بوم رویاها و آرزوها

CHAPTER SEVEN

The Canvas of Dreams and Desires

Everything you’ve been taught in school and at work about doing a good job has been about meeting spec, delivering on the assignment, getting the A, doing the specific thing for the specific industrial purpose.

“What do you do” is about a task, a measurable, buyable thing.

Consider this job description from the U.S. government: SEWING MACHINE OPERATOR; GRADE: 6

Sets up and runs a variety of domestic and industrial type power operated sewing machines and related special purpose machines such as buttonhole, basting and feed-off the arm machines. . . .

Makes independent judgments and decisions within the framework of oral or written instructions and accepted methods, techniques, and procedures. Continually handles objects weighing up to 5 kilograms (10 pounds) and occasionally objects weighing up to 9 kilograms (20 pounds). Works inside in areas that usually have adequate light, heat and fresh air. Is exposed to the possibility of cuts and bruises.

While this is the description of a job, it’s not the description of a dream or a desire. While it’s specific, it could easily be changed without altering what it delivers.

This is how money works as well. Twenty-dollar bills are meaningless. It’s what you can buy with them that we work for.

The same is true of your product or service. You may say you’re offering a widget, but don’t believe it. When you’re marketing change, you’re offering a new emotional state, a step closer to the dreams and desires of your customers, not a widget.

We sell feelings, status, and connection, not tasks or stuff.

What do people want?

If you ask them, you probably won’t find what you’re looking for. You certainly won’t find a breakthrough. It’s our job to watch people, figure out what they dream of, and then create a transaction that can deliver that feeling.

The crowd didn’t invent the Model T, the smartphone, or rap. The crowd didn’t invent JetBlue, City Bakery, or charity: water either.

Crowdfunding is one thing, but the crowd isn’t that good at inventing a breakthrough.

There are three common confusions that many of us get stuck on.

The first is that people confuse wants and needs. What we need is air, water, health, and a roof over our heads. Pretty much everything else is a want. And if we’re privileged enough, we decide that those other things we want are actually needs.

The second is that people are intimately aware of their wants (which they think of as needs) but they are absolutely terrible at inventing new ways to address those wants. They often prefer to use a familiar solution to satisfy their wants, even if it’s not working very well. When it comes time to innovate, they get stuck.

The third is mistakenly believing that everyone wants the same thing. In fact, we don’t. The early adopters want things that are new; the laggards want things to never change. One part of the population wants chocolate, another vanilla.

Innovative marketers invent new solutions that work with old emotions While the seven billion people on this planet are each unique, each a different collection of wants, needs, pain, and joy, in many ways we’re all the same. We share a basket of dreams and desires, all in different proportions, but with a ton of overlap.

Here’s the list, the foundational list, a shared vocabulary that each of us chooses from when expressing our dreams and fears: Adventure

Affection

Avoiding new things

Belonging

Community

Control

Creativity

Delight

Freedom of expression

Freedom of movement

Friendship

Good looks

Health

Learning new things

Luxury

Nostalgia

Obedience

Participation

Peace of mind

Physical activity

Power

Reassurance

Reliability

Respect

Revenge

Romance

Safety

Security

Sex

Strength

Sympathy

Tension

You could probably add ten more. But it’s unlikely you could add fifty more. This core basket of dreams and desires means that marketers, like artists, don’t need many colors to paint an original masterpiece.

And this is where we begin: with assertions. Assertions about what our audience, the folks we need to serve, want and need. Assertions about what’s on their minds when they wake up, what they talk about when no one is eavesdropping, what they remember at the end of the day.

And then we make assertions about how our story and our promise will interact with these wants and desires. When someone encounters us, will they see what we see? Will they want what we think they’ll want? Will they take action?

Don’t begin with your machines, your inventory, or your tactics. Don’t begin with what you know how to do or some sort of distraction about your mission. Instead, begin with dreams and fears, with emotional states, and with the change your customers seek.

Nobody needs your product

It doesn’t make sense to say “people need a white leather wallet,” because: People don’t need a wallet. They might want one, but that’s different.

People might decide that they want a white leather wallet, but they don’t want it because it’s white or because it’s leather; they want it because of how it will make them feel. That’s what they’re buying: a feeling, not a wallet. Identify that feeling before you spend time making a wallet.

Marketers make change. We change people from one emotional state to another. We take people on a journey; we help them become the person they’ve dreamed of becoming, a little bit at a time.

No one is happy to call a real estate broker

Not really. Despite what the broker is hoping, this isn’t often a joyous interaction.

They’re afraid.

Nervous.

Relieved.

Eager to get going.

Anxious about moving.

Stressed about money.

Thinking about status gained or lost.

Concerned about the future.

Worried about their kids.

The broker is a speed bump on the way to their future. And most of what he or she says is merely noise, a palliative, because it all costs the same anyway.

According to statistics given to me by the National Association of Realtors, more than 80 percent of the people who hire a broker do so by choosing the first person to return their call.

Given that, here’s what I’d ask a broker seeking better: How will you choose to show up in the world? Will you reassure and soothe? Will you probe and explore? Will you claim that you’re better, faster, more caring?

Just as no one needs a drill bit, no one needs a real estate broker. What they need and want is how it makes them feel to get what a broker can get them.

(And the same thing is true for waiters, for limo drivers, and perhaps for you . . . ) • • • • •

Like real estate brokers, most of us do our most important work when we traffic in emotions, not commodities.

