Would you ask someone to give up their seat?

Rory Sutherland

Rory Sutherland describes how potential embarrassment is an underestimated force in marketing. Following some academic research on public transport, there are practical implications for harnessing the 'embarrassment factor' in marketing.

Would you ask someone to give up their seat?

Rory SutherlandOgilvy

If I were to mention the Milgram experiment, most people reading this would think of the electric shock experiments on obedience and authority conducted in 1961. Less well-known, however, but almost as interesting, were a series of experiments from the 1970s, in which he asked his students to travel around on the New York subway asking strangers to surrender their seats.

In the end the experiment revealed you could get up to 68% of people to give up their seat when asked. But far more interesting was the...

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