Seth Godin had a recent post that is sorta semi-related. Common desires quenched can influence and attract a crowd – http://budurl.com/SethGodin5PillarsSM

Thanks for sharing.

what you’re writing about is in line with “social proof” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_proof) where folks who lack enough information to decide on a course of action will follow the lead of others. very much herd behavior.

the way to reach those that are basing their decision off of noise instead of data is to highlight those that have the data and the moves they are making. Position them as “cool folks in the know” while also positioning those that aren’t making moves “uncool folks not in the know.”

for example, a community wanted to increase it’s recycling efforts and had failed with past promotions until… they ran a low-budget commercial that showed people in the neighborhood all taking their recyclables down to the curb. one boy asked his father, “where are the petersons?” to whcih dad replied, “son, the petersons, well, they don’t recycle.”

community recycling jumped (nobody wanted to be like the petersons!). same psychology can be applied here…