How do you make people remember you?
Easy! Be impressive.
But being impressive isn’t just about delivering loads of value per se. But its also about how you deliver it. If you can show something impressive, almost imediately visualised and with obvious effect, its like magic. Take too long to make your point and you’ll fade into the background.
Value Impact | Time Is A Factor
Like George Constanza says in the 80s comedy Seinfeld
“If you condense everything I’ve achieved in my lifetime down into a weekend, it looks impressive”
If I’ve got a fantastic tomb of life wisdom to teach you, but I only give you a little nugget of information each day, none of which in and of itself is life-changing, then when I’m dead and gone you’re going to say, “Hey thats a mild shame, that James Forbear, he was a neat guy.”
But if I manage to condense that info down and deliver it in one punch with some crazy kind of Zen-style eye opening example where I pull a treasurebox from the river… this time at my eulogy you’re going to be saying “Forbear… legend!!! Remember the Treasurebox in the River story, well that changed my life.”
The Big Secret to Success
Here’s the BIG secret… Effective Content Marketing ain’t just about solving peoples problems. Its about making them remember that YOU were the one who solved them.
When crafting your ideal Icebreaker, Opening Gambit or even Wheelhouse offer, you want to orchestrate a point of Value Impact and lead up to this climax.
When you remember the Matrix, you remember three lines;
- “Will it be the Red Pill or the Blue Pill”
- “I know Kung-fu”
- “There is no spoon”
If your remembered lines were different to these, then you’re weird and I don’t want you reading anymore of my content, please go away.But considering for a moment why we take away these specific moments, its because as humans we are hard-wired to remember either moments of failure or triumph. Its a survival thing. But at each of the three main points, there is an explosive realisation of some kind. Good or bad.
“Will it be the Red Pill or the Blue Pill”
– Reality is a facade, we are all really slaves to the machines.BAD
“I know Kung-fu”
– Dissemination of several lifetimes worth of grand mastery is at my fingertips, plus I’m now double-hard.GOOD.
“There is no spoon”
– In this simulacra there are no limits but the ones I set myself.GOODish.
If you can craft the delivery of your value so that it snaps into focus at a referenced “pinch-point” you will have created a memorable experience in your prospect. Politicians often distil their campaigns down to one key issue. They then summarise that key issue with one soundbyte for exactly this reason. They understand the lasting effect of well executed Value Impact Slogan.
“we promise to, in this decade, land a man on the moon and do the other things. Not because they are easy , but because they are hard”
– John F Kennedy
In this speech, John does a great job of making you remember that the Lunar Landings were achieved by his administration. Its a shame the boys over at MJ12 decided that he and Marylin would be better off not creating any further statements containing memorable Value Impact, but hey-ho! I guess that’s a conversation for another time. But the point being that the “reveal” that we were going to the moon, was sudden, impactful, a simple message, delivered with absolute confidence made you remember John for the massive strides forward he made, furthering humanity. Not just as some unfortunate dude in a Cadillac, wheeling around the grassy knoll.
So when you’re crafting your next set-piece, teaching your prospects how to scratch that next itch of theirs… do me a favour and think about which exact moment it’ll all snap into clarity for them. And try and mark that moment with a catchy statement, visual or analogy. Do that, and you’ll be well on your way to creating Memorable Value Impact that gets associated with you and your brand.
In content marketing, Don’t Do This…
Gradually reveal stuff over time, with no real “aha!” moment, not really announcing the realisation of the “cool”, even though you put the same amount of effort into teaching your material, unfortunately you’re likely to have your prospects just go… “meh!!.. that was okay I guess.”
Memorable Marketing & Bathtub Shenanigans
I’m not saying that Archimedes was just some guy cocking-around with pans of water until he started shrieking “Eureka“. But we remember Archimedes and WHAT HE SAID in that moment over King Hieron, the gold crown or any of the other details of the story. (Or for that matter even his war machine constructions that held off Roman invasions for two whole years.) I’m pretty sure the “being naked” part also helped memorability, but that’s nothing new in marketing. I’d consider full or partial nudity optional, depending on your brand and local trading standards.
The point is, in content marketing, you want people to remember that IT WAS YOU who helped them through this problem. You might want to design a visual or sound-byte that inject a little of your own brand personality. This is a technique that we use QUITE DELIBERATELY during my years in TV advertising.
Listerine would have you believe there’s an army of little blue Listerine men shooting off all that nasty plaque with their gushing Listerine hoses.
“Kills germs that cause bad breath”
PROBLEM SOLVED
Vodafone spent a decade since 2002 asking me if I could “Dig it?” … or “How was I?” Suffice it to say I never got an opportunity to reply. But their brand advertising imagery did do me the service of making me realise that my drab lifestyle and lack of friends was due to my poor choice of cellular network.
“Power to You”
PROBLEM SOLVED
The then creative Young-Gun agency, taking the advertising world by storm, Mother, formulated the slogan “Trust Boots” in 2005. Although controversial as many said it was too verbose, or that fitting that many syllables on to a short 10 or 20 second TV spot may be problematic. Also there was the issue of ambiguity… what if the prospect was wearing boots? Was the message at the end of said pharmaceutical companies advert simply to trust in your own footwear? I jest of course, however using the ultra-concise imperative “Trust Boots” over a statement, say “Boots Cares” tested quite well and ran with a high degree of success.
I was just a bit jaded that they didn’t consider my offering:
“Trust the Alliance Unichem and Walgreens Owned Pharmaceutical Giant Boots, Where We Only Cause A Few Deaths From Dispensory Errors”,
… which apparently volunteered information unnecessary to their brand messaging and came off as more impersonal than they’d like their brand to appear. Pesants.
“Trust Boots”
PROBLEM SOLVED
Suffice it to say that in modern content marketing, getting your message across in a timely fashion is important. People’s time is important. You don’t want to get side tracked by delving into personal opinions or off topic, like talking about the unconstitutional assassination of former actresses and presidents or spreading cynical views about pharmaceuticals who obviously have our best interests at heart, as their slogan proves.
But at the point of delivering your “Aha!” moment in your instructional content, or brand messaging, you want to have a memorable, slogan, tag-line, sound-byte, sticky image, call-it-what-you will visual takeaway that your audience will associate with your brand, remember you by and come back to you with their next problem.
And don’t just do the easy thing and plagiarise or adapt existing brand executions, no matter how tempting that might be. Thanks for listening….
TRUST ENERGISE
Digital Video Advertising: Grading (Colour Correction)
