FLEB Marketing Tactic #9 Social Triggers = Social Conditions
This is Day 9 of How To Spot a Female Lifestyle Empowerment Brand (FLEB).⠀
If you’re a consumer, this crash course can help you make an informed, powerful decision about who you offer your time, money & attention to.⠀
If you’re an entrepreneur, download this free 10-day class to help you audit your own business practices, so that you can:⠀
- Bake justice into your business practices & marketing (and flourish while you do that)⠀
- Make sure you’re creating the social & client impact you intended⠀
WHAT NOT TO DO⠀
FLEB Tactic #9:
Social Triggers = Social CONDITIONS⠀
(so EVALUATE YOUR IMPACT)⠀
FLEBs use social triggers– aka TRAUMATIC SOCIAL CONDITIONS –in order to activate and channel our trauma responses & survival instincts into a sale.⠀
But social triggers are social CONDITIONS.⠀
Authority, scarcity, social proof, unearned privilege: they’re all social conditions.⠀
Uncritically using social triggers as sales devices without evaluating potential impact = leveraging injustice to create profit. ⠀
WHAT TO DO INSTEAD⠀
Culture Making Business Practice #9:
Use high risk/low risk distinction to evaluate IMPACT of using social triggers⠀
Ask yourself: is this selling situation high-risk or low-risk for my client?**⠀
SOMETIMES social triggers are useful. They help us make quick decisions in low-risk situations — and that’s valuable, because we’re saving our time & cognitive resources for more important tasks. ⠀
FOR EXAMPLE: If I buy the most popular yoghurt for $3 (low-risk), then the trigger of social proof (popular = social proof) worked on me — and that’s valuable, because otherwise selecting a cart full of groceries could take FOREVER.⠀
What is the female lifestyle empowerment brand (FLEB)
and why is it a problem?
Female
- Conform to the cultural demands of Ideal Femininity in order to rise
- Reinforces gender dualist/binary
Lifestyle
- Display wealth, privilege & leisure in order to manufacture social authority over other women
Empowerment
- Use the language of feminism & social change to bait a women into following/buying… while doing (oppressive) business as usual.
- Conflates individual success with collective empowerment (they are not the same thing)
Brand
- Teach women how to style themselves as saleable, consumable objects in order to ‘succeed’
- Asks us to erase ourselves in order to perform a brand character
In low risk situations, social triggers help us make snap decisions.⠀
In high-risk situations, social triggers can lead us into subconscious rather than informed decisions. DANGER DANGER.⠀
CONCLUSION: The higher the risk (eg price, time…), the fewer social triggers we use.⠀
**Dr. Michelle Mazur @drmichellemazur taught me the high-risk/low-risk distinction/tool⠀
