Dublin at the moment, like most other cities, is currently full of people walking around looking at their phones (well even more than usual). They're playing Pokemon Go the new augmented reality smart phone game.

When the game was first released in Ireland I noticed adults sheepishly walking around playing the game trying to hide what they were really doing. In recent days more and more people are playing and nobody is trying to hide it. Why?

I think it was to do with a concept known as 'social proof'. This is the idea that when we see others, especially other people like us, exhibiting a particular behaviour then we are more emulate that behaviour ourselves. Unlike most games which can be played at home in order to play Pokemon Go the player has to go out in the world and walk around. The visibility of adults playing the game emboldens others to play the game without embarrassment. Due to there visibility every player becomes an advertisement for the game.

If a small business or organisation can make an aspect of their project more visible they can leverage social proof to promote their product, idea or cause. Badges are an ideal way to do this. A well designed badge will be voluntarily work by your existing customer and seen by their friends. Your new potential customers will trust their friends much more than they will trust any paid advertising or other marketing message coming straight for you.

The badges we made for the Mattress Men documentary about Mattress Mick are a great example of this. The badges focus on cheesy, ironic, mattress themed puns which are appropriate to the subject matter of the documentary and to the target audience. These badges offer the wearer something, in this case humour, rather than just prominently pushing the name of the documentary. People are happy to wear the badges because of the humour and the wearing of the badge is an endorsement of the film to their friends and colleagues. The same principle applies to any project or cause.

Mattress Men Badges

In his book Contagious: Why Things Catch On Jonah Berger writes about what he calls 'behavioural residue'.

Behavioural residue refers to a publicly visible indication that a person has engaged with your product, organisation or cause. Seeing examples of behavioural residue creates what Berger calls 'social proof'. When we see others, especially others who we admire, are engaged in a behaviour such as wearing a badge to promote a particular cause it generates 'social proof' and makes us more likely to also support that cause or to wear a badge.

Berger gives an example of using behavioural residue to generate social proof and increase voter turnout.

It’s hard to get people to turn out to vote...Unless you actually happen to see all the people who go to the polls, you have no idea how many other people decided voting was worth the effort...But in the 1980s election officials came up with a nice way to make voting more observable: the “I Voted” sticker. Simple enough, but by creating behavioural residue, the sticker made the private act of voting much more public, even after people left the polling station. It provided a ready reminder that today is the day to vote, others are doing it, and you should too.

Behavioural residue can be generated by printed promotional products and there is a huge range of choice out there including badges, magnets, and key rings. So which should you choose and are some better than others? Berger explains:

Some of these giveaways provide better behavioural residue than others. Giving away a makeup carrying case is fine, but women usually apply makeup in the privacy of their bathrooms, so it doesn’t make the brand that observable.

Badges are an ideal way to create behavioural residue and communicate social proof as they are highly visible and public. Badges are also strongly associated with the particular person who wears it and so enables you to piggy back on that persons social influence among their peer group.