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If you have two hours to kill, would you choose to sit through a powerpoint presentation on the benefits of using all natural products to clean your office, or watch the film, “Terminator?”
Even if you’re not a big Arnold fan, don’t appreciate science fiction, and hate violence in movies, I still bet you’d be drawn to high definition entertainment over low resolution powerpoint.
This was the question I posed to a gentlemen yesterday. He showed me his ads and marketing materials laden with facts. No emotional triggers. No differentiators. No reasons why his company will help me sleep better at night. It was all about how “green” his cleaning service is.
Being “green” these days is no longer a chief brand differentiator in many industries, especially in commercial cleaning. It’s a commodity. It’s a little bit like having a neurological hospital trumpet that they have the smartest brain surgeons in town. I’m afraid in their business that having bright cranial docs is the cost of entry. They’re a commodity. And we all know what happens to commodities in our customers’ minds. Our services are devalued, get subjected to bidding wars, and our prices resemble the aftermath of a cyborg encounter.
Since people buy with emotion, then rationalize their purchase with facts, why do so many green marketers holster their most formidable weapon: Telling great stories?
Earlier this week I introduced you to Dr. Sam Ham, and his thesis of “Thematic Communication” to coax behavior change. In this second in a series of articles on his work in environmental communications, I asked Dr. Ham for his description of thematic communication.
“It’s simply a way of thinking about communication that is based on the idea that persuasion is about making people think their own thoughts. We must provoke people to think and make their own meanings with respect to the message if we want to increase our likelihood of success over the long term.
“A ‘theme’ is simply the message. It’s like the moral of a story, or the main conclusion a communicator would like her/his audience to draw from the message. These morals and conclusions are meanings made between the ears of the individual. The more strongly relevant the message is (the more it connects to what the audience — not just the communicator — already cares about, things that matter to them), the greater the likelihood they will attend to and process it. The more they think, the more persuasive the message can be. And if the thoughts they think are consistent with or supportive of the kind of behavior being advocated, that behavior stands a greater chance of ensuing.
“We must not try to intuit what this moral might or should be. To enjoy our greatest chances of success, we must derive it from our ‘homework,’ which allows us to isolate the truly important beliefs our audience has about the behavior, and specifically, which of those beliefs is different between compliers and non-compliers. Our theme needs to target those beliefs and we need to craft it, package it, and deliver it to our audiences in a compelling way, connecting it to what matters to them.
Dr. Ham included this 70-page guide, “Promoting Persuasion in Protected Areas,” that takes you through creating thematic communication in your campaign.
So if you’re selling anything from green commercial cleaning services, to top-notch brain surgeons, to a behavior change that asks visitors, “Don’t feed the animals,” start by getting your story straight. Understand what motivates your customer emotionally. Then tell a tale that makes them think and compels them to action.
I will be telling my tale about “The Cold Shoulder of Social Media” and the tendency for its contributors to write as poweproint engineers as opposed to Spielbergian storytellers as a presenter at Social Media Arizona. If you’re in Tempe, AZ, stop by the MadCap theater. I’m at noon.
Tags: Dr. Sam Ham, Green Marketing, storytelling, sustainability, thematic communication
Posted in: Green Marketing, Sustainable Marketing
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