Really? Are prospective Telefunken factory workers screened against their childhood attitudes toward perfection?
Marty Neumeier, author of Zag, describes?a tagline as the outward expression of your brand's most compelling differentiator. Surely it would help for your tagline to be believable.
Here's a poster I came across in the city this week:
I love it. Imagine the fun of sharing these tic tacs with your friends - you have the disco ball, I'll have the Kombi van.
There might be many ways to bring attention to a low-interest product - ask an artist like John Maeda to do something crazy with it, invite passionate customers to show why they love?your product - who knows. I doubt, however, that creating and advertising a?fake product that's more interesting than your real product is the optimal method.
As we transmit & sense fear, so we transmit & sense passion - it cannot be faked.
You may not care for dancing, nor for reality TV, but the dancers on So You Think You Can Dance would convince you otherwise. One cannot achieve their expertise nor maintain their level of commitment without their passion for dance.
Choreographers Napoleon and Tabitha take this one step further, by telling passionate stories in their routines. Not only do they give us a visual feast, they transmit emotion - we feel something.
Few routines epitomised this more than Joshua and Katee telling (dancing) the story of a young man drafted for war and his girlfriend's reaction:
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How is your passion transmitted in what you do, so that others can sense it, feel it and respond?
Yesterday a friend told me of a life-changing experience as a 12 year old kid. He was playing rugby and defending the try line as a very large player bore down on him, intent on scoring a try. For the uninitiated to rugby, the effects of big rugby hits look like this:
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Deciding that a) his very large opponent was likely to score a try anyway and b) a trip to the hospital or morgue was likely, my friend stepped aside. At that moment a smaller teammate stepped up and comprehensively took this very large player out, preventing the try and saving the day.
My friend learned two valuable lessons:
He was capable of more than he realized, and
If he doesn't defend the line, who will?
In turn he told me his story so that I'd realize I was the last line of defense for one aspect of a client's business. It stuck in my head and changed my mind.
Chip Heath and Dan Heath tell us about idea that are made to stick - they say that memorable ideas are:
Simple
Unexpected
Concrete
Credentialed
Emotional
Stories
These map to 'SUCCESs' for easy recall.
If my friend had merely told me some facts I might not have paid close attention or responded. Instead he changed my mind with a SUCCESsful story that I may never forget.
Here's full-page print advertisement that appeared yesterday on the back page of the 'Financial Review Investor' insert of Sydney's Sun Herald:
The ad is timely - people are greatly concerned about their investments. It's authoritative, credible and therefore trustworthy. It's also located correctly - it's in an insert for investors. And the message is clear - don't panic.
The sole omission is permission. The company could have offered readers the opportunity to receive valuable insights like this in the future - instead they offer only advisors and a web site. An opportunity lost.
Most employers dislike, dissuade and/or discipline argumentative employees but in doing so they miss the point - employees argue because they care. As a result, most employees are whingers or quiet, having accepted the inability in instigate change a long, long time ago.
I very much agree with Keith McFarland, who points out the need for 'insultants', people willing to ask the tough questions that cause a company to think critically about its fundamental assumptions. The value of insultants is that they will go to great lengths to get their companies to reevaluate a position or adapt to a changing environment."
