A frame is what will influence people to make their decision, it is essentially where a seller or marketer sets a scenario in which they will guarantee their desired answer.
So how’s it done?
In Scottish Football, there is a divide between the two biggest Glasgow based football clubs, Celtic and Rangers.
Historically, Celtic is associated with Catholic/Irish communities whereas Rangers are associated with Protestant/British communities.
The frame is this case is your cultural background. If you’re from a Catholic community in Glasgow, you will support Celtic over supporting Rangers
This is due to the fact that people will make assumptions about other people based on which club they support. This scenario is framed by an association with culture and religion.
However, this is not exclusive to football culture.
Marketers are aware of this bias and will often aim to create frames in which target audiences can’t say no to a product/service.
Take a look at the Tobacco Industry as an example.
Tobacco companies were seeing a lot of revenue in the 20th century with the rise of cigarettes. However, there was one market that was never thoroughly examined until the late 1920’s. That market was women.
A major reason as to why was due to smoking originally being perceived as an inappropriate act for women.
In order to encourage women to smoke, the perception of cigarettes had to be changed.
To do this, Edward Bernays created a frame using his ‘Torches of Freedom’ campaign. This involved framing cigarettes as a form of female empowerment.
In order to convince women to smoke cigarettes, Bernay’s decided to go beyond poster campaigns and hired a crowd of women to join New York’s Easter Sunday, March in 1929 and smoke.
As a result, cigarette sales saw a miraculous rise over the next few years as Women started smoking.
The art of the frame is about creating the right scenario to get the right answer.
To learn more about framing and other persuasive techniques, check out our upcoming Persuasive Design Workshop
