How Behavioral Science Can help PR Pros Understand Motivation and Decision-Making

Your client is wrong. You know it. They know it, somewhere underneath the certainty. 

And you have two choices. You can tell them they're wrong, which will end the conversation and cost you the relationship. Or you can find the thing they want more than being right and take them there instead.

This is something most communications professionals learn the hard way and never quite put into words. Every difficult client, every resistant leader, every person digging into a position that will hurt them, they are not just wrong. They are running two competing motivations at the same time. 

The need to be right. And the need to succeed. 

And those two things are almost never the same thing. The PR professional who understands that distinction doesn't argue. They redirect. And the client ends up exactly where you needed them to go, convinced it was their idea all along.

Listen For

4:40 Can communicators actually motivate people to act?

7:17 Is PR returning to behavioral science, or losing its way?

8:55 What are system one, system two, and system three thinking?

11:17 How do you challenge a client without losing trust?

14:08 Will AI replace PR professionals or reveal who thinks strategically?

Guest: Roger Hurni, Founder & Chief Brand Strategist, Off Madison Ave

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Outthink. Outperform. Transform Your Organization Through Behavioral Marketing

Doug

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Farzana

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Transcript

Lady Emily (00:00):
For most of human history, the expert has talked and the other person has listened. That is not why things change. In fact, it's often why they don't.

Farzana Baduel (00:20):

(00:20):
 For most of medical history, the doctor's job was simple. Examine the patient, diagnose a problem, tell them what to do. It was a clean transaction. The doctor had the knowledge, the patient had the problem, information traveled in one direction. The patients didn't change. They nodded in the office. They filled the prescription. They went home and did what they had always done. They smoked. They didn't exercise. They ate the same way. And for a long time, medicine called this noncompliance. It named the problem after the patient.

(00:56):
 Then behavioral scientists started to ask a very different question. Not why won't patients listen, but why does being told what to do make people dig in harder? What they found was this, every person sitting across from a doctor has two motivations running at the same time. The motivation to be right about their own choices and the motivation to be well. And when a doctor tells a patient they are wrong, the first motivation wins. Every time, the harder the push, the deeper the resistance. The solution had a name, motivational interviewing. Stop telling people what to do. Find the motivation that's already there and work with it. Over 160 clinical trials confirmed it works, and yet most medical schools still don't make it mandatory. Most doctors still default to the lecture. The information still travels in one direction. Your client is not a patient, but the dynamic is identical.

(01:59):
 They are sitting across from you with two motivations, the need to be right and the need to succeed. What you do next determines everything. Today, on Stories and Strategies, you're the doctor. Sometimes the cure is not in what you prescribe. It's in what you ask. My name is Farzana Baduel.

Doug Downs (02:40):
And my name is Doug Downs. Our guest this week is Roger Hurni joining today from Tempe, Arizona. Roger, how are you?

Roger Hurni (02:48):
I'm doing well. If no one knows where Tempe is, it's in Phoenix, so we'll go with that.

Doug Downs (02:53):
Yeah. Like the southeast sprawl and home of the Angels in the spring, because I'm a huge Mike Trout fan and I'm wearing my baseball T shirt. I like it. Home of the Angels, right?

Roger Hurni (03:02):
Yeah.

Doug Downs (03:02):
Yeah.

Roger Hurni (03:03):
I don't follow baseball. I follow football. I mean, and not American football. I follow European football.

Doug Downs (03:08):
Right. And y'all got the Sun Devils there for your college team, so it is ...

Roger Hurni (03:15):
No offense to anybody listening. I'm kind of a Barcelona fan. Okay.

Doug Downs (03:20):
Moving

Roger Hurni (03:20):
On.

Doug Downs (03:20):
Roger, you are the founder of Off Madison Ave, a behavioral marketing agency built over 36 years by working with brands like Nike, PetSmart, Wells Fargo, not by telling them what their customers want, but by decoding what their customers actually do. I mean, you literally wrote the book on this. Outthink, Outperform.

