Steve Martorano 
The Behavioral Corner is produced in partnership with Retreat Behavioral Health -- where healing happens.



The Behavioral Corner 
Hi, and welcome. I'm Steve Martorano, and this is the Behavioral Corner. You're invited to hang with us as we discuss how we live today, the choices we make, what we do, and how they affect our health and well-being. So you're on the corner, the Behavioral Corner. Please hang around for a while.

Steve Martorano 
Hi, everybody, welcome to the Behavioral Corner. It's me again, Steve Martorano, you know hanging on the Corner. You know how it works when we set up shop here. Our conceit is that we're just running into people who are really interesting and have a lot to say about everything because, well, that's our mandate, we feel our mandate is we're a podcast about everything because that's what affects our behavioral health. So we've talked to lots of different people from lots of walks of life, about stuff like that, that affects our spiritual, mental, and physical well-being. It's all made possible by our underwriting partners, Retreat Behavioral Health, and you'll hear more about those fine people later on in the program. So here's what we wanted to do it just the light bulb comes on and my colleague is gonna be, you know, once you talk to this guy, he's in public relations, and I'm thinking public relations really, wait a minute. They're persuaders...they persuade...let's talk about the art of persuasion. And fortunately, I didn't go where I normally might. And I would have gotten great information had I gone into a clinician, or a psychologist, or somebody studying what motivates people, you get good stuff. But I thought, now there's somebody even closer to the ground than those guys. And that's a public relations expert, a guy who does this for a living. In fact, that's who Jim DeLorenzo is, and he is our guest here on the program. Jim, thanks for joining us on the Corner.

Jim DeLorenzo 
Thank you for inviting me to join you on the Corner. I really appreciate it.

Steve Martorano 
You also think of yourself as a persuasion expert.

Jim DeLorenzo 
I do I never really put it into those words until I heard...we started talking. But over the last week or so I've been thinking about that, yes, I am a persuader, I try to be a gentle or a subtle persuader. I try not to hammer anybody over the head about it. But I recognize that persuasion is part of my makeup.

Steve Martorano 
Yeah, you wouldn't be able to make a living and you have for decades in this field unless you had the skills. And the understanding that what you're trying to do is convince someone of something that in your view they should know about. So let's begin right there because we're gonna get into the weeds on some of the techniques and how this works in the context of public relations so that we can relate it to our everyday lives and maybe wind up making better decisions about our health, mentally and physically through the art of persuasion. So we read about persuasion. How is it different or is it from unit manipulation?

Jim DeLorenzo 
Manipulation. I'm gonna go back to something I once said, it's a shrewd thing. It's a gonna be a kind of a cruel thing. And I think manipulation is more of a bad thing. I think manipulation in any form is dangerous. and I try never to be involved with anything that is manipulative. I've had people manipulate me. And I've come to realize when that's happening, I have a gut reaction, and I turn away, I turn away from that person, I turn away from that message. A lot of time...

Steve Martorano  
It's coercive, right? I mean, it's...

Jim DeLorenzo 
Exactly, yeah. And I think we were talking before the show about the various messaging and delivery of the message during the COVID-19 pandemic. And I think there was a certain amount of persuasion that didn't get done. And I think there was a lot of manipulation that did get done. And I think we see very clearly the difference between persuasion and manipulation on the whole...everything that happened in 2020 and 2021. Going into 2022, as far as what to do, how to react, how to live your life, and how to make sure you don't get COVID-19. How to make sure you stay away from the pandemic out how you can protect yourself. There was a lot of manipulation there. There wasn't a whole lot of persuasion. And I think a lot of people, good, bad or indifferent, a lot of people began to recognize that and that was a big public relations problem, that I'm just glad that I was not involved in any of that.

Steve Martorano 
Right.

Jim DeLorenzo 
You know, I felt as I watched it each day unfold, I could see things that I would never do.

Steve Martorano 
Right.

Jim DeLorenzo 
And I could see things that I was taught never to do, or I was shown never to do that were being done on a regular hourly, minute-by-minute basis.

