollar Cost Averaging
Automatic Monthly
Investments
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Message Strategies
Using Evidence as an Influence Tactic
 Evidence must be seen as relevance
 Evidence needs to be believable
 New evidence is the best evidence
 Evidence should be comprehensible
 Best used when:
- you think you may be seen as low credible
- you think you may be seen as having vested interests
- you use multiple sources
- strategically cite sources of evidence
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