We met in a living room of an old 1920s farm house. It was way out in the country of course because these types of things always exist at the fringes of culture. There were people stuffed into the front room on couches, chairs, stools and sitting on the floor.
The leader – an earnest looking fellow a little older than me – occupied the focal space in the center of the room. It wasn’t long before the show started. My friends who had brought me here knew what to expect. I had a suspicion that I knew as well.
We began with prayer. It was that sort of prayer I have found to be peculiar to pentecostals and evangelicals where they tell God how he should do things and remind him how fervent they are. I found it irritating and off-putting. And exactly what I expected. The level of fervency rose as the various folks “lifted their voices” to the heavens. Lots of vocal agreement and “yes god!” echoed through the room. It made my skin crawl. Then – finally – the interminable prayer ended.
Looking back on it, it was just a religious form of virtue signalling. And I know that my revulsion was normal. Healthy people don’t talk like that and certainly don’t treat a deity like that. But – as I learned – these were not healthy people.
Then the Big Cheese himself started talking. It was as I had suspected. A lot of pseudo-intellectual bullshit wrapped in cultural christian jargon.
They made their women dress like extras from Little House on the Prairie. It was retrograde. Backward-looking. A rejection of the 20th century.
Mostly, these people just wanted to homeschool their kids. They longed for simpler times when people lived closer to the land and plowed behind a horse.
But I did my duty to our friendship. I had attended a meeting. I had seen for myself what they were all about. And it was exactly what I suspected.
My friends had joined a cult.
The fundamental absurdity of this cult was obvious to me. And yet my two closest friends were completely taken in by it. Why? Why could I see through the bullshit and they couldn’t? The answer was as irritating as it was surprising.
It’s all about technique.
I teach these exact techniques in my branding training classes. Anyone who uses the techniques will get a response.
Sometimes that response will be positive. Sometimes it will be negative. But it will never be neutral.
Mine was the negative response. And – as I later discovered – the negative responses are the best. The harder I argued against this group and its teaching, the more entrenched my friends became in defending it.
I tried to save them and instead drove them deeper into its toxic embrace. This is a well-known psychological phenomena known as The Backfire Effect.
The Backfire Effect
When an opinion is contradicted by facts, instead of the opinion changing, it gets further strengthened.
When your deepest convictions are challenged by contradictory evidence, your beliefs get stronger.
This is the exact opposite of what we say we believe. We talk as if facts matter. We speak as if we are dispassionate, objective seekers-after-truth who are ready to change our beliefs as science reveals more facts.
What we actually believe is always demonstrated by behavior, not signaled by words. But we act like we must defend our point of view to the death, regardless of facts.
The more I tried to reason my friends out of their lunatic decision to pledge their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor with a group of religious fruitcakes, the more passionately they defended their decision.
That is how humans really behave. And that is why smart marketers never try to change minds. Ever.
You instead want to confirm the suspicions of your audience and show them how your offer is perfectly consistent with their extant beliefs.
This sounds simple. It isn’t. Because – news flash – people aren’t rational. If I tried to tell you that I have a scientifically validated series of steps you can take to get people to buy from you, I would be (a) lying and (b) saying exactly what about half of you want to hear.
Creating loyal customers is far more art than science. Because people are far more art than science. And you are working with people.
Create your own Irresistible Persona
The techniques I teach in the Irresistible Persona training course will give you the tools you need to make your online persona more powerful, more persuasive and more memorable.
Will it work with everyone? No. Some people will have positive responses. Some will have negative. But no one will be neutral.
And that’s your first step on the road to becoming irresistible and unforgettable.