Christmas cards and reciprocity: What it means for brands
Richard Shotton
Author of The Choice Factory and founder of Astroten, a consultancy that applies findings from behavioural science to improve marketing.
In December 1975 hundreds of Americans received a surprise. Tucked among their mail was a Christmas card, addressed to them but from a family they’d never heard of. How they reacted was to have important implications for marketers.
Unbeknown to them, they were part of a psychological study. Phillip Kunz and Michael Woolcott, two sociologists from Brigham Young University, posted 578 Christmas cards to random families and then monitored how many cards were sent back in return.
The most striking finding was the volume of people who felt obliged to reply. 20% of recipients took the time to find a card, write a message and send it back to the experimenters.
In the context of 0.1% response rates to digital ads this is impressive. Why go to such lengths for complete strangers? Kunz and Woolcott attributed this to the cultural norm of reciprocity – the strong social pressure to return favours.
The power of reciprocity exists outside of formal experiments. Take language. Our use of "much obliged" as a common synonym for "thanks", unwittingly reveals our attitude to gifts and favours. Reciprocity is a bias that marketers should capitalise upon.
How can advertisers use reciprocity?
Many brands offer a value exchange to consumers, the key is to position that exchange as a gift.
How does that work in practice? Consider loyalty programmes. The standard model is to require customers to fulfil certain criteria and, in return, offer a reward. So Tesco awards a Clubcard point for each pound spent and Caffe Nero a free cup of coffee after nine paid ones.
The problem is these approaches are transactional. There is a quid pro quo. Since the customer feels they have earned the reward there is no obligation to reciprocate, no need to repay an outstanding debt.
Brand rewards must be unpredictable and surprising to harness the bias.
Who uses reciprocity well?
Pret A Manger is a rare example. The brand empowered its staff to give away free cups of coffee. Since this was originally positioned as a gift it created a subtle pressure on the customer to reciprocate by returning again.
However, their subsequent promotion of the initiative is counter-productive. The free coffee seems less a kind gift than a manipulative stunt.
But if reciprocity is so powerful, why is it used infrequently? It’s because brands are obsessed with easily countable metrics of success. It’s simple to tally the number of Clubcard points redeemed, harder to quantify additional sales due to reciprocity. Hard, but not impossible.
Brands that establish controlled test and control areas can ascertain the value of reciprocity. The scale of responses to Kunz and Woolcott’s Christmas card experiment shows that it is at least worth trialling.
Richard Shotton (@rshotton)
First published on Brand Republic https://www.brandrepublic.com/article/1375916/christmas-cards-reciprocity-means-brands#28OV70U77Z5ji613.99
Digital Marketing Manager at K2 Space
8 年This is a great article and it ties in quite closely with Trivers’ concept of reciprocal altruism. Short of examples of pure altruistic gifting, there seems a third way. Rather than a quid pro quo transactional loyalty (a free cup of coffee for every nine spent), or pure altruism (a free cup of coffee without accruing points) there seems room for brands which have deeper collaborative ways of gifting (by helping me on an on-going basis, I’ll do the same for you). This would mean reciprocity by design, rather than reciprocity as an afterthought or add-on to how the brand usually transacts. A brand which is exemplary of this is the South African health insurance firm, Discovery Health. It has a growing membership base of around 2.6 million and an annual revenue of around R34.2 billion (￡1.5 billion). From its inception Discovery has designed its insurance products around the promotion of good health (the premise being that healthy clients are less likely to claim). A recent example of this is its ‘Active Rewards’ programme which fully funds the cost of an Apple Watch to members who consistently achieve four of their weekly goals over a period of 24 months. Partial achievement of the weekly goals results in partial funding of the Watch. Discovery clients also need to activate their watch to see their personal fitness goals (which vary according to client and previous goals set). This gives the company deep insight into their clients, albeit with information that is mutually beneficial to both parties.