“If I see a person as they are, I degrade them.
If I see them as they will be, I uplift them.”
[ IMPORTANT: Today's post is filled with huge chunks of major marketing nutrition. Continue reading: ]
Last week, we looked at how people will happily hide in the safety of a group when they find frustration and failure in their lives and want to be free of freedom.
Heck, you read the sordid details of how I did exactly that with Toastmasters: I put my heart and soul into an organization in order to be free from the responsibility of my then-faltering career.
Freedom means responsibility, and many of your prospects would rather have an escape.
So give them an escape and you’ll get them hooked on your drug.
Where are they escaping to? With Toastmasters, I escaped to that wonderful place where my group was “making effective communication a worldwide reality.”®
Yep, your customers escape to the non-existent Promised Land, filled with milk and honey and more importantly, with sacred themes.
Today, I’m going to give you a few usable advanced marketing techniques that are devastating in their power. Let’s start by viewing this 62-second video — make sure you have your speakers on or you’ll miss everything I’m gonna share with you:
Powerful stuff, isn’t it? Heck, it almost jerked a tear out of my eye. But don’t worry, it didn’t, because I’m a tough guy.
But guess, what? That video wasn’t about helping good and decent people realize the truth about and the power within themselves.
That video was entirely conceived, written, and produced under the guidance of marketers, with only one purpose: to get more customers. The words were written by a copywriter on assignment with a deadline and a bag of proven techniques. Combined with the visuals and music from the creative director and a solid $600 voiceover-for-hire from voices.com and you wind up with mighty powerful stuff.
Powerful. But why?
Let me take away the emotional impact, lie this video on the cold mortuary slab, and perform a marketing autopsy for you. Scalpel, please:
First incision …
Using contrasts:
The copywriter contrasted limitation with unlimited potential, with the outcome being the viewer is the definition of eternity itself. Look more closely at the words used in the video:
The devil to run away from: Limitation:
“You are not your name. You’re not your job. You’re not the clothes you wear, or the neighborhood you live in. You’re not your fears, your failures, or your past.”
The Promised Land to run to: Unlimited potential:
“You are hope. You are imagination. You are the power to change, to create, and to grow.
The one IDEA to value more highly than anything else: You are eternal:
“You are a spirit that will never die. And no matter how beaten down, you will rise. Again.”
Eight weeks ago, I asked you a deep marketing question:
“What is the most powerful force there is and ever will be that can come from humanity? More than life, freedom, time, family, friends, respect, appreciation, assets, and stuff … what do people value more highly than anything else?
The answer was something eternal: an IDEA that gives their lives meaning and purpose.
In this video, you see the incredible power of an IDEA – “You are eternal” – that easily can give any person who feels beaten down a life renewed with meaning and purpose.
That idea is so powerful a force that Scientology does no selling, but merely ends the video with their tagline (“Know yourself. Know life”) and their domain name. And people will come running to them.
Our marketing autopsy continues, as I make my …
Second incision …
Using subtle rhythm and repetition,
especially the power of threes:
This is the same cold and precise technique I’ve been using for years as an inspirational speaker to deeply touch people’s hearts and as a motivational speaker to get them to act:
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The devil to run away from: “You are not __1__. You are not __2__. You are not __1__ or __2__. You are not __1__, __2__, or __3__.” Pattern: 1. 2. 1-or-2. 1-2-or-3. The Promised Land to run to: Pattern: 1. 2. 1-2-and-3. |
You can also use this pattern powerfully: 1. 2. 3. And/Or/But 4:
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“You are cool (1). You are hip (2). You are smart (3). But most of all, you are real (4).” Join now:
“You can give your cash (1). Your time (2). Your most prized possessions (3). But whatever you do, give with your heart (4).” Donate now: |
You can create rhythm within rhythm: 1. 2. 3. And/Or/But 4 (A,B,C):
| “You can give your cash (1). Your time (2). Your most prized possessions (3). But whatever you do (A), whenever you do it (B), why ever you do it (C), give with your heart (4).” Donate now: |
Can you feel the eternal almighty power in the rhythm of those words, brothers and sisters? Hallelujah!
