That saying “familiarity breeds contempt” may be true. We tend to take loved ones for granted over time, no matter how well-intended. Yet it is equally true that familiarity breeds acceptance. Thus it is easier to stick a new idea in someone’s mind if you can attach it to something familiar – an existing memory.
Become More Frequently-Quoted by Employing This Familiarity Effect
For example, what familiar and respected product embodies the valuable trait for which you want your product to be remembered? Plum wants to be the Netflix of baby clothes. Instead of buying clothes for your child, rent them then return the clothes when they are outgrown, and get a new set.
Here’s another hint: Let others be the stars in your story.
People are more likely buy your idea or product if they are placed in a situation where they can be the experts, exploring the topic their way. Better yet, enable them to gain bragging rights, proving themselves right – in front of others – in their choice to buy from you or to support you.
Imagine, for example, the astonishment of the staff and the sommelier at Bone’s, an Atlantic steak house when they started handing dining guests iPads at the table, loaded with a copy of the wine list.
Purchases of wine, shot up 11 percent. Mused Mr. Reno, the sommelier, “With the information on the device, they seem more apt to experiment by buying a different varietal or going outside their price range. It stuns me, but they seem to trust the device more than they trust me, and these are people I’ve waited on for 10 years.”
Or, perhaps diners feel more comfortable and confident, looking at various wines themselves and discussing them at the table. The key here is that they get to be the expert.
Hint: Some times it helps your firm or you, when you when you let others take charge of your message, tweak it for their needs and thus sell themselves on it
Former Sony Pictures CEO, Peter Guber, is a passionate believer in the power of a purposeful narrative. That means that if you share a story or offer in which others see a role that they want to play in it, they are more likely to share it with others.
In Tell to Win, Guber gives many examples of how people love to tell others about something which makes then feel smart, proud or otherwise impressive. How can you craft a story that pulls others in, perhaps even enhancing it yet retelling it with passion and conviction.
Organizations as diverse as LEGO and the S.F. Giants, and individuals as diverse as Nicholas Kristof and Tony Hsieh have attracted passionate supporters, in part, by letting others take over their story to re-tell it in their own way.
Hearing your story in a way that we can feel good when sharing it means it may spread farther, faster and in more directions than you can on your own. What story are you sharing that pulls others in to participate? I am eager to hear it – and your insights about how to nudge us to participate with you
