Tastes Great versus Less Filling – Dual Process Models
22nd April 2009
One of the best ad campaigns ever was the Miller Lite Beer series in the 1980s that featured the ferocious fight: Less Filling versus Tastes Great! Ads mocked the point-counterpoint form of debate. Each ad featured a celebrity who liked Miller Lite Beer because it was Less Filling followed by another celebrity who liked Miller Lite Beer because it Tastes Great. The two celebrities might battle one another for argumentative supremacy in a hilarious irony that closed with both quaffing a bottle of beer in happy harmony. Clearly the ads sold beer in a most subtle and funny way by pretending to take ad arguments seriously while treating the whole affair as a send up like a Monty Python skit. (For the infamous “cat fight” ad visit this YouTube link.)
The delightful irony of course is the false choice between the two attributes: Great Taste and Less Filling. The beer has both qualities and is best understood and appreciated with both and not as an either-or. Yet, if you read the popular persuasion trade press, you often walk away feeling as if you have to choose among various approaches. Without having to name any names, you know who I’m talking about.
Often times the choice presented is between: Arguments or Cues. Authors and readers seems to believe that there’s a primary principle, method, or concept that is the essential.
As the dual process models of the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) or the Heuristic Systematic Model (HSM) make clear, you can’t get a good grip on persuasion without understanding both. In other words, persuasion both Tastes Great and is Less Filling. Fighting is funny, but ultimately misleading. People are careful thinkers, the homo economus rational actor, motivated and able, high WATT processors and they are also simple minded, cue driven, mindless, low WATT processors. They vary over time and across situations and move flexibly from arguments to cues and back again moving with the WATTage switch.
Don’t trap yourself into seeing persuasion as a particular path, as one real thing. In this instance persuasion is not the porcupine, it is the fox.