Opening up the chest cavity …
The beating heart revealed:
In the past two months, you learned people value that one idea that gives them meaning and purpose. And most are desperately seeking it.
In Cosmopolitan, Architectural Digest, and a host of other glossy magazines, the gorgeous stories and ads of gorgeous people wearing gorgeous clothes in their gorgeous homes filled with gorgeous things are not about vulgar materialism and crass consumerism and spend, spend, spend.
Yep, this is true even as the magazines are filled with $45,000 watches, $120,000 evening gowns, and $200,000 tables.
They are about arousing the imagination and helping readers see themselves in The Promised Land.
Why do people who pick soda cans out of trash cans for recycling cash also pick up the free magazines featuring multimillion-dollar homes? Because it arouses their imagination and whisks them off in their mind to The Promised Land. Have you ever looked at an ad for a product that you wanted and fantasized about? We all have.
But without that ad, without those carefully crafted words, there is no imagination and there is no Promised Land for your prospects.
The sad fact is, most people don’t have much of an imagination, primarily because they’re like you and me: super-busy and occupied and preoccupied by tasks and requirements of daily living. They no longer can see themselves as being anything other than what they are now and they no longer can see themselves as having anything other than what they have now.
By showing them your Promised Land, you do more and go further than most other marketers:
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You offer more than a great product at a great price. You offer more than truly world-class service. You give their lives meaning, purpose and, beyond that, you give them hope. You give them Eternity. (Recognize those words as set in a pattern? See the power of the pattern?) |
So you aren’t ready to produce a fancy schmancy video.
What then?
FIRST: You’ve seen the power of using the Devil and The Promised Land as contrasts. (You are not the color orange. You are not red, blue, or green. You are the rainbow and the spectrum and the artist’s palette. You are color itself.)
SECOND: You’ve seen the power of using rhythm and repetition in your words. (You are not the color orange. You are not red, blue, or green. You are not even the rainbow or the spectrum or the artist’s palette, or even color. You are Light itself.)
THIRD: You’ve seen how the fancy Madison Avenue advertising types use these exact same techniques to sell tickets to ride the train to The Promised Land.
FOURTH: You’ve held the live beating heart in your hands: Setting your prospects up to use their imagination. When you help them enter into the world of their imagination, you take them to a place they don’t visit themselves. But because they can visit again, you have given them Eternity.
FIFTH: Right now, I’ll show you again how easily this works with a true story:
I once guided a team of young ambitious tech-head nerdo executives — my business partners in a new venture — in finding market segments to target. They all rang in with their logical responses of what they thought were sizeable, profitable segments — all based on their rational thinking which came to them easily. I quietly listened to them and then I said:
| “Don’t think big. Think HUGE.” |
Then I vividly painted the picture of the market segment known as the Promised Land and how it personally offered them far greater rewards: it required less work … had more milk and honey (and dollars) … and they could hire and train staff to do the actual $10-an-hour work while they hunted down and bagged more HUGE milk-and-honey elephant-sized contracts.
Finally, I closed the sale with two words: “Just imagine . . .”
The three of them sat back in their chairs with huge open eyes on their relaxed faces and mumbled like they were stoned: “Wow … Yeah … Wow … Yeah …” as they frollicked in their new imaginary Promised Land I just handed them.
Sure, I didn’t use a fancy professionally produced video by a well-known religious organization. To help them run from the devil, I simply uttered five words: “Don’t think big. Think HUGE.” And to help them enter the Promised Land, I merely said, “Just imagine . . . ”
I’ve been mentioning ideas and eternity and The Promised Land. “The Promised Land” is just a phrase or a way to remember what sacred themes are.
Next week, we dig deeper into The Promised Land by seeing how a sacred theme runs rings around a moral theme every single time … how it relieves your prospects’ tension better than incredible sex … how some industries constantly use sacred themes (you just saw one of them today) … and how the sacred theme is actually the sneakiest trick in the marketing handbook that will make you feel guilty as sin — but only if you do it right.
Questions? Comments? Post them below and I’ll answer them:
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