Pitching an idea

question

The most powerful way to get someone to agree with your idea is to ask them the leading question, and have them tell you.

Ronald Regan used this technique a lot. He did not tell the American people “your economic situation has deteriorated over the last 48 months”, instead  he asked the famous question during his election campaign: “Are you better off now than you were 4 years ago?”. The answer was a resounding “NO” and he was elected.

Asking the right question can prompt a favourable, almost pre-deternmined response, but the formulation of the words to convey that response provokes a deeper, more intensive processing of the question. This leaves less room for ambiguity and uncertainty in the way the receiver responds to the question, and considerable committment to the answer. 

I have also found it a great way to generate engagement at the opening of a presentation.

The “Twitter Pitch”

Mark Twain

Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) famously said “I do not have time to write you a short letter, so I have written you a long one”.

This statement is a pitch for twitter 100 years before it was conceived, as the sentiment of clarity through brevity is the same. Writing to convey an idea is a challenge, writing to convey an idea in a few words requires a discipline of thought that can be extremely hard.

The restriction of Twitter to 140 characters does seem to encourage a written shorthand that I find excruciating, but at its best, also adds a discipline to constructing an idea that squeezes out the superfluous, the hyperbole, the distractions,  and forces clarity by brevity.

It seems that the “Twitter Pitch” is replacing the “Elevator Pitch” first made popular by Dale Carnegie, but the idea is the same.

A measure of brand maturity.

 

coke

Ever noticed that people who seem to “really have it all together” are able to poke fun at themselves, take negative feedback as an opportunity to learn and improve, and surprise with their capacity to be absolutely, selflessly, honest?

It is often the same with brands, another example of the similarity of people and brands, of how brands take on human characteristics.

However, it is a revelation to see this astonishingly honest ad by Coke.

Is this the beginning of a trend, a measure of maturity of the Coca Cola brand that it is able to spend resources advertising the downside of consumption of the product, or just a mistake, like the appalling blunder with “New Coke”  in 1985. Perhaps, my cynical side asks, it is because they make more money out of their other beverage products, and want to switch consumption?

It seems to me that despite all, it really is just a measure of the security that Coke management feels in the strength of their brand. It is a recognition that if they do not talk about the cause and effect between sugar beverage consumption and obesity, and all its problems,  others will, and they better have a credibility and a stake in the conversation.

 

C21 Moments of Truth.

SAS

Former CEO of Scandanavian Airlines, Jan Carlzon  write a book in the eighties called “Moments of Truth” which reflected the journey of SAS from its commercial deathbed to being the most admired airline in the world. It was a best seller, articulating the then revolutionary idea that each interaction an enterprise had with a customer was a “Moment of Truth” a point at which the consumers experience would shape their attitude and future relationships with a brand.

It occurs to me that it has changed now, and the moment of truth that now matters as much, if not more, is now the point at which a consumer posts, tweets, or other wise publicly records the interaction and their experience with it for others to see, hear, and feed into their memory banks for reference.

The 21st Century has opened up a number of opportunities to interact with consumers Carlzon never anticipated, the referral power of the devices we now routinely use has changed Carlzons Moment of Truth to just the first of many crucial moments.