Made to Stick (20 page)

We’ve seen that we can make our ideas more credible, on their own merits, by using compelling details or by using statistics. A third way to develop internal credibility is to use a particular type of example, an example that passes what we call the Sinatra Test.

In Frank Sinatra’s classic “New York, New York,” he sings about starting a new life in New York City, and the chorus declares, “If I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere.” An example passes the Sinatra Test when
one example alone
is enough to establish credibility in a given domain. For instance, if you’ve got the security contract for Fort Knox, you’re in the running for
any
security contract (even if you have no other clients). If you catered a White House function, you can compete for any catering contract. It’s the Sinatra Test: If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere.

Safexpress, a family-owned business based in India, used the Sinatra Test to its advantage. Safexpress competes in the shipping business, where competition is fierce. And, while the competition led to low prices, there was a catch: Most shipping firms would not guarantee safe, on-time deliveries. With some firms, you couldn’t be guaranteed that deliveries would be made, ever.

To distinguish itself from the competition, Safexpress assured its customers of safe, on-time delivery. International companies operating in India—companies accustomed to the reliability of FedEx—embraced Safexpress immediately. But Safexpress struggled to attract business from Indian companies that weren’t accustomed to paying higher rates. Rubal Jain, a member of the founding family of Safexpress, was determined to make inroads with Indian companies.

To do so, Jain set his sights on winning the account of a major Bollywood studio. When Jain proposed that Safexpress distribute the studio’s films, the reaction was “Are you kidding?”

The skepticism was predictable and plausible: Piracy is a major concern in India, as it is in the rest of the world, so distribution is
mission-critical. If films end up “misplaced” en route, bootlegged versions show up a few weeks later on street corners. This risk wasn’t one that the movie studio could take.

Fortunately, Jain had a powerful credential ready. Safexpress had handled the release of the fifth
Harry Potter
book—every
Potter
book in every bookstore in India had been delivered there by Safexpress, an insanely complicated delivery: All the books had to arrive in stores by 8
A.M
. on the morning of the release. Not too early, or the bookstore owners might try to sell them early and the secret would be blown; and not too late, or the bookstore owners would be irate at lost sales. Also, the
Potter
books needed the same piracy protections as the studio’s films—there could be no leaks.

And Jain had a second story. He knew from an earlier conversation that the Bollywood studio executive had a brother who had recently taken his high school board exams. After telling the
Harry Potter
story, Jain mentioned, “By the way, we also safely delivered the examination papers for your brother’s boards and carried the return answer sheets.” Safexpress handles the distribution of all the central examinations for high school and university admissions.

Two months later, the deal was signed.

Both of Jain’s stories passed the Sinatra Test. Jain could have used statistics instead of stories—“98.84 percent of our deliveries arrive on time.” Or he could have drawn on an external source of credibility, such as a testimonial from the CEO of a multinational company: “We’ve used Safexpress for all our deliveries in India and we’ve found them to be an excellent service provider.” Both of these are good credibility-boosters. But there is something
extraordinary
about being the company that carries completed board exams and the latest
Harry Potter
book. Their power comes from their concreteness rather than from numbers or authority. These stories make you think, “If Safexpress can make it there, they can make it anywhere.”

For an example that unites all three of the “internal credibility” sources—details, statistics, and the Sinatra Test—we can turn to Bill McDonough, an environmentalist known for helping companies improve both the environment and the bottom line.

Most executives tend to be skeptical and suspicious when approached by an environmentalist, even a “business-friendly” environmentalist like McDonough. To overcome such skepticism—to prove that there can be perfect consistency between business goals and environmental goals—McDonough tells a story that passes the Sinatra Test.

The story goes as follows. In 1993, McDonough and a chemist, Michael Braungart, were hired by the Swiss textile manufacturer Rohner Textil, which produces the fabrics for Steelcase chairs. Their mission was one that most people in the textile industry considered impossible: Create a manufacturing process without using toxic chemicals.

