I saw a photo today and the caption read “Anti-Poachers Protecting Gorillas.”
The photo showed a black dude taking a selfie.
Behind him was a guy dressed in a very convincing gorilla outfit, but standing in a very ungorilla-like pose.
Specifically, he was standing completely erect, with his arms straight by his sides, a big beer belly jutting out.
“How is this gonna work?” I wondered. “Will this guy pretend to be a gorilla so the poachers come and try to shoot him? And then what?”
I got curious so I researched this story in more depth.
SHOCKER!
Turns out I was completely wrong.
That’s not a man in a convincing gorilla suit.
Instead, it’s a real gorilla standing in a very human-like pose.
It seems these anti-poachers in the Congo raised a couple of orphaned gorillas. And now that the gorillas are grown up, they completely imitate (ape?) their human parents.
So they stand up straight, walk around on two feet, and even pose for selfies.
Which got me thinking about the instinct for mimicking those around us, whether human or ape.
It’s such a fundamental part of the thought machine we know as the brain.
Resistance is futile.
And if you need proof, take for example email marketing guru Ben Settle.
Over the course of the past year, Ben has on several occasions warned his readers to disregard social proof when making a buying decision online.
Noble advice. Except…
Even though Ben is like the good friar going about the shire and sermonizing about the dangers of alcohol, he’s also back at the monastery brewing up some delicious ale that he sells at the Sunday market.
Specifically, at the end of July, Ben ran an aggressive campaign to promote his Email Players newsletter (I know because I was tracking and categorizing every email he sent out that month).
And so from Thursday the 25th to Monday the 29th, he sent out 10 emails. Each day followed the same pattern.
Morning: an interesting or intriguing email leading into a link to the Email Players sales page…
Afternoon: an email that was basically just a testimonial for Email Players. 5 testimonials over 5 days. Because they are too powerful not to use.
So in case you want to promote an offer aggressively over the span of a few days, maybe try mimicking this little sequence of Ben’s. I imagine he’s using it because he’s tested it and it works.
And if you don’t need emails, but you do need some advertorials, then fear not. The anti-poaching brigade is preparing a special report on the topic, which you can sign up for here: