Planet Money - Get The Vaccine, Lose The Skinny Jeans

Episode Date: May 19, 2021

Two stories from our Indicator team about the sometimes-unlikely people who shape what we buy and what we do. | Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for NPR and the following message come from the Kauffman Foundation, providing access to opportunities that help people achieve financial stability, upward mobility, and economic prosperity, regardless of race, gender, or geography. Kauffman.org. NPR. This is Planet Money. I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. Today on the show, we have two stories from Planet Money's daily podcast, The Indicator. So a lot of us have a kind of naive view about ourselves. We like to think we are in control of what we like and the choices we make. We don't always think about the messengers and influencers who spend their days trying to shape the decisions we make about what we buy and

what we put into our bodies. Today on the show, don't shoot the messenger. From vaccines to skinny jeans, the sometimes unlikely people and forces that shape our economy, what we buy, and ultimately our lives. Here's the show. Katie Milkman is a professor of operations, information, and decisions at Wharton, and the author of this book, How to Change, the science of getting from where you are to where you want to be. And she says when news of the COVID vaccine first broke and everyone was talking about cold storage supply chains and transportation issues, she and her team of behavioral scientists and economists immediately thought of something else.

We looked at each other and we said, uh, there's one other thing you aren't thinking about. We have to convince people to take them. So we decided we were going to devote our attention to that. And we built sort of the biggest study that I think has ever been done quite quickly on figuring out what kind of messaging would be most effective on vaccination. Katie's team decided they were going to put together this study. They got together with Walmart, Northeast Penn Medicine, and Geisinger Health, partnering with thousands of doctors and pharmacies all across the country,

reaching more than 700,000 patients. And they used text messages to test out different kinds of messaging and incentives to see how effective different things were at getting people to go and get their flu shot. We tested literally dozens of messages, encouraging people to do it to protect the other people that they loved rather than out of self-interest. Trying jokes, like, makes it more like-hearted and they're more likely to do it. Do you remember what the joke was? It was a, well, we had a couple versions of it, but the joke was basically, have you heard the one about the flu? Don't spread it around.

That's cute. Right now, Katie's research is super relevant as businesses and legislators all over the country are trying different things to encourage people to get vaccinated. And this week, the governor of Ohio announced a plan where vaccinated teens in the state could be eligible for free college tuition. And vaccinated adults will be entered into a lottery. And the winner each Wednesday will receive $1 million. That's right.

Getting a vaccine in Ohio could make you a millionaire. Hello and welcome to Planet Money. I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith, host of Planet Money's daily podcast, The Indicator. Today on the show, how do you get people to take a vaccine? Does a carrot approach work better or the stick? I'm Yo-Ai Shaw. I'm Kia Myakonitis. We're the hosts of the NPR podcast, Invisibilia.

You can think of Invisibilia kind of like a sonic blacklight. When you switch us on, you will hear surprising and intimate stories. Stories that help you notice things in your world that maybe you didn't see before. Listen to the Invisibilia podcast from NPR. So before we got to the whole vaccine issue, I had a general question for Wharton's Katie Milkman. When it comes to sort of carrots versus sticks, what tends to be more effective when you're trying to incentivize people? The general finding from behavioral economics is that losing something is significantly more motivating than gaining the equivalent.

So sticks beat carrots in terms of their motivational power. Now, there are some caveats to that. Caveats like the stick approach, while effective, can make people really angry, which is not ideal if you are a company or a politician. In fact, Katie recalls one experiment from a Michigan primary election in 2006 trying to encourage people to vote. Researchers sent out mailers that included the voting records of people and their neighbors. It was kind of like a shame strategy. So they're finding out if you've showed up, just as you can see if they've showed up.

And we're going to update everyone in the neighborhood on who comes to this election. So you'd better go or your neighbors will find out you didn't. And that one piece of junk mail increased voter turnout by eight percentage points, which is like the most unbelievable effect that anything has ever had. People were so, so angry about this, right? Absolutely infuriated. So it was effective, but it had massive blowback. So the stick approach is tricky, especially when it comes to something like a vaccine.

But the carrot approach is tricky, too, says Katie. In fact, certain carrots can backfire, like having the wrong person encourage someone to get a vaccine shot can make that person less likely to get the shot. And in the case of paying people to get the vaccine, the amount of money seems to be key. Katie says there are these studies that have shown that smaller amounts of money can backfire. So where paying people $100 to get a vaccine might work and get more people to get vaccinated, paying people $20 can actually discourage people from getting a vaccine. Small payments can convey to people some sense that there's a higher risk in whatever activity is being encouraged,

or else, like, why would you need to pay me to do it? And so I do think sort of small payments can be risky. Aon, the insurance and financial services giant, went the carrot route. It did not opt for cash, though. And that's probably good because that would have gotten very expensive. How many employees do you guys have? Roughly 50,000 globally in about 120 countries. Really? That's like a city. Kelly Clark is head of culture and change at Aon. She says the company wanted to encourage workers to get a vaccine, so they did research and asked workers what was keeping them from getting vaccinated. One of the things they heard? Worries about side effects. So,

Ann offered workers who got vaccinated two days off per shot. Kelly would not say if that actually caused more workers to get the vaccine, but she did say the approach has been really popular. If you're choosing and debating about how you're going to manage getting your work done, delivering on your work commitments, and also receiving the vaccine, we want to help you in that. And so it's been met with real gratitude. Katie Milkman at Wharton has been watching all of these different approaches companies and governments are taking with great interest. See what works, what doesn't. In her study, she says, the findings were not at all what she expected. The least effective approach, for instance, was this kind of cool kids are doing it text message. That did not work. What I think was people who are wealthier and better

educated are more likely to get vaccines. So you should too. So we thought, you know, like saying, don't you want to be in this identity group? People did not like that. But peer pressure was effective in a different form, like talking about just how many people were getting the vaccine. Yeah, like you should come to the party. Everybody else is coming. That often works. But another thing that jumped out was it's good to nag people.

So sometimes we message them once and sometimes twice. So nagging is a big one. Nagging is good. And the joke, remember, have you heard the one about the flu, don't spread it around? I thought that was so cute. It would capture people's attention, make them laugh, like relieve a little bit of the stress. And I think that was one of the worst performers. Katie says, though, one message stood out way above the rest. It was far and away more effective than any other method at getting people to get a flu rest. It was far and away more effective than any other

method at getting people to get a flu shot. It was not a carrot or a stick. The top performing message simply communicated that a vaccine has been reserved for you. So it was a very simple, very dry message, like none of the cute back and forth that we were so hoping would be effective. But this very clinical, we've set one aside, it's reserved for you, come and get it. Why is that? Like, why? What's going on in our little heads? So there's a lot of things that happen when there's sort of a default. That's what an economist would call this a default is, there's an assumption that this is what's recommended by the policymaker who's sending this to me. And if that's someone I trust, then I think, oh, you're like telling me to get it and

you're making it really easy. I don't have to lift a finger to go to that website that's been set up where I can find an appointment by typing my zip code. You'd think that's a really small price to pay. But this is people are really lazy. And this is much easier. It's already been arranged for me and I don't have to think about anything. I just have to be there. And by the way, I'm going to feel like a jerk if I don't show up because you scheduled me for an appointment. So I'm canceling on someone now. So there's all of the psychology that seems like it's probably playing into the effectiveness of these tactics. Katie says some companies are doing things like this and bringing vaccines to the office, offering them to workers on site. Still, she says no one approach

is going to work on anyone. So she says it's good that different places are trying different things because you just never know what's going to speak to people. She says, you know, the smallest nudge can make a difference where a huge push will fail. For instance, Krispy Kreme, which offers people free donuts if they show them their vaccine card. My favorite Twitter post of Lane was someone saying he thought it was garbage and that his uncle said that's what did it for him. Really? A guy said his uncle like got vaccinated because he wanted a free donut? It's daily. You get a free donut every day. Free donut? So much better than a carrot. After the break, the TikToker who's done what professional designers, fashion labels, and global retailers have tried and failed to do for decades? Make the skinny jean uncool.

Amy Leverton remembers when the skinny jean trend was born. She had just gotten her first job in the fashion industry. And it was very early 2000s. The Strokes, their first album. The Strokes. Their first album, Is This It, was a huge hit. And the band was photographed by everyone in all these magazines. And they were wearing this kind of like punky Ramones style outfits, like graphic T-shirts, you know, skinny ties, skinny jeans.

That was almost the first time we'd seen slimmer jeans, especially on dudes as well. That was like a jean moment. Yeah, exactly. And Amy was working at the company where it happened. It was this brand called Superfine, started by stylist Lucy Pinter, who got on a plane to Tunisia with designer Amy Robertson. And the two of them worked with tailors and textile manufacturers to develop a collection of skinny jeans. They went out to work with the factory. and she talked to me about it. She's like, they just pinned it in and in and in and in.

They were like smaller, tighter, smaller. In part two of today's episode on the people who make us want what we want, we're talking skinny jeans. I'm Darian Woods wearing my finest pair of skinny jeans, these smaller, tighter pants that turned out to be an economic mammoth, dominating the $70 billion global jeans market for decades. Recently, though, the seams have started to loosen, and now it looks like the reign of the skinny jeans is ending.

Amy Leverton is a denim expert and consultant, and she was at the company Superfine that rolled out one of the first collections of skinny jeans in the early 2000s. She says they were like this revelation. They were so edgy and cool. There was, though, one kind of big problem. They were hard to get on. They were hard to get off. Oh, my gosh. Getting them off. Nightmare. I can just see myself in the bedroom, drunk, you know, early 20s, trying to get my damn skinny jeans off, standing on them and pulling. It was a real thing. But then, innovation. So Mills and Isley started producing stretched denim, which meant skinny jeans, easy to get on, and pretty comfortable and flattering.

Customers went crazy for them. Skinny jeans dominated runways and city streets in 2002, 2005, 2010, 2015. In the land of fast fashion and seasonal trends, the skinny jean was like Caesar, dominating everything, refusing to let go of this grip of power. And Amy Leverton said this actually was kind of hard on fashion companies. It's something that I feel quite guilty about working in trend forecasting because obviously we all have enough stuff as it is. But obviously a part of the apparel industry, you know, a part of it, the whole point of it is to make money. So yeah, it made it harder because obviously,

if you've already got your five pairs, say, of skinny jeans, how do you sell? Amy says designers just gave up on trying to push new silhouettes onto customers, and they just surrendered to the skinny. In fact, 20 years went by and skinny jeans in all of their various forms just kept out selling everything. And it started to seem like nothing could kill the skinny jean. Hi, my name is Monette. I currently live in Toronto right now and I'm a fashion design student. Monette's coitan dowie is 21 21 and while she was in quarantine she started using TikTok videos to style her friends. I like put together the outfits and then that video blew up and so then I started doing with other people but that's how it started. So

one day Monette is going through her clothes and she spots this old pair of skinny jeans. Then I was like yeah I don't wear them anymore because one, if I'm waking up at 7.30 in the morning, I don't want to put on some skinny jeans, try to pull them up. They're uncomfortable. They're not the most flattering, but I just held onto this pair that I've had since 2015. My idea popped into my head, like, why don't I just do a little short TikTok? Not thinking anything of it, of course. In Minette's video, there's a Zinirachi song playing and the words, three ways to style skinny jeans appear on the screen. And like the first one was like putting it in the garbage.

The second one is like cutting it up and the third one is burning it. Brutal. It's so harsh. I mean, honestly, this TikTok is delightful to watch. It's like charming and it's smart. And, you know, Monette says she has a lot of fun making it, but it's a little devastating, honestly. It's a declaration of intergenerational war. Well, I don't think Monette meant it that way, but that is in fact how it turned out. And she didn't realize any of this

was happening until a friend of hers told her that like her TikTok had been featured in an article. And I was like, what? So they sent me the link and they were talking about how, yeah, it's like such a, like millennials versus Gen Z with the skinny jeans. Hundreds of thousands of people had watched Minette's TikTok and that video, along with a handful of others, had sparked a huge intergenerational battle, including a raft of backlash TikToks from angry millennials furiously defending the skinny jeans.

Oh my gosh, yes. And everyone kind of freaked out about this. People were just like feeling their feelings about skinny jeans. Social media went nuts. The media went nuts. There were all these headlines about the death of the skinny jean, you know, saying like Gen Zers on TikTok were like trying to kill the skinny jean. It cuts to the soul.

It did cut to the soul. I mean, Monette said she did not see this coming at all. She honestly says she could not figure out why everyone was so emotional about this. But denim expert Amy Leverton says she gets it. The humble denim jean, it means a lot to people. It really means a lot. We imprint on it, you know, our wear patterns, where we put our wallets. You know, I don't know, we're kneeling down looking after kids or what have you.

It's all of these memories that we imprint on it. So the gene is an emotional thing. It is like somebody tearing down your best friend, in a way. Skinny jeans have gone from dominating jean sales to making up about a third of them now and falling. Amy, though, says the timing couldn't be better for the fashion industry. 2020 was a terrible year for most clothing companies, and the decline of skinny jeans will mean lots of people buying lots of new pants.

People like me. I mean, Darian, I have five pairs of jeans. They are all skinny jeans. I actually asked Monette, I went to the source, and I was like, listen, do I need to buy all new pants? And she was like, you do not need to buy new pants. You should wear what makes you comfortable. You should do you.

And I was so relieved. So if you saw me walking down the street in skinny jeans, I would not like seem like a tragic figure or anything like that. No. My mom still wears skinny jeans and I think she looks really good in them. I have to buy new pants. That's, yeah. I mean, it's killing us with kindness, that comment. So bad.

I mean, it's killing us with kindness, that comment. So bad. In fact, actually, denim expert Amy Leverton thinks the reason the skinny jean conversation got so emotional is that, you know, like having like a cool 21-year-old kind of mocking your style means basically that you are no longer cool or 21. I'm 40 now. So I've been on the other end of this and it happens every generation you know so it's like we're not meant to look cool it's just that we were you know like millennials were cool and it's just they're just getting older and basically that's just aging so what they're struggling with is I think aging and it's attached to this gene. This poor gene is like, oh, I'm taking all the flack.

Perhaps, Darian, the fault lies not in our skinny genes, but in ourselves. Amy says nobody really knows what will replace the skinny gene. She says there is a gene silhouette power vacuum. What Amy and Monette both told me was that the baggy boyfriend jean is kind of a contender. Mom jeans are a contender. Low rise jeans are in there. Slightly questioning that one. Also bell bottoms and something called a column pant.

Right, like wide leg jeans. I don't know what it is. I just wrote it down on a piece of paper. Yeah, the column pant. Hmm. on a piece of paper. Yeah, the column pant. But still, Amy says,

no matter who grabs the denim throne, probably nothing will reign as long as skinny jeans did. That's the kind of trend that comes along once in a generation. These stories were originally reported for our daily podcast, The Indicator. If you don't subscribe, you should strongly consider it. It is a daily show explaining one slice of the economy in 10 minutes or less. You can search for The Indicator anywhere you listen to podcasts.

These two episodes of The Indicator that you just heard were produced by Brittany Cronin, Emma Peasley, all with help from Gilly Moon. The episodes were fact-checked by Sam Tsai. The Indicator is edited by Kate Concanon. Today's episode of Planet Money was produced by Raina Cohen and edited by Miranda Kennedy. I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith, and this is NPR. Good question. That's a really good question. It's a great question. This is free therapy. Thank you for asking me that. God, that's such a good question.

That's an interesting question. But what Fresh Air interviews are really about are the interesting answers. Listen and subscribe to Fresh Air from WHYY and NPR. And a special thanks to our funder, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, for helping to support this podcast.