Two Sides of Cognitive Dissonance In Marketing 💥

A boy comes home from school and thinks about where he would hide a pack of cigarettes. He knows smoking is bad and mommy will get angry. Why then do so many adults smoke?

Fast food isn’t healthy at all, you know that. You come into McDonald’s and see smiling faces, children adoring their happy meals, cheerful families. Why do they associate food that can harm their children with happiness?

Actually, it’s human psychology to blame… as well as a little bit of marketing.

The power of social advocacy

The psychology behind the phenomenon can help to answer these questions.

Cognitive dissonance is a tendency for individuals to seek consistency among their cognitions, beliefs, opinions. The common psychology theory distinguishes conscious and unconscious parts of us. We have some of our desires admitted and others don’t because they are not accepted by society, for example. People seek pleasure unconsciously even though what brings pleasure may actually ruin health, reputation, and relationships. The battle between conscious and unconscious desires creates psychological conflict, which we usually feel like discomfort or dissonance.

When we come to believe in something — for whatever reason — and when evidence comes in that what we believe in is patently false, it confronts us with a dilemma. — Colin Lewis

Whereas this discomfort is a red flag for our brain, it nails our attention and enforces motivation to solve it. In marketing, it means to buy the goods or services that issue discomfort and make sense of it. In practice, during the decision-making process, a consumer faces conflict between their personal preferences and overwhelming social advocacy for the alternative.

Why then do so many adults smoke? ’Cause successful people that look so happy do so. ’Cause smoking can bring pleasure and relief. That’s how it works.

Cognitive conflicts may drive the marketing of almost every brand. The tone of voice, logo design, and fonts that don’t match common expectations influence the clients’ psychology and make your business stand out. The greater the gap between your actions and beliefs and what a large group of people says about it, the greater the tension that is experienced as well as the urge to bring back comfort.

Cognitive dissonance in action

It may seem that cognitive dissonance usage in marketing is always manipulative and sneaky. You may think so when the product or service being pitched to you is something you don’t need. This puts the service or product’s quality on top and relevance.

A good brand will address subconscious drivers like these, and any company that makes it easy for a consumer to narrow the gap between what they believe and what they do will tap into a viable market opportunity. — Jasmine Bina

This technique helps greatly when one needs to give good things bigger exposure.

It’s easier to be generous when you get something in return. Amazon knows about that and offers AmazonSmile users to donate 0.5% of the price of purchases and opt-in when the website prompts them. Why not just spend some money on charity, can you ask? Here’s our inner conflict to blame: deep inside, we are selfish and don’t want to share the money we’ve earned so hard.

Society blames these feelings for promoting being generous and helping those who can’t take care of themselves. Donating a small amount from a purchase solves the conundrum. One spends money on themselves when buying goods but reduces the guilt of being selfish by donating a bit for good deeds. This inner conflict effect brought charity organizations over $200 million in 2019 and continues to generate donations with every new purchase.

Source: About Amazon

The dark side of cognitive dissonance marketing

According to Forbes, cognitive conflicts can also work either way. Overwhelmed with contradicting messages, people get the motivation to eliminate the discomfort and… disable or ignore ads that don’t match their beliefs. What seemed striking and interesting yesterday is flooding news feeds and ad channels almost the next day, either because competitors are copying the case or potential customers meet their natural information consumption fatigue. Thus, an increasing number of people become insensible to the influence of cognitive dissonance marketing.

The online environment is no different to any other. It has its protocols and its ways of doing things. The only thing that sets it apart, possibly, is that many of those protocols are not yet fully established due to the relative novelty — for some — of the experience, and there may still be many users out there who are unfamiliar with them. And while breaking those protocols may seem cool, daring, or that word the ad industry loves so much, transgressive, to the rest of us it’s a drag. — Enrique Dans

The other problem is, when poorly applied, cognitive dissonance marketing can’t build a long-term motivation to use your service or buy products.

Suppose you sell a service or product with conflicting beliefs, but a client was served unprofessionally. The next time this client needs a similar service or product, they will know your quality is poor. If you fail to make them your loyal brand followers after the first purchase, you’ll need to find other ways to bring them back.

Summary

Summing up, understanding the effects of cognitive dissonance on consumer behavior is not actually a new frontier for influence marketing. Brands emerge and apply new techniques to engage potential customers and cause them to buy. However, one should never forget about the psychological basics of marketing. Knowing key principles driving peoples’ actions may give you more flexibility in your marketing campaigns.

Originally published at https://crowwwds.substack.com.

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