Ira’s third video on storytelling is by far the most popular. He's describing the positive side of the Dunning-Kruger effect. I think this video speaks to: Linear, no-threshold thinking, Minimum Effective Dose, and Cumulative Effect.
Never would you guess the family’s leaders dine with Persian princes and European presidents all while driving their simple blue Fords. Remember, your customers and your employees are watching.
I remember a Marshall McLuhan quote of “The Media is the Message.” So I asked Roy, what about McLuhan? The skies darkened, the floors parted, and a fiery hell appeared as Roy screamed.
“The amount of time finding the decent story is more than the amount of time it takes to produce the story… I think that, like, not enough gets said about the importance of abandoning crap.”
A dozen years from now 50% to 60% of transactions will be occurring online. And a surprising advantage will go to stores who sell online but advertise locally.
Warren Buffet and Charlie Munger made money by using a strategy that passed the test of time. At 97 years old, Munger attributes two things to his success: patience and inversion.
A picture is worth a thousand words. Confucius told us that. Or did he? Actually, Fred Barnard made up the saying to promote the use of images and called it “a Chinese proverb so that people would take it seriously.”
When you advertise, you typically make bullet points of what you “want customers to know.” Giving a customer an education so he’ll have no choice but to pick you is as fanciful as it is arrogant.
The chase for instant gratification in marketing often looks like “sales events.” Knowing when to use a sale and when to use other methods to get customers in the door makes all the difference.
The first video covers Ira’s two basic building blocks of storytelling: the Anecdote and the Moment of Reflection. And in advertising terms, these are roughly analogous to Relevance and Credibility.
Business is like writing. You have to find your own style and stick to it. Stop worrying about what the competition is doing. They're all bastards. Get inspired by things they don't understand.
I hate funnels. The thing we call a Marketing Funnel is really just a shorthand to remind us that no customer goes from “I don’t know who you are” to “here, take my money!”
In many businesses, what most customers are really buying is transformation. Groundhog Day plays to three very powerful psychological dynamics you can use to captivate and convert.
Just like unions of the 1940s, there is a societal shift toward worker empowerment. If you’re first in your category to embrace this shift, you win. Resist, and you lose.
You’re thinking about buying something and an acquaintance says, “Don’t do it; I bought that / hired them and it was a total waste of money. I got screwed.” Generally speaking, we believe them.