The Trojan Horse Effect

Marketers in India spend crores of rupess to let customers know about their brands. An average Indian is subjected to over 500 advertising messages in a Day. You start your day when the alarm rings on your Nokia phone, the morning rituals expose you to colgate or close-up and your brand of bathing bar. If you are male then probably Gillette is what you also see. You browse through ads in the Times of India and have a good meal with Amul Butter and Nestle Milk. Hoardings, advertisements on radio, people wearing branded clothes, TV… the story continues and probably ends with you setting an alarm on your Nokia phone.

Advertisements are expensive and more loud you are with the media spread, more you get into the minds of customers. That’s what marketers around the world believe so. Even the not so known brands are hiring the best Marketing brains to replicate the phenomenon called advertising for their les known brands. Watch zee tv and you will know what we are talking about.

Are there any other mediums available to attract customers and make them buy your product? Yes the Trojan horse effect.

The Trojan Horse Effect is a simple technique of asking intention questions. The research states that a simple act of asking questions can leads to biased response of the part of the respondents. And not just a biased response from the respondent but eventually a change in the underlying behavior. The questions are not meant to actuate the behavior but do lead to action on part of the respondents. Like the fabled Trojan Horse, the questions are not perceived to be manipulative or to have persuasive intent but do the job effectively.

Let’s see if this works. How likely are you to buy Coffee Today? Do let me know if any one of you reading this article finally went to barista to buy a café latte.

The technique is especially useful in activating the product category in the minds of respondents. Do you have a MP3 player? Which car are you likely to buy next? What music do you listen to?

All these questions can activate a category in your mind. The activation then spreads to the brands in the category, in proportion to the prior or existing cognition about the brands. So when people are asked about category purchase intention the brand with higher accessibility (read advertising/promotion) is likely to be activated. Thus its important to advertise no doubt, but actuating the customers to think about the category or brand is much more important. Marketers of new product categories should try this technique in advertising or at ground level. The brands that advertise the most should leverage their chance of being considered in the choice set by including this concept at the ground level.


We tried this principle in a Gurgaon Mall. Nestle’s share of coffee from the snacks counter of the movie halls in negligible. Coke and Pepsi have the meal combo coupons or offers which superficially subsidizes the popcorn. We posted bold stickers on the lift gate which read “How likely are you to buy Coffee Today?”. We tested this with two groups, one who were exposed to this message and one who were not. And the findings, 90% of those who were exposed to the message actually went ahead and bought coffee during the interval and paid 20 rupees extra for the total coffee and popcorn deal. Did Nestle subsidize the coffee or the pop corn? The answer my friend is no.

A similar question was asked to respondents while entering the mall. How likely are you to buy a pizza today?. In MGF mall there is only Pizza Hut and their sales actually grew by 15% for the days we put his concept to test. Many of them did eventually have a nice meal with their family at Pizza Hut.

The Trojan Horse effect can be used at the point of purchase or in the advertising message itself to activate a customers intention to try out a category and eventually buy your brand. The cost effective way of inducing someone to undertake a behavior is the challenge every Marketing or Brand Manager faces.