When you unite people with your idea,
You unite them with eternity:
Last week, we looked at how freedom means responsibility, and how many of your prospects prefer an escape from freedom rather than freedom itself. So let them escape to the non-existent Promised Land you create with sacred themes.
Today, we dig into the power of sacred themes.
To unite your followers with an idea, and thefore eternity, your idea must be either sacred or moral.
Which idea, you ask?
Look at these ideas:
- The Promised Land
- Enlightenment
- The Kingdom of Heaven
- Perfection
- Nirvana
- Completion and Fulfillment
First — notice they come from religion or spirituality.
Second — and this is going to feel extremely sneaky, but it is essential to retaining your followers — the idea must be a vision, and a vision can never be realized.
You can never reach The Promised Land, The Kingdom of Heaven, a state of nirvana or enlightenment or perfection or completion or fulfillment. Never ever.
You can never fully express your individuality or maverick rebel nature. Never ever.
Sacred ideas are your trump card:
Like an Ace in a deck of 52 cards, sacred and moral ideas are higher and more powerful than all other ideas.
But it gets better: sacredness will trump morality every time. So you want to use sacred themes over moral themes:
- Sacred themes: You are a spirit that will never die. There is hope. You can have: freedom … power … wealth … health … beauty … wisdom … love … fulfillment … perfection … completion
- Moral themes: Love thy neighbor … Obey the commandments, the law, or authority figures … Be a good boy or girl … Follow the rules … Put litter in its place … Vote … Do the right thing
Do you see?
Do you see how sacred themes open you up to grand unlimited possibilites, while moral themes merely build limits and restrictions that keep you within someone else’s pre-defined possibilities?
Do you see how sacred themes don’t need an explanation and don’t need to be sold because they are ideas that can mean anything to anyone?
Do you see how moral themes might need an explanation and might need to be sold? Follow the rules: “What rules? How? When? Where? Why should I?”
Which list of themes feels better to you: sacred or moral?
Look at these sacred ideas that successfully sold a product (a political candidate):
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Here are the themes again in action:
Sacred Theme: What does Christianity do to keep its followers on the path to The Kingdom of Heaven (which perhaps you now know cannot be reached by doing anything)? Repeat the importance of believing, trusting, and having faith … sacred themes.
Moral Theme: What do white-haired elder masters do to help their students build their character, which is a lifelong process that cannot be completed? Repeat the importance of doing the right thing … a moral theme.
How do sacred themes trump moral themes?
They use guilt trips:
You learned in Mass Persuasion that Kate Smith saturated her 65 calls to buy war bonds with her overall theme of “buying a bond is a sacred act.” The sacredness of the war becomes a holy cause to right wrongs and the sacrifice of sacred life in this holy cause. A purchase is more like a donation to your religious organization to further its good works than it is a purchase of a financial investment.
You also learned that she used the idea of morality (doing the right thing) by shifting prospects away from the social standards they had already fulfilled to moral standards that can never be fulfilled.
Then, she took it even higher, using the idea of sacredness to shift prospects away from the moral standards they had already met.
Kate Smith used the Aces of sacredness and morality and trumped every possible objection anyone could ever lay down on the table:
- Sacred: I did enough. “This mother has given one son . . . What are you doing compared with what this mother has done?”
- Moral: I met the socially accepted standard: I used 10% of my income to buy bonds. “Buy a bond and bring the boys back. Don’t you think you owe that much to Mrs. Smith and her son and all of the other mothers, each who’s praying each night for the safe return of her boy?”
- Moral: I’m interested in bonds only as a safe investment. “Can you go down the street and tell Mrs. Jones, who just saw her son off to war and may never see him again, that you are interested only in the coldly calculated rate of return, when she may never see him return at all?”
