Thermometers Still Work!

The following is a hand-picked guest post from John Lepp.  Enjoy, and you can read more about John below.

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I want to share a little story with you – with a point. Obviously.

There is one little phrase, that even to this day, takes me way back to the early days of my career.

“Let’s use a thermometer…”

I would silently groan.

We were coming into the holiday season of mail packs around the Stephen Thomas offices, where I was the main creative working with all of the various account teams. We would gather in the boardroom or in the smaller creative room and talk about the pack, and eventually, sometimes sooner rather than later, Steve (Thomas of Stephen Thomas) would suggest…

“Let’s use a thermometer…”

A visual of a thermometer says – we need to get here (with a goal, usually near the top) and we are only here (sometimes near the middle or at 2/3rds).

He liked to use them on everything since – “they worked”. And he wasn’t wrong.

They did what they need to do. “We are here but we need to be here!”

So my job was to try to find out what else I could visually turn into a thermometer… and through the years I discovered that everything and anything could be visually used the same way with some dots or shading or whatever.

“We are here but we need to be here.” This past fall we were working with our friends at Friends of Indy Animals for their holiday pack and this was the outer I designed for it.

The client, Becky, was uncertain. ”This doesn’t look very festive, does it?”

“No,” I explained, “but it speaks to what the appeal is about – which is a shortfall for your program.”

“‘We are here but we need to be here.” With cats and dogs.

The appeal went on to raise 200% more than the year previous. (Let’s acknowledge it wasn’t ONLY because of the thermometer.)

Thermometers in fundraising have worked in the past; they still work and will likely always work since they so quickly visually say “we are here but we need to be here.”

Agent John, over and out.

PS: Using a thermometer from a decision science perspective also taps into a number of cognitive and behavioral science principles:

1. the goal gradient effect: people are more motivated to take action as they approach a goal
2. social proof/herd mentality: when you have a partial filled thermometer, it sends a signal that others have already taken this action to give and we naturally want to follow the crowd
3. incompleteness effect: a partially filled thermometer triggers unease since incomplete tasks (or containers) are psychologically troubling
4. anchoring effect: an almost full thermometer signals that just a little more is needed, making donating seem like an easy win
5. scarcity and urgency: as the thermometer is almost to the top, it visually signals that the goal is in reach, which creates this “last chance” effect that encourages us to give before it’s too late.

Cool eh?

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Steven says: “The following is a guest post from John Lepp, the co-founder of Agents of Good in Toronto.   John has the best understanding of how fundraising actually works that I’ve ever met, and then he ‘turns it up to 11’ by being a great guy to hang out with.  You should subscribe to his blog here.”