X-Message-Number: 29619 From: Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2007 21:55:22 EDT Subject: More on marketing Content-Language: en At the CI open house Sunday it was clear that there remains a lot of confusion about why don t they and how can we etc. Let me try again to clarify the marketing problem and what we can do. Stating the problem succinctly is easy. A two-word encapsulation is cultural inertia. However, in order to be useful, this needs fleshing out. Two more words encapsulate important aspects of cultural inertia responsibility and uncertainty. Most people are uncomfortable with responsibility, especially in areas where tradition is strong and professionals hold sway. We ask people to accept personal responsibility for life and death decisions. They don t feel up to it, and they don t want to rebuke or betray their spiritual leaders or teachers or their own prior convictions. Most people are also uncomfortable with uncertainty, and would rather be in danger than in doubt. We ask people to live with uncertainty, several kinds of uncertainty and pay for the privilege. In other words, we demand that they accept the full burden of adulthood, which is very unwelcome. Another word captures another important element of cultural inertia altruism. Altruism to a certain degree, in certain contexts is built into us, hard-wired by evolution. It is also reinforced by our conditioning, which generally frowns on selfishness and extols altruism and loyalty to causes or principles. Saying all this makes it sound nearly hopeless, but it isn t. We can t do as much as we would like, as quickly as we would like, but we can do some things, old and new. First, it helps to get rid of the excess baggage some of us carry. When people are illogical and suicidal, according to our lights, it is tempting to blame them and scold them. This may make you feel a little better, but it doesn t really accomplish the task at hand, which is not to flaunt our superiority or deplore the stupidity of others, but to take reasoned steps to achieve the goal, or as much of it as feasible at present. Quite a few cryonicists, including Dave Pizer, who has contributed substantially to the movement, still cling to the notion that we have something to gain by attacking religion. I ve already said it over and over, along with many others, but I ll say it again: (1) Religion is not a major part of our problem, and (2) We in cryonics could in any event at most contribute only a trifle to any crusade against religion, and (3) We don t need to arouse hostility where it doesn t exist. Next, as I have said repeatedly, we should continue, and improve upon, what works, and exploit the data. The data first of all show one striking fact that it is easier to sell cryonics to relatives and friends than to strangers. Not easy by a long shot, but easier, much easier. I don t have the figures at hand, but I know for sure that a family member of a CI member is much more likely to be him/herself a member than is someone chosen at random from the public. A patient s family is overwhelmingly more likely to include CI members than is the family of a random non-member. Incidentally, this is in line with a well-known axiom of marketers, especially charities, namely, that your best source of business is prior buyers or donors. To get more from existing members, and to get new members from the families of existing members, we need to do a better job of getting and keeping members involved. Ben has taken several steps to this end, including sending Long Life to all members, and yesterday the open house, which was more successful than I had anticipated. The open house suggests to some that we should try again for more socializing among local members. I am still skeptical about the prospects here. We are too thinly scattered and too diverse. Many members don t want to chat about cryonics, and quite a few just aren t very sociable. But the right personalities could probably make a go of this. After all, lots of businesses and organizations have social occasions where business is not discussed or at least is subordinate. Maybe we need, on a volunteer basis, something like a human resources leader. Networking has lots of aspects and variations. (On this particular topic, and on others, I violate my own rule about do-it-yourself, with the excuse that I am doing something, even though far from everything.) The data also show us that many people are more motivated to save others than themselves. Our patients include a considerable number of parents, especially mothers, the contract having been signed by a child or children. Doing something for your parent, at some cost to yourself, has cultural support and has the altruism conditioning working for us. So, looking back again: People dislike responsibility, but we can do a better job of reducing their burden of decision. We need to make membership more nearly a turnkey decision. Our members are not just customers in the usual sense, but most of them want the benefits of customer status, including a minimum of effort. This aim is in conflict with the aim of getting more membership participation in our activities, but the two nevertheless are not mutually exclusive. Our membership is not monolithic. We need to encourage participation of those willing and at the same time lighten the burden of responsibility for those who need this. People generally dislike uncertainty, and while we must acknowledge that the fact of uncertainty is built into life and death, we can in practice reduce the feeling of uncertainty by building an aura of confidence and sense of progress, and there is plenty of raw material for that. Sorry if I ve rambled a bit. R.E. ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com. Content-Type: text/html; charset="UTF-8" [ AUTOMATICALLY SKIPPING HTML ENCODING! ] Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=29619