Persuasion and Culture: Choosing the right tools and approaches

Last week, a friend asked me if persuasion approaches vary around the world.

To me, it is about how various persuasion approaches might work more (or less) effectively for different cultures. It reminded me of an NPR podcast episode I recently listened to about the efforts employed to persuade communities to bring more people into the vaccination club.

For example, an imam in England who's been using his Friday sermons to counter vaccine disinformation. His congregation is among the communities hardest hit by the virus and the most hesitant to take the vaccine.

His efforts not only include demystifying the misinformation the community has about the vaccine (“Is it halal?”, “Will it change our hormones?”, etc), but also applying to the National Health Service (NHS) to use his mosque as a vaccination centre getting the jab himself as a role model. The latter was important as he believed that his community wanted to see the reaction to make their mind up and also to seek permission to do it together.

This kind of persuasion approach works for this religious community where the religious leaders have an enormous influence on their followers. With his own congregation in mind, to persuade them to get the vaccination, the imam tried to allay their fears and doubts about the vaccine.

On the other side of the world, in Israel, many are also not sure about getting the vaccine (due to all kinds of false rumours going around the country). Some vaccination centres played upbeat music and were offering giveaways (e.g. free headphones for people who come and get vaccinated). But what brought people into the centre was not the DJ or headphones, it was pressure.

There was a new law in Israel where you can’t get into gyms, swimming pools, restaurants, theatres and other public spaces if you are not vaccinated or haven’t recovered from the virus. One person in the queue said they were there because their wife’s best friend is getting married and they won’t let them into the wedding unless they get vaccinated. People are taking the new law and government-issued document seriously and a little pressure goes a long way.

One persuasive approach might work for one culture (e.g. Israelis) but not necessarily work for others (e.g. (a similar proposal was getting resistance in the U.K.), and vice versa. The art of persuasion is not universal.

For example, in countries that are more about the society and community, using persuasion techniques and messages which involve other people’s actions, views and involvements would be effective and powerful (e.g. “If you do this, it would benefit your family or people around you.”).

Or in countries like Nigeria or China, how they’re being perceived by others are important so to persuade them in doing something or to get involved in certain things, it would have to be a slightly different approach than the above.

One other thing which is also worthwhile pointed out is that: Very often people talk about behaviour differences between countries (hence, for example, creating country-based business or marketing strategies). However, as we see in the first example above, you can see behaviours, mentality and attitudes are not always country-specific, but they can be cultural, religion or other tradition-specific.

This is a light touch on persuasion across cultural divides, technological and social environments. Different cultures can have different preferences for styles of persuasion.

Understanding the underlying elements of what is important to each culture or group and the context they are in means that you could choose the right ‘tools’ to influence and convince your customers, for example, about your services, or even promote change of behaviours for the better.

If you would like to chat more about this topic, feel free to get in touch.