The textile industry routinely deals with hazardous chemicals. Most dye colors contain toxic elements. In fact, the trimmings from Rohner Textil’s factory—the excess cloth not used on the chairs—contained so many questionable chemicals that the Swiss government classified them as hazardous waste. Furthermore, the trimmings couldn’t be buried or burned in Switzerland—to comply with government regulations, they had to be exported—shipped to a country with laxer regulations, such as Spain. (Note the vivid, concrete detail.) McDonough said, “If your trimmings are declared hazardous waste but you can sell what’s in the middle, you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to know you’re selling hazardous waste.”

To tackle this problem—eliminating toxic chemicals from the furniture-manufacturing process—McDonough needed to find a willing partner in the chemical industry. He had to provide Rohner Textil with a source for clean chemicals that would fit the company’s production
needs. So he and Braungart started approaching executives in the chemical industry. They said, “We’d like to see all products in the future be as safe as pediatric pharmaceuticals. We’d like our babies to be able to suck on them and get health and not sickness.”

They asked chemical factories to open their books and talk about how the chemicals were manufactured. McDonough told the companies, “Don’t tell us ‘it’s proprietary and legal.’ If we don’t know what it is, we’re not using it.” Sixty chemical companies turned them down. Finally, the chairman of one firm, Ciba-Geigy, said okay.

McDonough and Braungart studied 8,000 chemicals commonly used in the textile industry. They measured each chemical against a set of safety criteria. Of the chemicals they tested, 7,962 failed. They were left with 38 chemicals—but those 38 were “safe enough to eat,” according to McDonough. (Note the concrete detail—“safe enough to eat”—plus a statistic that establishes a relationship—a tiny number of good chemicals out of a larger number of toxic chemicals.)

Amazingly, using just those 38 chemicals, they were able to create a complete line of fabrics, containing every color but black. The fabric they chose was made from natural materials—wool and a plant fiber called ramie. When the production process went online, inspectors from the Swiss government came to check the water flowing out of the plant to make sure chemical emissions were within legal limits. “At first, the inspectors thought their equipment had broken,” McDonough says. The instruments were detecting nothing in the water. Then the inspectors tested the water flowing into the factory, which was Swiss drinking water, and found that the equipment was fine. McDonough says, “The fabrics during the production process were further filtering the water.”

McDonough’s new process wasn’t just safer, it was cheaper. Manufacturing costs shrank 20 percent. The savings came, in part, from the reduced hassle and expense of dealing with toxic chemicals. Workers no longer had to wear protective clothing. And the scraps—instead of being shipped off to Spain for burial—were converted into
felt, which was sold to Swiss farmers and gardeners for crop insulation.

This story is remarkable. Think about all the memorable elements: The impossible mission. The elimination of all but 38 of 8,000 chemicals. The factory’s water turned so clean that Swiss inspectors thought their instruments were broken. The scraps were transformed from hazardous waste into crop insulation. The idea that this fabric was “safe enough to eat.” And the happy business result—workers made safer and costs down 20 percent.

If McDonough approaches any business, in any industry, with a suggestion for a more environment-friendly process, this story will give him enormous credibility. It easily clears the bar set by the Sinatra Test.

So far we’ve talked about creating credibility by drawing on external sources—authorities and antiauthorities. And we’ve talked about creating credibility by drawing on sources inside the message itself—by using details and statistics and examples that pass the Sinatra Test. But there’s one remaining source of credibility that we haven’t discussed. And it may be the most powerful source of all.

One of the most brilliant television ad campaigns of all time was launched by Wendy’s in 1984. The first commercial opens on three elderly women standing together at a counter. On the counter there’s a hamburger on a plate, and they’re gawking at it, because it’s huge—about a foot in diameter.

“It certainly is a big bun,” says the woman on the left.

“A
very
big bun,” echoes the one in the center.

“A big,
fluffy
bun,” says the first.

“A
very
big fluffy …”

There’s a pause as the woman in the middle lifts the top half of the bun and reveals a meager, overcooked beef patty and a single pickle. The patty is dwarfed by the bun.