Roger Hurni (03:42):
Yes, I did. Actually, shameless plug.

Farzana Baduel (03:47):
So Roger, we met in Prague and I was just blown away by your insight. And we met at a PR conference. Now, your work is very much at the intersection of, would you say, human behavior and communications? Is that how you'd describe your specialism?

Roger Hurni (04:06):
Communications is the output. If you look at a Venn diagram, there are behavioral sciences, behavior design, where I learned the models from Dr. Fogg, who runs a Behavioral Persuasive Lab at Stanford. And then I have a background hustle on behavioral economics. So where those two things cross over, I call that behavioral marketing, and that's the communications component of those two disciplines. And as it gets applied to public relations, honestly, customer service, sort of that whole range of marketing and communications.

Doug Downs (04:40):
And when people are looking at an idea, you're trying to introduce an idea to them. You're a big advocate for there's two competing things that are going on in their brain at the same time. What are those two competing things and how does that often play out?

Roger Hurni (04:56):
Well, a lot of times ... Well, let me start by saying this. I've heard a lot of marketers and communications professionals say, "We're going to motivate people, our customers to do something." You actually can't motivate anybody. Scientifically, you cannot do that. You can tap into an existing motivation and spur that along, but that's not technically increasing it. What we find that is tricky about motivation, understanding that is that there's often conflicting motivations. I have hope about something, but I have fear it's not going to work out. So one pushes motivation up, one pushes motivation down, both of them intrinsic. So way often what I find with clients, particularly in the C suite, is they always have this motivation to be the leader, to be right, to get their point across, have everyone do what they need to do. And that's driving their motivation up to make a certain level of decisions.

(05:54):
 And that's often in conflict with what does the customer need? What's my motivation for success if I'm not right? And so this motivation to be right and this motivation to succeed can sometimes be in conflict, actually more times than not, they're in conflict. And so part of a job as a good communications professional is to point those differences out and provide the pros and cons of the decision that you're going to make. And more times than not, that decision will favor the need for success over the need to be right.

Farzana Baduel (06:32):
I love that. Now, Roger, our Stories and Strategies community, they are PR professionals. And if you look back, one of our sort of modern godfathers of PR, some say the founder of modern public relations, how it's practiced, was Edward Bernays, who's the nephew of Sigmund Freud. And because of that sort of connection with psychology, the early days of practicing public relations was very much with a sort of psychologist's lens. And then we sort of say we lost our way. Do you feel that the comms community, that we're actually finding our way back into understanding psychology and behavioral science, and we're leaning back in again?

Roger Hurni (07:17):
Honestly, not really.

Farzana Baduel (07:21):
But now you're on the pod. Now everyone's going to know.

Roger Hurni (07:25):
Maybe

Farzana Baduel (07:26):
You are the pivot.

Roger Hurni (07:29):
Hopefully I'm the pivot. I think we were, Farzana. I think we were on that path to where we have to shift behavior. And I think for the last few years, it's really become a thing. You'll see it on websites where like, oh, we change customer behavior or we change the behavior of your audiences. And that's wonderful. Now how well they do that or not well they do that is a different argument, but at least they were doing that. So that gives me hope. But what has given me pause is honestly the introduction of AI. And instead of vacillating back and forth between system one and system two thinking, like Thinking Fast and Thinking Slow, we're going to a system three thinking where we're defaulting to someone, it's cognitive surrender, where we're surrendering that cognitive ability to the AI, asking it for an answer. And then because it feels polished and it feels right, even if it's wrong, people are taking that and running with it as opposed to doing the proper analysis for it.

(08:39):
 And that's what gives me pause is that they might pay lip service to human behavior, but then they default to a system three and relinquish their cognitive abilities to analyze. And that's the word of caution that I have to make sure that we don't do that.

