I first came across the ‘pull versus push’ model of editorial marketing after moving from print magazines to digital media. Years later, and many pulls and pushes on, I realised that this model doesn’t just apply to marketing but to many other aspects of our lives, including parenting and leadership.
My new bosses explained how my work as an editor would have to evolve to fit the new digital paradigm. “In a print magazine, the act of sale has already been done before the buyer reads your articles. The magazine was ‘pushed’ on to them – through special offers or marketing the quality of your content. Once they’ve purchased it, buyers are compelled to read every page because they’ve paid for it.”
In the digital world, however, the product is free and the sale actually takes place after the reader has clicked on the article – in fact, the readers are the commodities that the media platform sells to advertisers, not the content. “Here, the editor has to use the ‘pull’ factor to lure in readers – the headline of your article should be so compelling that anyone would stop a few seconds to click on it and see what’s inside.”
This advice given by corporate bosses to news editors is why so many headlines on content websites used to be ‘click-bait’ or behaved like baits to lure hits from readers, such as adding lines like, “You won’t believe what happened next”. Unethical editors would use suggestive titles or click-bait headlines that may not even be related to the page’s subject. Eventually, though, Google, Facebook and other social sharing platforms cracked down on such techniques to score page views, and algorithms began giving more visibility to genuine headlines that matched the content of the link.
After several years of understanding how headlines work on the internet and the everchanging dynamics of social algorithms, I began noticing parallels between the push-versus-pull factor of marketing and my own interpersonal dynamics with my colleagues and kids.
If I wanted something done by a team member or my child, I found that pushing someone into doing something they weren’t personally invested in would never work as a long-term strategy. Sure, a reader may be cajoled into buying a magazine the first time by using the ‘push’ strategy, but if they didn’t like the articles in it, they’d never spend money on it again.
The more effective approach is the ‘pull’ strategy, which means that the website has to offer content that not only has intrinsic value but is also packaged appropriately for their target audience. Only then will a reader click on it of their own free will.
In the same vein, if I want to get someone to do something, I must make sure the task holds some value for them. Plus, I must package the activity as desirable or aspirational for my team member or child to want to do it of their own free will.
For a colleague, for example, a copy editor, it could be rewriting an amateur piece filed by a junior reporter, a task that is generally seen as a ‘thankless job’ in the print media since it is invisible to anyone outside the organisation.
But by empowering the copy editor to work with the writer – or a team of writers – from the planning stage onward, so that she is a co-creator of the final article instead of having it dumped on her full of holes on the last day, I can add inherent value to the work. Further, by including the name of the editor along with the writer on the web link – as many media websites do today – I also give her visibility that helps in her career growth and motivates her to keep going.
Thus, I have employed the ‘pull’ factor to make her invested in the task from beginning to end, while also adding a layer of accountability, ownership and team work.
In the case of children, any parent would tell you that teaching a child to contribute to housework is a big challenge. One clever Indian-Australian mother I knew used the pull factor here. She told her four-year-old boy, “If you finish your sandwich completely without a mess, I’ll let you help me with the dishes.” From the time the child was born, washing the dishes – and other household chores like vacuuming – were framed as fun family activities and rewards for good behaviour that had to be earned! So, the mom not only got her son to behave well but also contribute to housework in one fell swoop!
In my own case, my younger daughter once pointed out to me why my ‘push’ strategy of advising my kids to take up lucrative careers in multinational companies was flawed. “You left a cushy job that paid well and set up your own magazine and followed your heart even if it came with financial risk. You can’t tell us to do the opposite!” What she meant to say was, kids don’t learn what their parents preach. Kids learn what the parents practise themselves.
Indeed, the ‘pull’ strategy is actually the default in parenting! You can’t push your kids to do something you aren’t doing yourself. You can only pull them towards being the best version of themselves by constantly working towards being the best version of your own self.
Coralesque 
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