Aren’t these guilt trips absolutely chock full of shame and humiliation? Of course they are. Guilt is an emotion based on a sense or feeling of conduct, and conduct is based on what is acceptable
Kate Smith shifted the definition of what is acceptable. Your bond purchase counts only when you make it to intentionally support the sacredness of life right now. Anything else (social or moral acceptability) fails to meet the sacred standard she sets:
- If you buy because bonds are a great investment, that doesn’t count
- If you already bought, that doesn’t count, even if you bought to intentionally support the sacredness of life
- If you already used 10% of your income, that doesn’t count
And that shift in what is acceptable creates guilt, because you as a buyer can’t win unless you buy another bond right now while kneeling before the altar and declaring, “I make this donation in the name of the sacredness of life. Amen.”
You can’t make anyone experience guilt or any other emotion. Only they can do that. But you can establish a sacred idea which helps them separates themselves from the lesser idea they are currently united with. That creates inner conflict that creates guilt.
Kate Smith separated them from the ideas that: bonds are coldly calculated investments … prior purchases count for something … and their sacrifices (even if they sacrificed their own sons in the war) were sufficient.
The competitive advantages
of using sacred themes:
Why use sacred themes? When your idea is sacred:
- Competitive Strength: You build a strong fortress against competition and your followers will continue marching with you
- Promise of the Dangling Carrot: Your Promised Land is the dangling carrot in front of the horse who keeps on marching forward trying to reach it
- Doubt and Confusion Relieved: You automatically answer the Big Questions that keep them in constant tension:
“Am I doing the right thing? Is this the way to go? Is this the idea to follow?”
How couldn’t you be doing the right thing by buying an Apple Mac, when life is about being an individual rather than just an anonymous bee in the collective hive?
How couldn’t you be following the right idea in buying a Harley, when rebellious expression within the limits of conformity is part of the myth and religion of being American?
Industries and their sacred themes:
Look at these industries, the sacred themes they use, and how it keeps its followers coming back for more in order to reach that unreachable state of being because they can never reach that dangling carrot:
- Health and beauty: fitness, nutrition, cosmetics, and fashion industries
- Freedom, material wealth: internet marketing, multilevel marketing, franchise opportunities
- Kingdom of Heaven, Nirvana, perfection, completion: religions, spiritual, and personal development industries
You saw the Scientology video last week (“You are a spirit that will never die”). Once you join their group, you will be pursuing an unreachable state of being.
Like a complex educational system, they have years of material that take you from their kindergarten to university PhD and beyond – from books and home-study courses to live events, classes, workshops, training, certification, and more – to keep you involved for several hundred years. (But of course, as a spirit that will never die, you’ll have plenty of time to complete the work.)
The power of sacred themes is
a many-splendored thing:
- They are ambiguous, unlimited, and personal: Freedom, wealth, health, love, and beauty mean something different to each person. That means you can offer a promise like: “Unlock your inner beauty” or “Achieve financial independence” and everyone can agree
- They are future-oriented: Although they may exist in the here and now, none of us can fully experience them. We must work toward experiencing their fullness, which happens some time in the vague future. This means your prospects are constantly refreshed by the internal energy of hope for a better tomorrow
- They are eternal: This is because they are ideas — and ideas are not subject to time and space. You’ve seen that they cannot be never satisfied. Do you know any person who’s reached Nirvana? Whose shipping address is The Kingdom of Heaven? It will take an eternity to reach Nirvana and forever for that package to reach The Kingdom of Heaven
- They relieve doubt and confusion: You automatically answer the Big Questions that keep your prospects in constant tension: “Am I doing the right thing? Is this the way to go? Is this the idea to follow?” Were Obama’s Progress, Change, Destiny, and Hope the right things … the ways to go … the ideas to follow on Election Day 2008?
I know this post has been long. But the importance of the power of sacred themes can’t be stressed enough. It got enough voters to put a presidential candidate into the Oval Office.
