In general, ideas only spread if they are believed; otherwise they are immediately dismissed out of hand.
Credibility can be gained in several ways.
One tried-and-tested method is to have experts back a story
up.An expert doesn’t necessarily have to be a doctor in a white lab coat – take, for example, the anti-smoking campaign which featured a woman in her late twenties who had smoked since the age of ten. Now facing her second lung transplant, she looked like a frail, elderly woman. Her appearance itself added credibility to her story.
People trust stories told by real, trustworthy people.
Another way of adding credibility to a story is to use realistic facts and figures to illustrate the point – but only if they paint a concrete, non-abstract picture. Over-reliance on statistics is a common and confusing mistake.
An example of effective use of statistics is the anti-war campaign that claims the world’s combined current nuclear arsenal has five thousand times the explosive power of the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. This gives the audience a common reference point (the imagery of the destruction at Hiroshima) and challenges them to imagine five thousand times that force. As this is essentially incomprehensible, it underlines their key idea: that nuclear proliferation has gone too far.
As an added bonus, the audience now has a ready-made statistic to use to pass the message on to others.
Using the audience itself as a reference is particularly good at bestowing credibility. Ronald Reagan’s electoral slogan directly addressed voters: ‘Ask yourself, are you better off now that you were four years ago?’
People often trust their own judgment more than they do an expert’s, so if the audience can personally verify your message, it is particularly credible.
A sticky idea must be credible.