Farzana Baduel (08:55):
I think you're right. We're definitely quite concerned that we're seeing a lot of cognitive outsourcing to LLMs and other AI tools. And you mentioned and framed it as system three. Could you describe to our audience what system one and system two mean to them? I mean, I read Daniel Kahneman's book, Thinking, Fast and Slow. I thought it was absolutely fascinating, but I'd love to hear it from you.

Roger Hurni (09:18):
No, it's not a problem whatsoever. Sometimes I forget for those who don't know. So system one is that fast thinking gut instinct, you just know. You know in your heart, you know in your gut, this feels like the right decision and there's a need for that. It allows you to eliminate choices rather quickly. People who are very good at it can often eliminate a hundred choices and get down to the 12 that make the most sense to investigate. And when they do that, they'll kick into a system two, which is more deliberate. It's longer thinking, it's contemplating, it's doing some research in that investigation part. And it's allowing yourself time to really analyze and think through all the possibilities of those 12 to get to the right one. And you have to use both. No matter how talented you are at one or the other, both are really critical.

(10:19):
 If you only rely on one, you never have the opportunity with two to get to some deeper meaning. If you only rely on two, you're wasting a lot of time investigating possibilities that really aren't going to ever go anywhere.

Doug Downs (10:33):
And you can overthink it.

Roger Hurni (10:35):
But that's the human analysis part that we need to apply to using an AI. We need to use both of those systems in asking the right questions, which can be all the gut instinct system one stuff. Sure, allow system three to take over in step two and allow the AI to do what it needs to do, but then kick in system two for yourself and analyze. Think through those answers, verify that information. Those three components working in concert I think are really effective. And for employees of the future, for communications professionals and PR, that's the system that's going to take you far as opposed to defaulting to an answer when it's really you that has to solve the problem.

Doug Downs (11:17):
Okay. Flipping this around, not just what's in my head, but in my client's head. Let's say my client's making a move and I really think it's the wrong move. And at a certain seniority, I'd say at any level, but certain seniority level, it's my job to tell them, "Don't do that. Don't go left, go right." How do I do that when system one and system two are working in my client's head? They may even know this is probably the wrong move, but how do I get that across, remain a trusted advisor, be able to come back for work Tuesday when it's Monday afternoon, that kind of thing.

Roger Hurni (11:52):
Juan, start with an improv class because it'll really teach you a lot with how to deal with moment and time decisions and helping people pivot. Okay.

Doug Downs (12:01):
Yes and go on.

Roger Hurni (12:02):
Yes, and there you go. At the end of the day, when you're working with human behavior, there's two maxims that you always have to keep in mind. The first one is that you can't manipulate anybody. Doug, I can't make you do anything you really don't want to do that. You have zero motivation. I love to cycle. I'm going to go knock off a hundred kilometer ride. If you don't have a bike or you don't want to cycle, no matter how much I prompt you, it's never going to happen. The second maxim is we help people do what they already want to do. Now, again, we talked about competing motivations. In that particular situation, professionally, you have to be able to point out what are the possible outcomes, and then you have to be comfortable with them living with the decision, even if that decision is wrong.

(12:53):
 However, most people would choose the right answer because the need to succeed generally overpowers the need to be right, particularly amongst the C suite. I have found in my career that the lower you go in the organization, the need to be right actually supersedes the need to succeed because being right is a motivator for promotion. I was right. I need to prove that I'm good. I need to self promote. But as you get up in the organization, it flips because now your responsibility is on the organization being successful, not you building your career.

Doug Downs (13:34):
Roger, I want to tug on that whole system three concept. And the way I simplify it is one of the ways people do that is by talking to AI like a counselor and like a friend. And not that that's black and white bad. There are probably some good applications for that, but don't rely on it. Do you find senior executives are willing to do that, that they're willing to enter into system three in terms of thinking? And to what extent? And is it good? Is it bad? Which is a horrible question.

