The Lure of Bullshit

At time of writing it is 3.14PM on January 30th, so we can be reasonably assured that all small people are away playing with new scooters and Lego toys when we say…

Santa doesn’t exist.

You and I know that. Our inner child might not, and every year some retailer or other gets in a world of trouble for a sly wink and an insinuation that the fat man in the red suit is really just an army of overworked, under-slept parents fighting for their sanity… but, like Santa Claus, magic tricks and aliens, we really do want to believe.

So much so, in fact, that we’re actually quite liable to believe absolute bull just because someone says it’s true.

We know why our common sense tends to malfunction when it comes to things that are too good, wacky, magical or interesting to be true: and that’s because it feels good. A healthy dose of optimism is one of our ancient survival mechanisms which helped us get up and take the risks that sometimes led to big rewards. It’s why we believe in things even when we lack conventional evidence: it’s our gut instinct reminding us that anything’s possible.

But if you’ve got a great idea, how do you get people to believe in the first place?

I’ll save you the smoke and mirrors, because Teller – of Penn and Teller – puts it better than I ever could. He says:

“Sometimes magic is just someone spending more time on something than anyone else might reasonably expect.”

To demonstrate this feat of magic, consider a shed in a back garden in Dulwich.

A shed which also happened to be London’s top-rated restaurant on TripAdvisor for a few months until December 2017 – except it was never actually a functioning restaurant, except for one night when its creator, Oobah, served friends and tourists some Iceland ready meals in an atmospheric event involving live chickens.

So how did Oobah manage to hoax not only thousands of eager gourmands, but locals, PR firms and even the world-renowned review site itself?

Simple: he put in a ton more time – and effort – than any reasonable person would.

He created a website, and hoaxed photos of gourmet food using urinal cakes, black pepper and his foot. He created a TripAdvisor profile, and got friends and family to leave fake reviews. He even bought a burner mobile phone – and told everyone who called the Shed was booked up indefinitely.

The Shed existed merely because he had the balls to say it did. He surrounded his fake platform with bogus exclusivity, authority, and social proof: and even though none of it was real, the image was enough because no one in their right mind would do it just for a laugh: it didn’t even cross people’s minds it could all be faked.

TripAdvisor even put their hands up, and admitted the oversight. They said, “there is no incentive for anyone in the real world to create a fake restaurant. It’s not a problem we experience with our regular community” – which is corp-speak for “we didn’t bother to check for this because seriously why would you even?” And that’s how Oobah’s Shed failed to ring alarm bells during the screening process.

The fact is, outward appearances matter. When people are looking for a restaurant, their criteria are simply a few reviews and a nice website. They don’t look for the physical restaurant or tax returns, they just assume it exists.

When people finally went to the Shed, they were expecting food worthy of London’s best restaurant – and even though a couple of people suspected a little ‘fowl’ play, Oobah was careful to offer a one-of-a-kind experience, to say the least, and most people came away satisfied.

You can use the same effect: if you want to be seen as an authority, then yes, you’ll need some good information – but you’ll also need good production values. Don’t use a cookie-cutter website. Build something beautiful and unique. Make yourself look like an authority, and that’ll be a huge help in making people believe you are one.

So that’s how you create a 21st century hoax, but what about Santa Claus, magic tricks and other sorcery, where there’s no incentive and even less evidence? That’s when another cognitive bias comes into effect: called the illusory truth effect.

Quite simply, we believe things if they’re repeated to us often enough. This is how legends like Robin Hood may have roots in fact, yet their stories are embroidered over time.

After all, Saint Nick hasn’t missed a Christmas for at least 1,747 years and little green men first landed in Roswell way back in ‘46, so it makes it a lot more likely that our own grandparents – and our distant ancestors – might just be as gullible as we are.

Now, we’re not telling you to go out and tell people you’re already a legendary rapper or billionaire angel investor when you’re not. You may get away with it, but honestly we want no part of the big mess you’ll make when the tabloids expose you.

But there are lots of ways you can use this in your marketing efforts. A lot of branding mostly comes down to this – if you’re told enough times that KFC’s chicken is finger-lickin’ good, you WILL start to believe it, even if you’ve been vegan for the past five years.

This is also why companies employ taglines – at Convertri, we use ‘Faster Funnels, Higher Conversions’. We use this because the pages built using our app load incredibly quickly, and when your pages load fast the conversion rates have been shown to be much better, and it means people see this every time they see our logo.

With enough repetition, it won’t matter if they’ve read one of the dozens of studies showing that faster pages mean better conversions; they’ll think it’s true for us anyway, because we’ve said it so many times.

But at the end of the day, a tagline has to live up to its promise. If our pages weren’t as fast and KFC chicken wasn’t as good, repeating our taglines would only hammer home the falseness quicker.

This is partly why when companies fail on a promise, news spreads so much quicker than when they deliver.

It just goes to show that if you’re in any other walk of life and the only thing separating you from magic is a lot of hard work, you should consider going the extra mile: it’s never crowded.

Also, if in doubt, add live chickens. Or KFC – whatever floats your boat.