> If you're a street musician setting up to play with an open instrument case, it's pretty important to "seed the pot"
This concept is discussed at length, and backed up with scientific studies, in the excellent book Influence, by Robert Cialdini, PhD. This particular concept he calls "Social Proof", and it's one of about 8 major categories of influence that he discusses in his book.
Incidentally, dropping the PhD on the end of his name is another one of the forms of influence. While reading the book, I couldn't help but get tons of ideas for a marketing campaign involving social proof. The concept is of course much broader than seeding donation hats. In the book he even gets into the elements of how the Jim Jones tragedy went down, and social proof is at the core of it.
This concept is discussed at length, and backed up with scientific studies, in the excellent book Influence, by Robert Cialdini, PhD. This particular concept he calls "Social Proof", and it's one of about 8 major categories of influence that he discusses in his book.
Incidentally, dropping the PhD on the end of his name is another one of the forms of influence. While reading the book, I couldn't help but get tons of ideas for a marketing campaign involving social proof. The concept is of course much broader than seeding donation hats. In the book he even gets into the elements of how the Jim Jones tragedy went down, and social proof is at the core of it.
Here is a video of the author outlining the major categories of influence. http://youtu.be/HOypv1AqYu0