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.
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 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 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.
Amateur ad writers assume everyone makes decisions based upon the same criteria they use. This causes them to unconsciously frame their messages to reach people exactly like themselves.
Who is the “McDonald’s” in your category? The business you believe is getting an unfair amount of customers… in spite of their quality and competence. A few things are happening that you should find illuminating.
Why are you still paying your social media expert to create posts that look like TV commercials and “for sale” ads? We are telling you to “STOP!” And if you won’t listen to us, then listen to Facebook. Please.
If the humor isn’t tied to the message; if you can’t talk about one without talking about the other, then any attempts at persuasion will be short-lived and not very memorable.
You probably read this and thought: that’s an unrealistic expectation. Kind of like expecting an ad to “go viral.” Who gossips about ads, of all things? And why would anyone want people gossiping about their brand?
The Coors campaign took market share from Bud and Miller while spending one-third as much money. They used a half-dozen smaller differentiators to build up “quality” and “caring” as what set their beer apart.