Proving Steve Jobs wrong
The power of showing vs. telling
Steve Jobs once told his advertising agency he wanted to cover 5 things one of their products did well in an ad
...and the ad exec responded by SHOWING him why that wouldn't work 👀
Sponsor: Storylane
Most interactive demos suck. They're too long. Too complicated. Too detailed. Too zoomed in. So I go back to Charlie Munger's famous quip: "Invert, always invert" to take what I DON'T want to happen (aka the above) to understand what I DO want to happen.
➡️ Market the pain, not the pill
If an ICP prospect is on my website, I want to convert them from web visitor > qualified pipeline
Here's how I'd use an interactive demo like Storylane to do that when a prospect hits a product or use case page:
1) Have the prospect select the pain they feel the most from a short list of options (if you know your market + product well, you shouldn't have more than 2-4 max)
2) That selection sets off an interactive demo experience related to that exact pain point, starting with a short blurb explaining the specific pain (shows your audience you *know* them)
3) Don't overwhelm them. Beauty lies in simplicity. Take them through a short workflow of your product that shows how their pain is solved. This shouldn't take more than 60 seconds to get through.
4) Have an ending visual that illustrates the before/after. It could be a table, a graphic, etc. The main thing is to help them see the gap between current state and ideal state.
This is one of many interactive demos we’re starting to build. The possibilities are endless - what will you build?
The story
The ad exec in this story was Lee Clow, and he said he was going to show Steve the difference between a good ad and a bad ad.
So Lee crumpled up a piece of paper, quickly turned to Steve and, while the crumpled ball of paper was already in mid-air, yelled to Steve, “Catch it!”
Steve caught the wadded paper ball, to which Lee said, "That is a good ad."
Slightly confused where Lee was going with this, Steve didn’t say anything yet as he noticed Lee was busying himself on the other side of the room, wadding up more balls of paper.
Taking 5 of those crumpled pieces of paper, Lee put all of them in one hand, and again turned quickly to Steve. Like just a moment ago, Lee then threw these at Steve, shouting, “Catch all of these!” to Steve as they were in mid-flight.
But this time, Steve didn't catch a single one of them. And to this, Lee said, "That is a bad ad."
Takeaway
In less than 60 seconds and with just 10 words, Lee was able to demonstrate to Steve the difference between sharing one message vs too many at a time.
The more things you ask people to focus on at one time, the less they'll remember any of them.
As marketers, we’re lucky if our audience catches the main message we throw at them.
But if we try to be like Steve in this example and throw 5 different things at them at the same time, they likely won't catch any.
Too many of us marketers think that we need 100 different things to say with our marketing.
We need to communicate all the value we can provide.
We need to communicate all of the benefits they’ll receive.
We need to communicate all of the outcomes they can expect to achieve.
But the reality of it is that we need to keep it simple.
Focus on one core message per ad.
Have each message supporting a larger, shared POV so that you end up with 100 ways of saying the same thing - that same core message.
And that is how you get remembered.
Book quote of the week
“People who know what they’re talking about don’t need Powerpoint.”
- Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson
In case you missed these this week
Just one post this week. Hiring for 3 roles at once + prepping for a board meeting while on a short week as I was OOO Thurs-Fri will do that 🤷♂️
See you next Saturday,
Sam