What are your favorite examples of signalling?

[hatchetman1954]

To start, a quick primer to people that might not be familiarized with the concept of signalling.

"... marketing signaling is any communication that provides information beyond the mere form of a message.

An easy example is price. Higher prices generally signal higher quality." - SCG

I'm mostly curious about what the members of r/growthmarketing have seen as great examples. But, as courtesy to get the discussion started, I'll provide a few examples that I like:

Example 1: Marketing Examples - Costly Signalling Theory - costly signalling

This clearly shows how in-person meets are better than online cold e-mail.
A personalized 5min Youtube video (takes effort!) to your prospect will signal that you're serious about your message.

Example 2: mashable.com - Land Your Dream Job Using Google AdWords (from 2010) - costly signalling

Bidding a Google ad for someones IRL name. You reach them in an unique & practical way - while showing that you're serious about your message.

It's a whole 10 steps ahead of simply sending a LinkedIn inmail, wouldn't you think?

Example 3: Breaking the norms counter-signalling

Wearing a fancy suit or a Rolex watch is signalling your wealth or status, right? Counter-signalling is demonstrating your value is so high, that you don't even need to signal or prove it.

Case in point: Vitalik Buterin (Ethereum foundation). While others show to conferences fully suited up, he rolls in in an unicorn themed t-shirt. Am I kidding? See for yourself:

https://imgur.com/4SNhxam

https://imgur.com/3JF66UR

All of the examples are just for reference - I'm more curious what your thoughts are.

Have you used signalling in your growth marketing?

Or have you seen a project that is really clever about signalling?

Hoping to get some active discussions and ideas going.

 

[grenbh]

@hatchetman1954 I'm not super educated with all of this stuff, but I've been blogging for a few months and trying to learn what I can, and something that stands out to me is how a website looks.

I started really noticing it because I would be SO self-concious about how my blogs looked, but then I started paying attention and I basically refuse to interact with 99% of sites that look outdated at all, and when I see really nice sites with amazing branding, their prices seem to reflect that.

I seem to trust most websites that look good, regardless of any other factors, which is a pretty naive way to go about it, but hey... that's why they spend the money on good looking websites I'd assume

 

[hatchetman1954]

@grenbh Absolutely true - I subconsciously judge every single website I visit too.

There's absolutely a difference between a hacked up Wordpress template, or a sleek clean design.

practical lesson: Use a premium design to become a premium brand.

 

[soibac91]

@hatchetman1954 I used to be a copywriter / growth hacker for a retail company. We would employ counter-signalling pretty often. For example, we'd start a sales pitch very seriously and it would mimic the competition pretty closely, but then, we'd suddenly burst out laughing as if to say "nope, we couldn't pull this sales bullshit off, but here's the real deal".

People considered us more genuine.

 

[hatchetman1954]

@soibac91 Very awesome example.

In terms of the seriousness at start, do you feel it's better to keep it realistic (mimic competition) or exaggerated to amp up the seriousness as much as possible, creating an even bigger contrast once you switch to casual mode?

 

[soibac91]

@hatchetman1954 Ooops, sorry. Been off the grid for a while.

It depends. Like with a joke you tell, or good storytelling in general, you need to have a feel for it. You need to make sure you establish what the consensus between you and the viewer is pretty early.

So we would wait until the competition's ads had run for enough time on social media that the public was familiar with them. This was so that we had a consensus with our viewers.

Then, when we would start our ads mimicking the competition exactly. What we were expecting to happen in the viewer's mind was to think "Oh! A competition ad! But why does it say DasMobiusStripper's company?!".

Then, we would slowly start to break character, until just losing it completely and burst out laughing and say "Sorry, sorry, we tried being salesy, we couldn't do it. However, what we can do is tell you that..."

Even if the initial reaction from the viewer wasn't the one mentioned above, it would have still worked if the viewer was more familiar with us than the competition's ads. Cause then, the viewer would go "Weird, this is DasMobiusStripper's company, but why are they talking so salesy?! Ooooh, that's why..."

What you mentioned about amp-ing up the seriousness would work as well, but you'd need to make sure viewers would get what you were doing and why. Also, if the competition's ads wouldn't be recognizable enough in your parodies, you could then choose salesy speech companies in general as a target and a good way to show that would be through amped up language.

I remember we once wanted to make fun of them repeating holidays in order to profit from holiday sales. Our initial idea was to pick a ridiculous holiday and repeat it annoyingly as well, but we weren't sure people would make the right associations and realize we were doing it ironically to point out how ridiculous what they were doing was.