The New Gold Rush.
There is a new gold rush. Billions of dollars are being spent by companies, large and small, to mine through thousands of pounds of dirt looking for tiny flecks of valuable gold. The difference between this gold rush and the last one is that the dirt is information, and the flecks of gold are preferences, or opinions. The masters of gold mining this time around are companies like Google, Nike, and Organizing for America.
Information is a valuable currency. This is true in any endeavor, be it war, politics, personal life, sports, and business. From the general who knows his enemies' whereabout to the basketball star who realizes he is 20% more likely to make a shot if he shoots from the left side of the court, those who have more information are at a distinct advantage. In business and politics, the most valuable form of information, the gold standard, is the understanding of popular preferences.
About Preferences
All preferences could be charted on a scale that has two opposite ends: theoretical decisions and values. At the theoretical decisions end you have very concrete preferences such as "If I went to the voting booth today, I would vote for Candidate A over Candidate B." Values are much more amorphous ideas such as "I highly value fairness." Most preferences fall somewhere in-between, such as "I like Nike brand shoes." This preference is relatively close to the action (we can assume this person will buy Nike shoes over other brands) and yet represents a level of thought that has not yet made it down to the decision point.
The whole point of business is to match people with their preferences. The reason people buy things is that they have preferences for them. I buy one shirt or bike or meal over another because it more closely matches my preferences. Those who do a better job of catering to more preferences get more business. But hasn't this always been true? Why is this gold rush to understand preferences starting now?
It is true, people have been seeking to understand preferences for a very long time, but the advent of the internet and social media have created new opportunities to find those preferences on an individual level. For the first time, you literally have people publicly broadcasting their preferences in a way that anyone can access for free. Facebook likes and posts, tweets, Google searches, Amazon.com purchase histories and Pinterest pins all make your preferences accessible like never before. While this information is available, it can be difficult to sort through and those that figure out how to find, sort, and use it will be tomorrow's billionaires.
Forging Preferences
There are many people who are keenly interested in not only discovering preferences, but in shaping them. The Democratic National Committee not only wants to find out who's a conservative and who's a liberal, they want to persuade more people to be liberal. Coca Cola is not only interested in finding out how many people prefer Coke to Pepsi, they want to increase that number. Discovering preferences is the first step to changing them, but there is much more to the story. In terms of the ease with which they change, preferences are much less like gold, and more like iron. There are three necessary conditions in shaping iron and preferences: The right temperature, strong impact, and repetition.
The right temperature - Some people's opinions cannot be swayed. These people are not at the right temperature. A thirty year old unemployed black woman who majored in gender studies at NYU is probably not at the right temperature for a Republican candidate. Some people can be swayed but they are not ready to receive messages at a particular moment in time. A seven-months pregnant woman might be convinced to buy a pair of slim, low-rise jeans at some point in time, but probably not right now. If you want to change preferences you need to swing at metal that is at the right temperature, otherwise, you're just making your arms tired.
Strong impact - We are deluged with messages seeking to affect our preferences everyday. Our world is filled with advertising like never before. In order to stand out from the crowd, an effective forger of preferences needs to strike hard. Messages must be especially funny, emotional, or different to stand out from the background noise. A TV commercial doesn't need to just grab attention in a vacuum, these days it needs to simultaneously grab someone's attention away from the Facebook message on their laptop and the text message on their phone.
Repetition - Even the strongest blows cannot meaningfully bend iron. Repeated hammering is necessary. The same is true of forging preferences. Even a great messages needs to be sustained over a period of time in order to cause a real change in an individual's preferences.
This blog explores how preferences are discovered and shaped. Welcome to the forge.