For the first time, we hear from the woman on the right, played by eighty-year-old Clara Peller. She squints through her glasses and says, cantankerously, “Where’s the beef?”

The announcer says, “Some hamburger places give you a
lot
less beef on a fluffy bun….”

Peller: “Where’s the beef?”

Announcer: “The Wendy’s Single has more beef than the Whopper or the Big Mac. At Wendy’s you get more beef and less bun.”

Peller: “Hey! Where’s the beef?” She peers over the counter. “I don’t think there’s anybody back there.”

There’s a lot to love about these commercials. They’re funny and well produced. Clara Peller became a minor celebrity. More remarkably, the ads highlighted a true advantage of Wendy’s hamburgers: They really did have more beef. The ads were a refreshing departure from the standard advertiser tool kit that attempts to paint powerful but irrelevant emotions on consumer goods—for instance, associating a mother’s love of her children with a particular brand of fabric softener. Wendy’s did something more admirable: It highlighted a genuine advantage of its product and presented it in an enjoyable way.

The ads had a big impact. According to polls taken by Wendy’s, the number of customers who believed that Wendy’s Single was larger than the Whopper or the Big Mac increased by 47 percent in the two months after the commercial aired. During the first full year after the ads ran, Wendy’s revenues rose 31 percent.

The claim Wendy’s had made was that its burgers had more beef. This information was probably not something most people would have given much thought to before. Certainly it was not common sense at the time. So how did Wendy’s make this claim credible?

Notice that something different is going on here. This message doesn’t draw on external credibility—Wendy’s didn’t invite Larry Bird to weigh in on burger sizes. (Nor did it use an antiauthority, like an obese burger-eating giant.) It doesn’t draw on internal credibility, either, quoting a statistic like “11 percent more beef!” Instead, the
commercials developed a brand-new source of credibility: the audience. Wendy’s outsourced its credibility to its customers.

The spots implicitly challenged customers to verify Wendy’s claims:
See for yourself—look at our burgers versus McDonald’s burgers. You’ll notice the size difference!
To use scientific language, Wendy’s made a falsifiable claim. Any customer with a ruler and a scale could have verified the claim’s truth value. (Though Wendy’s advantage was sufficiently substantial that just eyeballing the difference was enough.)

This challenge—asking customers to test a claim for them-selves—is a “testable credential.” Testable credentials can provide an enormous credibility boost, since they essentially allow your audience members to “try before they buy.”

Testable credentials have a colorful history in urban legends. In the 1990s, Snapple struggled to shake rumors that it supported the Ku Klux Klan. Rumormongers thought they had a few pieces of “evidence” on their side: “Look on any bottle of Snapple—there’s a picture of a slave ship on the front!” Doubters were also encouraged to look for the strange symbol showing a
K
inside a circle—allegedly, evidence of the Klan’s ownership.

Sure enough, Snapple’s labels
did
feature a picture of a ship and a
K
in a circle. They just had nothing to do with the Klan. The ship was from an engraving of the Boston Tea Party. The circled
K
is a symbol for “kosher.” But some uninformed people saw these symbols and bought into the rumors.

Notice that the Snapple rumor provides a kind of bait-and-switch version of “Where’s the Beef?” Wendy’s says, “See for yourself—our burgers have more beef.” The Rumormongers say, “See for yourself—there’s a circled
K
. Therefore Snapple supports the Ku Klux Klan.” The validity of the see-for-yourself claim causes some people
to leap, illogically, to the rumormongers’ conclusion. This is how testable credentials can backfire—the “see for yourself” step can be valid, while the resulting conclusion can be entirely invalid.

Testable credentials are useful in many domains. For example, take the question “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” Ronald Reagan famously posed this question to the audience during his 1980 presidential debate with Jimmy Carter. Reagan could have focused on statistics—the high inflation rate, the loss of jobs, the rising interest rates. But instead of selling his case he deferred to his audience.