Object and How to Fail at Minority Influence

So waiting on things and with the summer rushing in to distract everyone I thought now would be a good time to go back to discuss everyone's favourite group Object and I want to talk about the way they are failing to engage with minority influence. I did wonder if this might help them but then realised they have already done themselves so much harm it would take years to rebuild in the areas they failed in.

So the key is about minorities influencing the majority and getting opinions and even policies changed. At that is the first thing no matter how Object play their ideology they are a minority although they act as though they represent a majority. One of the most important aspects of getting a working minority influence is a consistent message that no one within the minority group deviates from.

So this is where we get the issues of people believing Object as they have a history of changing their statements and also their own members seem to have differences when you try to debate with them. Remember Object although they try to pretend they are a charity that works for the good of people they are in fact a lobby group. And the one fact about lobby groups is they try to influence decision makers.

If we go back to the origin of Object they were there to support strippers and work with them to exit the industry, and to be honest that was their biggest mistake and assumption. See they assume that dancers were unintelligent and all of them wanted to leave the industry. So they set themselves up to help strippers. Now here we have an organisation that has been asking for funding based on a belief from their middle class ivory tower backgrounds where they have subsumed their parents morals. Now they must of had a big shock when the strippers basically ignored this so called help and even more so when they realised that a large percentage are actually highly intelligent and making their own choices. So the whole set of great expectations ended with a whimper. They keep saying we only want to help the dancers, now they only want to help them become unemployed.

So we get the change in message because they didn't get the response from the dancers they wanted they then decide well lets tackle this another way and changed their method and approach. Which is unfortunate as the research by romanian born french social psychologist Serge Moscovici shows that minority influence only really works if the message stays the same. Now obviously there will be a core of supporters that will follow Object but those outside the core wonder why the message has change and where the group may end up.

So lets take the current Object attack on Lads Mags. Now I am a little older so rarely read them but I do like having the choice to purchase one if I want. And originally the message was about maybe using covers and placing the mags out of the eyeline of children (not going to stop them seeing the covers of female magazines). Now the message has changed to we don't want to ban them we just don't want shops to sell them. Errrmmm isn't that a ban in all but name?

So once again the key message has changed and people wonder if Object are able to ever say what they mean or mean what they say? The average individual would get confused over the changing messages, I know I have over the years. The issues change and so do Object but their really have missed the whole keeping the message the same aspect to their changes. U turns are not minor little aspects of flexibility.

TonyN (tonyprince@acdcfan.com)