Here are some important questions. Which shoe do you put on first in the morning? Left or right? Do you tie your right shoelace first, or the other one? Do you clean your teeth before showering, or after? Do you think about these things at all? Or are you so used to doing them now you just do them without thinking, by habit?
When you walk along the street, have you ever stopped to think what you are doing? Did that affect the way you walk? When you open a door, stir your tea or reverse your car out of the drive, do you do it automatically? What would happen if you stopped to think about it?
Habits can form unnoticed without anybody being aware, and changed without anyone noticing the change. For years my mother played bridge each week with her three best friends. Each by rotation took her turn at hosting the game in her home. Because all four ladies were watching their waistlines it was agreed that for refreshments they’d each serve nothing more fancy than tea and plain biscuits.
That worked fine for a while. But as time passed invariably one of them would introduce something just a tiny bit more special; home-made biscuits perhaps, or a fruit cake. Then in turn, not to be outdone or seem to be skimping, each of the other ladies would slip in something more fancy, perhaps cream cakes or jam scones. Best cutlery and finest tableware would gradually appear. Before long feasts were being set out and the ladies were all secretly getting anxious about the pounds they were adding. Eventually sanity prevailed, a halt was called and the rule of tea and plain biscuits only was re-imposed. But in time, as people will do, one or other of them would soon break ranks again. And the whole competitive cycle would start all over.
To my knowledge, it came round at least half a dozen times, always with the same results.
‘What’s this got to do with fundraising?’ I hear you ask.
Well potentially, quite a lot. Ghandi seems to have cottoned onto it, some time back. He’s not alone.
The science of habit formation is now a major field of study in the world’s leading universities. Its implications for commercial marketers are profound because researchers have realised that behaviour comes from habits as a natural consequence of our neurology. Habits, we know, can keep us healthy or unhealthy (exercise and smoking). Productivity, or the lack of it, can come from habit. The alcohol habit can be highly destructive. A savings habit can be pleasantly enriching. Bad eating habits make us overweight, good food habits keep us slim and fit. Bad work habits cost companies $billions so now some corporations, encouraged by the leading business schools, are treating habit very seriously. ‘You can’t change that, sonny. That’s just the way we do things round here.’ Pioneers of best business practices have found that almost invariably bad habits can be broken and good habits can be formed.
Our habits lead to urges most of us barely recognise or understand, yet we follow them all the same because, well, they’ve become a habit. Could we fundraisers encourage our donors to make making a difference a habit? We could if we define our benefits clearly, report on them frequently, wisely, compellingly and tell our stories well in ways that donors will welcome and even look forward to. Do that and our supporters could indeed slip into a habit of supporting us that is not just comforting and enjoyable, it’s also automatic (and so, unlikely to be stopped).
Would it pay us to engineer such a habit? Perhaps we could even foster, if not create, a craving to make a difference. ‘Go on, feel good, enjoy it, you deserve it!’
Sound far-fetched? Maybe it is. But then, stranger things have happened. Take the extraordinary story of Pepsodent and that brilliant if somewhat unprincipled giant of advertising, Claude C Hopkins.
Between the wars few Americans regularly cleaned their teeth. It wasn’t perceived as necessary or helpful, despite prevailing poor teeth health. The people at Pepsodent determined to change that.
Hopkins, author of the classic Scientific Advertising, had through campaigns such as Schlitz beer and Palmolive soap already convincingly shown that adverting is not a random gamble, it’s a precise science. And he’d made himself mega-rich in the process. But when a friend came along with a strange product called Pepsodent that he wanted Hopkins to promote, the great ad man initially said no. Teeth health was in steep decline due to the rising tide of sweet sticky products American were then consuming, but nobody was selling much toothpaste because in those days hardly anyone ever brushed their teeth.
‘You’ll wonder where the yellow went when you brush your teeth with...
Claude Hopkins was well known for the series of rules he coined to persuade consumers to adopt habits designed to promote sales of his products. Eventually (long story being cut short here) he changed his mind and advertising history was made. Soon everyone from Shirley Temple to Clark Gable was boasting about their ‘Pepsodent smile’. Within five years Pepsodent was one of the best-known products on the planet, selling in vast quantities just about everywhere to fuel a now universal daily habit. Hopkins got even richer.
What he did to effect this change was he found a way to cultivate and grow a new habit. He discovered that a thin film of plaque forms on everyone’s teeth every day. Eating an apple will remove it more effectively than hours of brushing with Pepsodent, but he didn’t say that. What his advertising did was it told people to run their tongue across their teeth and to feel the film. Then he told them Pepsodent would remove it and give them a nice smile too.
It was the classic need and reward cycle. Soon millions of people were cleaning their teeth every day. It may not remove the film, but perhaps we should be grateful for Hopkin’s deception all the same, though pre fluoride, toothpaste probably made no difference whatsoever.
The finest marketing idea ever, in my opinion, came from whoever it was (see opposite) who added the single word ‘repeat’ to the instructions on every bottle of shampoo. People wash their hair by habit, they don’t need instructions to follow. Yet through repeated advertising many people adopted that habit too, even though it’s entirely unnecessary. Imagine how much more shampoo it sold.
Reader Elaine Webster has pointed out to me that the church – and also presumably temples, mosques, synagogues and similar – is one of the clearest examples of a structure designed to make doing good a habit. Of course. And with the decline of churchgoing in most societies, perhaps the role of the fundraiser is even more important as the potential for creating and instilling ‘habits for good’ moves into new hands and formats.
Seems to me that the process of creating and encouraging habits is something fundraisers could be studying and should be fostering. Great feedback, I feel, could become a routine that turns into a habit, for donors. I’m tempted to say, it’s something we could really get our teeth into, if only we could kick the frankly rather annoying habit most of us seem to have, of imagining that we already know it all.
© Ken Burnett 2013
With thanks to The Power of Habit, by Charles Duhigg (Random House 2013).
At the time of writing Ken Burnett is co-founder of Clayton Burnett Limited, a director of eThe White Lion Press Limited, a consultant to The Burnett Works agency, former chairman of the board of trustees for the international development charity ActionAid International and is currenty an independent trustee of the UK Disasters Emergency Committee. He’s author of several books including Relationship Fundraising and The Zen of Fundraising and is managing trustee of SOFII, The Showcase of Fundraising Innovation and Inspiration.
Gandhi’s wisdom and the Hopkins habit loop. Pepsodent changed the habits of a nation and in the process made rather a lot of money (and not just for Claude Hopkins). Perhaps we could learn from it.
