The Messenger Is the Message

Remember Tupperware parties?

I’m guessing you do, but let’s do a refresher anyway. Tupperware is an American household products company founded in 1946 by Earl Tupper, and it sells various types of plastic containers, primarily for the kitchen.

The company developed a direct marketing strategy known as the “party plan” to sell its products, an approach that continues to this day. These Tupperware parties enabled women of the 1950s and beyond to earn an income while working from home.

As quaint as it may seem, this direct-selling approach was a stroke of genius. 

That’s because it turned ordinary people into super sales representatives thanks to the relationships they already had with prospects, combined with a setting that brought other highly persuasive aspects into play.

We can actually create this same dynamic with content. But it’s not about generating “more” content; it’s about laser-focused content that sparks a powerful psychological phenomenon.

Skeptical? Let’s take a closer look at the principles that apply to these friendly gatherings, and then see how we can tap into these proven persuasion methods with our marketing.

In the Tupperware party, there is:

• Reciprocity: The host throws the party, usually with snacks and beverages, which prompts the tendency for guests to want to “pay it back.”

• Liking: The party host is usually a neighbor or friend that attendees see as similar, likable, and perhaps attractive.

• Unity: Unity is present because the host and the prospects share a common social identity as community members, members of the same church, or similar values.

• Authority: The host has unique knowledge of these new products and is placed at “center stage” during the presentation, demonstrating expertise and authority.

• Consistency: Attendees are prompted to say whether they like certain products during the party, so their later purchase of those items is consistent with the views they’ve publicly committed to.

• Social Proof: The party is designed for on-the-spot buying, which means friends, family, and neighbors are purchasing right in front of each other, leading to social proof.

• Scarcity: Besides having a limited supply of products on hand, the host offers special price incentives if attendees buy at the party, but not later — FOMO at its finest.

In this way, the Tupperware host exemplifies the potent attributes of a “leading” expert.

While the setting helps create a compelling selling environment, it’s the established attributes and shared identity with prospects the host has before the invitations go out that make the system so effective.

Likewise, the relationship you forge with your audience before a sales message arrives becomes the message. 

The messenger is the message.

And yes, we use content to establish that relationship, but it’s still important to understand the distinction between being a content “creator” and the true goal.

Social psychology research shows that people rarely separate content from their perception of the communicator. This is called the “Messenger Effect.”

That means true “thought leadership” is more likely to be embraced based on who the person is to the prospect, not the actual thoughts.

In a provocatively titled 2021 study, “Hidden Wisdom or Pseudo-Profound Bullshit?”, researchers presented test subjects with sentences that sounded deep but were actually meaningless strings of word salad, such as:

• “Matter is the experience in consciousness of a deeper non-material reality.”

• “Wholeness quiets infinite phenomena.”

• “As beings of light we are local and non-local, time bound and timeless, actuality and possibility.”

The researchers showed study participants these types of quotes in three different contexts: isolated, attributed to a famous person, and as part of a short story.

When the participants were told  messages were from high-status people such as Albert Einstein, Nelson Mandela, or the Dalai Lama, the participants’ perception of the nonsense shifted to meaningful and more favorable than without the attribution. 

So if you’ve ever been perplexed by some drivel posted by a “guru” on social media getting hundreds of likes and shares while your useful content is ignored, well… there you go. What needs to happen for your messages to be similarly embraced is to change how your audience perceives you.

This is not a new phenomenon; it’s simply been validated by social scientists for modern times. Dating back to Aristotle and the concept of ethos, the messenger has been recognized as the most critical aspect of the “message” equation, even beyond logical and emotional appeals. 

And that ironically means that the creator of the message is not who matters. What matters is how people view you as the person who delivers the message.

Content Creation Isn’t the Key

Social scientists sometimes refer to the “messenger” effect as the “authorship” effect, but that can be misleading. 

As the “pseudo-profound bullshit” study shows, nonsense messages “authored” by the researchers only had to be attributed to a high-status person. And this occurs all the time in the real world with non-nonsense messages as well.

When a particular message is delivered to an audience, the source of the message becomes connected to the content in the prospect’s mind. And that means it doesn’t matter if the messenger created the content in the first place.

Think about celebrity endorsements. A marketing message is created by an advertising agency and delivered by a famous person. Why does this work if content “creation” is the secret to success?

Here’s something a bit closer to home. Many of the “gurus” you know with massive audiences don’t create their own content. They have ghostwriters who generate books, articles, and social media posts for them. And yet those huge followings not only persist, they grow.

Top talent on the speaking circuit hire researchers and speechwriters to create their presentations, even as they collect $50,000, $100,000, or more for a 45-minute keynote address. 

Once a year, the President of the United States delivers a State of the Union Address carefully crafted by members of the administration. And yet we credit or discredit the President personally for the content.

This brings us to artificial intelligence. ...