Thinking triggered by jokes: "cognitive dissonance" in marketing psychology

Release time: 15:06:24, November 26, 2021

Recently, a paragraph on Diaoyin became popular. You can see it in the comments of many beauty videos:

"I really don't understand why such a beautiful girl would do such a thing?

Where is morality?

Where is dignity?

What's the address

Where is WeChat? "

I just want to ask one question about this kind of behavior that seems to resist and secretly rejoices in the heart:

Are there any principles?

Is there a bottom line?

Do you have any contact information?

Just a joke.

In fact, from the perspective of marketing, this kind of jokes can be popular because they use a kind of psychology - "cognitive dissonance"

"Cognitive dissonance": refers to a psychological state of tension and conflict. As long as a person has two inconsistent cognition at the same time, such as different ideas, different attitudes, and different beliefs, cognitive dissonance will occur.

For example, "like drinking" and "moderate drinking is good for health" are in harmony, but they are not in harmony with "I want to quit drinking".

So can we use it in alcohol marketing communication:

"Wine, beer, spirits

It's a bad thing. If you can quit, you can quit

If you can't quit

here... Available for sale "

There are many similar marketing methods, such as:

It is generally recognized that college students are more valuable than workers.

General recognition: home is a warm harbor


Positioning customer needs with cognitive dissonance

Human beings have two types of needs. One is to meet the needs of the ideal self, that is, physical happiness and satisfaction, security, love and belonging, self-esteem and self realization. On the other hand, when a demand cannot be realized for the time being, there will be cognitive disharmony between ideal and reality. It is also an urgent demand to eliminate this disharmony.
There is a story in Aesop's fable, "The Fox and the Grape", which says that the fox wanted to get the ripe grape very much. It jumped up, not high enough, jumped up, and jumped up again... It wanted to eat the grape but jumped up not high enough. It was painful and sad in the heart, which was actually unable to meet its physiological needs, resulting in cognitive disorders, At this time, the most urgent thing for the fox is to eliminate the psychological pain. Since the fact that he cannot eat grapes can not be changed, he can only change his view of grapes, and the grapes will become sour grapes. Through the spiritual victory method, the fox eliminates cognitive imbalance and psychological pain. Therefore, the key to the second type of demand is how to eliminate the cognitive imbalance of customers and make them feel calm. The goal of marketing or sales personnel is to create value for customers to meet customer needs, replace spiritual victory with products or services, and eliminate customer cognitive imbalance.

How to find these needs in life

Nine times out of ten, life is not as good as will. This kind of demand is everywhere.
Method 1: legislation
Substance versus legislation
The most common is the classification of product grades and functions. For high-end products, the economic conditions are too poor to bear, and they need to expand to the middle and low end; For general-purpose products, those requiring special purposes cannot be used, and product functions need to be subdivided and personalized.
Spirit versus legislation
It means that the existing products conflict with their values and beliefs. For example, since we cannot produce certain equipment at home, we can only import foreign equipment, and people with strong patriotism sigh while using it. When will we use our own equipment. Using the products produced by an enterprise with a poor reputation in social welfare, people with a strong sense of public welfare will have cognitive dissonance.
Method 2: Look for cognitive dissonance from social class and lifestyle
The lower class always wants to imitate the way of life of the upper class, and the people of the upper class always want to have a clear distinction from the people of the lower class in their way of life.
Due to the limitation of economic conditions, it is not always easy to imitate the lifestyle of the upper class. The pursuit of style has replaced the pursuit of luxury. To some extent, it is the new value created by avoiding cognitive imbalance.
Due to the general improvement of economic level, luxury goods are no longer the exclusive property of the rich class, and thus are no longer the typical signs to distinguish the class and show their identity. The rich class must find another way to express their identity and social status.