I need to first introduce you to the three rings of lasting success when it comes to promoting and positioning yourself as someone people should pay a lot of money to.Ring number 1 will be the PROMISE. The promise is the thing you say about your stuff. Now, the promise is often supported and, to some extent, made more palatable by something called POSITIONING.Positioning is what they think of you before you actually make the promise. If you have good positioning, they are going to be more inclined to listen to the promise. If you have bad positioning, they are not going to listen to the promise at all.What is very cool is that what comes before positioning is something called THE BIG IDEA.The PromiseThe promise is basically when you say something like: “Buy my stuff and youwill be happy."Promises we can see are:McDonald’s: "Buy my hamburger and you will be satisfied"Levi’s: "Buy this shirt and you will be a hit at the party"C&C: "Buy this paint and the paint job on your house will last for decades"FGV: "Study here and you will become a qualified professional in the field"SARAIVA: "Buy this book from us because it was printed in excellent quality"Now, interestingly, this is where 99% of all marketers and all campaigns place their focus: “Look how great my product is. My product is absolutely fantastic."The opening conversation is almost always about the promise. It is quite effective... which is why 99% of people do it.Since 99% of people do it, in today’s world they end up not differentiating themselves. These marketing campaigns do not become memorable. To create a better marketing campaign, we must focus on something beyond the promise: Positioning and the Big Idea.PositioningPositioning concerns the preconceptions your customers have about you. What do they think about how you behave?Have you ever watched McDonald’s ads and compared them with Bob’s ads?McDonald’s focus is to show young people, a clean, organized environment. In fact, McDonald’s is very concerned with these values, and when you want to buy at McDonald’s, I believe these values go through your mind. After all, isn’t it great to know that you will be served quickly even with a long line? That you will eat a hamburger and fries that are always just right and in the correct quantity?Now look at Bob’s, the focus of the ad is "the messy eaters." What they want to show here is the opposite of McDonald’s: you will be served hamburgers that, whether you like it or not, will make you stain your shirt with so much sauce. Who has never been to Bob’s and been happy that they made a mistake (on the generous side) with the amount of sauce / cheese / Ovomaltine / chocolate topping? Bob’s positioning focuses on satisfaction in relation to eating something "over the top."When creating your own positioning, think about your brand’s PROS and CONS. What are they?From the pros, you will know what to focus on. The cons can also be a sign of what not to focus on or what you have to work on to turn into something positive. For example, McDonald’s has the pro of being seen as organized, but Bob’s not so much. So Bob’s takes advantage of this perception of being "a little disorganized compared to McDonald’s" to turn it into one of its strengths: we will not measure the amount of sauce that will be put on your hamburger.The Big IdeaThe big idea is what grabs your customer’s attention and presents the promise in a new and possibly even unusual way.I want you to think of the big idea as a unique way to encapsulate what is truly cool about what you have to offer. No, it is not a unique selling proposition. In fact, it is one level above that.It is a way to open the door to your customer’s mind with a single combination of words. That is really what makes it different. If you can wrap a big idea around a common commoditized product, now you have something completely decommoditized and unusual. See why this is important. In today’s world, everyone has already heard almost every promise under the sun, and we have all been disappointed to some extent. But if our potential customers have already heard all the promises and are tired, we have to be different.We have to stand out.Most people try to stand out simply by being louder, by being bolder. Promises like “Hey, let’s make the headline red. Let’s have flashy videos instead of normal videos. Let’s make even bigger claims like giving 2 sandwiches for the price of 1."Well, unfortunately, this is not effective. The best way is to focus on the big idea. As I said before, having a big idea is hard. It takes time and it is something you do not want to rush. Give yourself permission to think about it. You do not need to get it overnight. It usually takes a while. That’s okay.Finding the Big IdeaOne of the best ways to come up with a big idea is to analyze these questions. I will ask the questions and then we will analyze what they really mean.- What is the promise?- How can you fulfill that promise in a way different from what the market is used to hearing?Now, look, we are already beginning to take a slightly different approach. We will start with a common promise, but now we are looking for ways to make that promise unique. Some of the things we need to focus on are:- What is their greatest desire?- In what unique way can I approach that desire that will grab their attention?I will give some examples of big ideas.1st Example of a Big Idea: Getting Babies to SleepThe first thing we do is address the DESIRE of the market. About a year ago, we’ll talk about a business helping exhausted parents finally get their children to sleep.This is their desire: “Get my baby to sleep. Please.”What is the PROMISE? “I’ll teach you how to get your baby to sleep.”The danger is that everyone has heard that promise before. If you go to amazon.com, there are a zillion new books for parents. They’ve tried many things. They’re probably tired. I’m talking to the lady and digging a little deeper, and I said: “How do you fulfill that promise? How do you make it happen in a unique way, different from what everyone else does?”She says: “Well, babies sleep naturally if you simply recognize their sleep cues. Basically, what we’re doing as parents is messing everything up. We keep the child awake trying to put them to sleep instead of recognizing their natural sleep cues.”Her DELIVERY METHOD was that she would train the parents, not the child. The BIG IDEA that came out of that conversation was “Born to Sleep.”