Steve Martorano 
Yeah, it just now occurs to me that someone in your field watching that process play out, and the pandemic is a great example of not the failure of persuasion because at the end of the day, it more or less prevailed but it was a struggle. And I can imagine someone like you sitting around going, "Oh, my God, why would they stand up and say things like that?" You know, maybe even if that's true, there's a better way to say it, and all of that. So...

Jim DeLorenzo 
And during that period, Steve, we...the networks, and the cable news systems, and all the different channels really filled up a lot of airtime, with a lot of talks, and a lot of panel discussions, and a lot of expert resources and there were a lot of press conferences, and they were covering these press conferences live. And I sat there. And I thought back to a conversation I had with a reporter from the Inquirer like 40 years ago, where I said, there ought to be a 24-hour day, press conference channel, you know, that's what those things turned into for many months was a 24-hour press conference channel where we were talking about a pandemic, we were talking about George Floyd, we were talking about the election, all these things were going on 24/7. And there was really no analysis. There was an attempt to do the SWOT analysis, while it was going on, but there was no postgame show if you will.

Steve Martorano 
Well, in the press conference construct is a push-pull thing. In any press conference about any topic, someone gets up and says, what the position is -- the official position -- and everybody in the room's job is to push back on it, not to attack it, but just push back on it by asking questions and everything. When you've got a public health crisis, as enormous as the pandemic was, that's a luxury we should not have. You know, we didn't have time to fool around with that. And, you know, we can see the results of that, you know, and by the way, it's nothing new about it, I did research on it, I couldn't figure out why the argument for wearing masks was unpersuasive in the beginning. And it turns out that in the 1918 pandemic, these leagues sprung up on the West Coast, anti-mask leagues. So that was a tough sell. And it was purely a function of what we're talking about. Getting out in front has an issue with a clear message, and then persuading people that you are giving them the right information. Let's talk about your role as a professional in this business. What do you consider the kind of bedrock fundamental skills, someone like you needs, or anyone needs to persuade somebody else of something?

Jim DeLorenzo 
Well, I always start with the story. I think of myself as a professional storyteller, and public relations is my vocation. It's, it's been my life since I was a junior in high school. And whether or not I got paid for what I was doing, I was working actively in PR almost every day since then. And what I like to do and what I recommend to my clients, my friends, and my colleagues, is the power of storytelling...storytelling with a purpose. Storytelling that gets you get the attention of your intended audience. So I work basically every day to create good stories because I don't like to work on the negative stuff. I've been there. I know crisis management, I don't want to be that guy. I want to be the guy who tells the good story. So I work with entrepreneurs and startup companies and small businesses, sports and entertainment properties, and new tech products. So I like the things that are new, different, good stories. And I feel like if I can tell those good stories to people, and I can find the right audience for that story, I can help my clients get their story told in a positive way that earns them the attention and the business that they're looking for. So whether it's selling tickets to the Fan Expo Philadelphia, Comic Con Fan Fest, and getting people to come in the doors of the convention center for two or three days over a weekend, or it's selling tickets to a rugby tournament at the Union stadium and Chester, where people in this area don't really seem to know a lot about rugby, but there are pockets of rugby people out there who all of a sudden, like, Yeah, this is great, you should all come out. And then new technologies or new businesses, I'm working with a client right now, that is a tech startup in the automotive industry. And they're facing a lot of headwinds, because there are a lot of people who get a lot of attention, whether it be a Carvana, or Voom or a CarMax, or all these other...We Buy Any Car and things like that, and my client is trying to do something different in that space. And they've got some success stories to tell. But how do you tell that story to a receptive audience? So I will go out, and I will craft the story, I'll craft the message working one on one with my client, and then I will determine what's the best audience we can go to for this. Is it an investor community? Is it a consumer focus? Is it a b2b play? So I tried to find the right audience to tell that story to and I continue to refine the story and find new storylines within that process. So I embed myself with my client so that I can see what their business is like on a daily basis. And I can respond to things that I think, "Hey, we should probably do something about this." I think of the story.

