Wow-effekt Archive - Page 3 of 4

Are you unavoidable or irresistible?

A lot of marketing advice these days focuses around becoming unavoidable. Being so present in the market that people can’t avoid you because your messages are present everywhere.

But, of course, being seen in a noisy world like ours is quite the challenge. Unsurprisingly, common marketing advice is that in order to be seen, you need to publish a lot. On as many channels as you can. So, in essence, to stay on top of the noise. If others publish a lot, you publish even more.

I think it’s much better to become irresistible instead. To make each of your messages so strong that people will be drawn to it regardless of their volume.

The most important shift that happens is that it’s not about the medium anymore but about people. While you can dominate a medium on sheer volume (though it’s unlikely because the next guy who is willing to turn up the volume even more, is right around the corner), the same is not true for people. Quite the opposite. Sooner or later people will just tune out if they feel overwhelmed by volume.

Instead of more, focus on intense! At least if it’s people you care about.

The kind of presentation I would want to listen to

A lot of presentations feel like the kind of thing that the speaker didn’t want to prepare but had to.

A much better approach would be to prepare a presentation so that it becomes the presentation your audience would want to listen to even if they didn’t have to.

The WTF moment

Marketers strive for a WOW moment. But the WTF moment is even stronger.

WTF is short for “I can’t believe that this is possible!” It occurs when you’ve given your audience exactly what they need and much more than they expected. It’s a solution to a problem that matters a lot to them.

Therefore, it’s also the trigger for “Tell me more!” It opens the flood gates.

Of course, this will get much easier if your product is a WTF product in the first place.

The show is part of the substance

When you believe in better, it’s your obligation to speak with the clarity that’s required for your audience to resonate with your message.

Change requires being heard. It’s a huge misunderstanding – and a source of big frustration – for quite a lot of difference makers who make better things and then stop at making them. The resonance that their competition gets for their arguably inferior products by putting on a show feels like an unfair advantage to them. You’ll often hear them complain that “show” seems to be more important than “substance” to their audience.

It’s not, of course. Because the show is part of the substance.

Your audience doesn’t care for the things they don’t see or understand and it doesn’t have to. It’s not their obligation to see why your thing matters. It’s yours. Resonance is actually required to get results.

The good news is this: If your product really does change things for the better, then you’re in a much better position to make your message resonate. Because what resonates most is relevance. So, the actual unfair advantage is to make better things. Because better things create relevance. Then, turn relevance into resonance!

Not good with words? Let AI take over!

If you still believe that it matters more how you say things than what you say then there might be great news for you. Liam Porr managed to get the AI algorithm GPT-3 to write a blog article that made it to the top ranked post on the website Hacker News.

The topic? Typical self-help stuff: “Feeling unproductive? Maybe you should stop overthinking.”

The article can be summarized in one sentence: “Well, if you tend to overthink things then stop overthinking and start creative thinking.”

Porr about what he needed to do: “It’s quite good at making pretty language, and it’s not very good at being logical and rational.” So he picked a popular blog category that doesn’t require rigorous logic: productivity and self-help.

And it is in fact a light read with a conversational tone. The scary part is how this article indeed reads like a lot of the conversion driven articles that put all their effort into getting you to click on the headline and that flood the social networks.

Yet, make no mistake. Computers are good at logic in general. So, this will likely be taken care of sooner or later. What’s still missing in computers is a sense of purpose. The why. The making sense of things part.

What’s lacking in both instances, human written and machine generated versions, is substance.

So, actually, GPT-3 is bad news if saying things nicely is your main focus as a communicator. Computers will probably soon become even better than humans in figuring out how to say things in a way that triggers just the right actions.

If we don’t want to end up in a society that’s filled with nice sounding, but ultimately meaningless content we need to raise the bars. Strive for purpose and for meaning – especially for meaningful content. This includes teaching our audiences so they not only cheer for the beautiful stuff but are also enabled to applaud the meaningful stuff.

What you say vs. how you say it

Here’s a question I get asked a lot:
“In the debate of what you say vs how you say it, which is more important?”

The answer is more nuanced than you think.

First of all, style and delivery obviously make a difference. They can light up a room or switch it off. They can make people lean in or turn away. But ideas can only make an impact if people lean in.

And so, it’s no wonder people often claim it doesn’t matter what you say, only how you say it. It sounds clever, almost worldly. But the more you think about it, the less sense it makes.

