Carmine Gallo recently summarized 10 key takeaways from his book The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: How to Be Insanely Great in Front of Any Audience. As I read them, I was struck by how well these guidelines apply to the development of engaging marketing messages.
- Plan in Analog For marketers, this is an endorsement of the simple tissue session. Nothing separates big ideas from tactical one-offs faster than a stack of paper and a supply of Sharpies.
- Create a Twitter-Friendly Description
- Introduce the Antagonist
- Focus on Benefits
- Stick to the Rule of Three
- Sell Dreams, Not Products
- Create Visual Slides
- Make Numbers Meaningful
- Use Zippy Words
- Reveal a “Holy Smokes” Moment
Challenge yourself to clearly communicate your message in 140 characters. The MacBook Air undoubtedly has numerous attributes, but Steve Jobs simply promised, “The world’s thinnest notebook.”
Every good story needs a hero and a villain. While your marketing campaign may never feature your villain as boldly as Mac does, a clear understanding of your antagonist is a powerful way to ensure your brand is positioned as the hero.
Most brands use laundry lists of features to promote their product or service. However, people are more likely to be motivated by benefits that address their problems.
Three is simply easier to remember than four, six, or eleven. Plus, three has inherent drama; just ask any playwright or comedian.
Most products are swiftly becoming commoditized. Even truly revolutionary products are not likely to stay that way for long. What can a marketer do? Build emotional connections. They last longer and even can transcend a misstep or two
For marketers, this means looking beyond product photography. Macs are beautifully designed, yet they don’t appear in the Mac vs. PC television campaign. Instead, the personification of each brand establishes visual imagery far more powerful than what even the most beautiful product shots could have created.
Numbers often need context if you want people to truly understand them. Communicating that it only takes one dollar a day to feed a starving child certainly puts a different perspective on the plea for a $365 annual donation.
Adopt powerful language. Ban the buzzwords. Even create your own terminology. Thanks to marketing, terms like scrubbing bubbles, ring around the collar and wassup are universally understood (and strongly associated with the brands that created them).
The creative brief might call it the net takeaway, the single most important idea, or the insight. Call it whatever you want, just make sure that it is dramatic, motivating, and powerfully represented in your final creative product.
Steve Jobs’s final presentation tip is to practice – practice a lot. For marketers this means to continually test, measure, evaluate, and optimize. If not, our fate will be Einstein’s definition of insanity – doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results.
– Pamela J. Alvord, EVP Chief Brand Strategist
