Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

For supporters of Britain staying in the EU, a simple question remains this morning: How did we fail to persuade voters of our position? Steve Martin, director at Influence at Work in London and best-selling author of several books on persuasion, spoke with HBR about the ways in which the Remain advocates’ message failed to get through, or even backfired. Martin was joined by Joseph Marks, a behavioral scientist on his team.

HBR: From a persuasion science point of view, how do you explain the vote for Britain’s exit from the EU?
Steve Martin: There seems to have been a focusing effect. The Leave side made sure that immigration became a focus. Not only a focus but the focus. And once that’s a focus it’s hard to get other messages through. What we see is all there is. Danny Kahneman said that clearly. We can only pay attention to a limited number of things and if we see that immigration story every day, that’s what affects us more than a rational argument that predicts what would happen if we left.

But they saw the economic arguments every day, too. Why couldn’t the Remain side focus the voters on that?
Joseph Marks: I think both campaigns were built around fear of loss. One was what we’re losing in terms of immigration coming in. And one was loss to the economy and your pocket. Normally that wins. That’s number one. But right now, you can see that immigration issue as happening now, in the present, whilst the economy is doing well. In the optimism literature, we’ve seen that people are generally optimistic about their own futures when the economy is good, so that’s maybe how the economic argument lost to something that feels more pressing to people. So ironically the very people who helped get our economy on track created an environment that makes it harder to communicate their message of potential negative impacts of leaving the EU. The health of the economy created a good economic environment that had a disproportionate influence over decision making at that moment....