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If marketing was a bakery

We would probably hate cake.

As a baker, when your cake doesn’t taste great, the best thing you can do is to learn to bake a better tasting cake.

The default approach of many marketers is different. They will take the cake and decorate it beautifully. Invent a story about how the recipe is an ancient and long forgotten secret of someone’s grandmother. Throw some incentives in so you can get three if you buy two (although you might not even want one). And have a celebrity, who never tasted the cake, tell us how delicious it is.

And then, when you’ve tricked the customer into buying that piece of cake, trust erodes as the experience falls short of the expectation.

The first bite is with the eye. But sooner or later, the customer gets to experience the actual taste. If the actual bite isn’t great, that first impression will quickly be forgotten.

The default approach to marketing is prone to deception: Give me what you have and I will make it appear attractive and find ways to persuade a customer to buy it.

Lighting the path is different because it starts with a great cake. You decorate a great cake not as a means to hide a weakness but because it makes a great cake even greater. You don’t invent a story about the recipe to make it appear cooler, you tell the actual story because it’s fascinating, let’s say due to the breathtaking attention to detail in making the cake.

Now, when the actual bite confirms the eye’s bite, it builds trust. And we might fall in love with the cake. And buy a second one even without any incentive.

Avoiding your audience’s autopilot

Our audiences have a lot of bad (or good?) habits that affect us.

When they read a boring headline, the scroll-further habit kicks in.

When they see a PowerPoint deck, the boring-PowerPoint-lets-check-Instagram habit kicks in.

When they read a generic first paragraph of a blog post, the this-is-irrelevant-lets-just-skim-over-it habit kicks in (or maybe even the lets-check-my-phone-and-get-lost-in-social-media-instead routine).

Habits are a big deal because they take over our audience’s brains (more or less) automatically. Once someone experiences a trigger (e.g. the boring headline), the habit kicks in.

The most effective way to avoid this behaviour is to avoid the trigger. And that’s why it matters to a) find trust in your own voice and b) understand what matters to your audience.

If you speak about what matters to your audience in your own distinctive voice, the just-like-everything-else trigger doesn’t fire and so your audience’s attention remains with you.

Don’t persuade harder, resonate stronger!

Traditionally, marketing is about getting the audience to do something. Marketers use all sorts of subtle techniques to gently (or not so gently) push or pull their audience in the direction they want them to go.

If the customer doesn’t buy, well, we’ve got to try harder and incentivise the purchase. Decorate the packaging a little better. Pay a celebrity to endorse the product.

Lighting the path is different. It trusts the audience with the decision to follow your advice. Because it turns out that people above the age of one prefer not to be pushed or pulled. They prefer to walk on their own (and are so much more loyal when they do).

This can only work when you start with empathy. When you deeply care for what matters to your customers. Then you’re going to build products that truly change things for the better. You’re going to understand their struggles and know what they strive for. And you’re going to speak their language.

Guess what happens when you solve someone’s struggle and explain it to them in their own language? They’re going to resonate. No need to push or pull.

Don’t persuade harder, resonate stronger!

Sometimes, a smile is all we need

Can I ask you a favor?

Could you send a smile to someone who you think needs one today?

It might be as simple as just an emoji. Or you shoot a selfie of you smiling. If you feel like it, why don’t you record a video and say a few nice words?

Do it in private or even publicly.

Whatever you choose, trust me: Your smile will make today a better day.

New information

“Have you heard the news about David?”
“Oh, yeah, yet another proof for how selfish he is.”

When new information becomes available, we immediately relate it to what we already know. If there’s a matching story, we fit the data into the story.

Rather than adapt the story to the data.

Because when we look closer, we discover that saying “no” to your support request for the project was for a good reason. He’s going through a rather difficult time and is uncomfortable speaking about it at work.

It’s actually a choice: When new information becomes available then either the narrative has to be adapted to the new information or the new information has to be integrated into the narrative. We either need to change the story so it’s consistent with the data or we interpret the data so that it confirms what we already believe.

The problem is that rewriting a story takes effort and it seems that the more effort it takes to adapt the narrative to the new information, the less likely it is that we actually do it. If it’s easier to interpret new information in a way that supports what we already believe, then that’s what will happen.

Keep that in mind when you try to convince someone. There’s no guarantee that they will interpret your data the same way you do.

The perfect job reference

Job references are issued at the end of a work relationship, sometimes in between, in regular intervals.

They are usually a judgement of how well an employee has performed during the period after the work has been done. You are the judge. You evaluate their work and you write your verdict up in a reference. It makes it seem like the responsibility for an employee’s performance would be totally theirs, not the leaders.