Steve Martorano 
You know, I couldn't be more delighted to hear you say everything begins with the story. I've been saying that for years to anybody that wants to listen, I don't mean, you know, you're supposed to write it. But every single thing, every transaction, you can imagine begins with somebody telling somebody else a story. And to the extent the story resonates with them, then you will get the kind of response that you'd hope, right? You come home late one night, and your wife says, Where have you been? Then you better have a good story. Are you going to have a bad night?

Jim DeLorenzo 
I haven't looked at it that way before but you're right.

Steve Martorano 
I mean everything...everything is about what's in my view the most successful salespeople, no matter what you're selling, are guys that can tell a good story. Write a good story. But then the other thing that you said that struck me as critical is that you that you get whatever message you're delivering in front of the right people, otherwise, you're really going to be banging your head against the wall.

Jim DeLorenzo 
Exactly. If you have a great story to tell, and you tell it to the wrong audience. That's gonna go over, you know, it's like a comedian, you have to be able to read the room. I read the room for my clients by looking at say, what they're doing. In the old days before, you know, basically, newsstands went away, and print media went away, seemingly overnight. I used to go into new clients' offices or prospective clients' offices and I would see what magazines they subscribed to in the waiting room, you know, Did the CEO have a subscription to this magazine? Or does the CFO have a subscription to this magazine? Or what magazines are they putting in their lobby so that their visitors can look at are those the magazines or the media outlets that the company's senior management team would love to be in? Now, it's much more different because there's a much broader audience and it's a more fragmented audience. So I really look for niche publications, whether it be a trade press, whether it be a consumer, magazine, or outlet, now with podcasting, taking larger and larger opportunities to pitch to them. It really is research and development of target audiences that I use hand in hand with the development of the storylines.

Steve Martorano 
Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, there's a lot of cognitive dissonance out there. And you're right, how do you cut through the noise, just the noise in order to get to the audience that you want to deliver this message to? And we're talking to a public relations specialist. I don't need to tell you that for a very long period of time. A guy in your field, the derogatory term...yeah, the sort of...the sort of earthy term was, "Oh, the guy's a flak."

Jim DeLorenzo 
Right.

Steve Martorano 
He's here to sell some story that I don't care about. But that's the story he's trying to tell.

Jim DeLorenzo 
I have certainly heard that term. And I've certainly known people who've used it and said so. But when you think about it, flak was the guy you put in front of the soldiers to take the incoming fire, that you were protecting the back you were running flak for that person. It wasn't so much. We were throwing stuff out there. It was you were going out there to protect the people that you were fronting for.

Steve Martorano 
Absolutely. You mentioned that there's, you know, all public relations, although it employs the art of persuasion across the board is not the same. I mean, crisis management that you talked about briefly, a second ago is way different than taking on a client with a new product, let's say, or whatever. And, you know, you think it's a valuable story to tell, and you present that story. So there are different forms of public relations. We are basically here trying to figure out how we can use the techniques employed by someone like you on a personal level, to change our behavior that is not helping us. We make lots of decisions that are that are beneficial to our behavioral health and many more, that are not. I read somewhere that persuasion, fosters cooperation, Do you agree with that?

Jim DeLorenzo 
I do. One of the things that I've really evolved into, and realized over the last several years especially was, I would often talk about making my story, the story that I'm telling top of mind. And that's great if you're a very cold and analytical person. Now, I've been working towards this, all my career, and I was doing some of these things before I even realized it. It's much more important to be top of heart. Because if you can be top of heart, if you can tell a story that affects people's hearts, you'll get the top of mind you'll get the heart first is where the story can really resonate story that you're telling. And then you can persuade people in a very compelling way that, you know, this is a good story. I like this, I want to work with this person, I want to know this person, I want to do business with this person.

Steve Martorano 
So you believe the emotional appeal is more persuasive than starting off with an intellectual being?