Because if the what doesn’t matter, then why bother saying anything at all?

What really matters in the what vs. how debate

Now, I get where this comes from. We’ve all seen average ideas succeed because they were communicated well, while better ones lost because they were not.

But here’s a truth that doesn’t quite fit: ideas don’t move people just because they’re spoken with charm. They move people because they resonate.

And resonance happens when style and substance work together.

The ones who seem “naturally persuasive” aren’t simply more charismatic. They’ve done the hard work of empathy. They’ve listened closely. They’ve discovered the words that fit their audience’s world. And suddenly, the message doesn’t feel like persuasion at all. It feels like recognition.

So, when you look closely, it’s not at all about slickness or talent. The people who seem so naturally persuasive usually just understand their audience better. What they say feels like what you were waiting to hear all along.

That’s not trickery. That’s not clever wording. That’s empathy.

A nuanced answer to the what vs. how question

Empathy changes the game. Because when you truly care about what you say, you also care about how it lands. You do the work to make sure it resonates. You search for the words that don’t just express your truth, but awaken their truth.

That’s when style and substance stop being two sides of an argument. They become inseparable. The belief you carry and the way you express it become one and the same.

And in that moment, trust is built. Change becomes possible.

So no, it’s not one or the other.
It’s both: what you say and how you say it.

But the “what” is where it begins.

Keep lighting the path,
Michael

The loooooooong pause

Many people tend to believe that tension is created by holding back information and having people wait for the reveal. Casting shows love to do that (“The winner is … looooong paaaauuuuuse … the winner is … even looooooooooonnnggger paaaaaaaauuuuuuuuse …”).

Often, though, a much more satisfying experience of tension is created by the opposite approach. By providing information leaves your audience in awe and begging you to tell them more. When you manage to create tension precisely by the things you say then it’s not the performance but the information itself that creates the tension.

If that’s the case you’ll know that you really hit a nerve. Also, it’s the beginning of a conversation rather than the end. Instead of being satisfied by the piece of information they receive, audiences become curious by it. Instead of feeling relieved by the information, tension is built up by the information.

What is a piece of information that you could give your audience that makes them want to know more?

Cute and clever is a trap

Cute and clever is a trap that businesses easily fall into. It’s deceptive because it seems that this is what the others are doing as well. When you see these slick presentations that win the deal, it’s easy to jump to the conclusion that it’s the slickness that did the job.

Yet, more often than not that’s not the case. It’s clarity that wins in most cases. With clarity comes slickness. Not the other way around.

You can have beautiful words, gorgeous slides, and catchy titles. Yet, when clarity is missing, your audience will not buy into your story.

It’s like with special effects in a movie. A movie with great special effects might be fun to watch, but a movie with a great story beats the special effects every time. Of course, a great story that’s implemented brilliantly beats both.

For presentations, it’s the same. Clarity beats slickness. Clarity plus slickness beats both. The good news is that once you have clarity, it’s so much easier to find the slickness that you were looking for.

A diamond needs to be polished, not decorated

Purity is what makes diamonds beautiful.

You polish it and shape it to take it’s purest form.

What you specifically don’t do with diamonds is to decorate it with fluff and stuff.

Why then do you decorate the diamond that is your product with all sorts of gimmicks and fluff and stuff when speaking about it?

When polished what is it that makes your product shine by itself?

WOW vs. AHA

A wow effect is relatively easy to achieve – if only because you can always throw money at the problem of making a show more breathtaking, more thrilling.

The thing is, though: a wow effect is rarely the point. When the show is over, when the wow moment is consumed, then what sticks? And for how long?

The aha effect is different. It’s what makes people care. It’s what makes people resonate with your message. It’s what makes people get what you have to say. The aha effect makes them see your point in a way they cannot unsee.

The thing is, though: an aha effect is something that money can’t buy. It requires effort. The effort of meticulously thinking it through and sweating the details. Of doing the hard work of empathy. Of walking in their shoes so you can speak their language. With clarity.

A wow effect can be a terrific tool to support an aha effect. To grab the attention that’s required to deliver an aha. But wow is never a means to an end. Wow is always a servant to aha.

Posts in Tag: Wow-effekt

What really matters in the what vs. how debate

A nuanced answer to the what vs. how question