Where’s the angry bear?

When someone doesn’t act as you expected them to, look for their fear.

It’s difficult to dream of anything when you think you’re about to be eaten by a grizzly. Even (or especially) if it’s all in your mind.

What do you want?

Let me guess. You’d like to be respected, successful, independent, appropriately busy, and maybe a little famous. You’d like to do work you’re proud of and do it for people you care about.

What’s not on that list? That you need to own a certain color car. That you have to sell your items in packages that are six inches wide, not seven inches. That you want all your customers to have first names with no fewer than six letters in them.

The details don’t matter so much. Just as your customers want a shift in their emotional states, to move from fear to belonging, so do you.

That leaves a huge amount of room. Many degrees of freedom.

It helps to follow certain truths of commerce. If you want to be independent, you probably need to own assets, or a reputation. If you want to be financially well off, you probably need to deliver enough value to the right people that they will happily pay you for it. If you want to be proud of your work, you probably need to avoid racing to the bottom and denigrating the culture along the way.

Within that framework, though, there’s plenty of room. Room for you to dig in deep and decide what change you want to make, and how (and who) you seek to serve.

This might be a good time to go back to the edges exercise, to go through it again and find some new axes, new revelations, new promises. Find the people worth serving, and then find a change worth making.

Always be testing

It’s tempting to make a boring product or service for everyone.

Boring because boring is beyond criticism. It meets spec. It causes no tension.

Everyone, because if everyone is happy then no one is unhappy.

The problem is that the marketplace of people who are happy with boring is static. They aren’t looking for better.

New and boring don’t easily coexist, and so the people who are happy with boring aren’t looking for you. They’re actively avoiding you, in fact.

The ever-faster cycles that require us to always be testing, to resist creating boredom, are driven by the fact that the only people we can serve are curious, dissatisfied, or bored. Everyone else can opt out and refuse to pay attention.

The good news is that two extraordinary things have happened, massive shifts in the way everything is sold to everyone: It’s cheaper and faster than ever to create a prototype or a limited run. That’s true for nonprofits, as well as for manufacturers or service businesses.

It’s cheaper and faster than ever to find the early adopters, to engage with people who want to hear from you.

This means it’s on each of us to make an assertion. Outline a promise. Choose your extremes, find the people you seek to change, and show up with your offer.

Call it a test if you want to.

But it’s real life.

The real life of engaging with what’s possible, and of working with people who want to make a change.

Always be seeking, connecting, solving, asserting, believing, seeing, and yes, testing.

The other way to read this is: always be wrong.

Well, not always. Sometimes you’ll be right. But most of the time, you’ll be wrong. That’s okay.

Scrapbooking

Being wrong from scratch is exhausting. Radical originality doesn’t have a high return on investment, and it will wear you out.

Scrapbooking is an efficient alternative.

When designing a website, or an email campaign, or a new product, you can scrapbook it.

Find the things you think that those you engage with will be attracted to and will trust. The typefaces, the pricing, the offers, the images, the interfaces . . . and cut them up, break them down into the original indivisible memes within. Then rebuild something new on top of these pieces.

You can do the same thing when you put together your website, your podcast, or your new project. Find the essential beacons (the extremes) that matter to you and to your audience, and weave them together in a new thing.

If you had to charge ten times as much

What’s the difference between a thirty-dollar massage and a three hundred-dollar one?

What could make a book worth two hundred dollars? Or a hotel room worth fifteen hundred dollars? What could cause someone to give five hundred dollars to charity instead of fifty dollars?

“More of the same” is the wrong answer.

In order to dramatically increase the size of your audience or the price that you charge, you’ll need to do more than simply work more hours or interrupt more people.

We don’t pay ten times extra for more words, a bigger order of French fries, or a louder stereo.

Instead, it’s a different extreme, a different story, a different sort of scarcity.

Irresistible is rarely easy or rational

There’s often a line out the door of Fiona’s shop.

It’s not surprising. The ice cream is delicious, the portions are enormous, and a waffle cone costs less than three Canadian dollars. And it’s served with a smile, almost a grin.

It’s irresistible.

Of course, once you finish the cone, you’ll stroll around, hang out by the water, and maybe start to make plans about where to spend a week of next year’s vacation.

The Opinicon, a lovely little resort near Ottawa, could charge a lot more for an ice cream cone. A team of MBAs doing a market analysis and a profit and loss report would probably pin the value at about eight dollars. That’s where the return on investment would be at its peak.

But they’re not in the business of selling ice cream cones. The ice cream cones are a symbol, a beacon, a chance to engage.

If you run everything through a spreadsheet, you might end up with a rational plan, but the rational plan isn’t what creates energy or magic or memories.

Stew Leonard’s was a small supermarket with a big footprint. It was profiled by Tom Peters and had the highest sales per square foot of any store of its kind. Stew’s was an experience, almost an amusement park, with remarkable customer service, clever merchandising, and interesting products to choose from. As the company grew to a few more stores, a new generation of owners took over who seemed more intent on short-term profit and less focused on magic. For a while, profits increased. But now, year after year, it’s a bit less crowded, a bit less energetic, a bit less interesting. So when a new store opens nearby, they lose a few more customers, then a few more, and finally, people begin to wonder, “Why do I even bother coming here in the first place?” It might not be about being cheaper. It’s tricky to define better. But without a doubt, the heart and soul of a thriving enterprise is the irrational pursuit of becoming irresistible.