Roger Hurni (14:08):
That's okay. Only the bad CEOs. I think it depends on the CEO and honestly the situation. Relinquishing that, having that cognitive surrender, again, it's fine if you're trying to figure out who won the World Cup in 1984. It's great at that. It seems that there's a lot of people experimenting, a lot of C suite people are experimenting and they're just not sure what to do. And so they're either paralyzed and they're not doing anything or they're allowing people to just play with it at their own devices and report back. I have come across C suite people who genuinely want to use the AI for efficiency and for helping be more productive, helping their people learn better, produce better quality work.

(15:12):
 The thing they won't say is that will reduce the workforce. I mean, it's just a thing, right? It's just you're either going to be the person who knows how to use AI effectively through behavior analysis and answer verification and expertise on qualifying anything, or you're going to be the person who looks for an answer. The people who have an AI and look for an answer, they're not going to have a job. So as much as everyone's saying AI is going to take your job, that's sort of true and not true. It's only going to elevate the people who are smarter using it rather than the people just looking for an answer. Now, I have come across some people, generally it's smaller types of businesses where they are willing to relinquish their employees and themselves to system three cognitive surrender to the AI because they don't care about the people that work for them or the company is about producing a product that doesn't have really great intellectual human capital behind that, that thought leadership.

(16:23):
 And so for them, it's like putting together a widget in the factory. If I can get that much output that much faster, it's good enough. In the PR world, if I can take a second, in the PR world, there's going to be those clients that come to a professional and they really need to solve larger problems. They need to level up their communications, either corporate. There could be potential crises with the type of industry that they're in. And there's people doing incredibly thoughtful work. They're using AI as an assistant to uncover blind spots, but they are the ones who have to provide the context and the sui generis ideas to help that AI uncover unrealized possibilities. Now, there are going to be clients and there's going to be PR professionals who are like, "Oh, you need a communications plan and a press release? Here you go."

(17:12):
 "I'm going to charge you X amount of pounds or dollars, currency of choice here and I did it in AI in 10 minutes and I don't really care about the results." Now, at some point, the AIs are going to be smarter because having an AI training AI is going to come to an impasse. The AI is going to be like, "Oh, this was done by another AI, therefore it's not of quality because it doesn't have everything else." But are there going to be bad actors that are just going to use the AI to output stuff that looks great and sounds polished and the clients don't know the difference? Absolutely. But my hope is, and my belief is that's a very small minority of our communications industry. It is not the majority of people.

Farzana Baduel (18:01):
It's a good note to end. Thank you, Roger.

Roger Hurni (18:05):
Perfect. Thank you very much for having me on.

Doug Downs (18:11):
Here are the top three things we got today from Roger Hurni. Number one, you can't motivate anyone. You can only tap into motivations that already exist. And the key is understanding when competing motivations like needing to be right versus needing to succeed are working against each other. I love that. Number two, system three is a trap. AI creates a dangerous cognitive surrender, in Roger's words, where people skip the human analysis of systems one and two and blindly accept polished sounding answers without verification. And number three, I struggle with this one still. Reframing is not manipulation. Roger says PR professionals, they aren't spin doctors. They're skilled at showing the same truth from a different angle. It still feels like spin to me, but who am I to argue with a behavioral scientist, right?

Farzana Baduel (19:05):
Absolutely. And I love his term cognitive surrender.

Doug Downs (19:08):
Yes.

Farzana Baduel (19:08):
That is the first I've heard, I think is a great word, especially with the age of LLMs. Now, if you'd like to send a message to our guest, Roger Hurni, we've got his contact information in the show notes. Stories and Strategies is a coproduction of Curzon Public Relations and Stories and Strategies Podcasts. If you liked this episode, then please do leave a rating and possibly a review and a big thank you to our producers, Emily Page and David Olajide. And lastly, do us a favor, forward this episode to one friend and thank you so much for listening.