“The big idea is a very small phrase that has one purpose: to open the door to a conversation with that customer.”- Frank KernThis phrase was not created to sell the program or make a promise. The sole purpose of the big idea is to open that door. If you think of the customer’s mind as a door, the big idea turns the handle just a little bit. That’s all it does.Once you have something that can be used as a big idea... in this case “Born to Sleep”... everything she built her system on is around the idea that babies are born to sleep. They don’t have difficulty sleeping.The next phase now is to find the PREMISE, what supports this big idea. The premise is basically your way of explaining the big idea.Imagine that we’re talking to an exhausted parent. Dad wants to get the child to sleep. Mom is desperate for the child to go to sleep. My client says: “You don’t have a problem. Your baby was born to sleep.” The only thing this little phrase is meant to do is make the parent say: “What do you mean?” That’s it. Boom. It’s just a way to get that interest.This is where the premise comes in.“The premise is a statement that defends or supports that big idea.”- Frank KernIn this case, here was my client’s premise: “Bush babies don’t stay awake all night.” She was referring to Aboriginal babies born in the Australian desert, babies born in the rainforests of Central America, Eskimo babies. These cultures don’t have the problems we have. Their babies sleep like rocks.Here’s the thing... babies are not designed to stay awake at night, and babies who don’t have all the modern distractions sleep very well. Parents are keeping the baby awake by accident because they don’t pick up on sleep cues.Now the final step is “HERE’S HOW.”If we’re having an imaginary conversation with one of the parents and my client says: “You don’t have a problem. Your child was born to sleep,” the only goal of that statement is to feed the parents’ desire to hear the premise: bush babies don’t stay awake all night.The big idea is “Born to Sleep.” Then we establish the premise. Yes, bush babies don’t stay awake all night. You’re keeping your child awake all night.The next thing we do is say, “Here’s how...” Now we can start by establishing positioning through education: “Here’s one way you keep your child awake. Here are some ways that make them go to sleep.”Then, finally, that positioning opens the door for us to make the promise. In this case, “I’ll teach you how to get your baby to sleep,” that is the promise.Premise -> Positioning -> PromiseNow imagine if we went straight to that customer and said: “I’ll teach you how to get your baby to sleep,” the mother would say, “Yeah, right,” with a lot of sarcasm. If we precede it with “Born to Sleep” and the premise, the mind opens up to the promise.2nd example of a Big Idea: Ensuring good reviewsNow let’s move on to an example of a consultant. His job is to ensure that doctors receive good reviews from their customers on the internet. He has several employees and bots to automate these tasks and ensure that his doctors get the proper review.His job is to ensure that more doctors use his consulting system. The problem is that there are many consultants promising doctors the same thing: that they will get their customers to leave good reviews.First, you ask what is different about his service. He says: “Well, what I do is focus on the team. I train the staff to ask properly, and I also know that even when the patient agrees to leave a good review, they’ll probably forget. That’s why I created an automated follow-up system that ensures the customer leaves a good review.”What’s setting him apart here is the automated follow-up system that ensures it works. This is different.The big idea he came up with was “Predictable Evangelism,” to encapsulate the main benefits of the results of his promise. Now remember, we’re not using this as a title, we’re not doing this as an ad or anything like that. What we’re doing is metaphorically having this conversation with the doctor. The doctor says: “Man, I need more reviews,” and we respond: “Ah, let me guess. Your patients know what to do and like you. They just aren’t leaving good reviews because they forget.” The doctor responds: “Yes.”He says: “Oh, what you need is predictable evangelism.” This phrase was not designed to make him say: “Here, take my money.” That won’t happen. Instead, he’s going to say: “Wait, what is that?” That’s all it should do.Open the door for him to establish the premise: “Clients want to leave good reviews, but you need to have a system to ensure they actually do it, and it has to be automated so you don’t have to think about it.”“Oh, what is that?” “Right here, let me show you how it works. Now we are establishing positioning through educatingthat client. Once you establish that positioning, now we can make the promise: “I will train your team and install the system that gets you good reviews.”If we went to the doctor with the promise, we would fail. If we go to the doctor with a big idea that opens the doors to positioning, we succeed.3rd Example of a Big Idea: Selling Magic: the Gathering CardsAnother example of a big idea can be taken from the gaming world. Channel Fireball is a store that sells Magic: the Gathering cards and products, among other games. The game is known for being very expensive and for many cards being released every month, with only a few actually seeing play.How does it attract customers when there are many other stores around the world? They have a very clear big idea: “Your cards are precious, ours are not.” or “We spend our wildcards so you don’t have to spend yours.”Channel Fireball Facebook postWhat does this big idea do? You can already imagine the work they must have testing all the possible combinations the game allows. So we move to the premise: “We know Magic is expensive and we don’t want you to spend money on just any card; we’ll evaluate them for you and you’ll only buy the ones that are truly valuable,” and then to the promise: “Buy your cards from us so you don’t waste money.”ExercisesFind your big idea! Write down each element below:What promise?What are your weaknesses?What are your strengths?What colors represent you?What characteristics would you like to present?Create a slogan.
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