Jim DeLorenzo 
Absolutely, absolutely. Because intellectually, we like facts, figures, and numbers, and sometimes, especially with startup companies, they don't have those numbers yet. They probably won't have them for several years. So what's a good story? When you're a startup company? Why did you start the business? That's a good story, we can find people who will be interested in that. What's your background? Why did you get into this? I was a car dealer for 30 years, and I had people coming into me constantly saying, I had this problem, I had this problem. What would you do? What would you do? And instead of, you know, continuing to do with this, when in a dealership model, why don't I start offering advice to people that can help them make their own decisions?

Steve Martorano 
Well, it's easy to see how in a one-to-one relationship persuasion, beginning at an emotional level, would resonate quicker than persuading someone through a facts and figures-based argument. Because while those facts and figures may be accurate, and compelling, how do they connect to me? So, you know, they look at the facts and figures in the intellectual message behind the persuasive argument. But if it doesn't relate to them, who cares.

Jim DeLorenzo 
Right. That's something in passing just there. One-to-one. When I started working with internet companies, internet properties, and the web, back in the beginning of 1997, when people were still very skeptical and frayed, and kind of, I hesitate to use the word but was ignorant of what the web could do. And we certainly didn't see some of the things that we're doing now, in 1997, when I started that part of my business, but the one-to-one connection is where everything is taking place. Now you and I are talking one to one right now through technology. But we're hoping to reach somebody that's going to listen to the podcast one to one, it's going to be an individual listener, it's not going to be a group of people in a room. Well, that's what's changed about VR. And some people still don't see that yet. Believe it or not. So when you're talking about the intellectual properties, yes, we'll get to that. But because I'm dealing One to One, I'm dealing one to one with my client, and then I'm taking that one-to-one relationship for my client to an audience. And that's what social media enables us to do. That's what the internet enables us to do. We hope that at some point, in the not-too-distant future, that's where AI will help us. These are all tools and techniques that constantly evolving. But the storyline, the story, the principle of telling a good story has never changed across all those technologies that we've used all these years.

Steve Martorano 
Yeah, no one ever thinks of themselves as part of a group. I mean, as typical of a group, and then you look at your life and the decisions you make, and somebody will show you a survey that says a lot of people do this, the same as you do and it's sort of recoiled from that that message will never work, you've got to get it on a one to one basis, We're talking to Jim DeLorenzo. He spent a career in public relations. So he knows a little bit more than a little bit about the art of persuasion. And that's what we're talking to Jim about in a public health context. Because I'm of the opinion, Jim agrees, I think that if we get better at the art of persuasion, we might wind up being able to improve our I know, we can improve our lives. And I want to take a look at the history of smoking in this country because I think it is one of the great examples of how persuasion was the only way to change millions of people's attitudes about something that they were doing routinely and enjoy and that smoking. Give us your thumbnail sketch of how did we turn around the notion of cigarettes being sexy and manly, and cool to the public health problems associated with them. Persuasion did that, right?