This relationship changes dramatically when you write a job reference at the beginning of your relationship and keep it in your drawer.

How would you like the employee to perform? What would the ideal job reference for that employee look like if it turned out to become a perfect relationship?

Really, write your employee the best reference you can think of – in advance!

Here’s the crux: Make it your responsibility that they live up to it, not theirs.

Provide them with the environment and the support they need to thrive. Don’t blame them if they don’t deliver the results, ask yourself how you can support them better.

It forces you to be more considerate about whom you hire. But more importantly, it forces you to do everything you can to get the optimum out of your relationship.

And in that sense, when you finally write the real reference, the one that gets handed over, it’s much more a verdict about your performance as a leader as it is about their performance.

The not-so-rational argument

Fact: The glass is half full.
Which is the same as half empty.

The more relevant question is what conclusions do we draw from the fact?

These can be rather different depending on your take regarding half empty or half full, e.g. because they imply a different sense of urgency.

The thing is that arguing rationally based on facts can be just as frustrating as arguing emotionally when we don’t agree on the meaning of the facts. Even more so … because everyone is so deeply convinced that their take is right. After all, the facts prove them right. It really is a factual argument: “But the glass is half empty! You can’t deny that!”

Why then does the other party, based on the facts, arrive at a different conclusion? And how come they are just as convinced of their conclusion?

The problem is that facts are just facts and the argument is not about the facts. It’s about what the facts mean. It’s informed by our experiences and expectations. It’s influenced by our values and principles.

And this means, that it only masks as a rational discussion unless we agree on these things. It’s a rational discussion relative to our values and principles. Only when we agree about these will a rational argument lead to the same conclusion for all participants.

Are you clear about the values that influence the meaning of a fact to you?

Playing around

When you’re testing a new approach, are you really testing it or are you just playing around?

When we play around, we don’t expect to get anywhere meaningful. We just try out this or that and see where it leads us. Some things work, some don’t, which is ok because we’re just, well, playing around.

Testing is different. Testing requires a rigorous approach by clarifying the assumptions, specifying the variables that are to be tested and a measure to evaluate the outcome so that we can later determine whether the test was successful or not and what the best parameters are for the task.

Playing around is most useful when you’re in a creative process, looking for new ideas not knowing, yet, what answer you’re looking for exactly.

Testing is most useful when you have a specific answer in mind that you want verified from the test and (usually) when you have a timeframe within which you want the result.

When you say “Let’s try this out!”, are you playing around or are you testing? Both have their place but it’s good to be intentional about which one you need for the task at hand.

Afraid of failing

Some people are so afraid of failing that they can’t find the courage to succeed.

Sometimes to the degree that they won’t even start to play. Out of fear that something goes wrong. To their embarrassment.

They just don’t make that call. They just don’t publish that post. They just don’t hit the record button to shoot that video.

Even though their story is great and they’ve rehearsed it a hundred times. Even though their pitch is perfect.

Here’s the thing: the prerequisite for winning is playing. You can’t win if you don’t play.

If you feel like it needs more refinements, then refine it. If you feel like you need more practice, practice.

But eventually, go out and play your game. We need you to.

(And yet, let me be clear: Some people really do suffer from anxiety and it’s appropriate to respect that. There’s not much use in arguing that a failure is highly unlikely or that it wouldn’t be bad. It’s a fear and as such it’s irrational. People affected by this know that, too. Keep in mind that you’re not walking in their shoes. You haven’t made their experiences. So, you’re not in a position to judge their fears and anxieties.)

I’ll just improvise

A lot of people tend to think that improvising is about being super spontaneous. What gets easily overlooked is how much improvising has to do with being prepared to be spontaneous.

For example, the master improvisers in music don’t just walk on the stage and start playing what comes to their mind. Or, in fact, they do. But they do it after years of practising.

They have experimented a lot. Played a lot of wrong notes. Been surprised many times by an unexpected turn of their fellow band colleagues. Thought of a line that their fingers just couldn’t implement.

But kept trying. Experimenting. Playing.

And therefore they are able to react masterfully to every turn that their fellow musicians are taking while their hands are able to quickly play what their mind is thinking.

When you improvise unprepared you’re probably going to hit a couple of lucky goals. But you’re going to miss just as many. In essence, you’re leaving success to luck to a large degree.

(Which, by the way, is a comfortable place to be in for some because you can always put the blame on the fact that you haven’t actually prepared and were just winging it and if only you had prepared you of course would have performed better.)

That’s not to say that you shouldn’t start to improvise when you’re just starting out. It’s rather a motivation to dig deeper in order to become better at improvising.

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Dr. Michael Gerharz