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The Law of Dissatisfaction: How To Motivate Prospects
By Jerry Bader (c) 2007

The 7%-38%-55% Communication Rule

Dr. Albert Mehrabian, Professor Emeritus of Psychology, UCLA is
best known for his 7%-38%-55% Rule that states 55% of
communication is attributable to non-verbal behaviors like body
language and facial expressions; that 38% of communication is
attributable to voice including volume, tone, pitch, cadence,
and quality; and only 7% of communication is attributable to the
words used.

Despite this persuasive evidence, companies continue to pile on
the Web-text in the vain hope that search engines will index it
and that someone might actually read it, even though the reality
is 70% of website visitors merely scan for headlines, bulleted
points and captions.

The evidence is clear, the most effective way to deliver a
marketing message is a Web-video using a professional performer
who knows how to use his or her voice, expression, and body
language to drive the point home.

"But Wait, There's More …"

I have noticed a proliferation on the Web of the sad old direct
marketing formula that you see in sales pitches for magazine
subscriptions. Can you really expect people to take you
seriously when you adopt this 'Barnum and Bailey' approach to
marketing? It is a formula that flies in the face of Dr.
Mehrabian's research and every other usability study that warns
against over-burdening website visitors with too much text. Your
search engine optimizer may think it's great for driving
traffic to your landing page, but I'll bet if you check your
logs, 50% of that traffic disappears in under 5 seconds.

This format is an outdated sales technique that doesn't work in
a Web environment where people find it difficult to read large
amounts of text. It is also a tactic that insults your
customer's intelligence.

A Red Flag Marketing Formula

If ever there was a red flag telling people to stay away from
your company it's a website presentation that includes:

- Huge bold headlines,

- Copious amounts of text,

- Bright yellow highlighted key phrases,

- Photos of smiling semi-ugly customers,

- Photos of smiling semi-pretty nonexistent staff,

- Lots of useless free crap,

- Loads of bulleted points with big red check marks,

- Numerous testimonials on pale yellow backgrounds and
quotations in Courier with more bad photographs,

- More extra bold, underlined, red text,

- The phrase 'But Wait, There's More' offering more useless
free e-books you'll never read and special bonus gifts you
don't want or need,

- Lots of 'Click Here To Order" buttons,

- And finally make sure you bury the price at the bottom of over
4689 words.

The entire presentation could be made in two minutes using a
cost effective video presentation delivered by a professional,
but that wouldn't be search engine friendly would it, never
mind it's the best way to sell your product or service.

Reducing Video Load Times

Which brings me to the issue of load times. We all know that
video and audio files take longer to load than text, however
there are many ways that load times can be reduced and kept to a
minimum.

1. The size of the video can be adjusted.

2. Choose an alternative codex to compress the file.

3. Design your presentation with simple, minimalist backgrounds
so the number of pixels that change from frame to frame are
reduced.

4. Decrease the frame rate.

5. Alter the audio settings.

6. Adjust the amount of video that is preloaded.

We also know that there is a class of Web-surfer who will not
wait for videos to load. This is a fact of life, I admit it, but
from a marketing and sales perspective it really doesn't matter
and I'll tell you why: websites visitors who will not wait a
reasonable amount of time for a presentation to load will also
not read your copious amounts of text and the reason is simple:
they are not motivated enough by what you sell and if they
aren't motivated they're not potential customers.

If They Aren't Motivated, They're Not Customers

Two things motivate all potential customers: a feeling of
dissatisfaction and a desire for change. All good advertising
creates a focused storyline with a singular message that stirs
the emotional dissatisfaction in the audience and offers a
solution that will initiate change.

Thank goodness people are insatiable for what's new and
improved. We are a species motivated to constantly strive for
more: more money, more power, more success, more stuff; and when
we have more stuff, we want better stuff. We are in a constant
state of desire. The advertisers job is to access that desire
and push that motivational button so that the audience takes
action.

The Law of Dissatisfaction

The job of advertisers is to create dissatisfaction in its
audience. If people are happy with how they look, they are not
going to buy cosmetics or diet books; if people are happy with
their old twenty-inch tube television they are not going to buy
a sixty-inch LCD flat screen TV. If people are happy with who
they are, where they are in life, and what they got, they just
aren't customer-potential, that is, unless you make them
unhappy.