Jim DeLorenzo 
Yes, absolutely. And I think part of the persuasion, especially beginning in the 1960s when I was just a child, infinite some ways to do some research and look at the history of it, as I have in past times. It started with articles and mass media, like Saturday Evening Post was still a weekly, with multimillion people buying it every week, or subscribing to a time was still a big magazine. Reader's Digest was very big. You had these general interests, mass media publications that were running stories about Dr. So and So saying this about smoking, and Dr. So and So saying this about cancer, and they were running these stories in the early 1960s, to the late 1960s. Cigarettes can kill you, or cigarettes can make you sick. And they got a lot of pushback from the tobacco industry, obviously. But at the same time, the tobacco industry started changing their advertising. And you mentioned this before, you had the Marlboro Man you had, you know, the Virginia Slims, you had, you had all these different brands that were now required to say that Surgeon General has determined that cancer can kill you put that on their box and put that in their ads, but it didn't overwhelm the ad for and the lifestyle, persuasion of those TV ads that ran into the middle 1970s. So then the next wave of that is the TV ads, that the public service announcements that were done by people who were in the public eye, who either smoked all their lives, and were suddenly found out that they were dying of cancer, or had smoked all their lives and quit and saw the positive health benefits of that. So I know this is kind of a really old reference. But William Tolman played Warren Burger, the district attorney on the old Perry Mason show with Raymond Burr, and he was dying of lung cancer. And he had smoked all his life. And he had a very rugged look about and he had a very odd look about him. But he recorded a public service announcement before he died talking about how cigarettes had killed him. You know, you're seeing this because I'm dead now. But the cigarettes killed me. And then in the middle 70s, You'll Brenner who was a superstar in westerns, musicals, and dramas and was in The Magnificent Seven. He was in the King and I, he was in Westworld. He did all these big things. And he was a big name. And all of a sudden, he's on screen. And he's withering away. And he says, I smoked all my life, and I'm about to die. And they ran those ads, selectively. They didn't overwhelm you as the SPCA ads do now with the sad music and the pictures of dogs dying and fields and stuff. But they use their that ad would run at selected hours and selected times on selected stations and had a lot of impact. So you started with the mass media in print, then you took it to the mass media in TV. And then you started doing things on the radio. And then the next iteration of that was in the 80s where they started saying we shouldn't have people smoking on screens. We shouldn't have people in the movies smoking. And Hollywood kind of took the ball and ran with it. And one of the last times that they probably ever been unified on any messaging. And they said yeah, you're right. We're not going to put smoking in In our movies anymore, especially if they're modern-day movies or period pieces, we'll have to figure something out. But in modern-day movies, we're going to take it out completely. So you start James Bond doesn't smoke anymore, or, you know, Indiana Jones doesn't smoke. In Superman, the movie, Lois Lane smokes like a chimney and Superman says, your lungs are still clean.

Steve Martorano 
Because he looked into her lungs. Yeah, Superman never smoked, that's for sure. But so you're right, it was like really pushing a rock up a hill, because again, they couldn't outlaw cigarettes, they were a legal product, and they knew it was a health hazard. They I mean, the society, and they push that rock up the hill, if you're old enough to know what the situation was 50 years ago, or 30 years ago, to what it is today, smoking, while it still goes on, and still causes problems for the people who smoke is now more or less not socially appropriate.

Jim DeLorenzo 
Right? Its smokers have been shunned. And there are good and bad things about that, too. But I can remember when I was in high school, in the late 70s, my Catholic high school had a smoking circle outside. And at lunchtime, the girls would ask you if they could borrow their jackets. Because they were going to go out and smoke, you know, in February out of the smoking circle and come back before class started. And you had places like that people did that in high school people stuff in college. I mean, it was something that everybody did.

Steve Martorano 
Nothing illustrates the trap of people who are addicted to nicotine or smoking, then seeing them have to step out of a restaurant, or a break at work, and four or five are huddled in whatever outdoor area they can get. And as you look at that, you it the impact on that for most people is "Wow, look at those poor bastards."

Jim DeLorenzo 
It used to look cool. Especially when you were in high school and you're impressionable. And then it became a shame, look at the out there in the cold.

Steve Martorano 
So I just point out this, the sea change in the attitude towards smoking is one of the great examples of the art of persuasion. No one was coerced. No one was forced, no one no product was outlawed. Common Sense practices prevailed. The government got involved where it needed to in terms of regulation. And we changed our attitude towards smoking, we can only hope that maybe that process is going on right now, as we face opioid problems. That's a different kettle of fish. When you talk about serious substance abuse, we can only hope that that happens. Jim, get you out here on a couple of things. So is it is it fair to say that people are, you know, in the main influenced by the opinions, and actions of other people?

