Sometimes, for your message to get through, it’s necessary to (metaphorically speaking) hit someone over the head with a message that effectively says “What you know is wrong”.
Solid unique selling propositions can help do this.
Jump ahead to:
Dispelling Myths
A YouTube science educator named Derek Muller has a Ph.D. in teaching physics through video.
His Ph.D. thesis is titled Designing Effective Multimedia for Physics Education.
In the course of running what we might call social or educational experiments for his Ph.D. research, he discovered that in order to get people to learn anything, you first need to tell them “What you know is wrong” in an effective way.
It appears this is a trigger that causes us to pay attention. When we’re hearing something we think we already know, we appear to not pay attention well. And why should we, since we already know about it?
If you’ve read the prior articles in this series, you’ve seen these two examples of effective myth-dispelling in marketing. They are repeating (briefly) as they’re both EXCELLENT examples of successfully marketing “against the prevailing market”.
7-Up
How do you sell a clear soda against colas? By defining the “UnCola” as refreshing, thereby creating a new product category.
And of course, the ever popular….
Volkswagen
How do you sell a small car (the Beetle) against a culture of big luxury cars and powerful muscle cars? By positioning the small and functional Volkswagen Beetle as cool.
As cool to be cheap and functional. As cool to save money on gas. As cool to save money on repairs. Some people consider the image below to the be the best print ad ever run.
Being Different Matters
Below is a quote from near the end of the book Positioning.
“To repeat, the first rule of positioning is: To win the battle for the mind, you can’t compete head-on against a company that has a strong, established position. You can go around, under or over, but never head-to-head”.
If your products or services are not different enough from established players, you don’t have a USP. You’re not unique.
The Dramatic Demo
The dramatic demo is how you communicate, in a matter of a few seconds, why someone should care to learn more about your product or services. They can be hard to create, but when you’re successful, you get attention.
To create a good dramatic demo, you need to understand your USP.
Below are a few examples, to help give you ideas.
These are all video examples, but video is not the only format. The main idea is for you to put some serious thought (and testing) into how do you QUICKLY get someone’s attention so they WANT to learn more.
Dyson Vacuums
He gets to the issue in 9 seconds.
ShamWow
His demos are so famous, no introduction is needed. At 8 seconds he shows you how absorbent the ShamWow is.
DrainWig
It’s a product for keeping shower drains unclogged. The dramatic demo occurs 5 seconds in.
