In Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation
, advertising and media personality Sally Hogshead explores what triggers fascination—one of the most powerful ways to attract attention and influence behavior—and explains how companies can use these concepts to make their products and ideas irresistible to consumers.
F Scores: The Fascination Personality Test
My team and I developed the F Score to objectively evaluate the level of fascination generated by a product, brand, or idea. It can test individual messages, such as product’s packaging or a television commercial, or it can test a holistic message, such as product launch. More interesting, it also can test personalities.
High scoring personalities
Fascinating brands have an extraordinary ability to influence behavior, and the same is true of personalities. Those with a high F score can sway opinion and action far more effectively than those with a low F Score, because they use triggers with unusual vividness and intensity. They get their message across.
These personalities might be the center of attention, or they could avoid the spotlight. They might be charismatic, or they might be introverted. What all high scores share is an ability to persuade others by eliciting an intellectual, emotional, and physical response.
Fascination versus Likability
A person doesn’t have to be likable to be fascinating.
Fascination versus Respect
A company that is respected isn’t necessarily fascinating. An eBay seller can have a perfect 100 percent satisfaction score and sell the highest quality of goods, and still go out of business.
The following questions will help you start to think about your potential F score results
- How much people naturally talk about you, or gravitate to you?
Do others make efforts to increase their sense of connection to you? Are they willing to go to great lengths to talk with you, listen to you, engage with you? If you’re a company, do they spend time on your website, and read your materials?
- How much appetite is there for your ideas and opinions?
More than you can supply? Are people interested in what you’re thinking and doing? Fascinating people generate a lot of curiosity about what they’re doing now, and what they’ll do next. (Would anyone write a biobraphy about you?)
- What kind of response do you elicit with your words, actions or ideas?
Are you provocative enough to generate a spirited discussion or even heated controversy? Fascinating people elicit intense emotional reactions from others. This response can be positive or negative. It can be intentional or not.
- Do you prompt others to think in new ways?
The most fascinating people disrupt usual ways of thinking. There are many ways to do so, from the whimsical to the terrifying. But all fascinating people reveal a different way to think, and if they can absorb our focus, they have the capacity to change our opinions.
- How often do others imitate you in their behavior, ideas or technique?
Imitation isn’t just flattery. It’s a signal that you’re setting a standard of some sort. Fascinating people and things become a sort of ‘shorthand’ for bigger values. Are you a symbol for anything? Would someone ever use you as a reference point when describing something else?
Complement Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation with Transform your business by being remarkable, where Seth Godin explains why you need the Purple Cow.