Most cosmetic advertisements feature a beautiful woman, igniting
the promise that you too can look like a drop-dead glorious
model if only you use their product. This approach is based on
showing an ideal that the audience will undoubtedly be unable to
stack-up against. The audience after seeing what they could look
like, is no longer happy with what they do look like, and are
now motivated to buy into the promise of change.

The Psychology of Contrary Thinking

Anyone who is interested in marketing and the Web is most likely
aware of the brilliant Dove Self-Esteem campaign. For those who
want to excise all video from the Web in favor of search engine
optimization tactics in order to drive traffic, it should be
noted that the original Dove Web-video has been viewed by over
3.3 million viewers and has driven huge numbers of traffic to
the Dove website, not to mention an incredible amount of free
publicity.

On the surface it may seem like the Dove campaign is an example
of the opposite of the law of dissatisfaction. The series of
campaign videos show real people with all their flaws and the
message that people should be happy with who they are, and how
they look. But what's the real underlying message of
advertising videos that show slightly over-weight, wrinkled,
aging women?

If ever there was a case of reverse psychology, this is it.
Women may initially be attracted by the sentiment expressed and
it certainly generated a lot of media coverage, but when all is
said and done, women will look at these ads and say, 'hell no,
I don't want to be fat, wrinkled and old, and I'm going to do
whatever I can to avoid it." Dove has masterfully managed to
create a positive campaign that still remains true to the law of
dissatisfaction. Whether or not that was Dove's intent doesn't
matter, the psychology of contrary thinking works.

Creating Successful Dissatisfaction

In order to implement a Web-video marketing campaign that
motivates action, you must present a storyline that accesses the
emotional and psychological subtext of desire. Your campaign is
based on this defining underlying message.

In order to create this underlying communication we must first
decide to whom the campaign is aimed. We each have a self image,
in fact we each have four self-images. We must figure out which
self our product or service serves.

1.    The Public Self is the self we present to the world. If we
sell high priced luxury goods or services that appeal to status,
we are probably aiming our presentation at the public-self, the
one we display to others.

2.    The Private Self is the self we hide from the world. If we
sell a hidden pleasure product or service we should probably
direct our presentation to the private-self, the one we keep
locked away and hidden.

3.    The Ideal Self defines who we wish we were. If we sell a
self-improvement or motivational product or service, we want to
access the ideal-self, the self we desperately wish to become.

4.    And the Actual Self defines who we really are. If we sell
a product or service that justifies our real behavior, then
it's the actual-self we want to target.

The dissatisfaction we are accessing may be active or inactive.
Active dissatisfaction like having acne, being overweight, or
worrying about a dysfunctional website is a concern that the
audience is aware. Inactive dissatisfaction like halitosis, body
odor, or ineffective marketing is a problem that the audience is
unaware.

To what degrees is our audience able to acknowledge a problem
exists even after we make it active? Does our audience
acknowledge they are overweight, have halitosis, or need a new
marketing strategy or do they deny or fail to recognize the
existence of the problem?

Next we need to decide whether the essence of dissatisfaction is
general or specific. Will our audience suffice with any solution
that comes along or does satisfaction depend on fulfilling a
specific requirement.

Lastly we must determine if the dissatisfaction is based on a
desire for something or on the avoidance of something. We may
desire an exotic sports car to show-off our wealth and status to
friends and colleagues, or we may avoid driving a flashy car no
matter how rich we are to avoid showing-up our friends and
colleagues.

Once we have analyzed the nature of our audience's
dissatisfaction and the ability of our product or service to
effect change, we can create an effective Web-video marketing
campaign. If your website content doesn't connect with your
audience's desire for change, if you're website traffic is not
motivated by dissatisfaction, then that traffic is just
congestion, not prospects.
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Jerry Bader is Senior Partner at MRPwebmedia, a website design
firm that specializes in Web-audio and Web-video. Visit
http://www.mrpwebmedia.com/ads, http://www.136words.com, and
http://www.sonicpersonality.com. Contact at info@mrpwebmedia.com
or telephone (905) 764-1246.
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