Jim DeLorenzo 
I think there is a lot to say about that. I think we see people that we respect, or we disrespect. And our opinions are shaped by I agree with that person, or I disagree with that person. And we see them on TV, we see them on we hear them on the radio, you know, that's what sports talk radio is all about. I agree or I disagree. So we hear people talking, we hear what they're saying, and what we agree with. We try to express our agreement. What we disagree with, we express our disagreement, but it's all part of that persuasion of you know, and the persuasion can be emulating a behavior. It can be avoiding behavior or changing a behavior. So, you know, I'm inclined to do a lot more online than I was even five years ago. Is that a persuading behavior? Or is that an adopted behavior? It's something that's a little bit of both because I've seen how it works now. And I say, Okay, I'm going to do Zoom calls today, I'm not going to go out on the road, or I'm going to do this. And I know people are, you know, look at what we're doing right now. Three years ago, nobody knew we were going to be doing this. And how quickly was the adoption of Zoom and video conferencing over the course of the year 2020 from being something that hardly anybody did in March of 2020? Almost every business person and every professional in America was doing it in September 2020.

Steve Martorano 
It's a great point. I mean, the other thing to keep in mind, I would anyway, with regard to the art of persuasion is if an idea is sound and beneficial-- people will listen to it.

Jim DeLorenzo 
Right.

Steve Martorano 
The majority of people will listen to it.

Jim DeLorenzo 
And because it resonates in their heart.

Steve Martorano 
Yes

Jim DeLorenzo 
It resonates in their, in their spirit in their souls, if you will. There's a story that touches them and there's a story that in that influences them and persuades them. But it really is an emotional reaction to stories, which is where the AI boom is suspect to me because it's not written with heart. It's not written with passion. It's not written with emotion. It's just taking words and phrases.

Steve Martorano 
Well, once, you know, we talked about the basics of persuasion. And right at the top of some of the lists I've seen is who's making the pitch, who's the communicator, if it's a machine, that's a whole different reaction, you're gonna get it if it's a human being. If you want to persuade somebody to do something, if I understand what you're saying, here, make it personal.

Jim DeLorenzo 
Make it personal, and not have a good story. You know, one of the things that's going on right now is everybody has their own truth. Basically, what is that truth? It's the story that you have, whether it's genuine or authentic or not. When people say I'm sharing my truth, basically, you're sharing your story. And it's either a good story, or it's a bad story. But it's a story that will persuade people or dissuade people.

Steve Martorano 
Jim, the next time we have you on, give you a heads up. Hope you come by the way, you're invited anytime but I want to get into whether or not strong persuasive skills. Can. We've talked about, you know, how they can convince somebody of something. But can they change somebody's mind about something, that's what I want to talk about next. We did it with maybe we could do with a lot of other things.

Jim DeLorenzo 
I would love to I think I think that we have common ground here that we can discuss.

Steve Martorano 
So before we go, what's all that stuff behind you?

Jim DeLorenzo 
At the beginning of the pandemic, I saw these people using Zoom and video chat on the networks. And I was fascinated by people's background images. And I've always had this stuff behind me in my home office. And then I began to realize, well if I organize it a little bit better, it'll make a great backdrop when I do these things. So I basically got things that represent various parts of my career in my life behind me here, whether it be my fandom of Star Trek, and then my work with people who were on Star Trek, I've arranged interviews for Shatner and others. Whether it be my love of baseball and Phillies, in particular, or whether it be my love and affection for comic books and the people that I've worked with in the comic book industry over the years. Tennis, I work with people in pro tennis or I have some tennis things up there. I have some things that relate to my career at Villanova. My career at US Interactive, my career with professional tennis, and then other client interactions I've had in the last almost 25 years now, but I've had my own business and I've had all these different people. So when I get something from a client, it goes down to the wall of fame back there.

Steve Martorano 
It was a great backdrop and it caught my eye instantly. Well, Jim DeLorenzo Live long and prosper. Try to give you the Spock deal. I'm a Spock guy myself thanks for joining us with an open invitation to come back I love this topic is a lot more ground to cover. Thank you, guys, for your time you know the deal here you like us and you say so and we love a review. Write a review on I guess it's the iTunes page you could write a review and you know, we like good news, but we'll listen to anything you have to say on The Behavioral Corner. We'll catch you next time Thanks. Take care.

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