Sacred Ideas:
Themes You Can Believe In:
10 weeks of eternal ideas:
NEXT POST IN 2 WEEKS: We’re going to put these last 10 posts about the IDEA as sacred theme together into one powerful strategy you can use. That gives you time to review what we’ve covered. An easy way is to keep in mind the Obama presidential campaign and its themed posters above, then read the summaries below. You can quickly review the posts themselves by clicking the links below:
GIVE ME YOUR QUESTIONS: I strongly feel this is much too important for you to miss. If there is anything you don’t understand in any of the posts below, either: (1) post your question as a comment below OR (2) if you prefer confidentiality, send me an email: bill@rippermarketing. com. I will answer each and every question you have. So ahead and ask!
POST #1: A quick intriguing question for you:
What is the ONE thing people value more highly than anything else?
POST #2: The most powerful force: Love is NOT the answer:
People value that one idea, whatever it may be, that gives their life meaning and purpose
POST #3: Be the Light your customers seek:
If they believe in the Light, Then Be the Light. For them to believe in their idea, they must believe in the person who originated it. For them to believe in your idea, they must believe in you. And to believe in you, they must trust you
POST #4: I can feel your pain:
They’ll follow an idea they believe in. How do you begin to lead people who aren’t following you yet? You fill their painful emptiness with anything
POST #5: Give me guidance, show me the way:
People are literally dying to be led. When you share your vision of a brighter future — your idea that unites your people — you lift them up above where they are now. And they’ll begin to give to you. As you demonstrate the quality of character through your consistent, constant action, you transform your followers’ hope into faith and then into rock-solid trust upon which they can safely build the structure of their lives, and the clouds open up more and rain upon you. Your idea will become part of them
POST #6: The devil made me do it:
We all need a devil, because we know more about what we don’t want than we do about what we do want. The devil helps your customers discover and focus on what they want. The ideal devil is: a single person or group … a foreigner or someone whose experience is so alien from our own … is in the present, is everywhere, and is all-powerful … and is one we admire and occupies a position above us
POST #7: Come to me, all who are loaded down with burdens:
Nobody truly wants freedom, certainly not our customers. Freedom is a heavy burden: it puts all responsibility for success or failure and the frustrations and heartbreaks on us. We want to be free of freedom. We escape from this discomfort of freedom by joining and losing ourselves in a group. Give your customers the illusion of freedom: limit their choices (Democrat or Republican, green or black, cash or credit, paper or plastic, priority or standard shipping?)
POST #8: More addictive than heroin:
Build your business so your customers can escape from freedom: give them a group to join, a way to participate somehow with a title and a sense of responsibility
POST #9: You are a spirit that will never die:
Freedom means responsibility, and many of your prospects would rather have an escape. So let them escape to the non-existent Promised Land, filled with milk and honey and more importantly, with sacred themes. Use contrasting language (limitation vs. unlimited potential). Use rhythm (“You can give your cash (1). Your time (2). Your most prized possessions (3). But whatever you do (4A), whenever you do it (4B), why ever you do it (4C), give with your heart (4). Donate now:”). And arouse their imagination to help them see themselves in The Promised Land (just like Cosmopolitan, Architectural Digest, and other glossy magazines help readers see themselves in their fantasy Promised Land).
POST #10: This post: Change we can believe in:
Ideas are eternal. And people value that one idea, whatever it may be, that gives their life meaning and purpose. Unite your people with an idea and thefore eternity: use a sacred theme. Sacred and moral ideas are higher and more powerful than all other ideas. But sacred ideas trump moral ideas. Use sacred ideas. Obama did and look how well sacred ideas (change, hope, destiny, progress) worked for him!
Questions or comments?
Post them below and I’ll gladly respond:
GIVE ME YOUR QUESTIONS: I strongly feel this is much too important for you to miss. If there is anything from any of the posts above you don’t understand, either: (1) post your question as a comment below OR (2) if you prefer confidentiality, send me an email: bill@rippermarketing. com. I will answer each and every question you have. So ahead and ask!
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